PS NJ
Senior Member
- Joined
- Nov 16, 2021
- Messages
- 95
- Reaction score
- 503
- Country
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I was matched up with Rich Viera in the second round at Albany. Rich is a quality player (with a very cool howitzer dice tower) who just joined the ASL tournament scene a few years ago. He's a regular with Carl Nogueira, who has shown him the ropes well. I played this at ASLOK and lost to Mike Z as we played the Greek cavalry were fanatic always, as opposed to Peter's clarification that they are only fanatic while mounted. I bid Greek2 and Rich took an extra 447 in the HQ group. I brought the infantry into the village area, five of the 8 cav squads went to the right, a pair of half squads tied up the four squads on the far left, and two squads remained a threat offboard. The main attack was slowed down by a stubborn 9-1/447 who survived three fire phases of 12(+1)/20(+2) shots. In Greek turn 2, I forgot to enter my reinforcements, which probably won the game for me. In Italian turn 2 Rich started shifting troops from his right and rear back to the center, his tanks stayed on the road to avoid mud bog and took up station to support the central VC building. In Greek Turn 3 I sent one half squad to absorb the fire of Rich's squad and mortar half squad still posted on his far right, then I blitzed 2.5 squads of cavalry around the flank down the road/orchard towards the one VC building on the Greek left. I got there ahead of Rich, survived a tossed DC, and drew the attention of three more squads who had previously been repositioning towards the center. This left a more even battle in the center. Rich malfunctioned one tank's MA and I immobilized one with a lmg shot (actually 1MT stunned=recalled=immobilized by SSR). This allowed me to approach the central VC building in a big blob. Rich's hot dice cooled off and I was able to grind my way forward. In the final Greek turn Rich retook the far left building and he still had two leaders and a 1.5 squads in the building. However I just managed to clear them out to squeak out the win.
In the third round I was matched against a pair of tough opponents, Bob Bendis and his buddy Stanley (pictured). It's always fun to play Bob and we've had many great games. We both bid German 2 and I lost the dice roll and upgraded a 8-1 to a 9-2. Things started off poorly as I armored assaulted a a 9-2 and two squads into a 2 flat resid with two 2 flat SFF's. After snakes and two fours I had just a wounded 9-2 left. After a few beers I got a bit sloppy with my tanks and lost them to PF shots I could have avoided by staying at three hexes. By German turn 3 I had still managed to press Bob back into an Alamo position and took out half his infantry but I had lost half of mine too. The killer for me was having a 9 TH for a sherman on a Pz4 with a side turret facing and rolling a 12 plus my last sherman rolling a 12 on an IF shot. With no tanks left I had no chance and resigned. Still a fun time.
On a side note John Wood stopped by with a nice game organizer (pictured) he build for me and Dan Dolan.
