We had seven members, plus a cameo by Mike Soffa, for the September edition of our ASL Game Day at Paper Hero’s.
James Quinn’s and Matt Cicero’s Germans defeated Eric Visnowski’s Swedes in “Lions and Tin Men”.
Poland in Flames got a workout today. Dave Deresinski’s Pole’s defeated Dave Nicholas’ Germans in “No Shortage of Determination”.
And the dice gave Dan Plachta the Russians against my Poles in another P.I.F. scenario “Iron Greeting”. Our first playing of this didn’t last very long. I played like I’d never played before. I mean really, like it was my very first game of ASL. I blundered my forces forward like a zombie human wave. Now granted, I never gave up a -2 shot, and the only Russian -1 shots were due to Dan’s only -1 leader. But by the top of turn 2 I’d had 2.5 of my 13 squads killed outright, and four more ELR’d to green and hiding in the backfield broken. I conceded, and we turned it around. In the second game I took the Russians.
This is a cool scenario, fought on Bounding Fire’s boards. The Poles attack a Russian held village with 13 squads and 6 tanks (3 each H35 and R35). The Russians start with 7 squads and an 37L AT Gun. On turn 3 a relief column arrives: 4 more squads and six BT tanks. This second playing was a lot closer. I managed to kill one Polish tank, and immobilize another by the time the BT’s arrived. I swung my tanks into Dan’s rear, and slipped the four squads into the village to aid in the defense there. We had a classic early war tank battle. My BT’s had good guns and lousy armor, Dan’s tanks had great armor but a shitty gun. The big factors were the BT’s B11 MA, and the Poles have a 10 for their AP special ammo.
With time running out, it looked like Dan’s Poles would prevail, and we called it. So the scenario must be balanced; I lost it as both sides. We both thought it was a cool scenario. It shows somewhat pro-Polish on ROAR, but it seemed pretty tight to us. We had a lot of fun with it.
The survivors adjourned to Tallyrand’s for an excellent dinner. If you want an old fashioned L.A. restaurant experience, it’s a great choice. I think they haven’t changed the place since the days of Mickey Cohen. All that’s missing are the cigarette machines. It was a great warm-up for next week’s barbecue.