May 28th San Diego Game Day AAR

[Jim Aikens]

I’m pleased to report we had 6 members in attendance for the San Diego Game Day at Steve Thorne’s house in Escondido:

Eric Morton’s Japanese defeated Henry DeVries’ Brits in “Uncommon Misery”.

In a battle of colonial troops, Fred Timm’s British forces defeated Steve Thorne’s Italians.

And Kevin Legge and I paired up for the first time. Kevin wanted to try something with OBA to help him grok that section of the rules. We went with the Schwerepunkt scenario “Beaufort’s Feast”; an early war scenario that has OBA for both sides. It turned out to be much more a lesson in handling early war combined arms; Overruns, Bypass freeze and Infantry/Armor CC than OBA.

Kevin took the Germans, and pushed his armor forward to force a battle close to the French entry area. I brought my French infantry in through a safe sector; moving in stacks with leaders to get as forward as possible. I sent my six S35 tanks further out on the same flank, positioned to engage the German armor on turn two. But I forgot how vulnerable early war infantry can be to marauding armor, and left my infantry in stacks with leaders and too distant from its armor support. Kevin saw his opening and swept his tanks in for the kill. By the end of German turn two 6 French squads and two leaders were KIA or died for failure to route; more than a third of my infantry and half my leaders. My tanks then wheeled around and engaged the German tanks while my surviving infantry hoofed it toward the VC buildings. Although all of the German tanks were eventually knocked out, it wasn’t until turn 4 before my tanks could return to the town and support my infantry assault on the VC areas. The French finally prevailed, but it was a very near thing. Bravo to Kevin for a well-played game!

And the OBA? I got lucky on turn two when my sniper KIA’d the German leader with the radio. From that point I was able to keep it out of the hands of his surviving leader, so Kevin didn’t get a chance to use it. On the French side, I was able to get down one full fire mission and half of a second one. At least we were able to walk through the flow chart a couple of times.

We adjourned for a very good lunch of Chinese food at the Bamboo Hut (a Thorne family haunt.) The location worked out superbly. I want to again extend my thanks to Steve Thorne for volunteering his home. It was great to see the San Diego guys back together.

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