June 9th Game Day in Bellflower: AAR

We had seven members in attendance for the June edition of our ASL Game Day at The Guild House in Bellflower.

Jim Svette's Italians fell to Gerard Unterreiner.'s Americans in “Retribution”.

Eric Visnowski's Japanese defeated the Marine team of Dave Lewis and Scott Thompson in “Choiseul Few”.

And because their game cleared fairly early, Eric and DL paired up for “Knocking on the Front Door”, where EV's Germans and DL's Russians fought to a draw.

And Dave Nicholas and I paired up for a playtest of one the scenarios from Bruce Kirkaldy's Eagle Hill (Budapest) HASL. We chose “In Gendarme's Way”. This is a big city fight scenario with about 21 squads on each side. I was a little concerned about the Russian chances, because the squad count is about equal. Nick argued that the Russian 5-2-7's would dominate the city fight against the Hungarian 3-4-7's with a 2 ELR. The dice gave me the Russians.

The Russians win by having 15 VP's at game end. They gain VP from net CVP and victory locations. I built three fire bases on overwatch (9-2/.50 Cal, 8-1 with 2 4-4-7's with MMG's and a 9-1 with 2 4-4-7's with LMG's) and lined up my 5-2-7's to go in and take buildings. My concerns about the Russian disadvantage seemed pretty evident when I lost 2.5 squads crossing the street as my first attack was almost entirely repulsed. But I decided, since this was a playtest, to press forward and make the best of it. My kill stacks started to inflict some damage during the turn 1 DF and turn 2 prep. I was able to cut off a couple of squads for failure to rout on turn 2, then won a couple of CC's, and things started looking up. By turn 3 my Russians were pushing the Hungarians back and inflicting more damage, particularly, as Dave predicted, with the 5-2-7's in CC. It was over by turn 5 (of 6) with the Russians holding 15 points in victory locations plus a 15 CVP advantage. The Russians went on the defensive at that point, and the Hungarians simply didn't have the strength to counter-attack.

I can honestly say I'm not sure how I won this scenario, other than getting lucky in CC and being persistent. It certainly wasn't by any military prowess on my part. We had a good time with it, and I'm looking forward to trying the other scenarios Bruce has developed.

We opted for Burger King for lunch to save both money and time. The survivors adjourned to Chris and Pit's for a late dinner. It was another fun day of ASL at one of our most popular venues!