February 18th Game Day at Emerald Knights

Well, with only a few days to go before WCM, you’d think our Game Day attendance would be a little light. But that just wasn’t the case. We had 10 members in attendance and got in six games:

Ed Esparza’s Germans defeated Sal Palaez's Americans in “Counterattack at Carentan”

Dave Nicholas and Dan Plachta paired up for “Came Tumbling After”, one of the new Festung Budapest scenarios. Dave’s Russians defeated Dan’s Hungrians.

And because their scenario got over fairly quickly the paired up again for the Journal scenario “Diversion”, where Dan’s Americans defeated Dave’s Japanese.

Eric Visnowski’s Germans defeated Mike Cirrincione’s Americans in the Deluxe version of “Road to St. Lo.”

Dave Rosner’s Germans defeated Blair Bellamy’s Poles in “Coudehard Cache”.

And Bill Yuen and I paired up for “The Shooting Gallery” from the new Festung Budapest module. This proved to be a great choice. Bill’s Russians came in hard on my out numbered Panzer Grenadiers, and by the end of turn 2 had pushed my best troops out of the front factories with a well executed attack. My strategy was to push the Russians over their casualty cap, which meant I had to go after the Russian armor. I set up and played with that in mind. In the end, my Germans were able hold their line together long enough to force the Russians over the cap for the win. This was a fun and exciting scenario, and a great introduction to the new module. Bill played a great game.

As usual, we adjourned for lunch at Larry’s; enjoying our chili dogs on the patio served by the always-charming Veronica. And at the end of the day we headed over for our traditional late dinner at Bob’s Big Boy. Honestly, we always have a great time there, but I don’t think I’ve ever laughed as hard as I did that night. Great games, great laughs and a great warm-up for West Coast Melee.