January 20th Game Day at Emerald Knights AAR

We had a total of 10 members for our SoCalASL Game Day at Emerald Knights:

Nadir Elfarra was the envy of all of us when he brought his newly acquired copies of Forgotten War, W.O.Pack and Objective Schmidt for us to look over. I have to say, all three products are quite impressive.

Nadir's Americans defeated Dave Rosner's and Mike Soffa's SS in the new W.O. pack scenario “Checking Out”, using two of the new Deluxe boards from the pack.

Dave Lewis' Germans defeated Dave Nicholas' Americans in “Canicatii”.

Dan Plachta's Americans defeated Peter Strand's Germans in “Better Fields of Fire”.

Since the end of the year, I've been on an 'oldies' kick, and over the holidays I went through my old scenario books and copied some scenarios that I really liked, but hadn't played in a long time. One of those was the Journal scenario “Audacity”, which is fun, fast-playing and very balanced. Through the years I've used it quite a few times for French and early war themed mini-tournaments at WCM. But I hadn't played it in quite a few years. Sal Palaez wanted to try it, and chose the defending Germans.

We had to brush up a bit on the Mud rules, which are actually in two different sections of the rules (one of the reasons MMP is working on a Chapter E re-write.) This scenario starts out slow at first, with the Germans ambushing a column of French troops on the road. The French have to cross a lot of open ground and capture a village. But they have good quality troops supported by a couple of H39 tanks. The Germans get some mixed quality troops and a 37L AT Gun.

The French and Germans traded ineffective shots during the first turn ambush, and I brought my initial force in on the French right, around the rear of the large hill where they were able to move behind cover. I brought my turn 2 reinforcements, including the tanks, around that way as well, to avoid the AT Gun and likely placement of the AT Mines. I forgot about the Mud rules, which made these radioless tanks stupidly slow, and I quickly realized this was a mistake. It was obvious to me that my infantry was going to have to do the heavy lifting in this scenario if I was going to win. On turn four it looked like I was well behind schedule and would run out of time. But as it turned out, I had pretty good luck with my wide flanking attack, and my final reinforcement group came straight up the road and quickly got into the fight, just as my tanks arrived from their long, off-road trip. Sal had an excellent set-up, but I was able to pry his position apart one building at a time, grinding up German and French squads alike in the process (mostly through Close Combat.) By the last turn, Sal had simply run out of troops and we called it a French win. This game could easily have gone the other way, and we both had a great time.

Blair Bellamy arrived late in the day, just as my game with Sal was wrapping up. So he paired up with Sal in the old classic “Red Packets”, with Blair's Germans defeating Sal's Russians.

Dan and Peter's game had also cleared at that point, so Dan and I paired up for another 'oldie' from my folder: the classic Red Barricades scenario “Bread Factory #2”. Dan took the Russians against my Germans. But by the time we got to turn 2, all the other games had cleared, and we decided to throw this one in and go to dinner instead. I'm looking forward to setting that one up again though.

We had our usual excellent chili dog lunch at Larry's, and enjoyed sitting in the sun for a change. The survivors adjourned to Bob's Big Boy for our traditional late dinner. It was another excellent day with an excellent turn-out.