September 8th Game Day at The Guild House AAR

We had 11 members for the September edition of our SoCalASL Game Day in Bellflower.

Peter Strand's Germans defeated Ed Esparza's Brits in “First Cristot”

Jim Svette's Germans pulled out a last CC victory over Fen Yan's Russians in the Deluxe scenario “Berzerk!”

JJ Ma's Germans and Eric Visnowski's Russians fought to a draw in “Urban Guerrillas” .

Blair Bellamy was originally part of the “Urban Guerrillas” game, but Ed and Peter's game cleared pretty quickly. So Ed and Blair paired up for “Comrad Klimenkov”, with Blair's Germans taking a 'down to the wire' win over Ed's Russians.

And Dan Plachta and I took the Russians against Stance Nixon and Dave Nicholas as the attacking Germans in the Into the Rubble scenario “Tractor Factory 137”. This scenario is a large scale city battle fought on two Bounding Fire half-boards. The Germans get a powerful SS force of 6-5-8's and 5-4-8's, backed by 3 PzKw IIIH's and a couple of Tigers. They have to capture four factories from a decent Russian force supported by 2 INF guns and 45L AT Gun. The also get one KV, a T34-M43, a T34-M41 and T-70. The Germans don't a get a lot of long range FP (four MMG's) but then have plenty of 2nd, and even one 3rd, level location to choose from. For that reason, we set up in ground level only, and almost entirely in defilade positions. We decided to make the Russian left rear factory our last stand, and put the KV in there with the 6-2-8/LMG's and the Commissar. The T34-M43, an INF Gun, the MMG and most of the remaining elite squads went into the factory in front of it. We gave up the far right hand factory, but had a secondary position to its rear to slow down a rush on that flank. Dan took the right flank, and would fight to the death for the other right flank factory and try to burn as much of the attacker's time as possible on that side. I took the left flank, with the two powerful factory positions. I set up a small secondary position on the left board edge to keep the Germans from making a quick encircling attack.

Perhaps the saving factor for the Russians in this scenario is they have MOL's. Personally, I find MOL's to be a mixed blessing against infantry, and use them sparingly. But they're excellent AT weapons, and in a city fight I try to always keep a squad or two in position to slip in beside an enemy tank for a quick kill. Stance, who commanded on the German right, facing me, had all of the tanks and recognized this threat. He made sure (correctly) to keep his tanks back a hex or two throughout the fight. But that of course diminished their contribution. Dave took the German left. He quickly sized up our plan, and pushed aggressively through the abandoned factory, then into Dan's main position. Unfortunately for him, Dan's dice were red hot, and Dave took serious casualties getting to Dan's second factory. On the Russian left, Stance went head first into the most powerful part of the Russian line. He sent a secondary force against my far left flank position. Against the weight of Stance's assault, my forward position buckled, but didn't quite break, and I was able to counter-attack back into the front left factory and push the Germans out. On the far left, my Russian squads played a cat and mouse game against the German flanking force, which wasn't quite strong enough to crush them.

With time running out, we concluded that the Germans had taken too many casualties on the right, and didn't have enough time on the left, to capture all four factories, and we called this one a Russian win. We all had fun with the scenario. ROAR has it 4-1 pro-German. Dan thought it looked tough on the Germans. I thought it felt pretty even, but your mileage may vary.

We spread out for lunch, with most of us opting for the pizza/pasta place next door. The survivors adjourned to Hambone's for another excellent barbecue dinner. The place continues to impress us with the quality of the food, prices and service. It was a great way to end a fine day of ASL!