May 28th Game Day in Chatsworth AAR

We had a total of 8 members, including the return of our two new SK players, David Lewis and David Franco.

The aforementioned Mr. Lewis and Mr. Franco paired up once again, this time for “War of the Rats”, with Dave F.'s Russians defeating Dave L.'s Germans. These guys have made good progress since their first game last week. They were pretty much able to play through without a whole lot of assistance. They'll be playing full ASL before you know it.

And while that game was going on, the Grogs paired up:

Dave Rosner's Americans fell to Ed Esparza's Germans in “Assault on Beridorf”.

Dave Nicholas' Americans defeated Jaime Palaez' Germans in “Lee's Charge”.

That left Sal Palaez and I to pair up for the HOB scenario “The Venetian Fort” from their Operation Mercury HASL. We've both played other scenarios in this module and I've been pretty impressed with its quality. Unfortunately, this scenario was rather disappointing. I had the German paras against Sal's combined Greek and Australian attackers. Both sides enter from off board and have to dash for a “fort” designed on Board 21 with some clever SSR's. The Germans move first, and obviously are expected to get into the fort first. I piled all 11 of my squads in there by turn 2. By turn 4 it was obvious that the Germans could not be pushed out of the victory area, and we called this one a German win. Frankly, aside from the clever SSR's, this scenario is not really very exciting or interesting. But hey, all ASL is good, and Sal and I had a nice time playing.

We once again called in our order to San Carlo Deli and ate there, which worked out very well. The survivors ended up at The Habit for our usual after-game dinner.

All Ways Gaming has provided to be our most popular venue since we started there in January. This month the room was crowded by the afternoon, and got stuffy and noisy for a couple of hours after lunch. But the ceiling fan helped, and we've certainly played under worse conditions. And hey, it's readily accessible to San Carlo Deli, which can mitigate a fair amount of discomfort.