January 31st Special 5th Saturday Game Day at Gameology AAR

[Jim Aikens]

Eight Club members were in attendance for our Special 5th Saturday ASL Game Day at Gameology.

The titles of three of the first four scenarios played: “The Bulge”, “A Stiff Fit” and “It Don’t Come Easy” seemed to follow a certain theme… But I digress.

In a game that seemed to be over rather quickly, Dave Kocot’s Americans defeated Ed Esparza’s Germas in the LFT scenario “The Bulge”. Because that game was over so soon, they set up “Last Minute War”, with Dave’s Slovaks defeating Ed’s Hungarians.

Rob Stai’s Germans pulled off a last-dice-roll win over Eric Visnowski’s Americans in the Deluxe scenario “It Don’t Come Easy.”

Kyle Li tried his hand for the first time playing a PTO scenario, taking a loss as the Brit’s against Dave Nicholas’ Japanese in “A Stiff Fight”. And because that scenario was over fairly quickly, they switched sides. In the second playing Nick’s Brits squeezed out a narrow win over Kyle’s Japanese.

And Scott Thompson took the Germans against my Russians in the WO scenario “Heart of Darkness.” This is a 6.5 turn scenario with a total of 46 squads. Nobody thought we would finish, but we actually did, in about 6 hours. The Russians get a large, well-lead force and 4 late-arriving BT-7 tanks against an equally well led force of Germans, who have to hold a bridge or two victory building. The Germans get two pillboxes, a 37L AT Gun and a 75* Inf Gun, plus some trenches and foxholes.

The Russians get to enter parts of their force on up to 3 different board edges. I took a wide, unopposed flanking movement to hit Scott’s defenders from an unexpected direction. But Scott had a solid set-up, concentrating on the bridge. After several turns of maneuver (the first MC didn’t occur until turn 3), the fighting began in earnest starting on turn 4. On the last movement phase, Scott’s Germans were down to only 4 of their original 16 squads, and both guns were out of action. But a lone German squad managed to kill the last BT-7 tank with an LMG and then use rifle fire to get a MC on the three 4-5-8 squads adjacent to the bridge. Only one squad had to pass the MC to advance onto the bridge for the win. But I rolled three 8’s in a row, leaving all three squads pinned, and giving Scott the well deserved win. It was a hell of a scenario and a hell of a game.

We made our usual trip to The Hat for lunch and wrapped up when the store closed at 10:00 PM. It was another great day of ASL!

We’ll be back to Gameology next week for our regularly scheduled Game Day.

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