February 4th Game Day at Gameology AAR

We had a solid six members in attendance for the February edition of our Los Angeles Game Day at Gameology.

Blair Bellamy and Mike Soffa paired up for two short Rally Point scenarios. In “Death Rattle” Blair’s Brits defeated Mike’s Germans. In “Handful of Howdy” Mike’s Americans fell to Blair’s Germans.

By contrast, in a game that lasted all day, Dan Plachta and Glenn Sellar paired up for the Kursk classic “Show Time”. Glenn’s German attack eventually ran out of steam against Dan’s tough Russians. I have played this scenario two or three times (but not recently), but I forgot how the pre-game bidding system can change both players’ strategies. The force pool choices also make this interesting. Dan chose the SU-57 halftracks, which in the post mortem analysis we all felt was a good choice.

I really wanted to play something out of the new Action Pack 8. Dave Nicholas and I paired up and chose “Coriano”, with Dave setting up the Germans against my Canadians. The victory mechanism is an interesting one, forcing the Germans to hold onto various city blocks to the last possible moment. Unfortunately, the scenario proved to be a disappointment. Dave fought hard for board 5a in order to delay my attack and inflict casualties. He achieved his goal; my Canadians had advanced only 3 hexes in the first two turns. And I had lost 3.5 squads. But the cost had been equally heinous to the Germans, who lost 2.5 squads. By turn three, under the cover of OBA Smoke, my Canadians started breaking into the city. The Germans simply didn’t have enough good order troops to be everywhere they needed to be, and by turn 5 the scenario had turned into a bug hunt that was unfun for both of us. We decided to call it a Canadian victory. Dave and I both agreed that the scenario would likely degenerate into a bug hunt no matter how both sides played, and given the opportunity, we’d probably pass on a re-playing of this one. But of course Dave and I had fun, as we always do when we pair up. And in the end, that’s all that really mattered.

We made our usual trip to The Hat for lunch, and took the opportunity to enjoy the beautiful weather by eating outdoors. It was another great day!