June 1st Game Day in Upland AAR

We had seven members for the June edition of our ASL Game Day at Gameology in Upland:

Mike Meeks' Japanese defeated Fen Yan's British in the Deluxe scenario “Playing Uno”.

And the rest of us piled into the Red Factories scenario “Sandbanks of the Volga”. I'd played the original version of this scenario a few years ago with Don Petros, and we found it fun, but very pro-German. The revised version seems to be a lot more balanced. Dave Nicholas and Dan Plachta took the Russians against me, Scott Thompson and John Lehman as the Germans.

This scenario is played on the RB map. The Germans have to capture the tank farm, and exit 5 squads off the east edge. They get 15 1st line squads, supported by 5-4-8's, 8-3-8 assault engineers with DC's and FT's, and three StuGIIIB's. (An SSR stipulates that each time a StuG is K.O., the remaining StuG's have to pass a TC to avoid being Recalled.) They also get two pre-game bombardments and an 80 OBA. The Russians get a mixed force of 19 squads, plus trenches, mines and wire. The Germans start in Manufacturing Halls 6C, 6D and 6E, and have a long way to go. The Kindergarten, the only 2nd level building on the board, is in no-man's-land, adjacent to the Russian set-up area. We assembled two assault teams around the 5-4-8's and 8-3-8's and a platoon of 4-6-7's each. Our plan was to send one assault team up each flank (Scott to the north and me to the south), and John would take the remaining 4-6-7's and the OBA spotter up the middle, with the 9-2/HMG/MMG kill-stack on overwatch. Our bombardment was well-placed but completely ineffective. John got some hot dice on the initial kill-stack shots, but mostly eliminated dummy stacks. Scott's team moved steadily down the north flank. I hit Dan's positions on the south flank, but the Russians fought hard and fell back slowly. I swung the StuG's around Hall 6E toward the center, with the plan of providing fire support and Smoke to each assault as needed. But Dan got a surprise side shot from an ATR on one of the StuG's, then killed it with snakes on the TK. Per the SSR, one of the two remaining StuG's failed its TC and Recalled. Nick observed that had to be the most effective single ATR shot in ASL history. By turn 4 our attack was pressing steadily, but was well behind our timeline. And just when we were finally able to get the radio observer into place and an SR on a location to do some damage, the radio broke, and remained broken for the rest of the game. By the bottom of turn 5, it was obvious the Germans didn't have enough time to capture the tank farm, let alone exit the requisite squads, and we called this one a Russian victory.

In retrospect, our plan was flawed. We dissipated our firepower over too wide an area. The complete ineffectiveness of the bombardment, OBA and StuG's compounded our problems. I think this is a good scenario, and much improved from its original version. We all had a lot of fun playing this one, and we'd all like to try it again.

We had lunch at Farmer Boys, and the survivors retired to Louie's for our usual excellent dinner. We had a great day with a lot of laughs.