December 30th Game Day at Gameology

We had an excellent turn-out of 10 players for our last Game Day of 2017.

Scott Thompson's Poles defeated Eric Visnowski's Germans in the Poland in Flames scenario ” No Shortage of Determination”.

Jim Svette's Russians defeated Blair Bellamy's Germans in “Retreat from Barak”.

Dan Plachta's Poles defeated John Lehman's Germans in “Polish Battlefield”. This first playing got over pretty quickly, so they set it up again as the same sides. They got to turn 4 in this second playing, with John's Germans doing much better. They ran out of time however, and decided to call this one a draw.

It was nice to see Fen Yan after about an 18 month hiatus. He had a pre-scheduled training game with his friend Peter Lam. They played “Guards Counter-Attack” with Peter's Germans defeating Fen's Russians.

And Dave Nicholas took the Germans against my Brits in the Action Pack scenario “Flight of Fancy”. Nick had played this as the Germans at ASLOK, and admitted to being thoroughly beaten by Wes Vaughn. Frankly, that's nothing to be ashamed of, most people lose to Wes. Aside from being a very nice guy, he's one of the best ASL players in the world. Both Nick and Wes thought the scenario was hard on the Germans. Nick wanted to try this one again, and I thought it looked interesting. Besides, it's a Pete Shelling design, and I usually don't pass up a chance to play one of Pete's scenarios.

This is a complicated scenario. The Brits have to capture multi-location stone buildings. The Germans need to get their men across the river to safety. Both sides need to allocate resources to prevent their opponent from scoring victory points. This is a scenario that you need to play once to get the hang of. Nick took a platoon and a leader and ran across the bridge, scoring a quick 7 points. I left a platoon to tie up Nick's river force, and sent everyone else on a right sweep to try to get behind the Germans. It turned out to be a tough go. I was finally able to pry him loose with my arriving flanking force. It was basically a swirling shit storm, with small pockets of troops holding each other off. Both sides had broken squads spread across the map, with no leaders available to rally them. Nick ran out of men first, and I was able to squeeze some squads across the road to grab enough victory buildings and the win. It's a hard scenario, but worth the effort. It's definitely easier to play the second time around. Our game could easily have gone the other way, but on the first playing, I think this is hard on the Germans.

We had a great lunch at The Hat, and the survivors grabbed dinner at Jersey Mike's. It was a great way to wrap up 2017!