February 7th Game Day at Gameology AAR

We had seven players at the February edition of our ASL Game Day at Gameology:

Dave Nicholas took the Russians in “Slamming the Door” for a training game with new players Jon and Justin Jaramillo (father and son.) Nick's Russians defeated Jon and Justin's Germans. Most importantly, Jon and Justin said they learned a few things and had a good time.

Dave Kocot took the Russians against Dan Plachta's Japanese in “Red Star, Red Sun.” This is a huge scenario, and they got about half way through. They recorded their positions so they can resume it at WCM.

And that left Eric Visnowski and I to our own devices. We chose a (no surprise) Deluxe scenario; “Into the Cauldron” from HOB. Neither of us had played it before, but it looked cool and was pretty balanced on the ROAR, so we set it up with me as the defending Russians against Eric's Germans. The battle takes place in the early days of Stalingrad, with a strong German infantry group backed by a StuGIII and a PzIV F2 attacking a well-led group of Russians backed by a 76L Gun and a heavy morter. The first two turns went quickly, as I gave up a sizable portion of the board and Eric moved steadily and carefully forward. By turn 3 the fight started in earnest, with German assault engineers coming across the street backed by some 4-6-7's, 5-4-8's and a 10-2 kill stack. I kept pulling my guys out o LOS, not wanting to go toe-to-toe with all that German FP, and standing to shoot when I had the advantage. The PzIV was brewed up by the 76L, but the Germans eventually blasted and burned their way into the the victory building (a large factory.) On the final turn, my Russians finally blasted back, then went in for CC in two VC hexes that Eric need to hold for victory. In the end it came down to a couple of MC's and a final CC, but my Russians pulled off a win with 1 VC hex to spare.

This is really a gem of a scenario; fun, fast playing and interesting. Both of us thought it was quite balanced, and both of us would happily play it again as either side.

We made our usual trip to The Hat for lunch, and wrapped up before the store closed at 10:00 PM. It was another great day of ASL!