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We had 8 players, plus cameos by Scott Thompson, who joined us for lunch, and Geoff Coward, who joined us for dinner:
Fen Yan's Russians defeated Peter Strand's Italians in the DASL scenario “The Replacements”.
Jim Svette's Germans defeated Dave Nicholas' Brits in “As Luck Would Have It”.
Bruce Kirkaldy and Mike Meeks did a playtest of “The Uniform Factory” from Bruce's Budapest HASL module “Eagle Hill”.
And Dan Plachta took the Germans against my attacking Russians in the Bounding Fire scenario “Relentless Pressure”. A reinforced, well-led company of Russians have to capture and hold all of the buildings on board 43, most of which are in a walled enclosure along the north board edge. The Russians are supported by two T-34M43's and two T-70's, plus an 82mm MTR. The Germans get a company of second line troops with a couple of MMG's and LMG's, plus a 50L AT Gun. On turn 5 a force of 3 squads and two StuG's arrives to either counter-attack or save the day, depending on the situation.
Dan built a festung in the walled enclosure, with a secondary position in the clump of woods to the front of it. Although that gave up a lot of territory early, it was the correct set-up because: 1) the Russian armor is effectively unopposed, meaning any defenders out in front will get cut off and killed easily and 2) most of the approaches could be covered by units at 1st level in the compound. My plan was pretty simple. I sent a couple of HS with ATR's on the long run down the south board edge, and the MTR into a woods cluster where it could get a turn 2 SMOKE shot on Dan's 1st level defenders. I held back the T-34's and a platoon of infantry for riders, and send everyone else in along the north board edge to hammer my way into the compound.
As it turned out, this was just one of the those scenarios where nothing went right for me. My turn 1 push into the grain and brush was mostly in defilade to the German MG's: so far so good. But then in DF of turn one, I assembled the MTR and took my one allowed shot (special characteristic of that MTR) and boxed the shot. Damn it. The in Rally of turn 2 I rolled 6 on the repair. No SMOKE. I had no choice but to do the attack the hard way, and pushed forward along the north board edge, where I predictably took casualties from the level 1 MMG's. My T-34's with riders went in on the southern flank, with the intent of getting around the south side of the complex. But some great shooting by Dan's MG's there cleared the infantry off the tanks, and cut up the other infantry coming in with them in support. But I kept going, hoping eventually numbers would make a difference. They did, to some extent, and by turn 4 my infantry was on the wall of the complex, along with the T-70's. But my big DF shots of turn 4, which should have blown the Germans back, were entirely ineffective. On turn 5 I had to pull the T-34's out of the fight and off the south to deal with the oncoming StuGs, to prevent an end run into the backfield to grab one of the stray buildings on the southern flank. My troops went into the front buildings of the complex and cleared them in CC. But even with those successes, at this point I could feel the scenario slowly sipping away from me. Dan brought his reinforcements in behind the complex, where his defenders now had me outnumbered. On turn 6 I hammered him again, and finally broke a couple of squads. But it was too little, too late. With only one turn to go, I no longer had enough strength in my front line to drive the attack home, let alone get into the upstairs of the rear buildings of the complex. We called this a German victory.
Dan and I had a lot of fun with the scenario and we both would like to try it again. It is 25/24 on the ROAR and it feels it. I have to say, this is a lot of action packed into a little over half a board.
We got drenched walking over to Farmer Boy's for lunch. The survivors adjourned to Louie's for an excellent dinner. It was yet another great day of ASL!
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