Tomorrow I'll be playing this scenario with a friend. I set it up already and it's going to be the first time I'm actually going to play a scenario in which balka terrain plays an important role. Because of this it led me to reread the balka rules as printed in the FoTB rules booklet and the more I read them the less sense they seem to make. First of all, I personally believe a unit in a blaka should be within LOS only to adjacent units, but that should also mean that only adjacent units could be fired upon. This is perhaps what's intended but the wording is very vague. Otherwise a concealed squad token might come in handy to represent something like this. I can also envision troops hunkering down against the edge of the balka without being seen until they actually fire (multiple times), but this would be a lot harder for vehicles. For simplicity's sake, I would therefore say that as far as firing is concerned: units need to be adjacent to one another unless in order for LOS to exist or the entire LOS must be traced through contiguous balka hexes.
A second point: why are there balka entrances if apparenly you can just enter a balka hex anywhere at a mere movement cost of 1 (even for vehicles, although this comes at a risk)? Wouldn't it be more logical to have a movement cost of say three (3) unless you move to or from an adjacent balka hex? 3 for infantry. 4 for vehicles would be even better, I think. The possible vehicle damage could stay as far as I'm concerned. An alternative might be to say that any unit immediately ends its movement when entering or leaving a balka hex (unless from an adjacent one in which case the movement cost is one (1).
Finally there's the issue of the cover value which is zero. I'd say this should be one (1) against area attacks (air support, artillery attacks, mortar attacks). After all there's still room around the balkas the way the hexes are depicted and the they could certainly provide some cover, not unlike trenches even I'd say, so perhaps the cover value should be even higher in this case and zero (0) against attacks from adjacent units or units which can trace its entire LOS through contiguous balka hexes). I'll suggest we play them this way to my friend.
What do you guys think?