May 31st Special Game Day at Gameology AAR

We had a solid eight members, plus Matt Cicero and his son Roman, for our Special Game Day at Gameology:

Because Scott Thompson had to leave early, we broke the group into three games:

Kevin Meeks took on Blair Bellamy in the SK scenario “War of the Rats”. In the first playing Blair’s Russians defeated Kevin’s Germans. In their second playing, Kevin’s Russians defeated Blair’s Germans.

Scott Thompson and Eric Visnowski paired up as the Americans against Nick Nicholas’s Japanese in “Tropic Lightning.” Unfortunately they ran out of time and called it a draw.

And I took on Dave Kocot and Mike Meeks in an old, very interesting FT scenario “Return to the Start Line”. This was Mike’s second time at Gameology, getting back into the game, so of course we picked something completely different to make sure we pretty much used the whole rulebook. This scenario is set in Mongolia in 1939, with a large group of Mongolian (Partisan) Cavalry fighting off mounted forces of Japanese and Manchurian (Axis Minor) troops, over two desert boards and river board 7. The Japanese also get two Type 92 tanks, which may as well have been Panthers in this fight.

The scenario involves a running, mounted battle to grab and hold certain hexes along the river. When I say we used whole rulebook, I wasn’t kidding. During the game we used: Axis Minors, Partisans, Japanese, Desert Rules, Light Dust LV, Horses, Cavalry Charges, Overruns, Banzai Charges, CC Reaction Fire, Sangers, Swamps, Bypass Freeze and Fording. Dave had the Japanese Cavalry, and I have to say, he used them to great effect. At one point he launched a series of Overruns with his AFV’s against a four-hex string of Mongolian Cavalry, followed by a series of Cavalry Charges with his Japanese Infantry. The result was four dead Mongolian squads by the end of the rout phase.

In the end, Dave’s Japanese and Mike’s Manchurians squeezed out a victory in the final CC phase against my late counterattacking Mongolians. It was an interesting, exciting and challenging game, and we all had a lot of fun. You really have to admire the ASL game system for being able to successfully model such an unusual combat situation.

While we were engrossed in our games, Matt and Roman duked it out in a collectable card game, and joined us for our traditional excellent lunch at The Hat. It was another enjoyable and well-attended SoCalASL event.