April 1st Game Day at Gameology AAR

We had five members in attendance for the April edition of our ASL Game Day at Gameology:

Jimmy Hansen's Brits fell to Jim Svette's Germans in “Crux of Calais”.

And I took the Partisans against Dave 'Special K' Kocot and Scott Thompson as the Russians in the WO scenario “Bolder Than Before”. As it turned out, Scott was pretty high on med's, and served as chart monkey and observer, letting Dave run the show.

I like this scenario. I think it's pretty challenging for both sides. The Partisans can secretly choose from three different VC's, each of which adds to their force pool and changes the length of the game. The Russians are attacking, but don't really know how long the scenario will be, and have to assume they've got to fulfill all three VC's until they can figure out what the Partisans chose.

I chose VC #2, (Russians must accumulate 16 CVP) which shortened the game to 6 turns and added two 4-4-7's and an LMG to my force. I tried not tip my hand, setting up my dummies to look like I was going for VC #1 (hold one of two VC buildings). I set up my rear force in the two most defensible groups of buildings I could find.

The Russians get four conscript squads to hold the VC buildings, and enter a strong force with 3 tanks on turn one. Dave came on hard and fast, and though I was able to break some of his squads with sneaky -2 shots, he had solidified control of the VC buildings and hill in short order. He sent his tanks around the flank to pry me loose and cut off my fall back to a more defensible position at the rear of the board. Dave is a great player, and our game was extremely exciting and challenging throughout. We called it a Partisan win after turn 5 when Dave had to go and it looked like he could only get 14 of the required 16 CVP. It was a close game, and I would happily play this one again as either side.

We had our usual lunch at The Hat and wrapped up in the early evening. It was another great day of ASL.