Slitherine

Sick of city fighting, i took the opportunity to escape from Stalingrad. But i'm a bit unclear of the victory conditions. MV conditions are clear - just hold 4 of the victory hexes. But DV i am unclear on. It seems to indicate that to get a DV you just need to get 7 of the Romanian forces over to Hexes on the very west side of the map. But I want to know if i also have to retain control of the 4 victory hexes as well? I'm at around turn 10 and the 2nd wave of Russian tanks/troops has started, so i need to know whether i should try to hold the objectives or can just make a dash for the west side of the map with all my troops.

The good news is that you only need to get the Hungarians to safety for the DV.
As long as you do that, then capturing the cities is useful mainly to protect your flanks, though the extra prestige is nice too. If you abandon the cities soon after taking them, they can't be used to generate new enemy units for two turns after recapture, so the risk of finding an army of KV1Cs jumping on your rearguard is delayed for a while - with luck you will be long gone by the time they arrive.

The MV target is an alternative to rescuing the Hungarians. If you lose all the Hungarians so early that you have time to take and hold the cities, you might be too far gone already, so the MV should probably be a choice made during deployment or on turn 1 or 2 rather than half way through.

From experience, if you can resist the urge to overextend yourself, and do a bit of planning about where to put your own units to maximise the chances of Hungarians surviving (eg clearing safe routes to get supporting artillery into place, using AA protection to minimise aerial losses, and a well places armour screen) it's not too hard to get a good number of Hungarians to safety. Having said that, if I have an off day or am not paying attention, it can all go downhill very quickly.

Thanks for the info. I didn't want to spend 2 hours playing through the entire map only to find i also had to hold the cities.

Another way to make sure of keeping the Hungarian's alive is to reinforce them if they are injured using green reinforcements. Its super cheap reinforcing their units with greens, so i went that route to make sure i keep enough of them alive. Am still only half way through it though, so will see how it goes.

Good point on the green reinforcements - the Hungarians don't fight that well, so it has little effect on combat, and you win by getting them to safety not by preserving their experience.

It's a few months since I played Escape from Stalingrad but it was one I enjoyed - especially after the city slogs. I remember that I pulled back as many Hungarians as possible to meet the oncoming German units, who could then protect them while the united forces headed for the remaining Hungarians. These were blocked by enemy troops or just too far away to join up. I managed to form the isolated troops into clusters where I had what looked like a reasonable chance to get to them with my faster units. The clusters made it harder for them to be surrounded and it also meant I had very clear destinations for the German troops to aim for. It seemed to work as I had a lot more than seven Hungarian units at the end.

Good luck!

Thanks for the tips. Indeed it is a refreshing scenario after the city maps of Stalingrad. I managed it ok in the end, although i got a bad fright when 5 or 6 KV1-C's rolled down from the North East.

I'm now on Tatsinskaya (just finished my turn 2) and it seems like a really tough one. So much Soviet armour and troops. Is it better to just hunker down and go for a MV for this one, or is DV reasonably achievable?

Tatsinskaya is pretty nasty - lots of experienced good and fast units. Try not to leave gaps three hexes wide or 3* T34/43s will slip through the gap and jump on your best artillery and AA units while you watch in horror.