January 26th Game Day in Chatsworth AAR

We had six members for our ASL Game Day at All Ways Gaming in Chatsworth:

Jaime Pelaez' Russians defeated Geoff Coward's Germans in the classic deluxe scenario “Guryev's Headquarters.

Sal Pelaez' Americans defeated Dave Rosner's Germans in the Dispatches scenario “Kreinkelterwald”.

And Eric Visnowski and I paired up for the Scherepunkt scenario “Operation Blackwater”. I'm pretty sure Eric and I have played this one before, but neither of us could remember anything about it, so Eric took the defending Germans and I took the attacking Brits. The Germans get a depleted company of Germans, supported by two Tigers, to defend a hill. The Brits have a reinforced company of infantry, supported by two Fireflys, four Sherman III's and a Carrier C. The Germans can also win if they have one of their mobile Tigers in a nearby village at game end.

Eric had an interesting setup, with most of his infantry on the hill with one of the Tigers. He also had a platoon of infantry in the village, and the second Tiger back, between the hill and the village covering the wide side approach to the hill. That platoon in the village bothered me, so I sent my elite platoon with all the LMG's, the Carrier, and a HS with another Piat, to clear out the village and dig in in case Eric decided to make a last stand with the second Tiger. I came to regret that decision; I sent my best troops on a mission where they would effectively be out of the hill fight, where they would be desperately needed.

Everyone else went at the hill, covered by Smoke from the 4 Sherman III's. I held the Fireflys back to coordinate an attack on the Tiger on the hill. The hill assault went well, as did my double-team of the single Tiger, which burned without costing me either Firefly. I then went after the second Tiger, but lost one of the Fireflys to a low-odds PF shot. But I got lucky when my second Firefly got a bounding shot on the second Tiger and killed it. That made the village irrelevant; I now just needed to clear the hill. But Eric had been beating the hell out of my infantry, and my good squads over the village didn't have enough time to get in to help. I was running out of infantry, but the Shermans' fire kept the pressure on the surviving Germans. Eventually Eric ran out of men, and my Brits claimed victory. It was a great fight and a lot of fun. Definitely worth another playing.

We had our usual excellent mean at San Carlo Deli, and the survivors adjourned to The Habit, where we were joined by Dave Nicholas, for a late dinner. It was another great day of ASL!