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- Feb 4, 2003
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- Michael
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I had a very enjoyable weekend of ASL. Thank you Gary Trezza, Steve Pleva and Joe Leoce for organizing the New York State ASL championship. Thanks also to all my opponents who did not object to having my wife Diane sitting near by most of the time watching Netflix on her iPad.
I don’t want to take the time to lay out the whole scenario each time, so grab your scenario cards, or visit the ASL Scenario Archive if you wish to get the most out of my AAR.
Round 1:
I played the German defenders in SP196 Hussars and Hounds. I had the German defenders against Ralph MacDonald. Gary Trezza had matched us up prior to the tournament. Kudos to Ralph for pulling the counters from my set while my wife and I got some lunch. I bid G1 to have the Germans (one less 447), which Ralph also bid. On the equal bid, Ralph volunteered to take the British. We had a game with an exciting last turn. I had the two buildings on the church side. Ralph had the two on the other side. He had two squads and a 7-0 over there. I had one tank destroyer and a HS. I was able to use the TD to tie up one of his squads. The HS survived a 2 minus 2 dash across a road to re-occupy one of the victory buildings. I can’t remember why the 7-0 and squad couldn’t re-take it. On the church side, I had only one HS in the church, and 2.5 squads in the victory building in front of the church. Ralph had massive firepower adjacent to my fortified building location, directed by the 9-2 leader. He broke one of the two squads and pinned the other, so he would be able to advance into that location. To reach the church, however, he would need to move some troops in open ground. My HS on level one over the fortified location pinned one squad, but the other made it to the church, but only after Ralph had used his Comet without MA to VBM my half squad in the church. After he advanced in to kill the HS, I won the ambush die roll and withdrew to maintain my hold on the church.
Round 2:
I played the Russian defenders in BFP99 Ivanoskii, from Crucible of Steel. I had bid R1 while Nick Richardson had bid G0. My bid elevated three of his 548 to 658 squads. I hipped my dug-in T34 on the left, covering the open ground. The MMG was also over there, but slightly more troops were on the right. Nick sent most of his attack on my T34 side. The T34 was key in holding that side, but it needed a lot of help from the infantry. On a particularly exciting turn, Nick sent two of his leaders carrying DC’s to eliminate that T34. They almost made it. After three turns, Nick conceded because he felt his losses were too high.
Round 3:
Gary Mei and I both bid R0 to play the Russians in J130 The Art Of Dying. I received the Italians by dr. Knowing Gary’s reputation as an excellent ASL player, I was glad that I had played this scenario once before, although I had the Russians in that playing. The critical move for the Italian is to have a lot of firepower in place to interdict the Russian reinforcements on turn 2. I sent four of the five tanks to the Italian right for that reason. I also positioned the MMG to be able to shoot down that side, and I was able to have one HS far down there when the time came. Prior to that, my elite half squads led the charge from the first woods to the second woods. I even managed to get most of the first line troops to the second woods by turn two. Gary positioned both the HS with MMG and the Commissar with ATR in the steeple. The Commissar ATR combination in the steeple is very clever, something that did not occur to me. The high position ATR forced me to position my tanks in blind hexes, which kept some of them further from the reinforcements than I wanted. The other ATR was with a squad on the Russian left. I had a bit of good luck in the first two turns. My units passed more MC than they failed, and Gary’s ATR’s failed to penetrate my tanks’ armour even though they usually hit the tanks. Gary brought his tanks on before his infantry, right into the Italian right. I’m not sure I handled that part correctly, because I used the MMG and one tank to try to destroy them, figuring he could only tie up two units anyway. After they fired, however, one tank (the other was stunned) continued on to occupy the hex of another tank, so he ended up interfering with three shooters. That was very well played on his part. The FT later destroyed that tank. Gary entered the reinforcing infantry with absolutely no stacking, so I held fire until the best targets, the LMG units and the leaders, entered. Even the leaders did not stack with anyone. I forget the exact casualties, but in summary, I managed to slow down the infantry such that they did not reach the buildings until turn five, by which time my Italians were in them. The center battle was a slugfest, but the Italian numbers eventually prevailed. One of the Russian guns came on board early and blew up at least one squad on almost every fire phase, and it maintained concealment for something like three turns while doing so. By the time my tanks were free to move again, both Russian ATR’s were in Italian hands, so my tanks sped over to the Italian left to take on the guns. A 6+1 leader, generated during a close combat in the church also took on one gun, soaking up some fire for the troops. Gary never showed any sign that he thought he might lose the scenario, but when we reached the time limit, he decided to concede because I had destroyed one gun, was about destroy the other and he would need to counterattack with limited troops to take back some buildings. We had played five complete turns.
Round 4:
AP63 The Nutcracker was the first choice for both Al Loiselle (beardless!) and me, I believe. I bid G0 while he bid R1. The R1 bid bumped up the German sniper to four. That turned out to be ironic and moot because Al rolled more three’s than fours and because my sniper never budged once in about seven rolls. There was also a tournament rule to enter the German infantry reinforcements on turn three instead of turn two. This was my second occasion to play a game with Al. The last time, he dazzled me while beating me. This time, he dazzled me again; you’ll see what I mean. I had to split my troops between the two villages, of course. I also set up a HS way forward on the German left forward hill. I felt that the German right village was a more attractive target, so it received the ATG, the hero with ATR, a 436, two 467, the LMG, and the 7-0 carrying a DC. I put one 436 and the 468 with MMG in the German left village. Each village had a 150 ART gun that could also shoot up the middle. A HS manned the light MTR in the middle as well, where it could target some woods and hill top positions. Al set up everything coming at the German right village. He declared a ten squad human wave with some troops on skis, some troops on foot, and some troops doing armoured assault with two platoon moving tanks on the first turn. When I asked him about it, he said he did it mostly for the extra movement points, which was absolute genius in my opinion. He directed the wave at two concealed units, of which one was a dummy and the other a 467. Al left the MMG’s with the 8-1 leader on the hill top. The 467 took its DFF shots with no effect and eventually left the scene as a broken HS. Al sent the fast platoon of three tanks up the middle. He sent the slower platoon to join his other troops attacking the German right village. The broken HS was then the target of another ten squad HW, but this time all were on foot. There were no German survivors, but at least other German units broke some attackers. On turn three, Al did yet another ten squad human wave to reach the village and the ATG. The ATG had killed one tank and broke a unit, but was overwhelmed by the HW. My 467 with broken LMG in the village also succumbed. The 150 ART just to the left of that village had taken out one of the fast platoon tanks in the middle, and then broke some Russian infantry in the village, but the crew eventually had to abandon it. The hero and conscript squads were occupied by the BT-79 tanks with the 76mm gun in the woods leading to the German right village. The hero managed to immobilize one, but the conscript was lost to me. The German MMG and 468 repositioned to support the German right village and had one good shot on the Russian two MMG and 8-1 hill top stack that broke the leader and one squad. The MMG broke later before it did any other serious damage. I could not abandon the German left village completely, because there was no SSR to prevent the Russian tank crews from dismounting to claim building hexes. I left a 436 and a 247 there, but sent a 467 to the German right village. At the end of three Russian turns, Al was just a few buildings away from controlling the German right village. I brought my reinforcements to counterattack that village. There was a mix of good order and broken Russian squads in and around the village, along with a commisar. There were three tanks, two on the left side of the village and one on the right side by itself (from the German view). I had to think long and hard about where to bring in my reinforcements. I thank Al for being very patient with me at that point in the game. I decided to approach the rear of the village with a leader, 467 and ATR and to advance a 467 and light mortar just on board to shoot over the valley to protect the area around the unclaimed building. The rest of the infantry, as well as the two tanks entered from the right of the German right village. The two tanks engaged the one Russian tank on that side, but to no effect, other than make it go into motion. One 247 ran towards two broken, but not dm, Russian squads that were in the woods leading to the village. The HS was later able to advance to dm them. The 8-0, 467 and LMG moved so to protect the last building with a fire lane. Another 467 was nearby for more interdiction, and could shoot down the road toward the Russian rear. A 467 and 247 ran into the valley heading for the last building area. On Russian turn 4, Al took one more building and moved one squad closer to the last building. He took a gamble sending his commissar to the rear to rally more troops. My 467 shot down the road at the dashing commissar with a two down two attack and killed him. The Russian tanks destroyed my two tanks; I can’t remember if they took anyone with them. In the defensive fire phase, the recently arrived light mortar broke the nearest 447 to the last building. On my turn four, I finally remembered that I could fire smoke from the 150 ART gun. I smoked the Russian hill top MMG position. In the advance phase, I was able to put into the last German controlled building the 8-0, a 467, the LMG and a concealed 247. Everyone else advanced to be able to fire on the area around that building. On Russian turn five, after the prep fire failed to break any units in that building, Al decided to concede because he did not have enough good order infantry to take the building. It was 1:30 in the morning, so I was relieved that he made that decision. Al really impressed me with his knowledge of the rules during the game. I know the rules well, but on the rare occasion when we dove into the rule book he was right more often then I was, and he tended to find the rule quickly.
Round 5:
I was one of three undefeated players after four rounds; at the New York State ASL Championship. Imagine that! The two other undefeated players played each other. JR Tracy was matched up with me. We ended up with O1 Go Big Or Go Home. I bid G0 while he bid F2, which boosted the best German leader to a 9-2 and adds a DC. I imagine the designer of this scenario had a good chuckle to himself by making a scenario where the French infantry must run away to win. I could see that JR set up to run some units out of the front village, because the MMG was dismantled. The scenario title loomed upon me as I set up and planned the entry of my tanks. The best chance I had to stop the French from leaving the front village on their first turn was to send one tank up the German left and the other up the German right to points where they could shoot at any units leaving the front village. There were dangers with that move, however. The two tanks could not support each other, or the German infantry from those positions. The left tank could be swarmed by the French tanks entering on turn one. The right tank needed to park in front of the French ATG and hope to survive probably more than one attack, since the ATG has a ROF of 3. I felt the risk was too high, so my tanks went up the middle to support the infantry attack. I positioned them to shoot through the orchards at infantry that tried to take the shortest route out. JR managed to pull out at least the leader and two squads that I can remember; he may have had more. The infantry attack started out reasonably well but ran into difficulties after a turn or two. During one MPh, three different assault engineer squads rolled six on their smoke placement attempt, and one of them was moving with the 9-2. That was half o my troops! I’ve never had great luck with infantry smoke, but that was spectacularly bad. Soon after, the leader directed MMG went on a ROF tear against several hexes of infantry that had only a hedge for cover. I had my 8-1, two squads and one HS fail NMCs and 1MCs. In keeping with the “kick them while they are down” philosophy, JR started shooting his ATG at my broken troops. The only effect I remember, after several ROF shots, is that he broke the ATG. My memory gets a bit blurry here. I know I had a bunch of snake-eyes to keep me in this game. I probably had as many in this game as I had all weekend, which was not a high number before this game. While my infantry recovered and cleared the front village, our tanks took shots , many shots, at each other with frequent hits. I eventually killed one of his, then it was time to move. One tank crossed the bridge with shots bouncing off of it and parked where it was safe from the French tanks and able to shoot at infantry. The other crossed on the right by way of the stream. Somehow, I got some infantry across the stream as well. On the left side, however, I made the only move that I regretted in the game. The 9-2 and a squad moved into some woods on the left where the French could take a eight flat shot. I had hoped an advancing fire shot would break the French MMG squad. Instead they broke my stack. A squad with a DC killed a second French tank around this time. The action came down to the last turn. JR had four hexes with French infantry in them. I believe that one had a HS with a leader in a stone building. Another had a HS in a stone building. A third hex had the squad and MMG in a building. Lastly, an orchard or open ground hex also had a HS. I sent one tank towards the leader HS combo. Shooting failed, so I moved in and stopped for CC. I sent one 838 after the HS in a building hex for CC. I sent the other tank to overrun the HS in the orchard hex, successfully breaking the HS, then the tank moved into squad+MMG position and stopped for CC. Since that was the worst odds CC only 1 to 1 for me, we did it first. JR’s troops failed to eliminate my tank. My tank failed to eliminate them, so I lost. What an exciting end to an exciting game, however.
I don’t want to take the time to lay out the whole scenario each time, so grab your scenario cards, or visit the ASL Scenario Archive if you wish to get the most out of my AAR.
Round 1:
I played the German defenders in SP196 Hussars and Hounds. I had the German defenders against Ralph MacDonald. Gary Trezza had matched us up prior to the tournament. Kudos to Ralph for pulling the counters from my set while my wife and I got some lunch. I bid G1 to have the Germans (one less 447), which Ralph also bid. On the equal bid, Ralph volunteered to take the British. We had a game with an exciting last turn. I had the two buildings on the church side. Ralph had the two on the other side. He had two squads and a 7-0 over there. I had one tank destroyer and a HS. I was able to use the TD to tie up one of his squads. The HS survived a 2 minus 2 dash across a road to re-occupy one of the victory buildings. I can’t remember why the 7-0 and squad couldn’t re-take it. On the church side, I had only one HS in the church, and 2.5 squads in the victory building in front of the church. Ralph had massive firepower adjacent to my fortified building location, directed by the 9-2 leader. He broke one of the two squads and pinned the other, so he would be able to advance into that location. To reach the church, however, he would need to move some troops in open ground. My HS on level one over the fortified location pinned one squad, but the other made it to the church, but only after Ralph had used his Comet without MA to VBM my half squad in the church. After he advanced in to kill the HS, I won the ambush die roll and withdrew to maintain my hold on the church.
Round 2:
I played the Russian defenders in BFP99 Ivanoskii, from Crucible of Steel. I had bid R1 while Nick Richardson had bid G0. My bid elevated three of his 548 to 658 squads. I hipped my dug-in T34 on the left, covering the open ground. The MMG was also over there, but slightly more troops were on the right. Nick sent most of his attack on my T34 side. The T34 was key in holding that side, but it needed a lot of help from the infantry. On a particularly exciting turn, Nick sent two of his leaders carrying DC’s to eliminate that T34. They almost made it. After three turns, Nick conceded because he felt his losses were too high.
Round 3:
Gary Mei and I both bid R0 to play the Russians in J130 The Art Of Dying. I received the Italians by dr. Knowing Gary’s reputation as an excellent ASL player, I was glad that I had played this scenario once before, although I had the Russians in that playing. The critical move for the Italian is to have a lot of firepower in place to interdict the Russian reinforcements on turn 2. I sent four of the five tanks to the Italian right for that reason. I also positioned the MMG to be able to shoot down that side, and I was able to have one HS far down there when the time came. Prior to that, my elite half squads led the charge from the first woods to the second woods. I even managed to get most of the first line troops to the second woods by turn two. Gary positioned both the HS with MMG and the Commissar with ATR in the steeple. The Commissar ATR combination in the steeple is very clever, something that did not occur to me. The high position ATR forced me to position my tanks in blind hexes, which kept some of them further from the reinforcements than I wanted. The other ATR was with a squad on the Russian left. I had a bit of good luck in the first two turns. My units passed more MC than they failed, and Gary’s ATR’s failed to penetrate my tanks’ armour even though they usually hit the tanks. Gary brought his tanks on before his infantry, right into the Italian right. I’m not sure I handled that part correctly, because I used the MMG and one tank to try to destroy them, figuring he could only tie up two units anyway. After they fired, however, one tank (the other was stunned) continued on to occupy the hex of another tank, so he ended up interfering with three shooters. That was very well played on his part. The FT later destroyed that tank. Gary entered the reinforcing infantry with absolutely no stacking, so I held fire until the best targets, the LMG units and the leaders, entered. Even the leaders did not stack with anyone. I forget the exact casualties, but in summary, I managed to slow down the infantry such that they did not reach the buildings until turn five, by which time my Italians were in them. The center battle was a slugfest, but the Italian numbers eventually prevailed. One of the Russian guns came on board early and blew up at least one squad on almost every fire phase, and it maintained concealment for something like three turns while doing so. By the time my tanks were free to move again, both Russian ATR’s were in Italian hands, so my tanks sped over to the Italian left to take on the guns. A 6+1 leader, generated during a close combat in the church also took on one gun, soaking up some fire for the troops. Gary never showed any sign that he thought he might lose the scenario, but when we reached the time limit, he decided to concede because I had destroyed one gun, was about destroy the other and he would need to counterattack with limited troops to take back some buildings. We had played five complete turns.
Round 4:
AP63 The Nutcracker was the first choice for both Al Loiselle (beardless!) and me, I believe. I bid G0 while he bid R1. The R1 bid bumped up the German sniper to four. That turned out to be ironic and moot because Al rolled more three’s than fours and because my sniper never budged once in about seven rolls. There was also a tournament rule to enter the German infantry reinforcements on turn three instead of turn two. This was my second occasion to play a game with Al. The last time, he dazzled me while beating me. This time, he dazzled me again; you’ll see what I mean. I had to split my troops between the two villages, of course. I also set up a HS way forward on the German left forward hill. I felt that the German right village was a more attractive target, so it received the ATG, the hero with ATR, a 436, two 467, the LMG, and the 7-0 carrying a DC. I put one 436 and the 468 with MMG in the German left village. Each village had a 150 ART gun that could also shoot up the middle. A HS manned the light MTR in the middle as well, where it could target some woods and hill top positions. Al set up everything coming at the German right village. He declared a ten squad human wave with some troops on skis, some troops on foot, and some troops doing armoured assault with two platoon moving tanks on the first turn. When I asked him about it, he said he did it mostly for the extra movement points, which was absolute genius in my opinion. He directed the wave at two concealed units, of which one was a dummy and the other a 467. Al left the MMG’s with the 8-1 leader on the hill top. The 467 took its DFF shots with no effect and eventually left the scene as a broken HS. Al sent the fast platoon of three tanks up the middle. He sent the slower platoon to join his other troops attacking the German right village. The broken HS was then the target of another ten squad HW, but this time all were on foot. There were no German survivors, but at least other German units broke some attackers. On turn three, Al did yet another ten squad human wave to reach the village and the ATG. The ATG had killed one tank and broke a unit, but was overwhelmed by the HW. My 467 with broken LMG in the village also succumbed. The 150 ART just to the left of that village had taken out one of the fast platoon tanks in the middle, and then broke some Russian infantry in the village, but the crew eventually had to abandon it. The hero and conscript squads were occupied by the BT-79 tanks with the 76mm gun in the woods leading to the German right village. The hero managed to immobilize one, but the conscript was lost to me. The German MMG and 468 repositioned to support the German right village and had one good shot on the Russian two MMG and 8-1 hill top stack that broke the leader and one squad. The MMG broke later before it did any other serious damage. I could not abandon the German left village completely, because there was no SSR to prevent the Russian tank crews from dismounting to claim building hexes. I left a 436 and a 247 there, but sent a 467 to the German right village. At the end of three Russian turns, Al was just a few buildings away from controlling the German right village. I brought my reinforcements to counterattack that village. There was a mix of good order and broken Russian squads in and around the village, along with a commisar. There were three tanks, two on the left side of the village and one on the right side by itself (from the German view). I had to think long and hard about where to bring in my reinforcements. I thank Al for being very patient with me at that point in the game. I decided to approach the rear of the village with a leader, 467 and ATR and to advance a 467 and light mortar just on board to shoot over the valley to protect the area around the unclaimed building. The rest of the infantry, as well as the two tanks entered from the right of the German right village. The two tanks engaged the one Russian tank on that side, but to no effect, other than make it go into motion. One 247 ran towards two broken, but not dm, Russian squads that were in the woods leading to the village. The HS was later able to advance to dm them. The 8-0, 467 and LMG moved so to protect the last building with a fire lane. Another 467 was nearby for more interdiction, and could shoot down the road toward the Russian rear. A 467 and 247 ran into the valley heading for the last building area. On Russian turn 4, Al took one more building and moved one squad closer to the last building. He took a gamble sending his commissar to the rear to rally more troops. My 467 shot down the road at the dashing commissar with a two down two attack and killed him. The Russian tanks destroyed my two tanks; I can’t remember if they took anyone with them. In the defensive fire phase, the recently arrived light mortar broke the nearest 447 to the last building. On my turn four, I finally remembered that I could fire smoke from the 150 ART gun. I smoked the Russian hill top MMG position. In the advance phase, I was able to put into the last German controlled building the 8-0, a 467, the LMG and a concealed 247. Everyone else advanced to be able to fire on the area around that building. On Russian turn five, after the prep fire failed to break any units in that building, Al decided to concede because he did not have enough good order infantry to take the building. It was 1:30 in the morning, so I was relieved that he made that decision. Al really impressed me with his knowledge of the rules during the game. I know the rules well, but on the rare occasion when we dove into the rule book he was right more often then I was, and he tended to find the rule quickly.
Round 5:
I was one of three undefeated players after four rounds; at the New York State ASL Championship. Imagine that! The two other undefeated players played each other. JR Tracy was matched up with me. We ended up with O1 Go Big Or Go Home. I bid G0 while he bid F2, which boosted the best German leader to a 9-2 and adds a DC. I imagine the designer of this scenario had a good chuckle to himself by making a scenario where the French infantry must run away to win. I could see that JR set up to run some units out of the front village, because the MMG was dismantled. The scenario title loomed upon me as I set up and planned the entry of my tanks. The best chance I had to stop the French from leaving the front village on their first turn was to send one tank up the German left and the other up the German right to points where they could shoot at any units leaving the front village. There were dangers with that move, however. The two tanks could not support each other, or the German infantry from those positions. The left tank could be swarmed by the French tanks entering on turn one. The right tank needed to park in front of the French ATG and hope to survive probably more than one attack, since the ATG has a ROF of 3. I felt the risk was too high, so my tanks went up the middle to support the infantry attack. I positioned them to shoot through the orchards at infantry that tried to take the shortest route out. JR managed to pull out at least the leader and two squads that I can remember; he may have had more. The infantry attack started out reasonably well but ran into difficulties after a turn or two. During one MPh, three different assault engineer squads rolled six on their smoke placement attempt, and one of them was moving with the 9-2. That was half o my troops! I’ve never had great luck with infantry smoke, but that was spectacularly bad. Soon after, the leader directed MMG went on a ROF tear against several hexes of infantry that had only a hedge for cover. I had my 8-1, two squads and one HS fail NMCs and 1MCs. In keeping with the “kick them while they are down” philosophy, JR started shooting his ATG at my broken troops. The only effect I remember, after several ROF shots, is that he broke the ATG. My memory gets a bit blurry here. I know I had a bunch of snake-eyes to keep me in this game. I probably had as many in this game as I had all weekend, which was not a high number before this game. While my infantry recovered and cleared the front village, our tanks took shots , many shots, at each other with frequent hits. I eventually killed one of his, then it was time to move. One tank crossed the bridge with shots bouncing off of it and parked where it was safe from the French tanks and able to shoot at infantry. The other crossed on the right by way of the stream. Somehow, I got some infantry across the stream as well. On the left side, however, I made the only move that I regretted in the game. The 9-2 and a squad moved into some woods on the left where the French could take a eight flat shot. I had hoped an advancing fire shot would break the French MMG squad. Instead they broke my stack. A squad with a DC killed a second French tank around this time. The action came down to the last turn. JR had four hexes with French infantry in them. I believe that one had a HS with a leader in a stone building. Another had a HS in a stone building. A third hex had the squad and MMG in a building. Lastly, an orchard or open ground hex also had a HS. I sent one tank towards the leader HS combo. Shooting failed, so I moved in and stopped for CC. I sent one 838 after the HS in a building hex for CC. I sent the other tank to overrun the HS in the orchard hex, successfully breaking the HS, then the tank moved into squad+MMG position and stopped for CC. Since that was the worst odds CC only 1 to 1 for me, we did it first. JR’s troops failed to eliminate my tank. My tank failed to eliminate them, so I lost. What an exciting end to an exciting game, however.
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