September 3rd Game Day at Gameology AAR

It was a crowded day at Gameology on Saturday; with lots of miniatures and some card players. But Kevin made sure to set aside table space for us. We had 6 members in attendance:

Eric Visnowski and John Lehman paired up for the Deluxe scenario “Back to School”, with Eric's Germans defeating John's Russians. Later in the day Dan Plachta took the Germans against EV's Russians and Eric came out on top again. I guess that's why we call him “Mr. Deluxe”.

Scott Thompson volunteered to help Dan with a run-through of his new Night Scenario “Italian Caucausus”. Scott was quite impressed, and made some helpful suggestions. This one is quickly turning into a real gem. I'm looking forward to taking a crack at it myself.

And that left Dave Nicholas and I paired up for the second week in a row. Not that there's anything wrong with that. I really enjoy my games with Nick; he's a great player and a good sport, whether winning or loosing. And we both like to play at a fast pace. We had a hard time finding a scenario we liked, and eventually settled on the Dispatches scenario “A Hotly Contested Crossroads”. ROAR shows it 21/27 (56%) pro-Russian, so we decided to give the Germans the balance (an additional MMG). Nick took the Germans and I attacked with the Russians. This is actually a large scenario played in a very small space. There's a ton of action right from the start, and the defender has to set up front or will get overrun too quickly. The Germans get an 80mm OBA. That concerned me. I had 14 squads and six tanks attacking across the width of a single board; talk about a target-rich environment. So I spread my infan try out and rushed them forward. I held the tanks back while the infantry scouted out the 2 German HIP tank hunter crews, and found them both on the 1st turn. Once I had the tank hunters eliminated I brought the tanks up to pressure the main German line. As it turned out, Nick had some horrible dice with his infantry and armor shots, and I got away with a lot. But his OBA kept him in the game with 4 consecutive black cards. This scenario is a brutal and bloody slug-fest, with no room to maneuver. The proverbial “knife fight in a phone booth” as Ed Esparza would say. I was finally able to kill the German OP tank, which ended the OBA threat and Nick was left with 2 – 3 surviving squads to hold back my 8 or so remaining squads and 5 tanks. We called it a Russian victory with one turn to go.

We had a great time, as we always do. If Nick had some better dice, it would have very close. But such are the fortunes of war.. I like this scenario a lot, and would happily play it again as either side, giving the German the balance. The MMP reprint over-corrected in favor of the Germans. I like the Dispatches version better.

We made our usual trip to The Hat for our usual excellent lunch. The survivors gathered at Tommy's Burgers for a late dinner.