August 21st Game Day in Sherman Oaks AAR

[Jim Aikens]

We had four members for the August edition of our SoCalASL Game Day at Paper Hero’s in Chatsworth:

Dave Nicholas’ Russians defeated Mike Soffa’s Germans in the revised version of “Dying for Danzig”.

I wanted to try another scenario from Poland in Flames, and Eric Visnowski was up for the challenge. We chose “Before the Blunder”, with EV taking the attacking Germans against my Poles.

This is a brutally simple scenario (1/2 board, all infantry) with an interesting and elegant tactical situation. The Germans get a well-armed infantry company reinforced with a couple of 5-4-8 A.E.’s. They have to grab a cluster of 3 buildings, and have to cross some nasty open ground to get there. The Poles get 8 squads with 2 HMG’s & 2 MMG’s, but only two leaders. They also get 2 Trenches and a couple fo 1-3-5 Pillboxes. Per SSR, these fortifications are revealed as if it was Night. The interesting tactical situation comes with the terrain. The Germans have to cross the lower portion of board 7A, which has a 4 hex pond and two marsh hexes right in the middle. This serves to bifurcate the playing area. The Germans can take the short way (to the Polish right) and push through a bunch of brush and grain. Or they can take the long way around the Polish left, and attack the victory buildings from the rear.

With only 6 turns I decided that the left hand approach would probably be too time consuming, and that Eric would go strong to the right. I put only a half squad to cover the open space back there, with all the dummies. I then set up a pillbox-trench-pillbox-trench line on the level one hills on the right and into the center woods, with the HMG’s in the PB’s, and the MMG’s in line to provided supporting fire. I put two squads forward, to force Eric to stay in the woods. Their job was to pull out no later than turn 2, and join the MLR in front of the victory buildings.

Eric came on spread evenly across the board. He took a couple of turns working his way up, and used half squad scouts to tap my line and figure out where my fortifications were. By turn 3, he’d correctly deduced my plan, and sent a strong attack to the left, led by the 5-4-8’s. I saw that move coming, and shifted 2 squads over to help slow him down. The fight eventually boiled down to a slugfest in the victory buildings. I launched a counter attack back into the buildings on the last turn, and it all came down to one CC: if I rolled a 6 or less I won, otherwise, Eric’s Germans would survive for the win. I rolled a 7, and Eric took the win. What a game!

This scenario is perfectly balanced on ROAR, and it certainly played that way. We both had a blast and agreed we’d happily play it again, as either side.

Doing the early lunch worked out great again. The survivors adjourned to Sizzler for dinner. BTW; a note on why we seem to end up at Sizzler so often: Most of our Game Days don’t wrap up until 8:00 PM. Most of the restaurants are still on pandemic hours, and close by then. Sizzler stays open later. They also seem to have upped their game a bit in terms of food quality, and their service is significantly better than Denny’s (our other late-dining choice.) So there you go.

It was another fun-filled day of ASL!

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