May 16th Game Day at Emerald Knights

We had 8 members, plus cameos from Bill Yuen and David Rosner, for the May edition of our ASL Game Day at Emerald Knights. Everyone even remembered our earlier 11:00 AM start time:

Eric Visnowski’s Brits defeated Sal Palaez’s Germans in “Stand Fast the Guards”.

Rob Stai’s Germans defeated Dan Plachta’s Partisans in “Light and Detached”.

Dave Kocot took the Americans against Nadir Elfarra’s Germans in “Hell for the Holidays”. They ran out of time, but plan to finish playing via VAASL.

And Dave Nicholas rose to my challenge of playing a scenario (my first) from Haakke Paalle. We chose “Legus Assault Guns.” ROAR shows this about 2 to 1 pro Finn, so we gave the Russians the balance. The dice gave me the Finns, and I thought I had a pretty good set-up, with a couple of ambush spots for hidden HS’s and the Hero with the PSK. Things started well for me; I KIA’d a Russian squad in the first shot of the game. And one of my hidden HS burned a T34-85 with a squad riding. But my Hero with the PSK missed two shots with his PSK, and a counter attack I launched into Dave’s flank on turn 3 eventually cost me the Hero and 2.5 squads, though I drew a fair amount of Russians away from the main effort. In the end it came down to a few Russian Final Fire shots on the bottom of turn 5 when my remaining Finns broke and ran, and we called it a Russian victory with time running out.

Dave and I enjoyed our game, and the scenario, immensely. We thought it played a lot closer than the ROAR implied and we both would play it again.

We adjourned a little earlier than usual for our traditional chili dog lunch at Larry’s, served by the always lovely and efficient Veronica.

With the store closing early (7:00 PM) we followed our plan and adjourned to Sizzler nearly for dinner and a Melee Pack IV scenario preview. Matt Cicero met us there with the scenario submissions we currently have and walked us through each one. It was a productive discussion, and we prioritized the top 6 to focus on and begin playtesting. The food wasn’t that bad either.

We wrapped up at 10:00 PM when the restaurant closed. It turned out to be a fun and productive day!