December 8th Game Day in Bellflower AAR

Last week, our Game Day in Upland drew 11 members; the best attendance we've had there in nearly 5 years. This week in Bellflower we drew 14 players, which tied our record for that venue. Our attendees included a new guy, (as in new to the Club, not ASL) Pat Ash from Tustin. It was also nice to see Tim White for the first time since WCM, and Geoff Coward, for the first time in quite a while, as well.

Guy Jimenez' British defeated Ric Hammond's SS in “The Bend in the Road”.

Hank W.'s Brits defeated Dave Nicholas' Japanese in “Down the Manipur Road”.

Scott Thompson's Americans defeated Tim White's Germans in the Dispatches scenario “The Krinkelwald”.

Pat Ash's Germans defeated Dan Plachta's Americans in “A Simple Solution”.

Jim Svette's Germans defeated Dave Lewis' Russians in “Adolph's Amateurs”.

Fen Yan's Germans fell to Geoff Coward's Russians in the Deluxe scenario “Back to School”.

Last week, Dave Nicholas and Dave Kocot paired up for “The Art of War” from the Death to Fascism pack. The scenario looked super cool, with Chinese Nationalists attacking Mao's Chinese Communist troops off the coast of China in 1949. Unfortunately, they both though the scenario was very hard on the Nationalists, though Nick thought he'd made some mistakes with them. So this week, I took the Nationalists against Stance Nixon as the Chi-Coms. We gave the Nationalists the balance (a 3rd Stuart tank). The cool part of this pack is that both sides get a budget to purchase their SW's off a table. Stance took the Recoilless Rifle and LMG's. I chose an American .50 Cal, two LMG's and a couple of DC's.

The set-up for this scenario is very challenging, since the attacker gets to pick which three board edges he can enter from and assigns the defender's friendly board edge, all after seeing the defender's set-up. Stance handled the set-up very well. I chose to make a three prong attack from the south and west board edges, and assigned Stance the north edge. Perhaps I made my attack too complicated, But I only needed one breakthrough to snag a bunch of empty buildings. Stance was able to break up one attack with a well-placed MMG in the steeple that went on a rate tear. Another attack faltered when an 8-0 boxed a rally attempt. I held my tanks out of bypass freeze as each one lost adds a building to my requirement. No matter, they have plenty of MG's and Canister. In the end, Stance's Chi-Coms died way too slowly, and the Nationalists (or as I took to calling them: 'Peanut Head's Finest') came up well short of victory. Not to take away from Stance's excellent set-up and solid play, but we both concurred with Nick and David that this was really tough for the Nationalists, even with giving them the balance. Too bad, I really like the subject and the scenario, and Stance and I had fun. Maybe cut the VC's back to 7 buildings instead of 9, and give the Nationalists the balance?

Because we had so many guys, and so many choices, we decided to split up for lunch. The majority went for to the nearby pizza place, with a couple going to Johnny Reb's and a couple more for burgers. The survivors adjourned to Hambone's, our favorite place for a late dinner. All in all it was a great day with another great turnout!