March 10th Game Day in Bellflower AAR

It seems like Bellflower has become our primary source of recruitment these days. This month we were joined by a 4th new member in as many months. We had a total of 10 members, plus a cameo by Fen Yan, who dropped in and stayed for quite a while. It also included our aforementioned new member, John Strauch, a friend of Jim Svette.

Jim Svette's Russians defeated John Strauch's Germans in “The Tractor Works”.

Peter Strand's Germans defeated Tracy Woods' Russians in “Commando Shenke”.

Dave Lewis and Dave Nicholas paired up for “A Real Barn Burner”. In their first playing Nick's French defeated D.L.'s Germans. The nice part about this scenario is it plays so quickly you can turn it around and try again. In their second playing, D.L.'s French defeated Nick's Germans.

During WCM, Chris Olden sent me a scenario he's submitted to MMP and asked me to take a crack at it. It looked fun, and I finally remembered to bring it to a game day to try. “One Story Town” has two Finn forces attacking into a Russian town from two different directions. They're supported by two tanks, one an OT133 flame tank. The Russian force is solid, and supported by a couple of BA-6's. They also get two reinforcing groups with a total of four T-26's. The Finns have three 20L ATR's and MOL. Eric Visnowski and I took the Finns against Dan Plachta and Ric Hammond as the Russians.

In our first try the Finns were very hampered by Eric's terrible dice rolls on his side. I managed to commit one of the biggest bone-head moves I've made in some time, when I sent the Finn tanks to hunt down a lonely BA-6. Instead, the BA-6 turned and killed one tank, and eventually the other. Without the armor support on my flank, the Finns were unable to make much progress. By turn 3 (of 7) it was obviously over. With 4 hours left before the store closed we flipped sides and tried again. This second playing went very well, but we ran out of time on turn 5. This scenario is interesting and very fun. We all enjoyed it and will definitely try it again.

We split ranks for lunch, with half going to Burger King and the remainder to Sizzler. The survivors adjourned to Chris and Pit's for our traditional late BBQ dinner. It was a great way to spend a rainy Saturday.