February 22nd Game Day in Chatsworth AAR

[Jim Aikens]

We had 5 members, plus Blair Bellamy, who joined us in time for dinner, for our last Game Day before West Coast Melee:

Dave Nicholas took the Germans against Dan Plachta and Ed Esparza as the Brits/Americans in “A Grain of Sand”. In the first playing, Nick made short work of Dan and Ed's attack, and they called it a German win on the bottom of turn 1. They decided to re-boot. In their second playing, Dan and Ed made much better headway, and they called it a British win when time ran out.

And Dave Rosner took the defending Germans against my Americans in the AP scenario “Second to None”. At a glance, this is your typical American assault on a French village defended by a tough group of 5-4-8's paratroopers. But this is a Pete Shelling scenario, so you know it isn't just that. The back story is the Americans are armed with '03 Springfields instead of Garands. As a result, they're treated as 2nd line with no assault fire. And they have only a single MMG in support. But they have numbers on their side, they're well led, and they're backed by three Shermans. There is also an SSR that allows them to make grenade attacks (adapting the MOL rules). They have to cross some difficult terrain to either capture a village and/or a hill at the back of the board.

Dave had a good set-up, and chose a good spot for his 81 MTR. I sent a platoon up along the left board edge with one Sherman, and sent a second Sherman up the left center along the stream. I sent a couple of HS up the right board edge, just to force Dave to keep that flank covered. Everyone else went up the middle, with the third Sherman. On the first movement phase, Dave pointed out that what I thought was Brush along the left of the stream was actually Marsh. Damn. My flank attacks went pretty well, and by turn 4 my left hook was grabbing buildings along the rear board edge. My main attack in the center got the crap kicked out of it, (mostly from the MTR). Against my better judgment, I jumped into close combat whenever possible, hoping to utilize my numerical advantage. This was risky against “The Butcher of Burbank”. But Dave's renown CC luck really wasn't with him, and we pretty much traded squads throughout the game. That proved to be worse for him than me; he simply ran out of men before I did, and we called this a hard-fought American victory with one turn to go.

I like this scenario, and Dave and I had a lot of fun with it. The SSR's give it just enough of a twist to be interesting without be distracting. And it felt pretty balanced. We had our usual lunch on the patio at San Carlo Deli, and the survivors joined Blair for our usual late dinner at The Habit. It was a great warm-up for WCM!

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