13th Annual Burning Wreck Barbecue AAR

[Jim Aikens]

We had 17 members, plus cameos by Michael Pitts and Blair Bellamy, for our 13th Annual Burning Wreck Barbecue in Long Beach.

Our scenario selection for the day was scenario 4 “The Commissar’s House”, from Beyond Valor. It proved to be an excellent choice. While the main event was going on, Matt Cicero ran an SK clinic for new member Robert Barratt. The remaining 15 players divided into one 3-player game and six face-to-face playings:

Jim Svette and Scott Thompson’s Germans defeated Fen Yan’s Russians.

James Quinn’s Russians defeated Stance Nixon’s Germans.

Dan Plachta’s Russians defeated Dave Nicholas’ Germans.

Don Temblor’s Germans defeated Gene Thompson’s Russians.

Guy Jimenez’ Germans defeated John Strauch’s Russians.

Fred Timm’s Russians defeated Eric Visnowski’s Germans.

And I took the attacking Germans against John Lehman’s Russians. This scenario is played primarily on Board 20. The Russians win by having one unbroken squad equivalent in either building S6 (Chemist Shop) or Z3 (Commissar’s House) at game end. They start with 25 squads, half of which are elite. They also get maximum Booby Traps, 3 HIP squads and a SAN of 6. The Germans also get 25 squads; half 8-3-8’s and the remainder 4-6-7’s. They’re armed with 6 DC’s, 2 FT’s and excellent leadership. John had a good set-up, with most of his strength around the Commissar’s House. It’s obvious from looking at the map that the Chemist Shop is not defendable. But with 8.5 turns, the Russians need to garrison it to at least make the Germans fight for it.

I think the key to this scenario is the stairwell in hex AA3 of the Commissar’s House. The Russians need to be able to use that stairwell to move troops up and down the building without getting shot up, and allow the broken troops to rout to safety. I put the 9-2 with a MMG and HMG and 2 squads at second level of the P9 building for over-watch. From there they can interdict the entire battlefield. I built small 4-5 squad assault teams with a mix of 4-6-7’s and 8-3-8’s with a -1 or -2 leader, and dispersed SW’s depending on their assignment. I held the FT’s back initially, saving them for the hard work of clearing the Commissar’s House. I deployed three 4-6-7’s and scattered 6 half squads in the streets around for Sniper protection. With so many high-value leaders and a Russian SAN of 6, I wanted to keep that threat contained as much as possible.

As it turned out, this was one of those games where everything I did worked, and everything my opponent tried did not. John had some clever traps set up, but seemed to roll an 11 every time he had the opportunity to knee me in the groin. Following my plan, I sent one assault team down the western board edge, and by turn 3 grabbed building CC2, which put the critical AA3 stairwell under fire. There was a lot of hard fighting, but the Commissar’s House fell on turn 5, and well called it a game. John played very well, but this just wasn’t his day.

ROAR shows this scenario dead even, and that seemed to be proved out. We had 4 German wins and 3 Russian. Everyone had fun with the scenario. It’s bread-and-butter ASL, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

We gave away 9 prizes in our raffle, including 3 that were donated. Special thanks to Chuck Hammond, Jim Svette and Blair Bellamy for those. As always, the beer and soda flowed all day. Take out pizza from Pizza Hut kept the guys fed and playing through lunch. We adjourned at 8 PM to The Habit for a terrific group dinner. We called it a night at 10:00 PM. 11 hours of ASL camaraderie. It doesn’t get better!

On behalf of the Club, I want to extend our thanks to Stance and Cheryl Nixon for hosting us at their home again this year. We couldn’t do it without you guys!

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