December 28th Game Day in Chatsworth AAR

We had 6 members at All Ways Gaming in Chatsworth for our last Game Day of 2019:

Blair Bellamy's Americans defeated Sal Pelaez' Japanese in “Take it Back”.

James Quinn's Germans defeated Dave Lewis' Brits in “Tretten in Flames”.

Dave Nicholas has been complaining again that I've been ducking him. So we paired up for the Pete Shelling design “Red Horse Recon”. Nick had played this one twice before, so he gave me the choice of sides. I took the defending Germans against his attacking Americans. The Americans have a very light infantry force with two Scotts, two Stuarts, two Greyhounds, an M3MMG halftrack, and a jeep. They have to clear a road from one end of board 54 to the other, or capture 10 building hexes. Bocage is in effect. The Germans get a couple of second line platoons, reinforced by four 5-4-8 SS Assault Engineer squads with a FT and a couple of leaders. The Americans have a lot of firepower, but most of their vehicles are open-topped. This is a very fluid, asymmetrical type scenario.

I think this game went about as badly for me as any scenario I have played in recent memory. First, I didn't play particularly well. I set up too strong on the left and should have seen that the right flank was the better approach for the Americans, which is the flank Nick decided to hit. Second, I only passed two MC's in the entire game. And because the American force is so mobile, breaks generally translated to failure to rout eliminations as the American AFV's cut off retreat options. Although I did manage to kill two American AFV's with point blank PF shots, I missed countless others, and barely affected the OT AFV's with infantry fire. Nick was able to squeeze both of his Greyhounds through my lines and into my backfield on turn 2, where they set up to interdict the reinforcing engineers. With my engineers bottled up in the backfield, Nick was able to overrun my main force and systematically kill them off. I finally threw in the towel on turn 4.

For all my bitching, I actually like this scenario. ROAR has it dead even, but I think it's much more challenging for the Americans. They have to play aggressively, and be willing to take risks to win. Nick played a great game and we had a good time despite my whining.

We had our usual excellent lunch on the patio at San Carlo, and the survivors adjourned to The Habit for a late dinner. It was a great way to wrap up 2019!