February 11th Game Day in Bellflower AAR

We had seven members for the February edition of our ASL Game Day in Bellflower.

We decided on two multi-player games:

In the first game, Stance Nixon and Dan Plachta's Russians defeated Dave Nicholas' Germans in “Need a Ticket to Ride”.

In the second game, Scott Thompson and I took the Russians against Eric Visnowski and James Quinn commanding the Finns in “The Last Attack”. ROAR showed this 8/2 pro-Russian, so we gave the Finns the balance (which allows them to enter their reinforcements on turn 1.) This is a cool, and very fun scenario. The Russians have to choose 7 of 8 platoon-size groups and/or guns. We picked all the infantry groups, plus the 82mm Mtr and the 76L Art. We held off the FT group to enter as reinforcements on turn 5.

The Finns have to capture two very well-separated buildings with a large, mixed-quality force supported by 5 StuG's. Scott and I set up two of the Russian groups in the closer stone building in hopes it would hold out until turn 4, and two groups in the woods line in front of the distant building. We put the 82 Mtr on the hill, and the 76L Atr in the center. If the forward group was kicked out of the front building early, they were to withdraw to the nearby hill, forcing the Finns to garrison the building and tie up troops from reinforcing the rear building attack. The Russian reinforcements could either come on to help re-take the front building, or reinforce the back building.

As it turned out, our plan worked perfectly. Though the Finns seized the front building, the Russians retreated in good order, forcing the Finns to stay and continue the fight, unable to reinforce the second attack. And the second attack, on the rear building, was just not strong enough to get the job done by themselves. We called it a Russian victory.

Although this is a fun and interesting scenario, it definitely seems rather pro-Russian, and would need more than the balance to make it even. I thought the Finns might need to be very aggressive with the StuG's, using bypass freeze to gain the front building quickly and then rush to the back of the board to take the second building. Alternately, they might rush the StuGs to the rear building quickly to support that attack. The Finns have a CVP cap, but its pretty high, and both strategies would be quite risky. In any case, we all had a blast.

We made our usual trip to Sizzler for lunch, and the survivors trekked to Chris and Pitt's, where we were joined by Stance's wife Cheryl, for a late dinner. It was a great way to warm up for WCM!