[ASLML] '04 Winter RV - AAR

[Jim McLeod]

Listerz;

The 8th gathering of the hardy and gamey at the Winter RV has passed
into the books.  
Local lad Darren Kovacs stopped the IJA in its tracks in "Shanghai In
Flames" for the tournament win.  Well done Kovacs!

We had a total of 9 players turn up at the ranch and three rounds of
dice tossin' were played.  Here are the final rankings.

1. Darren Kovacs
2. Jim McLeod
3. Gerry Proudfoot
4. Dwayne Matheson
5. PAul Suderman
6. Steffen Knippel
7. Mike Bourgeault
8. Ron Levreault
9. Brent Fedak

My personal account is as follows;

Saturday:  Round 1.  vs. Paul Suderman in "Bread Factory #2"

I've played this gem many mucho times and this outing had me with the
Ivans w/balance.  :)

Fortified the Victory building ground levels and dumped a tunnel across
the road to feed reinforcements into the VB if and when needed.  

I tossed my Reds out to repel the facists and as luck would have it,
Paul's 9-1 went Berserk on turn 1 ... too bad he was stacked with 2 1/2
S's.  These guys eventually died but overall Paul did run a very decent
attack toward the VB's.  On turn 3, a 458 of mine in the forward VB went
Berserk and charged into a mass of blue.  Somehow he survived and this
disrupted the momentum of the German assault.  My 45mm ATG going on a 4
hit ROF tear against the German HMG stack didn't hurt either.  That was
the high water mark of the Gemran advance.  Mass death for the blue guys
followed and we packed it in on turn 4.  1-0.

Round 2.  vs. Gerry Proudfoot in "A Few Rounds"

A recent playing of AFR as the German helped steer me toward the
Canadian side this time out to see how the view was on the other side of
the hill.  

I made sure that there were MMC in the various Bd. 43 buildings for
Gerr' to contend with and I took a gamble with placing the MMG up front
to put down a nice FL before scrambling back to the walled in estate. 
The 17 lbr was in the brush just forward of the walled in farm.  

Gerry's Jerries came in mostly on the Canadian left.  Turn 1 featured
some nice DF shot and the FL did good work in dusting off a few rider
MMC.  Plinking away with 2 and 1 FP shots with a -2 DRM had some success
but I began to withdraw with the hope of falling back in GO to the
"Alamo".  

This ... did not turn out so well.

Sometimes in a scenario, one can identify a specific event that marks
when the tide of victory is either going to flow in or out for your
side.  

In my opinion, the tipping point in this scenario was on turn 2 when
Gerry sent a CX'd HS into CC with my HS in that little stone building
near the Orchard road on Bd.19(?).  I ambushed him and was looking at a
very nice CC attack of 1:1 -2 ... the Dice gods thought otherwise.

I rolled a 12 and Gerry tossed a very stylish 2 which also gave him a
7-0 Leader.  However, I still had the last laugh in that comedy in that
he may have had a new leader but the bugger was still CX"!  

Ha!  Take that Jerry!  :)

As I said, I sensed a seismic shift of events based on that one event
and the remainder of the scenario proved me correct.  Not much good
happened for me for the rest of the scenario.  

The 17 lbr Shocked a Sturm Tiger, which eventually died, but the ATG
caved to a fire attack during the next turn.  More sadness was visited
upon my boys as all but a HS of my forward defence line broke in the
next turn, turn 4 I believe.  I was left with 3 S's and the 9-1 in the
compound as Gerry soon swooped in for the kill.  The endgame went well
for Gerr' as the other 2 Sturm Tigers rolled up to put some lovin' on my
guys with the Grenadiers right behind them to mop up the last holdouts.

Ah well, not exactly the result we had planed on but this is a fun
scenario nonetheless.

1-1.

Sunday:  Round 3  vs. Steffen Knippel, "Urban Guerillas"

Steve had the SS and I the Reds.  Most of the black guys were in the
main line of resistance and it appeared to me that Steve intended to
stop me at my start line.  Fair enough, I loaded up my right and charged
straight at his first strongpoint in my way.  A S or two were lost
closing in but my FT did its lethal work.  I ran the Flame men up the
stairs of the forward overlay stone building and toasted them a la
"Storm Trooper Flambe".  Two T-34's worked around the extreme Russian
right and parked beside the next stone building to put down encircling
fire on the remaining SS S. still up front.  My remaining troops moved
forward toward the Cathedral.

The Panther and MK IV were HD beside the Cathedral and the Panther put a
beating onto my asault troops and much fire was exchanged.  However, the
point of note was that Steve decided to make his stand and only saddled
up a HS on the HT to fall back across the canal.  Interesting.

Turn 2 was fun.  My T-34's made their dash across the canal to take up
positions to the German rear.  During this trip, Psk and Panther fire
was dodged but sadly for Steve, he had setup his 88 illegally and it was
removed from play.  Steve had setup the gun HIP in a paved Orchard road
hex.  Ah well ...

Meanwhile, my attack on the German right was developing well and more SS
squads were about to get the bayonet, imminent death was everywhere. 
And to make things even more fun, Partisans had been popping up
everywhere and this made things interesting as all get out.

After my MPh, Steve gave the map a good look over and decided to pack it
in.  This was too bad as we were only on GT 2 but on the other hand, we
were late starting and perhaps this impacted Steve's decision as well.

And that was that.  2-1.

So ended another fun RV.  This was my first intense gaming in about 2
months and I am feeling that I am not playing anywhere near as much as I
should.  Gotta' get more gunnin' in but that is, more often than not,
easier said than done.



			=Jim=