I admit it freely, I am not a great player like many people here
. I am used to play games in "normal" mode, as an example, I completed my first campaign on colonel in the base game with a more or less balanced MV/DV scoresheet, winning Moscow 43 and Overlord decisively to end the game (Fortress Europa !).
That been said, as an average player, this scenario, while definitely fun, in a challenging way, made me scratch my head a bit. I have hesitated at the start to play it or go on to Norway - the previous campaign in Poland was so immersive, almost in a "roleplaying" sort of way that this more abstract "what if" scenario felt a little bit off for me, and maybe the clearly "optional" part had this effect ...maybe, in retrospect, it made me hold back, so I didn't give my best ... but in the end, I gave up, reloaded my Warsaw end turn save, and took my leave toward Scandinavia.
Basically, and many people already gave that feedback, but I wanted to highlight my point of view as your "average gamer", while the scenario is completely doable (I stopped at Brest while grinding away the infamous juggernaut - would have no doubt DV'd it), fun (really) because of the challenge, and the even match up - at that point, I had lost several cores (+1 SE, + countless aux), most of my experienced troops that I had nurtured in Poland where emergency-refitted with green troops, and realized that the optional scenario would have resulted in a battered and weary force on the way to Norway (playing on Colonel). Even if the victory gave tons of prestige, a lot of experience was irremediably lost.
I am perfectly OK with hard scenarios, designed to make you fight for your cores, as mandatory scenarios in a campaign when it makes sense and when the rest of the campaign is balanced around this (Overlord, Bagration ...). I think this map is intriguing and challenging, with a great basic premise : a balanced Ger vs Sov 39 matchup, great concept for a scenario map. I just feel it doesn't work (for me) as an optional, bonus scenario in a campaign.
I still think, it is a good scenario, and that it should be kept - as I can see in the feedback, many experienced players like it (I did actually like it - I just didn't want to advance into Norway with my mess of a core). I just want to stress that it is good that you can opt out of it (maybe the difficulty could be stressed a bit more in the briefing note, so that "newbies" like me do not wander into it by mistake and without knowing what they are signing up to :p ).
Thinking about this scenario, I played a bit of Heroes and Might and Magic 6 (not quite as great as HOMM3 was, but still very good), and ran into the Colosseum building in one of the maps. Basically, while many of the "random" battles in this game are designed to be in your advantage, because it is of the utmost importance that you lose as few troops are possible to be able to fight the "important" battles (enemy heroes and towns for example), this building pits you against very challenging odds, in a mock battle, where you are expected to lose a lot of troops and give all you have got. But if you win (or lose), your troops are restored (it was a mock battle after all), you don not get experience for enemies you vainquished (for the same reason), and get a little bonus for having won the challenge.
Could maybe something like this work with this scenario ? After all, there is no declaration of war between Russia and Germany at this point - no one wants to lose troops and material.
