October 5th Game Day in Upland AAR

We had five members for the October edition of our ASL Game Day in Upland:

Dan Plachta's Germans defeated Fen Yan's Americans in the Historical scenario “Abram's Charge”.

And I took the SS/Hungarian forces against Eric Visnowski and Blair Bellamy's Russians in the C.H. Deluxe scenario “Streets Afire” by Chris Olden. Eric and I had played this scenario twice previously. We've found it to be razor close and an absolute barn-burner!

It's Buda, 1945. A mixed force of Hungarians and SS are holding the 1st and 2nd floors of a building. The Russians hold the ground floor. Each floor is treated as a factory. (So it's like having a battle in a Sears.) Both sides have a relief force coming in from different directions. The Russian force is bolstered by a mix of five T34's (85 and M43's). The Axis gets two Hetzers at set-up, and three Zrynii's that enter on turn 1. The Russians have to control the Sears building to win.

The Russians set up first, but also move first. In my experience, the side that can reinforce the victory building first has the best chance to win. So both sides need to attack and defend. I set up one platoon with both Psk's in the center, and the MMG and HMG at 2nd levels to interdict the Russian squads as they came into the factory. I set up two platoons to assault straight into the factory on turn 1. I got both platoons in on the bottom of turn 1, only to have Blair's Russians in the building blast them to pieces. By turn 3 both sides had taken at least 50% casualties. Both sides have a SAN of 5. Interestingly, there were no Sniper attacks on turn 1. But that changed during turn 2. The German Sniper was particularly deadly, killing 5 Russian leaders. In one string of 3 SAN activations the German sniper KIA'd a 10-0, 9-0 and 9-2. None of the 8 Russian leaders survived the game. In the end, my Axis troops cleared out the victory building and took the win.

We all had a blast with this one. Bravo to Chris Olden for his very fine design! It's one of my favorite Deluxe scenarios and well worth a the effort. We all said we'd happily play it again straight up as either side.

We had our usual lunch at Farmer Boys, and our traditional late dinner at Louie's Chicken and Fish. It was another awesome day of ASL!