January 21st Game Day in Burbank; AAR

We had an outstanding turn-out, plus a cameo from Matt Cicero and his son, Roman, for the January edition of our ASL Game Day at Emerald Knights in Burbank.

Dave Lewis' Americans fell to Ed Esparza's Germans in “L'Abbaye Blanche”.

And because that game got over fairly quickly, Ed faced off against a late-arriving Blair Bellamy and Dave Nicholas in the Rally Point scenario “Kettle & Cox”. Ed scored his second win of the day when his Germans defeated Nick and Blair's Americans.

Meanwhile, Dan Plachta's Germans defeated James Quinn and Eric Visnowski's Americans in “Necklace of Pearls”.

And while that action was going on, I paired up with Mike Soffa for the Journal scenario “Old Friends”. The dice gave me the attacking Americans against Mike's Germans. ROAR shows this scenario very balanced, and I would have to agree. We slugged it out all day in a very exciting game. Mike handled his armor particular well, and launched a well-timed counter-attack with his two Panthers that bagged two American M24's with no loss.

It became obvious as the game progressed that the best way for the Germans to win was to push the Americans over the casualty cap. Mike kept shoving squads into the central victory buildings while his Panthers stalked my Shermans and M10's. In a classic ASL moment, Mike had a Panther lined up to take out one of my M10's and push me over the cap. The Panther needed an 11 to hit, but Mike rolled boxcars, which allowed my TD to escape. In the end, I was able to slip an infantry platoon around the German right and into the village, grabbing just enough buildings for the win while just squeaking under the casualty cap. It was a great game and we had great fun. I would definitely play this one again.

We made our usual trip to Larry's for chili dogs, and the survivors made their way to Bob's Big Boy for our traditional late dinner. All in all it was a great day, as usual!