May 4th Game Day at Gameology AAR

We had 7 members for our ASL Game Day at Gameology:

Fen Yan's Russians defeated Geoff Coward's Germans in the RF scenario “Defenders of Stalingrad”. The consensus is that this scenario is a pro-Russian dog. I watched the last couple of turns of this game. Though the game came down to the last turn, it didn't seem winnable for the Germans, even with the balance. Too bad, because otherwise it looks fun.

And Dan Plachta and Dave Nicholas wanted to take another crack at “Objective Uman”, with Nick taking the Russians against Dan as the Germans. Scott Thompson joined in the German armor attack before leaving late in the day. They decided to call this a German victory.

And Jim Svette took the Germans against my Russians in the classic RB scenario “Bread Factory #2”. Jim got the best possible result when he rolled a 1 in the initial turn, and the 9-1, instead of going Berserk by SSR, battle hardened to a 9-2 instead. In retrospect, I should have dropped concealment on some rear area squad to prevent it, but I didn't think of it. The impact of the “twin tower” 9-2's gave Jim all the advantage he needed to turn this one into a German victory. And because Jim and I play pretty quickly, we decided to try a second scenario: the RB scenario “Turned Away”. I hadn't played this one in decades, and I forgot how much fun it is. Jim once again took the attacking Germans against my Russians. I chose to defend the northern-most VC building, and set up evenly to disguise my choice as long as possible. Jim chose a 2 prong attack, but lucky for me put most of his weight in the southern gully. By turn 3 he had established which was the victory building, and moved quickly to assault it. He swung his 9-2 and two 5-4-8's with LMG's around the east, behind the final victory building, bypassing a conscript squad I had back there to defend. Using that conscript squad from behind, and a 1st line squad in front, I was able to catch that 9-2 stack in an encirclement. Lucky for me, my HMG chose that moment to go on a rate tear, breaking the entire stacking and causing them to die for failure to rout. The scenario quickly unraveled for Jim, and we called this one a Russian win with one turn to go. Jim is a fine player, and I was happy to come away 1-1 with him for the day. We both had a lot of fun with both these scenarios.

We decided on Farmer Boys for lunch. And because it was a little too late for Louie's, we decided on The Habit for a late dinner. It was a great day all around!