March 17th Game Day at Emerald Knights AAR

We had five members in attendance, plus a cameo from Bill Yuen, who joined us for lunch, for the March edition of our SoCalASL Game Day in Burbank.

Dave Nicholas' Germans defeated Eric Visnowski's Brits in “Flight of Fancy”.

I wanted to resume my Korea kick this week, and convinced Larry Reinking and Dave Lewis to join me for “Hard ROK” from Forgotten War. Larry and DL took the attacking North Koreans (KPA) against my South Koreans (ROK). This is basically a bridge crossing scenario. The KPA gets a powerful, well led force of elite troops backed by two SU76 'Bitches' and two T34-85's. The ROK is forced to set up on two boards with a mix of second line and conscript infantry on each board. The front force sets up in the middle of board 10, the rear force can set up anywhere on board 23. The set-up restrictions are such that it is very difficult for the ROK to pull their front force back fast enough, especially through the board 10 village. (I hate the board 10 village, almost every building is a death trap, and very hard to attack through or defend in.) On the face of it, this seems like a cake walk for the KPA, but their assignment is tough. They have to crush the front force quickly, then push to the canal and cross the only available bridge into the victory area. I set up my entire board 23 force, except for a couple of conscript squads, behind the canal covering the crossing.

For the first half of the game, the KPA hit and crushed the board 10 force. But I felt pretty good that I was able to get two leaders, two and half squads and the MMG and LMG back to board 23. The KPA took some losses, most notably both Bitches (one a Recall, one to a BAZ.) It turned out I needed every man I had to cover the bridge. I set up my only AT Gun, a 37LL, looking straight down the bridge with a bore-sighted location with the intent of getting a D.I. shot. But I boxed the very first shot. The KPA pushed both T34's across the bridge and into my backfield (they needed one to survive for the win, plus 4 squads.) So on turn 7 I pushed my gun crew into the street, then onto the bridge for the KPA turn 8 rush over the bridge. The crew was a meat plug. The infantry couldn't move into the crew's hex, so they had to keep shooting it to eliminate it. They eventually did, but had to prep so many units they didn't have enough squads remaining to rush the bridge (which was well covered by an HMG firelane.) We called it a ROK victory. We all enjoyed the scenario a lot. I think its very challenging for both sides. This isn't a small scenario, but it actually plays pretty quickly.

We trekked to Veronica's for our usual chili dog lunch. At E.V.'s suggestion, we decided on Tallyrand for dinner. It provided to be an excellent choice. I had the best turkey dinner I'd ever had that I hadn't cooked myself.

All in all it was another great day of ASL!