December 1st Game Day at Gameology

We had an excellent turnout of 11 members for the December edition of our SoCalASL Game Day at Gameology:

Robert Hammond's Japanese defeated Karl Johnson's Marines in the Dispatches scenario “The Trail to Hellzapoppin' Ridge”.

Fen Yan (Mr. Deluxe)'s Brits fell to Jim Svette's SS in the ancient On All Fronts deluxe scenario “School Daze”.

Bruce Kirkaldy's Americans defeated Mike Meek's Germans in “Black Day in Hattan”.

David (Special K) Kocot's Red Chinese defeated the Chinese Nationalist forces of Dave Nicholas in the Death to Fascism pack scenario “The Art of War”. This scenario looks very cool, as do all the scenarios in the DtF pack, but both David and Nick thought it was hard on the Nationalists.

And Eric Visnowski took the Americans against me and Blair Bellamy as the Germans in the Hattan scenario “Bertaldo the Brave”. Blair and I split the German force, with him taking the German left and me the right. I took both AA halftracks, and Blair took all the 251-1's, which he held in reserve. Eric set up fairly far forward, so we chose what I call the 'Frank Sinatra” assault (you hold him, I'll hit him). I hit the American left pretty hard, broke through on turn 2, and headed up the board edge. Eric said in retrospect he should have pulled back faster, and his problems were compounded with some terrible dice rolling. By turn 4 the Americans were in trouble. At that point, Mike and Bruce's game had wrapped up. So I jumped over to his table, where we set up the Hattan scenario “First Timers”. While I was playing Mike, Blair's Germans defeated EV's Americans.

Meanwhile, Mike took the Americans against my Germans. He came in heavily off the board edge on the German right. His attack started out strong, when one of his two spotted 60mm mortars scored a CH, killing a German squad and its MMG. He ground forward, rolling up the German right flank. With the threat of CC always looming, I was forced to keep concealment for as long as possible, wait until the Americans were adjacent, and then break and rout back. Rinse, repeat, rinse repeat… By turn 5 Mike managed to snag 12 buildings, one short of the number he needed, and we called this one a German win.

These were my first two scenarios from the Hattan in Flames module. I enjoyed “Bertoldo the Brave”. I think there were challenges for both sides, and I'd like to try it again. On the other hand, I was pretty underwhelmed with “First Timers”. Aside from an interesting one-on-one tank battle between one of Mike's Sherman 76W's and one of my Pz IV's, there was very little action. My German infantry never Prep Fired, and they took no more than a half-dozen DF shots in the entire game. I like the winter motif of the board, but overall it has a very simplistic, Starter Kit feel to it. I'd like to try the other scenarios, and we have the CG slated for our Thursday night group when we finish Tarawa.

We had our usual lunch at Farmer Boys. The survivors adjourned to Louie's for our usual excellent late dinner. It was a great day with the best turnout we've had at Gameology in nearly 5 years.