Progress Report: 7/12/14 Slaughter at Ponyri CG

[Jim Aikens]

We had 9 members, the best turnout we’ve ever had, at St. Crispin’s for the set-up session for the upcoming HASL playtest “Slaughter at Ponyri”.

Dan Plachta, Scott Thompson, Dave Kocot and Jim Svette volunteered for the Russian team, advised by CG co-designer Eric Morton. Jim Cotugno, John Lehman, Kyle Li and I will be playing the Germans. We got the board set up in short order and went to work on purchases and set-up. On the German side the purchases didn’t take long, and we quickly paired up for pick-up games as planned.

Jim Cotugno and John Lehman paired up for “The Marco Polo Incident”, with John’s Chinese falling to Jim’s Japanese.

Kyle Li and I paired up for the SK scenario “Sherman Marches West”, with my Germans defeating Kyle’s Russians. This was one of those scenarios where everything I did went perfectly. My 50L killed two Shermans in its first two shots, before being jumped by a 447 and 8-1. They tied that squad and leader up for three CC phases, finally dying, but taking half the 447 with them and wounding the 8-1. Meanwhile, my single Tiger, with a PzIII N as its wing man, systematically hunted down and killed the remaining four Shermans with four shots. We decided to call it a game on turn 4.

Meanwhile, the Russian team got their purchases done in short order, but then the playtest nature of this project started kicking in when the fortifications set-up restrictions proved too complicated and needed a re-write. Eric handled that re-write while I carried on with my scenario and the Russian players pulled counters and worked on other parts of the set-up. With the restrictions cleared up, the Russian team agreed to meet on a weekday at Gameology at some time in the next couple of weeks to finish their set-up. Our goal is to stay on schedule to launch this CG at the next St. Crispin’s meetings on August 9th.

We had our usual ‘gamer’s lunch’ served by the St. Crispin’s crew, and wrapped up around 5:30. Stay tuned for next month, when we launch “Slaughter at Ponyri”!

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