December 22nd Game Day in Chatsworth AAR

[Jim Aikens]

We had six members for the December edition of our ASL Game Day in Chatsworth:

Peter Strand's Americans defeated Mike Soffa's Germans in “Ain't Running Away”.

Blair Bellamy has been on a 'France '40' kick lately. He came with the old scenario “Art Nouveau”. Although the scenario shows 60/40 pro-Belgian on ROAR, it looked pretty interesting and I agreed to take a crack at it, giving the Germans the balance.

Dave Nicholas and Dave Lewis also decided to give it a try. In their first playing, Nick's Germans diced the hell out of Dave's Belgians, and they called this a German win in short order. They then turned it around, but it just wasn't Dave's day, and his Germans fell to Nick's Belgians.

In our game, the dice gave Blair the Germans and I took the Belgians. This scenario has an interesting pre-game mechanism where, via three consecutive card draws, the Belgian force can be depleted or reinforced. Also, the Belgian force, though not very powerful, sets up entirely HIP at start. The Germans get a well-led motorcycle company later reinforced by 3 tanks and a '39 FB. They have to clear a roadblock and exit a certain number of CVP, depending on the strength of the Belgian force. Every infantry CVP they loose adds to their required exit total. My draw pull was red-black-red. On the first red I deleted a 4-5-8. On the black pull I added a T-15. On the subsequent red pull, I deleted the T-15, leaving me short one 4-5-8, but making the German required exit 15 CVP.

I set up my 9-2/MMG in the center, with the T-15 right behind it in the stone building. I set up a secondary position in the two hex building, with a squad and an 8-0 at 1st level to cover the nearby hill hexes. The 8-0 spotted for the mortar, which set up behind the building, and could cover both the hill and the woods hex behind the PB. Blair split his attack, sending part over the hill, some up the middle, and a platoon to his right (where I had almost no coverage.) My dice were pretty hot, which helped knock a lot of motorcycle troops off their bikes for a double break. Blair made steady progress, but found his troops being badly cut up. By turn 5 he was down 5 squads, and had a lot of broken units strung out in the backfield. He wisely paused his attack to get his tanks in place and rally his troops. On turn 7 he went in for the kill. All my remaining infantry broke and ran, but in the ensuing tank battle, two of Blair's tanks broke their MA, tried to repair and got recalled. My tank was also recalled by then. On turn 8 we calculated that the Germans (who now needed 28 EVP) didn't have enough left to win, and we called it a Belgian victory.

All in all, we both thought this was a fun and interesting scenario. The card draw mechanism adds replayability and some fog of war. The Germans need the balance, but otherwise, this scenario is well worth the effort.

We made our usual trip to San Carlo Deli for an Italian lunch. The survivors trekked to The Habit for our traditional late dinner. It was another great day of ASL.

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