November 3rd Game Day at Gameology: AAR

We had six members for our SoCalASL Game Day in Upland on Saturday:

Dan Plachta's Kiwis and Dave 'Special K' Kocot's Germans fought to a draw in the ESG scenario “The 24 Hour Pass”.

Fen Yan's Kiwis and Dave Nicholas' Germans fought to a draw in an obscure Coastal Fortress Deluxe scenario “Blockbusting the Meatgrinder”.

And Blair Bellamy and I paired up for the recent Operations Magazine scenario “Forced Crossing”. This is a very interesting scenario that has a well-led company of Russian 4-5-8's attempting to do a bridge crossing in a snow storm. They are opposed by a couple of platoons of Germans. The dice gave me the attacking Russians. This scenario has its own snow chart, which basically makes the snow LV hindrance heavier than the RB version. Starting on turn 3, the German gets to try to blow the bridge, success resulting in everyone on the bridge dying, and those behind it trapped on the wrong bank. The action is fast and furious, as the Russians must cross as quickly as possible. To help them, they get 6 half squads that can set up concealed on the German side of the river, in order to distract the defenders. Although the snow LV helps on the initial shots, it doesn't affect Fire Lanes and Residual Fire. I started working my way across. On the bottom of turn 1, the snow intensified to heavy, which made almost all shots at least +3. I worked my way forward on turn 2, again facing residual and Fire Lanes, while the snow came in heavy throughout the turn. I was able to get a couple of squads into the bridge exit hex, which were able to advance or rout to safety into a cluster of woods on the German side. I had most of my force on the bridge by the start of turn 3 and planned to bum's rush the exit under the cover of the heavy snow. Wind change DR… 2, the snow stopped. Yikes! Now I have no cover! So I changed my plan, and Prepped a couple of squads on the bridge and others that had already crossed. My shots were lucky and I broke a couple of German squads covering the bridge. Then it was everyone forward… through Fire Lanes and Residual. It was a shit show, and I lost 3 squads and a 7-0 getting across. But everyone else made it off the bridge and onto the German side. And it was good they did. On German turn 3 Blair dropped the bridge into the river. The following 3 turns were a slug fest in the woods, with Blair falling back to the victory area and both sides taking heavy losses. The snow never returned. In the end, I was able to pin Blair's final surviving squad as it tried to fight its way back into the victory area, giving my Germans a very close, hard fought win.

We both liked this scenario a lot. And with the variables of the snow and bridge blowing rolls, there's a lot of replayability. It was interesting, tense and exciting from beginning to end, and we had a blast.

We once again chose Farmer Boys for lunch, and the survivors retired to Louie's for an excellent late dinner. It was great to catch up with Dave Kocot, who took time out from his 14,000 mile sojourn driving around America attending ASL tournaments and seeing the country. All in all, it was another great Saturday of ASL.