September 2nd Game Day at Gameology AAR

We had nine players for our first ASL Game Day in September:

Scott Thompson took the Russians against Bruce Kirkaldy's Hungarians in a playtest of “Hermand's Hermits” from Bruce's Budapest HASL.

New player Fred Diver took the Russians against Dave (Special K) Kocot's Germans in “Smashing the 3rd”. Fred had to leave early, so Jon Jaramillo switched from his game to sit in as the Russians in this one. Special K's Germans proved victorious.

Blair Bellamy's Russians fell to Dave Nicholas' and Jon Jaramillo's Germans in “Tisla Tease”.

And I took the Russians against Eric Visnowski's Germans in the Rally Point scenario “Hungarian Hopscotch”. Eric wanted to include this in a future WCM mini, so we gave it a try. This is a Pete Shelling scenario and very cleverly done. The Russians get a reinforced company and 4 T34-43's against a couple of platoons of good German infantry backed by a JdPzIV, StuGIIIG and a StuH42. Starting on turn 2, either side can exit their tanks (and any riders) and can reenter on a road hex on the same side on a subsequent turn. In our first playing, I considered setting up for this play, but decided to be conservative. By the start of turn 2 it was obvious that this is definitely what the Russians need to do. So we re-booted and in the second playing, I exited two T34's with 5-2-7 riders off each side. Eric kept his tanks on board, but had to hold them back to cover the potential re-entry hexes. My attack went in hard on the Russian left, and even though I missed my covering Smoke shot from my 76L Gun, I got lucky on some advancing fire and got across the street. The fight for this block would consume the remainder of the game and grind up squads at an alarming rate. But slugfest allowed my left-side T34's to slip in and grab a building in the German rear. A couple of turns later my other T34's entered on my right and grabbed another building. In the meantime Eric went after my squads in the big block fight. He must have been channeling “The Butcher of Burbank” Dave Rosner, because he won 5 CC's in a row, mostly at 1-1 odds or worse, at the cost of only a HS. But when the Smoke cleared, my Russians had all the buildings they needed for the win.

As is always the case with my games with Eric, it was fun, fast and exciting to the very end. This is a very interesting scenario and well worth the effort. I'm looking forward to trying it again.

We had our usual lunch at The Hat, and because all the games cleared early enough, the survivors had dinner at Jersey Mike's. It was a great way to enjoy a blistering hot day!