August 19th Game Day at Emerald Knights

We had nine members, plus a cameo by Nadir Elfarra, for the August edition of our SoCalASL Game Day at Emerald Knights in Burbank.

Larry Reinking's Americans barely defeated Ed Esparza's Germans in “Resignation Supermen.”

Dave Perham's Germans defeated Eric Visnowski's Americans in “Yankee Pride”.

Dave Nicholas and Blair Bellamy took the Slovaks against Sal Palaez' Germans in “Rebels Without a Pause”. Blair later dropped out of that game to play me in my second game. Nick's Slovaks defeated Sal's Germans.

And Dave Rosner and I paired up for “Tisza Tease”. Eric Visnowski asked us to try this as a potential scenario for an upcoming Melee mini. It shows somewhat pro-Russian on ROAR, so we gave the Germans the balance, which upgraded one of the Panzer IV's to a Panther. That gave the Germans a company of mixed infantry, a halftrack, a truck, two Pz IV's and three Panthers. The Russians get a couple of platoons of infantry, three SU-85's and a T34-85 with an 8-1 AL. The Germans have to cross a lot of open ground and exit 24 CVP, including 4 CVP of infantry.

The Russians can HIP one unit, and I chose the T-34. I used half the given concealment for 5/8″ dummies to keep Dave guessing. I think the Russians need to kill German vehicles if they want to win. I positioned most of my force in the Russian center-left, assuming the Germans wouldn't go through the more open ground on the right, and used more dummies to make it look like I had coverage on the right. Dave came in on the center-left as I anticipated. During the first German movement phase he chose to leave all of his tanks, except one PzIV, in Motion, and that one PzIV was sitting in Smoke. With his armor in Motion, I swung all three SU's out and went after the Panthers on the bottom of turn 1, while they were vulnerable. The odds were in my favor, and I expected to loose all three SU's in exchange for 2 or 3 of the Panthers. That would leave the still-hidden T-34 to finish off the remaining Pz IV's. The thing is, if you're going to pull a move like that, you've got to roll well, or at least average. I didn't, and Dave did. And, well that was about all I need to say. We called it a German win on the bottom of turn 2.

At that point, Dave pulled out, and I recruited Blair to play the older Schwerepunkt scenario “Cutler's Cross”. This scenario is set in Syria, with some elite Vichy French defending a village against a couple of platoons of Aussies backed by an 80mm OBA. Both sides get reinforcements, and the Vichy get four R-35 tanks. Unfortunately for Blair, the dice that had been so cold in my previous game with Dave came back with a vengeance in this game. My troops shrugged off repeated MC's, and Blair's initial force wasn't able to make any headway whatever. By turn 3 all the other games had cleared, and we chose to call this one a French win so we could adjourn for dinner. Personally, I liked both scenarios and would definitely try them again.

We made our usual trip to Veronica's for chili dogs. And the survivors retired to Bob's Big Boy for our traditional late dinner. It was fun day for everyone.