August 17th Game Day at Emerald Knights AAR

[Jim Aikens]

We had a solid 12 members in attendance, plus cameos by Sal Pelaez and Matt Morocco, for our flagship ASL Game Day at Emerald Knights.

Blair Bellamy’s Germans defeated Dan Plachta’s Brits in “Sound Retreat”. And because their game got over fairly early, they set up a rematch with “Butchers not Bakers” with Blair’s Brits defeating Dan’s Germans.

Mike Soffa’s Canadians were defeated by Phil Seymour’s Italians in “Sting of the Italian Hornet”.

In a rematch of the WCM XIV championship, Dave Perham and Dave Derizinski paired off in “Cat Chow”, with Dave Perham’s Russians defeating Dave Derisinski’s Germans.

Dave Nicholas’ Germans defeated Ed Esparza’s Russians in “A Grim Day at Krasny Krim”.

And John Lehman and I paired up as the Germans against Eric Visnowski and Dave Rosner as the Russians in the classic Deluxe scenario “First to Strike”. This turned out to be a blood-bath. We wrapped it up and called it a draw after the bottom of turn 5 (out of for lack of time. At that point, of the roughly 45 combined squads on board at start there were less than 20 remaining, with no end to the casualties in sight. I wish we had the time to finish; I think it would have come down to a handful of squads on each side grabbing VC buildings. Quite the slaughter, not to mention great fun, to say the least.

We adjourned for our usual lunch at Larry’s, and the survivors (joined by Matt Cicero) staggered over to Bob’s Big Boy for a very late dinner. It was a great turn-out and a great day of ASL!

[Matt “Rolling Hot” Cicero]

My games at EK proved again the maxim that's it's better to be lucky than smart at ASL. In “Sound Retreat” I thought I had lost the scenario on the first turn when I decided to attack with my motorcyclists on a broad front–that's probably not the best opening move. But I managed to get my 37AT gun unloaded and behind a wall and it accounted for two of the three Mk VIBs. Then my intrepid scout HS shrugged off a few OR attempts by two Carriers, went into CC against one of them, Immobilized it and then Burned it. On the other side of the map, 7-0 Cpl Koch leapt off his sidecar and into CC with another Carrier. He managed to Immobilize it, setting it up for a kill shot from a PSW 231(6R). Later, that PSW managed a CH on another carrier to reach the CVP goal.

In “Butchers and Bakers” my Brits stepped into and out of both AP Minefields with nary a scratch.

We'll see what happens this Saturday at JJ's–I'll be using the same dice…

[rdf]

Sadly, the Russians lost that game of Cat Chow. It was reasonably close, but only because Dave D malfed his 88 on the first shot and I was able to get some infantry in there to capture the thing.

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