April 19th Game Day at Emerald Knights AAR

We had a nice solid 9 members, plus a cameo from Matt Cicero, for the April edition of our ASL Game Day at Emerald Knights:

Kevin Kiff’s Americans defeated Phil Seymour’s Japanese in “Used and Abused”.

In a case of perfect timing, late arrivals Dave Rosner and Ron Hatch showed up at just about the same time, and quickly got underway with the ASLSK scenario “Clash at Boriskova”. Dave’s Germans defeated Ron’s Russians.

Coming fresh off of tax season, Blair Bellamy took on Sal Palaez and Dan Kaufmn in the ASLSK scenario “Extraordinary Bravery”. When the smoke cleared, Sal and Dan’s Axis troops defeated Blair’s Poles.

And Dave Nicholas and I paired up for the Dispatches scenario “LZ S”. This is a 1945 glider landing, with a powerful and well lead American glider force assaulting a German artillery battery of three 105’s and a 150, covered by a couple of light AA guns an a depleted infantry company. There are a couple of different ways the Germans can set up, and I thought I had a pretty good position centered on a long string of woods hexes near one of the board edges. The Germans get two decent groups of random reinforcements that arrive on turns 2 and 4.

The Americans can land anywhere, and as with most glider landings, have the option of a ‘safe’ landing out of line of fire, or a coup de main type assault landing on top of the Germans. Dave chose the former, and suffered no losses during the landing and assembly phase. As his Americans approached my position, his mortars went on a WP rate-tear; getting down 4 WP rounds and breaking 3 squads in the process. That allowed his glider men to rush across open group and into the German position much faster than I had expected. My 105 crews barely held on, and for three turns couldn’t hit anything. Finally, on turn 5, one of my 105's got a hit on Dave’s key position; two 667 squads with two MMG’s and a 9-2. When the dust cleared only a broken HS remained. In my following prep phase I was able to KIA a couple more squads and break several more with deadly point blank fire from another 105, and some well-led German reinforcements. By the bottom of turn six, it was obvious the Americans didn’t have enough strength left to clear out the guns, and we called it a German win. It was a very close and exciting game, and we both agreed it was well worth playing again.

We made our usual trek to Larry’s for chili dogs served by Veronica. Dave Nicholas and I, the only survivors at the end of a very long day, adjourned for a late dinner at Bob’s Big Boy. It was another great day of ASL that was topped off with Matt Cicero delivering a bunch of ASL goodies.