October 19th Game Day in Sherman Oaks

We had 11 members for the October edition of our ASL Game Day at Paper Hero's in Sherman Oaks:

It was nice to see Dave Deresinski after a 2 year absence. I invited him to sit in for me as Eric Visnowski's partner on the German side against Dan Plachta and Dave Nicholas as the Americans in our on-going “Battle for Wiltz” mini-CG. I know Dave is a big fan of CG's, and he fit in perfectly with the Wiltz team for the day. They moved the CG forward another 1.5 turns.

Fen Yan's Poles squeezed out a razor close win against Sal Pelaez' Germans in the classic cavalry scenario “Into the Fray”.

Larry Reinking's Germans defeated Dave Rosner's Russians in “Flanking Flamethrowers”.

And Chris Watson-Wood and James Quinn took the attacking Americans against my Germans in the new AP14 scenario “Emergency Surgery”. The Germans have to prevent the Americans from crossing a river. The Americans are light on infantry, but they have help from the French Resistance. And they have a lot of fast-moving recon vehicles. The German's AT capacity, beyond their PF's, is very limited: just an INF Gun and a single PSK. Lucky for them all of the American vehicles are open top. A nice feature of many of the scenarios from this Action Pack is the Germans get to purchase fortifications from a table. I went heavy on Wire, Mines and Dummies.

There are three bridges to defend: two stone bridges on the German right and center, and a foot bridge on the left. I used all the Wire and Mines, backed by two squads and the INF Gun, to cover the center, with the remainder split on the flanks. In retrospect, I had too much strength on my left. James and Chris split their force and attacked each flank. Their attack evolved into what I call a “Frank Sinatra” assault (you hold 'em, I'll hit 'em). Chris tied up too many of my troops on my left, while James attacked aggressively and made good progress on my right, and was very close to a break-through. Then, on the penultimate turn, my INF finally opened up with a vengeance, starting with a nearly improbable hit/kill against an M10 TD behind Bocage, followed by back to back crits. That gave my infantry just enough room to slip out of Chris' grasp, and slide from the left to center to help my beleaguered right flank. In the end, the Americans crossed 19 of the 20 EVP they needed, and we called this a very close German win.

Chris and James played a great game, and this one could have definitely gone the other way. It is an exciting and challenging scenario that is very much worth the effort.

We trickled over to Nat's restaurant next door in small groups for lunch. The survivors adjourned to Bob's for our usual late dinner. It was a great turnout and a great warm-up for next week's Barbecue!