August 31st SoCalASL Summer Offensive II AAR

We had 14 members for our SoCalASL Summer Offensive II event at Apex Fasteners in Irwindale.

Our format was different than our usual Game Days. Nadir Elfarra was kind enough to round up almost a dozen maps from George Kelln of Lone Canuck Publishing, and loaning them to us, along with scenarios and special counters.

Mike Meeks and Stance Nixon's Germans fought to a draw against Scott Thompson and Matt Cicero's British in “Crossroads at Les Attaques”.

Jim Svette's Americans defeated Mike Soffa's Germans in “Bridge at Son”.

Larry Reinking's Germans defeated Sal Pelaez' French in “Ill Prepared”.

In our only non-HASL game of the day, James Quinn's Germans defeated Eric Visnowski's New Zealanders in the classic Deluxe scenario “The Kiwi's Attack.” This scenario was very cool to watch, because James brought his scale miniatures, and they used those on the Deluxe boards. James did a really fine job painting these, and has a very cool magnetic system to identify each stand of figures.

And Dave Kocot and I took the Americans against Dave Nicholas and Dan Plachta as the Germans in the Bulge HASL scenario “Battle for Wiltz”. The HASL map for this is probably one of the most attractive I've ever seen, covering the wide area of rivers, streams, hills and woods around the village of Wiltz. The scenario has four parts, with each part spanning 6 to 8 turns. The Germans have to fight their way across the board and exit 100 EVP of units by the end of the 4th part. Alternately, if the Germans can trace a road route from the east to west board edges without an American unit on or adjacent the end of any part, they can win a sudden-death victory. The Americans start with a woefully small force to block four companies of attacking Germans. But the terrain heavily favors the defense. And what the Americans lack in bodies they make up with fortifications and OBA.

In the bigger picture, this was a pretty ambitious choice for a day of ASL. But the map was just too gorgeous to not play on. The set up is complicated for the Americans, and the Germans have to make some hard and important choices about their attacking force. We played 2/3 of the way through part I. It really captured the desperate American position, and the frustrating nature of the German attack. We all had a lot of fun with this, and we're planning to continue the battle at a future Game Day.

We enjoyed an excellent lunch at the nearby Mexican place, and the survivors adjourned to BJ's restaurant for a late dinner.

I want to give a shout out to Nadir Elfarra for rounding up and providing the Lone Canuck products for us to play, and to Matt Cicero and Bryan Earll, for opening their business for our use. SoCalASL Summer Offensive II was a blast.