October 12th Game Day in Bellflower AAR

We had 8 players, including a new guy, for the October edition of our ASL Game Day at the Guild House in Bellflower:

Blair Bellamy paired up with new guy John for a walk-through instructional game of “Retaking Vierville”.

Guy Jimenez' Germans and Dan Plachta's Brits fought to a draw in “Panzer Graveyard”.

Stance Nixon's Canadians defeated Larry Reinking's Germans in the Deluxe scenario “The Good Shepherd”.

And Fen Yan and I paired up for the Dispatches scenario “Streets of Kharkov”. This shows 60/40 pro-German on ROAR, so we agreed to give the Russians the balance. The dice gave Fen the SS against my attacking Soviet NKVD troops. This is an interesting attack-defend tactical situation. The Russians win immediately by blowing up two bridges. The Germans win immediately by exiting 12 EVP off the Russian board edge. Otherwise, the Russians win at game end by controlling hexes on both bridges, or controlling four multi-hex buildings. The Germans get 9 well led and equipped SS squads supported by a couple each of PzIV's and SPW251-1's, and a Marder. The Russians get a couple of platoons of rifle squads and nine 6-2-8 NKVD squads, backed by 6 T-34's and an 80mm OBA. The balance gave the Russians a third Commissar and an additional DC. I like the excitement of sudden-death VC's, and the PzIV's and SPW251's make the German force very mobile: they can win just by exiting the 251's and one squad, or the two PzIV's.

I decided to abandon the notion of destroying the bridges, and go for either of the other two VC conditions. I set the 80 OBA to pound the center cluster of building, and put my main effort on the right. I drew a red card on the first Prep, but stuck with my plan. Fen had a plan of his own, and launched a quick, violent counter-attack on my left. Fen had decided to go hard for the sudden death win. His attack was well-executed, and eventually drew off an appreciable amount of my strength. In the end, my attack worked quicker than Fen's. I was able to just barely stop his flanking maneuver while securing the necessary buildings for the win. It was very close. Fen got 7 EVP off. One more vehicle would have been a German win. This is a cool scenario, with a lot going on. I think it's a lot tighter than ROAR shows it, but I think the balance is appropriate. We had a lot of fun with this one.

We enjoyed our usual lunch at the pizza place, and the survivors adjourned for our usual excellent late dinner at Hambones. It was another great day of ASL!