November 30th Special Game Day in Bellflower AAR

We had 8 members for our Special 5th Saturday Game Day at The Guild House in Bellflower:

Fen Yan's Soviets defeated Jim Svette's Germans in “Amerikanskaya Suka”.

Peter Strand's Americans defeated Blair Bellamy's Germans in “Hellava Patrol Leader”.

Dan Plachta's Germans defeated Dave Nicholas' French in “A Fine Mess”.

And Scott Thompson and I paired up for the Rally Point Korean War scenario “Meat Choppers with Knives”. The dice gave me the Chi-Com's against Scott's U.N. forces. (We're talking truly U.N.: mostly French infantry, with a platoon of South Koreans and two American M-16 Meat Choppers.)

This is an attack-defend scenario. It's February, '51. The Chi-Coms have to capture 4 of 5 stone buildings in a small village, and at the same time hold a hill from a potential U.N. counter-attack. Scott put his S. Koreans in a position to assault the hill, so I set up 4 squads there, supported by the MMG and both mortars. Everything else went on a right flank attack into the village. Attacking with the Chi-Coms, because of their limited movement ability, is tricky, and takes some to get used to. It's sort of like attacking with Japanese, but with crummy support weapons and no Banzai's. My attack went in pretty much unscathed and continued to succeed mostly because of Scott's terrible dice rolling. But I have to say those French 5-5-8's with Assault Fire are tough characters and died hard. But die they did, taking Chinese with them. Meanwhile, on the Chinese left, Scott assaulted the hill, again and again, tying down 4 of my squads and most of my good support weapons. Eventually I was able to defeat this attack. But it's purpose was accomplished, as I was never able to get these troops into the village assault. In the end, on the final turn, the last of my Chinese advanced into the last victory building. The CC killed everyone in the hex, leaving it in French control and giving Scott and his U.N. troops a blood soaked win.

In retrospect, I think my Chi-Com attack could have been better handled. But we both thought this one was probably a little tough on them, given Scott's terrible dice rolling throughout. We both had a hell of a lot of fun with this one and agreed we'd happily play it again.

We had our usual very pleasant lunch at 600 Degrees pizza, and the survivors adjourned for our usual excellent late dinner at Hambone's Barbecue. It was a great way to spend a soggy Saturday.