Let Me Finnish

    Getting ready to take on my first Hakkaa Paalle scenario, and just my second scenario of any kind since last summer. We've selected 165 - Nothing But Courage. The scenario is based on a Finnish counter attack of Russian positions near a rail station in Honkaniemi, Finland, 1940, a battle which featured the only Finnish tank action of the Winter War.
   We chose sides randomly and I got the defending Russians. I fear my dice are already betraying me. I'm often wrong about favored sides when eyeballing a scenario, but at first glance this seems a bit hard on the Russians.Though the sides are roughly equal in quantity and quality, the Finns have a lot of things going for them. For starters, there's a very restrictive SSR which puts the Russians on No Move counters for up to three turns. The Finns also get three (!) FFEs as a pre game bombardment. They have skis and winter camo.
     Of course, these aren't just any Finns. These are ASL Finns, which means they can self rally, deploy and recombine without a leader, and fire a rifle with one hand while building a snow hotel with the other.

 

     The early results on ROAR have this as 2-0 favor of the Finns. Sure, it's statistically meaningless, but I still would like to have seen a Russian victory there.
    But enough pre-game whining. I'll save some for for Saturday.