November 2nd Game Day at Gameology AAR

We had seven members for our ASL Game Day at Gameology on Saturday.

Jim Svette's Canadians defeated “Dr. Deluxe” Fen Yan's Germans in the AP14 Deluxe scenario “Death Takes its Toll”.

The rest of us were paging through the new AP14, when we came across “Night of Nights”: a 3 board night paradrop that includes a convoy, and bocage. After some 'oohs and aahs', we decided a big 5 player game of this scenario was in order. The dice gave me and Eric Visnowski the Germans against John Lehman, Scott Thompson and Dan Plachta as the American para's.

It's the early morning hours of D-Day, and four sticks of American paratroopers have made a scattered night drop. They have 8 turns to accomplish 3 of 4 objectives: Capture a town; capture/eliminate 5 AA Guns; prevent a German truck convoy from getting through; and/or exiting 12 EVP off the north edge. The German convoy has insufficient MP's to exit unless they can break up, which means seeing a KEU at some point. On the other hand, the Americans would be hard pressed to exit, and realistically, would need to clear the village to do so safely. So we decided to garrison the village heavily, and set up a small trap of HIP units in the southwest corner. The AA Guns went in positions to support the village defense, with a couple on the outside board edges to distract the paratroopers. We entered the convoy on turn 2 (earliest possible time) on the eastern road route, in hopes it would arrive in the village about the time the village fight was heating up. From there the escorts could support the defense, and/or the trucks could break free and make a run for the north board edge. The more time the paras took to capture the village, the less likely they could exit the north board edge or capture all the AA Guns.

So we had a Night scenario with a paradrop, bocage and a convoy, and 5 players with a collective 150 or so years of ASL experience, spending a lot of time digging through their RB's. In the end, with the help of a fair amount of luck, our plan worked pretty well, and the Germans took a win. This scenario is ambitious, but well worth the effort. We all had a lot of laughs and a lot of fun. Board 12a, where most of the fighting occurred, has a great feel to it. I think it will get a lot of use.

We had our usual lunch at Farmer Boys, and the survivors enjoyed an excellent dinner at Louie's Chicken and Fish. We had a great time and a great day of ASL.