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Greetings ASL Fans;
We had 8 members for the September edition of our SoCalASL Game Day in Bellflower.
Eric Visnowski's Americans defeated Larry Reinking's Germans in “Assault on Baerendorff”.
Jim Svette and Fen Yan paired up for “The Strongpoint”, an ancient OAF Deluxe scenario. In their first playing Jim won as the Germans. They set it up again, with Jim winning again as the Russians. This looks like a cool, fast-playing four turn scenario that might work well in a future tournament.
Dan Plachta's Russians defeated Dave Nicholas' Germans in the ESG scenario “Pulse of Steel”.
And the dice gave me the defending Germans against Blair Bellamy's Brits in “Miracle at Sinagoga”. This is a Rally Point scenario designed to be used with SK or full ASL. We played it as full ASL. The Brits get 21 squads, of which a third are 4-5-8's, supported by a couple of 76 MTR's and five Sherman II's and III's. They have to cross a lot of mostly open ground and capture 12 buildings. The Germans get a reinforced first line company, supported by an 88L AA, 82 MTR and a StuG. On turn three they get a couple more squads and two PzIVF-2's.
The Germans are forced to set up without concealment. For this reason I thought it wise to set up in defilade positions to avoid those punishing initial British prep phase shots. There weren't a lot of placement choices for the 88L, so I chose woods hex Z10, where it could hit the tanks coming over the hill on the German left, or even reach into the center. I put the 82 on the German left also, to help keep infantry away from the 88. The Germans have an entire board to cover, so I chose to build a series of interlocking, platoon size strong-points, each with an MG and a leader. The StuG set up CE behind some building on the right flank, where I could get it in front of the Shermans' approach route.
Unfortunately for Blair, this was one of those scenarios where everything he did just didn't work. It wasn't a dicing exactly; more that if he need a certain number, he'd roll 1 pip higher. He lost Smoke on all three of his initial MTR prep shots, and was forced to spread out and run for it into the German positions. The Brit's, in my mind, have one weakness, they only had 5 leaders for 21 squads. So I concentrated on just breaking British squads, which forced Blair's attack to leave various squads and HS's behind waiting for a chance self rally. It's a frustration I've faced in numerous scenarios, and it definitely drained the power of his attack. With two turns to go it became obvious the Brits were going to come up short, and we called it a German victory.
Blair isn't just a great teacher of ASL, he's also a tough veteran player who never gets rattled and always give you a great game. This is a fun scenario, and we had a lot of fun with it. Blair, ever the teacher, thought it would be a good three or four-player scenario, with a newbie paired with a veteran.
We had our usual lunch at the pizza place next door. And the survivors adjourned for our usual excellent dinner at Hambone's BBQ. All in all it was another great Game Day in Bellflower.
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