July Game Day at Paper Hero’s AAR

[Jim Aikens]

We had 11 members for the July edition of our ASL Game at Paper Hero’s in Sherman Oaks:

James Quinn’s Germans defeated David Rosner’s Americans in the Deluxe scenario “It Don’t Come Easy”.

Dave Nicholas’ Germans fought to a draw against Phil Tinsman’s and Chris Watson-Wood’s Russians in “Possl’s Posse”.

In a first for a SoCalASL Game Day, Blair Bellamy and Sal Pelaez’ played VAASL face-to-face. Blair’s Gurkas and Sal’s Japanese will conclude their playing of “Take a Long Walk” at a later date.

And we had two playings of “Anhalt Pandemonium”. In the first game, John Lehman’s Germans defeated Mike Soffa’s Russians.

In the other playing of the same scenario, Eric Visnowski took the Germans against my Russians. This is an end of the war situation, with a depleted company of SS troops, supported by a couple of StuG’s, stubbornly holding out in a town. The Russians get 16 mostly 1st line squads, supported by two T-34M43’s and two IS-2m’s. The Russians need to have more EVP north of the town at game end than the Germans have left on board, and have only 4.5 turns to do it. Eric had his infantry evenly spread out, to avoid an early breakthrough. My plan was to line up everything I had from the right to the center, and flood the zone with bodies. I held the armor back on turn one, since I knew Eric at two HIP HS’s with PSK’s lurking.

Eric’s set-up was very good, with mutually supporting defensive positions. My initial assault was repulsed, and I immediately regretted going all in on one flank. I should have kept a platoon on my left, to keep the Germans spread out. Eric was able to shift his right flank to reinforce his center, while slowly backing up against my renewed attack. On turn two, I swung my armor and some squads to my left, but this lateral move cost me a turn, and the Russians have no time to spare. Retrograde defenses are probably one of the toughest tactical situations to pull off in ASL, but Eric excels at them, and made me pay dearly for each step forward. In the end, I simply ran out of time without killing enough Germans or making enough forward progress. The Germans won this one handily. We (me, Eric, Mike and John) agreed that it was a very fun and challenging scenario, but maybe a little hard on the Russians. However, I can say in our game, Eric simply had a better plan, and outplayed me. We all said we’d like to try it again.

Because the store opened at 2:00, we met for lunch at Sharky’s at 12:30. That worked out perfectly; good food, easy parking and just two blocks from Paper Hero’s. As with all of our Game Days this month, we enjoyed catching up after our pandemic hiatus. It was great to be back in Sherman Oaks for yet another outstanding day of ASL!

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