August 18th Game Day at Emerald Knights AAR

We had 11 members, plus a cameo by Matt Cicero and his son Roman, for our SoCalASL Game Day at Emerald Knights in Burbank. There was a Magic event in downtown LA, so we pretty much had the store to ourselves. We took advantage of that by sprawling out on the six foot tables at the back of the store that are usually off limits to us.

Dan Platcha's Poles defeat Sal Palaez and Eric Visnowski's Germans in “Polish Battlefield”.

Dave Nicholas' Americans defeated Dave Lewis' Germans in “Buchholz Station”.

Blair Bellamy's Germans defeated Peter Strand's Americans in “Black Day in Hattan” from the new Hattan HASL.

Mike Soffa's Slovakians defeated JJ Ma's Germans in “Rebels Without a Pause”.

And Larry Reinking chose the attacking Russians against my Germans in “Broken Wings”. This is a very cool Pete Shelling design, but it shows 10-2 pro-German on the ROAR. I offered to switch scenarios, but Larry said he'd take the balance and was up for the challenge.

The Germans get a depleted company of second line troops with an ELR 2, supported by a 20L AA and a 75 AT Gun to defend two stone buildings for 5 turns. On turn 3, five SS Squads (including two 8-3-8's with a FT and DC) rush in to help save the day, supported by a Gun armed H.T.and a StuG IIIG. The Russians get 16 well armed and led squads supported by two KV-1 M42's and a couple of SU-76M's. The Russians win immediately by capturing two stone buildings, or at game by having more EVP past the victory line than the Germans. I defended the rear of the two stone buildings with half my infantry, all the MG's and the 8-1, and put two HS's in the front building. The remaining four 4-4-7's went into the woods on the right with the 7-0's. I put 3 Wire in front the rear VC building, and a fourth in front of the AA Gun over on the tree line. The 75 AT went into a building in the center

Larry chose a spread out attack, hitting the front VC building and the wood line simultaneously. The front VC building fell quickly and the Russians started heading to the back VC building. The fight on the woods line was nasty for both sides. Eventually all the Russians died in CC, and the four German 4-4-7's were reduced to 1.5 conscript squads. By turn 5, the Russians were in the second VC building, but couldn't clear it in time. That made it a race to the victory line. But that's where the newly arrived SS troops stopped them cold, and we called it a German victory. Larry played a good game, but I think the VC's make this scenario pretty much unwinnable for the Russians. That's too bad, because its a great design, and we had a lot of fun.

We made our usual trek to Veronica's for our chili dog lunch, and the survivors retired to Bob's Big Boy for our usual late dinner. It was an outstanding day all around!