January 4th Game Day at Gameology AAR

We had 8 members plus a walk-in for our first SoCalASL Game Day of the New Year. The theme this week was historical maps; 3 of the 4 match-ups this week were played on them:

Scott Thompson’s Germans defeated Nick Nicholas’ Poles in “Maczek Fire Brigade”.

Ed Esparza’s Russians came up short against Jim Svette’s Germans in “Crossing the Bloody Meadow” from Festung Budapest.

Vegas Visnowski paired up with Chip Wertenberger for the Festung Budapest scenario “Uncles and Pups”. In the first playing E.V.’s Hungarians made short work of Chip’s attacking Russians. Because the game was over quickly, they decided to turn it around and try it again. This time EV’s Russians were defeated by Chip’s Hungarians. They concluded that it seems awfully hard on the Russians, though the ROAR showed it pretty even. Too bad, this one has been on my play list for a long time, and I’d heard good things about it. Has anyone else played this? Is there a trick for the Russians that these guys overlooked?

And I paired up with John Lehman for the VotG scenario “Storming the Station”. This is one of my favorites from the module, and I’ve played both sides a couple of times (way back in playtest days, in fact.) John took the Germans and I set up the Russians. This is a big scenario, and the set-up and opening turn takes some time. We got to turn 4 before we ran out of time and called it a draw. We had a ton of fun, though.

Dave Kocot, who found us through our website, showed up just before we broke for lunch. He has most of the modules and has wanted to play for years, but up ‘til now had only played solitaire. He sat in on my game with John, and it was clear he knew his way around an ASL board. He joined us for lunch and stayed all day, and promised to be back next month to try his first FtF scenario. Welcome aboard Dave!

We made our usual trek to The Hat for lunch, and sat outside for a change. We wrapped up around 9:30 PM. What a great day with a lot of fun.