November O.C. Game Day AAR

Greetings all;

Well the rain seemed to keep a lot of people away from The Realm on Saturday. But that didn’t stop Blair Bellamy and I from getting a game in. Blair wanted to play the Journal scenario “Prelude to Spring”. It turned out to be a good choice; perfect size for a Game Day, despite being 4 boards and 8 turns, it plays pretty quickly. The game went back and forth, and on turn 5 it looked like my Russians were going to be able to exit enough tanks for a instant win in their next movement phase. But then Blair repaired the MA on one of his Pz IV’s, and it just happened to be a perfect position to kill my SU100. My last JS2 tried to exit for the win, and had little to fear from the German Pz IV's in his way. That is until Blair rolled a CH and burned it. Although I was able to exit three tanks for 21 VP, I needed 22, and now that was going to require at least one VP of infantry.

Blair had two tanks and an MMG between my infantry and the board edge, and their chances looked slim. On the next Russian movement phase, my guys made a run for the board edge, hoping that at least one of them would exit. Multiple shots from the tanks, and the MMG firelane cut down the first few units. Then my lowly 7-0 headed off. After shrugging off a couple of low level shots it looked like he was finished when a MA shot landed a CH: 24 -1. But the result was a 4MC, and now it was my turn to roll snake eyes. The HOB roll turned him into a heroic 8-0, and he went on to exit for the final VP and the win. It was an exciting finish to a game that went back-and-forth all day. I'd play this one again anytime.

Other than our very enjoyable game, nothing much else was going on at the store. There were 4 guys playing hero-clicks or something, but when they left it was pretty much just me, Blair and Jon (the owner) for the rest of the day. That was weird, because I figured the store would be packed on a rainy day. Jon said sometimes that happens, but other times the rain just keeps everyone away. So we had the place pretty much to ourselves.