April 18th Game Day at Emerald Knights AAR

[Jim Aikens]

Well, our triumphant return to Emerald Knights was triumphant indeed. We had 14 members (one shy of our record) and a cameo by Matt Cicero and his son Roman, for our SoCalASL Game Day in Burbank:

Sal Palaez’s French fell to Blair Bellamy’s Germans in a very close playing of the classic “Strangers in a Strange Land.”

Nadir Elfarra’s Brits defeated Kyle Li’s SS in another classic scenario “The Five Pound Prize”.

Chris Nielsen celebrated his long-overdue return to our ranks with a win as the SS over Ed Esparza’s Russians in “Early Morning Action”. Welcome back Chris!

John Lehman’s Partisans fell to Rob Stai’s Croatians in “Operation Schwartz”.

In the last game of the day to clear, Mike Soffa rolled a ‘4’, exactly what he needed, in the last CC of the last turn to score a win as the Republicans over Dave Kocot’s Nationalists in one of my favorite scenarios “Far From Home”.

Initially we had an odd number of guys, and that left me, Dave Nicholas and Eric Visnowski setting up the large late-war Schwerepunkt scenario “The Rimling Circus”. Once we started setting up Dan Plachta arrived to make an even number, so we decided on a 2 on 2 game because the scenario was so big. EV and Dan took the defending Americans against me and Dave as the Germans. It’s an interesting situation pitting a powerful late-war SS formation with 16 squads and 11 AFV’s against a group of elite Americans defending a village supported by some Shermans and late-arriving Jacksons. Both sides get 100mm OBA. Unfortunately, Dave and I had a lousy plan, and we tried to make up for it with poor execution and even worse dice rolling… The scenario mercifully ended on the bottom of turn 3 with a sudden-death American victory when they immobilized the last German tank destroyer.

For lunch we traveled to Larry’s for chili dogs, where Veronica welcomed our return. The survivors adjourned at 9:30 for a late dinner. Lest anyone accuse us of being creatures of habit… we broke our long-standing tradition of going to Bob’s Big Boy in favor of a new, hipper burger place called Umami. I must say the burger was excellent, but the meal was a little pricey and the portions a little small. I suspect we’ll be returning to good ol’ Bob’s next month.

We had an outstanding turnout and an outstanding day of ASL!

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