June 3rd Game Day at Gameology AAR

We had six members for the May edition of our ASL Game Day at Gameology:

David “Special K” Kocot's Japanese defeated Dave Nicholas' Chinese in the classic scenario: “Generalissimo's Own”.

And Jimmy Hansen and I took the Germans against Eric Visnowski and Jim Svette as the Russians in “Something Borrowed”. This is an interesting Rally Point scenario that is challenging (and frustrating) for both sides. The defending Germans get a handful of 1st and 2nd line squads defending some strung out buildings surrounded by a lot of open ground. On turn 2, they get a couple of platoons of 5-4-8's with a FT and DC's with a 9-2 leader to bolster their defense, backed by two re-purposed T-34 41's and two T-26's. The Russians start with a company of infantry, reinforced with six Matilda lend-lease tanks, two platoons of infantry, and later, two radioless T-34's. The frustrating part for both sides is the open space: board 9A.

The Russians have to capture 12 of 14 buildings and have to cross a lot of open ground to do it. We set up 1.5 squads on the German left to force the Russians to attack that way, and the remainder in two strong, mutually supportive positions in the center and right, where there were safe approaches for our reinforcements to move up.

The Russians have lots of tanks, but they all have 40L Guns with no HE. The Germans have some marginally useful Russian tanks and pretty much nothing else to oppose the Russian armor. The Russians sent 4 Matilda's to the German left with about 6 squads to clear out the 1.5 squads on the German left, and 2 Matilda's and the rest of the infantry to the German right. On the bottom of turn 1 we split our reinforcements and sent about half into each strong-point. We sent all four tanks against the 2 Matilda's on the right. Then EV set the tone of the game by hitting one of the T-34 with an improbable shot, followed by a crit on the next roll. It was the first of 4 or 5 crits he rolled during the game. Losing the T-34 early was a tough loss, because it meant we had no chance to take control of the armor battle. The remaining T34 and T26's were forced to switch to a purely defensive role for the remainder of the game.

Even with the crits, the Russians had their work cut out for them. They had to cross a lot of open ground and lost a lot of men taking those buildings away from the Germans. The end was as exciting and spectacular as it gets. The Russians had to win two CC's to pull off the win. The needed to roll a 9 in one melee, and had two chances to roll a 4 in the other. They got exactly both, and the win. We had a great time and this really was a fun scenario. If you're looking for something challenging, and a little different, this is a good choice. We gave the Russians the balance (upgrade a leader) but ironically the German sniper killed the upgraded leader on turn 1.

We had our usual lunch at The Hat, and the survivors had dinner at Jersey Mike's. It was yet another great day of ASL!