September 9th Game Day in Bellflower AAR

Greetings ASL Fans;

We had six members for our September Game Day at The Guild House in Bellflower on Saturday.

In a game that featured a first-turn Russian Human Wave, Dan Plachta's Russians defeated Eric Visnowski's Japanese in “Deadly Line”.

Dave Nicholas' Germans defeated Justin Jaramillo Russians in “Lenin's Sons”.

And Jon Jaramillo took the Russians against my attacking Germans in the VotG scenario “Drama, the Park and Deadly Things”. Because I had previously played this scenario I offered Jon his choice of sides. I split my attacking force into two columns; the 9-2, MMG, HMG, two 5-4-8's with LMG's 3 4-6-7's and an 8-1 went up the center while the remaining units went to the left. I brought the HT forward for first turn armored assault and held the AC back. Both the StuG's went up the middle for turn 2 Smoke shots.

Jon had a good set-up, including the 45LL at 1st level way in the back. He started pounding away with it at my StuG's and eventually immobilized the one with the 9-1 AL fairly far to the rear. On turn two I got a one Smoke shot down and then drove the AC into bypass freeze to break up a strong point on the German left. I used HS's in the center to search for mines and bump scout, with the 5-4-8's coming up behind to hose down whatever stood in the way. Unfortunately for Jon, he had some pretty crappy dice all day, particular on the first 3 turns, and by turn 4 I was up against the VC building. But Jon's dice turned around (at least somewhat) and he kept his men battling, right to the very last Prep phase, when I broke his final defenders for the win. It was a tough fight that could easily have gone the other way, especially if Jon's dice had been better in the early turns. He had a good set-up and handled his troops well throughout the game. We had a lot of fun.

I like this scenario a lot; it's fairly simple and not overly dense in units, but there's a lot going on and its very challenging for both sides. I've played it a couple of times now, and would happily play it again as either side.

We had our usual lunch at Burger King, and the survivors had dinner at Chris and Pit's Barbecue. It was a very enjoyable day of ASL!