January 7 Gameday at Gameology AAR

Greetings ASL fans,

The first SOCALASL gameday for 2012 garnered six attendees. A little light but this didn't diminish

the fun at Gameology . A total of three games were played with the following match ups:

Dan Plachta's Soviets on the attack against Blair Bellamy's German force fought to a draw in

RPT 60-“Cat Chow” in a very demanding scenario outside Leningrad in early 43. Blair and

Dan declared this a draw as they were unable to finish due to time constraints on one of the players.

Glenn Sellar and David Nicholas battled it out in 1940 France in FT-92 ” No Fortress is Impregnable”.

This is a nasty city fight with a strong German force, including combat engineers toting flame throwers

DCs and other assorted toys attacking first line French defenders. Glenn retired David's French defenders

with superior firepower in this bloody playing.

Finally, Bill Yuen and me chose a delux asl scenario [ Yes, again! I never tire of DASL] in a wild

to-the-death matchup of J-65 ” Brave Little Emchas”. The dice gave me the SS , Bill getting the Soviets.

I have played J 65 4 or 5 times and this was the closest game yet for me. It all boiled down to a CC that I absolutely

had to win , and Bill absolutely had to lose.No survivors , please!. The attacker[ Bill Yuen] has the choice of VC

in this scenario and Bill chose to take the stone buildings on the middle board , forcing me to counter attack him

as opposed to the Russian's taking a large German held buildng.

After a nasty slugging match there wasn't a tank remaining on either side,and my stymied infantry had to pull out all

the stops to try and win this one.With a lucky prep fire phase I was able to exploit and rush units to the rear and claim one

building then advance into a wild CC for the remaining one I needed to save the game.I rolled a 3, in hand to hand,Bill

was betrayed by his dice and rolled a 10…… so it goes. This was a razor thin margin.,but baby Jesus worked it out.

If for some reason you have not played Brave Little Emchas,I highly recommend it,it's very well balanced and immense fun.

It is also a mere 6 turns.Just about perfect.

For lunch, we caravanned top The Hat, always a treat , and were welcomed by a CH 46[ DC3] painted up in invasion stripes

flying in a lazy circle over the restaurant. In the distance, several biplanes looped and rolled trailing their smoke charges.

As always, it was a great day with ASL and friends.I hope to see more of you at the next gameday,make sure and check

the calendar on the SOCALASL website [www.socalasl.com] for the next event.

Lastly, don't forget the scheduled historical field trip to Chino Airport later this month,this will be quite interesting and

is open to friends and family.

Regards, Eric Visnowski