March 1st Game Day at Gameology AAR

We had a solid six players for the March edition of the ASL Game Day at Gameology. Not bad considering it was the week after WCM and raining like hell.

Nick Nicholas’ Russians defeated Jim Svette’s Germans in the Deluxe scenario “Back to School”. That scenario got over pretty quickly, so they set up another. In the Deluxe scenario “Breakout” Jim’s Germans fell to Nick’s Russians.

Dave Kocot’s Germans defeated Scott Thompson’s Russians in “The Last Tiger”.

And ‘Vegas’ Visnowski and I paired up for the revised version of “Battlin’ Buckeyes” from Rising Son. The revised version adds a squad and a BAZ to the American force, which seemed to be just about right. I took the Americans and Eric took the Japanese. It turned out to be an extremely fun and exciting game (as our games together so often are.) The dice were all over the place for both of us; at one point I rolled three snakeyes in a row. At other times I’d have an entire fire phase where I rolled nothing but tens and elevens. Eric’s dice were the same way. As soon as one of us seemed to have an advantage, the dice would turn. For example, in a duel between 3 Chi-Has and my two TD’s, I got the jump on Eric, only to have him go on a tear with his knee mortar and kill one of my TD’s. One of his tanks then shocked my other TD. In his turn, Eric moved two tanks in for the kill, only to miss both shots. My TD recovered from its Shock in the next Rally, and I thought, “Ok, I’ve got him now”. First shot killed one of his tanks and maintained rate. I then fired at the second tank… boxcars… . Yeah, it pretty much went back and forth like that all day.

In the end, the Japanese simply ran out of guys and we called it an American win. “Battlin’ Buckeyes” has a rep for being a very fun scenario, and it certainly didn’t disappoint us. The revised scenario is very much an improvement.

We made our usual trip to The Hat for lunch, and wrapped up around 9:00 PM. It was another great day of ASL!