[ASLML] '04 Winter RV - AAR

[scott.holst at us.army.mil]

Hi ya-
A few rounds is an awesome scenario, when I played it, I mainly used the strum tigers for their smoke capability. Blocking rout paths and so on, I guess I was being too safe with them, but I was trying to keep the luck factor down IE, keep from getting recalled.
Had a little scenario fest myself, Rob B. and I played a couple of really cool critical hit scenarios from their 7/1 issue and the Hero Pax 2. 
We played "The Warlords Estate", a chinese vs Japanese action during 1944, its a nice small tourny action type but with some nifty toys for both sides. It went down to the wire with a CC roll deciding the fate of the scenario. Thats ASL!
>From the Hero Pax we played "The Maelstrom", a 1945 cornered like rats SS scenario. Very intresting VC, the SS gotta win by exiting the board with so many points of refugees. Rob and I joked when he used his Volksturm as the rear guard while his SS regulars took off with the refugees.
Anyway, we had a blast and it cool to hear you guys had a blast too. 

take care

Scott

----- Original Message -----
From: Jim McLeod <jmmcleod at mb.sympatico.ca>
Date: Friday, February 13, 2004 11:05 pm
Subject: [ASLML] '04 Winter RV - AAR

> 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 
> acrossthe 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 
> decentattack 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 
> frontto 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 
> successbut 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 
> thathe 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 
> chargedstraight 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 
> saddledup 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 
> roadhex.  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=
> 
> 
> 
>