July 1 Game Day at Gameology AAR

We had four members in attendance, plus Tim White, a new guy, for the July edition of our SoCalASL Game Day at Gameology.

Jon Jaramillo's Poles defeated Scott Thompson's Russians in the Poland in Flames scenario “Iron Greeting”.

David “Special K” Kocot wanted to try “Retrained and Rearmed”. The ROAR has this 70/30 pro-Slovak. I had played it before and agreed that, though it was a fun scenario, it was definitely pro-Slovak. We decided to give the Germans the balance (increase He depletion on the Hetzers to 10) plus, at my suggestion, we threw in an extra 5-4-8 squad. Dave wanted the challenge, and took the Germans with the balance.

I like this scenario because the defending Slovak's can actually win by exiting some Partisans off the north board edge. That forces the Germans into a balancing act of both attacking the Slovaks, and defending against the Partisans. The problem for the Slovaks is a very limited supply of anti-tank capacity. They get two 80* ART, an ATR and MOL. I set up one of the ART in a good position on level 3, but I fucked up the set-up for the second ART. It covered the southern road, but was mostly blocked to lower levels. Dave came on strong along the north ridge. I took a long shot with my mostly-blocked ART, figuring I wasn't going to get much use out of it. I missed and IF'd it, using the same logic, and boxed the shot. Ok, one ART out of the battle, but it was in a lousy position anyway. Then Dave ESB'd a Hetzer and immobilized it. But in the next movement phase, I boxed the second ART, followed by an X on the following repair roll. In the meantime, Dave had achieved a near breakout on the hill. It was obvious to both of us that all he had to do was load some squads into the HT's and bum rush the board edge, using the Hetzers for bypass freeze. Sure, he was going to lose some to MOLS, but there was little I could do to stop it. We decided to call it a German win on turn 3, so that we could turn our attention to something else.

In the meantime, Jon and Scott's game had cleared, and Scott headed out. Tim had been watching our game, and was ready to take a crack at a SK scenario. Jon offered to step Tim through SK1's “Retaking Vierville”. I caught the last couple of turns of that game. At the risk of embarrassing Jon, I'm going to call him out: he's a hell of a good teacher. He is really good at explaining rules and is very patient. Tim said he had a lot of fun and got a lot out of his game. It was obvious that he was picking it up really quickly.

While Jon and Tim was playing, I took the Americans against Special K's Germans in “Raff's Rules”. I had previously played this scenario as the Germans, and I like it a lot. I think it's very balanced, challenging and quick playing. The force purchase option creates plenty of re-playability. I chose the two MMG's and two Lt Mtrs for the WP. Dave took the HMG upgrade, HIP, and extra concealment. I put the two Mtrs where I could get some WP in key spots, and split a squad into HS's for the MMG's and the 10-2. Dave had a good defense, and I took some casualties getting into the tree line. After exchanging blows, my paras cracked the line on the German right and headed toward the 105's in the German far right rear. Dave broke and then repaired one of the 105's, and got an intensive fire hit followed by snakes on the results, KIA'ing 1.5 American squads, a MMG and a 9-1. In the end, I was able to inflict enough damage to get my VP total up to 13 against Dave's 9, at which point I pulled back. The Germans didn't have enough strength or time to counter-attack and make up the difference at that point, and we called it an American victory.

We made our usual trip to The Hat for lunch, and wrapped up around 8:00 PM. It was a great day of ASL!