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We had 8 members, plus a cameo by Scott Thompson, for our Special 5th Saturday Game Day at The Guild House in Bellflower:
Dave Nicholas' Germans defeated Guy Jimenez' Russians in “Kampfgruppe at Karachev”.
Fen Yan's Russians defeated Larry Reinking's Hungarians in “Extracurricular Activity”.
Ric Hammond's Germans defeated Blair Bellamy's Sikhs in “Sikh Defiance”.
I've been anxious to bite into the Red October scenarios since I opened Red Factories 2 months ago. But I am generally loath to travel with my original HASL maps. I was going to create laminated sectioned copies of the Red Factories maps (which I've done for VotG and the original RB) for travel purposes. But that eight foot map looked too daunting. So I decided instead to begin creating scenario-specific maps for each of the RF scenarios, starting with the ones from RO. I have begun with scenarios O1, O2 and O4. One of the advantages to this is I can customize the map with the exact overlays that are called for and, doing a little cut-and-paste, create shellhole and rubble hexes as called for. Stance Nixon and I paired up, and I gave him his choice of scenarios. He chose O4: “The Martinoffen”.
This scenario has a solid force of 17 Russian squads (half elite, half 1st line) defending building S22 (The Martinoffen). They get some decent MG's, including a .50 Cal, and an 45L AT Gun. But what really makes them scary is a SAN of 6. The Germans get a company of 8-3-8 assault engineers, armed to the teeth with 3 FT's, 5 DC's and 6 LMG's. They are led by a 10-2, 9-2, 9-1 and 8-0. They also get a depleted infantry company ensconced in a nearby building. But those troops cannot leave the building until the assault engineers reach hexrow O. ROAR has this scenario 3/1 pro German, so we decided to play it straight up.
This fight was characterized by two factors:
1) The Russian Sniper went off continuously. I was probably able to convert 60% of Stance's SAN rolls into attacks. The German leaders died in a variety of ways, outright KIA's… bleeding out from double wounds… booby traps; it was like a Quintin Tarantino movie. By the end of the game, Stance was down to just a wounded 7-0, and an 8-0, who survived unscathed.
2) The three German FT's. Candice Juliano refers to FT's as “ticking time bombs of disappointment” for good reason, they tend to X out very quickly. Often, it seems, on the first shot. Not so with Stance's FT's. He fired all three pretty much in every fire phase… and didn't X one out until turn 5.
This scenario is an eye-gouging, knee in the groin, head-butting kind of fight. Our scenario swung back and forth through turn after turn of incredible violence, even by Stalingrad standards. In the end, with the store ready to close, we called this one a Russian victory. But it was close, and could have gone either way. Stance and I enjoyed our game immensely and agreed we'd happily try it again, straight up, as either side.
We split into two groups for lunch, with half going to the food court down the street for burgers and Pho. The remainder went to 600 degrees for pizza. The survivors adjourned to Hambone's for our usual excellent late dinner. It was yet another great day at our favorite game store.
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