August 14th Game Day in Bellflower AAR

We had 11 members for our SoCalASL Game Day at The Guild House in Bellflower:

John Strauch’s Germans defeated Jim Svette’s Poles in “Will to Fight Eradicated”.

Dan Plachta’s Russians defeated Fen Yan and Guy Jimenez’ Germans in “The Beasts Have Arrived”.

Hank W.’s American’s defeated Stance Nixon’s Germans in “Hickory Lickin'”.

New player Robert Barratt returned this month. His Germans defeated Dave Nicholas’ Americans in “Gavin Take”.

And Peter Strand made me an offer I couldn’t refuse; he brought the card for the Valor of the Guards scenario “Drama, the Park, and Deadly Things”. I love VotG, and this scenario is one of my favorites. I’ve played it several times, though not recently. I gave Peter his choice of sides, and he went with the defending Russians. I took the Germans.

This scenario is played on a 10 hex wide strip along the southern board edge. The Germans need to grab the 2 hex “Firehouse” building. They get a well-armed reinforced company, backed by two StuGIII G’s, a PSW 222 and one of those marginally useful flak half-tracks. The Russians get a couple of platoons of mixed quality infantry, and can chose 2 of 4 reinforcement groups for some AT capacity, including one 45L AT Gun. Peter had a well thought out set-up, designed to channel my armor into a kill zone for his AT Gun.

I put the 9-2, HMG, MMG and two 4-6-7 squad kill stack on my left, with a couple more 4-6-7’s to take ground. In the center, I created two assault groups (two stacks of two 5-4-8’s with LMG’s, each led by an 8-1). The remaining infantry went to the right, led by the 7-0. My scouting HS’s found Peter’s minefields on turn one, and I moved up my assault teams and kill stack, preparing to hit the center hard on turn 2. I kept the AFV’s back a bit, until I could establish what Peter’s set-up looked like. On turn 2, my right flank infantry attack jumped off first, drew fire while bypassing the mines, and was able to skirt the board edge. This drew fire from the 45L. Unfortunately for Peter, he boxed his very first shot with it. Time to bum’s rush the Gun. I shifted my center attack to the right, and threw the StuGs and PSW that way as well.

In the end, this was one of those games where everything pretty much went right for me, and wrong for Peter. The AT Gun was never able to recover, and several other key shots never seemed to drop when he needed them. Even then, I wasn’t able to break into the victory building for the win until the last movement phase. Peter played a great game, and we had fun. If you like VotG, this is a solid choice for a Game Day scenario.

The pizza place next door was open, so we hit that for lunch. Since Hambone’s is still closed, the survivors gathered at Sizzler again for very pleasant dinner. It was another awesome day of ASL!