We played this weekend in Olympia, Washington at Enfilade. There were about 200 people in attendance, 10 or 12 of which played ASL all weekend. About 35 to 40 people played at least one ASL game using Starter Kit Rules and Miniatures. (I'll have pictures to post later.)

In the ASL only tourney, Rob Wolkey and I were the only ones at 2-0 on Saturday afternoon, so we played for the Championship. Rob won and chose to take the $30 cash prize, leaving me with the copy of Action Pack 4 that MMP had been kind enough to provide. (I was very happy with that outcome).

Here's my first game AAR.

Friday, 23 May 2008
Brian Pickering and I rode down together. We arrived Friday early afternoon and Larry and Diane were already running the ‘3D-ASL’ event. (A 4’ x 8’ table with miniatures – that duplicated board Z – they were playing one of the starter kit scenarios…) The 3-D event drew players all afternoon and into the evening. Very nice.

This year, we are in the main gaming room with the rest of the folks. Attendance seems to be down compared to previous years – but I didn’t run the event last year (real life) – and I only committed to running this time about a month ago. I also think our attendance is hurt by a “rival” tourney in February.

I got to play “Josh” from Spokane. Rob Wolkey has been training Josh and it shows. (If you want to become good at this game, you need to play often, play against multiple opponents, and play often against an opponent of Rob’s quality.)

Josh picked “Commando Schenky” and we rolled for sides. I got the attacker. I told Josh that I’ve started this scenario as the attacker about three times in the last month. I’m using exactly this scenario to train a new player when we play (once a week) at my house. We’ve played the first two or three turns, and then we’ll stop and discuss how the scenario is going, what might have been done differently, etc. I think it’s a good way learn how to play… We played from about 3 or 4 PM till midnight – with 90 minutes off for dinner. At any rate, Josh setup and we went at it.

I will say this about Josh. He rarely rolls in the middle of the bell curve. He complained that he always rolled 8 or more, but there were a distressing number of times he rolled a 3. (My sniper was a 2 – only activated once…) We had just about everything happen in this scenario. Squads gunned down in the street, 5 or 6 Russian squads captured, one German elite squad captured!, Units battle harden, Prisoners re-armed, cats and dogs living together… you get the idea. I was moving pretty aggressively, (and losing some units) because I felt that the German would need two or three turns to clear the VC building of those pesky Russians. I got a toe hold into the building on turn 4 and then I made a mistake. Not a “oh crap, I lost the game” mistake. A rules mistake. I advanced a squad into CC against a 447. We resolved the first round of CC. I was reduced, and I was able to hurt him in return.

It wasn’t until Josh’s turn that I remembered that since all locations in the VC building were fortified, I couldn’t advance into CC as long as there was a good order squad equivalent in the location. Dang… I hate it when I forget a rule. We became aware of the mistake a full player turn after it was made – as Josh was reinforcing the Melee. We both felt we could fix this by restoring my half squad and letting Josh re-position his units in the VC building. (I know, it’s a tourney game, a lot of you wouldn’t have done this. Josh and I both agreed, so it was all done between consenting adults.)

So I now had units in the VC building, but realized I had to break the guys or kill them outright. All the building was fortified, so +4 TEM all around. I think I had one flamethrower and two DCs left. At this point I was wishing that I had the other FT… Most of my troops were in the X2 – W4 end of the building. A 338 HS with a DC moved to X6 to place the DC. Josh rolls a “3” and there was just a DC lying in the street. Two MMCs with the 10-2 move to W6. Josh fires and breaks one squad and pins the other. The 10-2 then decides to advance onto the DC in X6. I did this just to try to pickup the DC and let Mr Wonderful deliver the football to some deserving Russians. It turns out, that Mr. 10-2 couldn’t FIND the DC for two rally phases. He eventually picked it up in the next German Movement phase. But it was fortunate that he was there, because he prevented a broken Russian from routing Level 1 in Y7 to Level 1 in X5. This caused the squad to surrender.

Turn 6 (of 6.5) I caused all but two of the Russians to surrender to me. They were broken and adjacent to Germans and had nowhere to rout. (Even the commissar surrendered to me). As we ended my turn, Josh had two MMC and a leader left. He was upstairs trying to hold off the remnants of the German attack. But I still had on FT and a DC left for “clean up”, and I had units adjacent to him on all sides and downstairs. Josh conceded….

Josh is a very good player and I was lucky to win this one. If one or two things had gone differently, Josh might have won, or we might have had to sweat out that last half turn to see if the Germans could break them… I really enjoyed the game. Thanks, Josh.

One rules question occurred to me. The VC say

“The Germans win immediately if they Control building 1X4 at the end of any Player Turn, or at the end of any Game Turn if there are no unbroken Russian Personnel units in building 1X4.”

So, the scenario is 6.5 turns long… So is the last game turn over at the end of the German player turn? In other words, can the German win at the end of 6.5 turns by having no unbroken Russians in the building?
 

More to come.... Stay tuned...