December 17th Game Day at Emerald Knights AAR

Yesterday marked our last SoCalASL event for 2016. We had 7 members for our Game Day at Emerald Knights in Burbank, plus a cameo from Blair Bellamy.

Justin Jaramillo's Germans and Dan Plachta's Russians fought to a draw in “The Heat is On”.

Eric Visnowski and Ed Esparza took the Brits against Jon Jaramillo as the Germans in the Schwerepunkt scenario “Porlomaggiore”. Unfortunately, Jon's dice were horrible, and the declared the game a British win in short order. In a re-boot of the same scenario, Jon and Ed's Brits lost to EV's Germans.

That left me and James Quinn paired up for “Adolf's Amateurs”. I like this scenario a lot. I think it's very challenging for both sides. I took the attacking 'green' SS troops against James' Russians. The Germans get twelve 447 SS squads that suffer from 'green' status, have crappy allied minor support weapons, and have only two leaders. They must attack over very dense terrain. The Russians have a small, but good quality force, but a low ELR. Both sides get a couple of early-war tanks, which are very difficult to deploy in the woods and streams of board 32.

James had a clever set-up, but had a couple of bad breaks and my Germans scored a sudden death victory on turn 3. We then turned it around with James attacking. I played a pretty conservative, fall back defense, and managed to kill both German tanks with a well-placed LMG. My Russians ran out the clock for the win. James did a great job on both the attack and defense, and we both had a great time with this scenario. I really recommend it.

We had our usual chili dog lunch at Larry's… and had the place to ourselves for a change. Veronica took good care of us as always.

The survivors adjourned for our traditional late dinner at Bob's Big Boy. Unlike Larry's, Bob's was quite busy. And Bob was missing. We were told he was off getting a paint job.

All in all it was a great way to end 2016. As I've previously announced, our next two Game Days have been cancelled, since they fall on Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve. Our next Game Day will be our regularly scheduled 1st Saturday Game Day at Gameology on January 7th.

In the meantime, on behalf of the Club Officers, I want to wish everyone a happy and prosperous holiday season. 2017 is already shaping up to be a great year for SoCalASL!