SoCalASL Game Day in Bellflower AAR

Well, as it turns out, not quite Bellflower. We met at Guild House at the appointed hour, but there was a Magic release going on. The owner was apologetic, but all he could offer us was one table. That wouldn't be a problem if we had, say 4 guys. As it turned out, we had 7 guys, so one table was going to be pretty tight. But, we weren't worried, we had our secret weapon: Stance Nixon. Stance offered to let us meet at his house in Long Beach, only 3 miles away. So we mounted up and headed to “Casa de Nixon”, where we were warmly greeted by Stance's wife Cheryl. We quickly cleared out the living room and set up some games.

Blair Bellamy paired up with our newest player, Tim White, for “Retaking Vierville”, with Tim's Americans defeating Blair's Germans.

Dan Plachta took the Germans/Italians against Scott Thompson and Stance Nixon's Americans in the March Madness Tunisian scenario “The 9th Sees the Elephant”. Dan admitted he had some hot dice; he created *two* Italian Leaders during the game. It looked like a big, interesting scenario. They played to a draw.

And Dave Nicholas took the defending Germans against my attacking Russians in the Friendly Fire scenario “Pursuing Frank”. This is a really interesting pursuit scenario, with a company of second line Germans running for their lives, being chased by a couple of platoons of Russian motorcycle troops backed by 4 lend-lease scout cars, two Valentines, a SU-57 and a meat-chopper. We liked this scenario a lot, but we both found it very difficult to get our heads around on our first playing. The fight was so fluid both sides couldn't plan their moves more than one turn in advance. In the end, my scout cars got behind the Germans, at which point Dave unleashed his two 75* Inf guns. The first one missed and then Malf'd on IF. The second boxed his first shot. I had been systematically hunting down and killing German squads. And at that point, Dave's troops didn't have the strength to break through to the Victory area, and we called it a Russian win. We flipped it around an tried again. The second playing was a lot different than the first, but in a lot of ways more enjoyable because we knew what we needed to do. We played to the half way mark before we ran out of time. It was still too hard to call a winner, so we agreed on a draw for this second playing. We both really liked this scenario, and we think its pretty balanced. But if one side has played it before, they will have quite an advantage.

We decided on Jersey Mike's for lunch. The survivors, plus Cheryl, and their nephew Quade, adjourned to Hofs Hut for an excellent late dinner.

On behalf of everyone who was there, I want to thank Stance and Cheryl Nixon for their hospitality. It sure beat being crammed into one table at Guild House. It turned out to be a great day!