September 16th Game Day at Emerald Knights AAR

We had 7 members, plus a late-arriving Blair Bellamy, for the September edition of our Game Day in Burbank.

Dave Nicholas' Russians defeated Eric Visnowski's Germans in “Counter Attack on the Vistula”.

Bill Yuen's Germans defeated Larry Rienking's Americans in “For a Few Rounds More”.

Bill then paired up with Blair Bellamy late in the day for “In Pursuit of the French” with Blair's Germans defeating Bill's French”.

And I took the Brits against Dan Plachta and Dave Lewis as the Germans in the ESG scenario “Backs to the Wall”. This is an early war scenario with a couple of platoons of British infantry backed by a couple of Carriers. They have to defend two board 23 bridges from a well-led German infantry company backed by 3 PzIIF's and couple of PzI's, plus a SiG. The Brits eventually get a couple MkVI's and an A-9 (with a much-welcomed 40L Gun) on turn 3.

The Brits are forced to set up in a narrow band of stone buildings, well in front of the bridges. Because the Germans have on-board set-up, and have a potential 9-2 led kill stack as well as the SiG, the Brits are forced to a reverse slope defense. It's a hard set-up, and it became obvious after the first turn that I put too much strength on my left. Dan got his Smoke down and hit my line hard and fast. D.L. ran the tanks and a platoon of German reinforcements, and they swung into position without much resistance from my troops or their ATR's. By turn 2 I had already lost a couple of squads and both Carriers. It was obvious that I could barely slow down the German attack, and called it quits after turn 2. We decided to turn it around, with Dave reprising his roll as the German armor commander and me taking the German infantry. Dan had a better set-up, but in the end it didn't matter, by the bottom of turn 3 the German tanks were covering the bridges, and all but 2 British squads were dead or cut-off. There was still some fight left in the Brits; the German tanks were not in great position, but the A9 couldn't be everywhere, and the Germans still had 14 squads to the British 3, and had a kill stack on 2nd level that could cover both bridges. We decided at that point to call it another German win and head to dinner.

I hesitate pronouncing this one a dog despite the outcome. I really like the board configuration and forces. We all sensed there's something we're missing on this one. In any case, we had fun, and its always fun to play a good early war scenario.

We made our usual trip to Larry's for chili dogs served by the ever lovely Veronica. And the survivors retired for our traditional late dinner at Bob's Big Boy. It was a very enjoyable day of ASL!