KAASL I AAR

KAASL I AAR

Over the weekend of October 19-20 the KAASL (Kalamazoo Area Advanced Squad Leader) club got together and hosted the first KAASL gathering. Loosely based on P.J. Norton’s long running Officefest on the east side of the state, Doug and I had been talking about hosting something similar at his chiropractic office on this side of the state. When his tenant moved out this month we realized that this was probably the best window to see if we could pull off a larger gathering then the informal one-day ‘house’ gatherings that we had done in the past. E-mails were sent out right after Oktoberfest and even though it didn’t give everyone much heads-up (something we’ll work to improve on next time) we had a great first-time turn out. What follows is an AAR of the event.

Friday October 19

Doug closed his office at 6:00pm and he and I cleared his office, pulled out tables, and set out ASL gear and snacks (including two home-made apple pies courtesy of my wife) and drinks. Shortly after 7:00 Todd Wiley, Geoff Ferguson, and D.J. Florian arrive. All three are locals - Todd and I play weekly and we are in the middle of a KGP campaign game. Geoff is an avid board-gamer, but just recently caught the ASL bug through the starter kits. He and I have played about 5 SK scenarios so far. D.J. is an occasional ASL player and plays when his schedule allows. Todd and Doug pair up to play “T-Patchers” and Geoff and D.J. settled into a SK scenario “Ambitious Assault”. I play host and help coach D.J. and Geoff through rules issues. It also gave me time to set up my defense for the next day’s game against Mark.

T-Patchers (G25): I haven’t played this scenario before so kept looking in to see how it was going. Doug’s US troops, led by his Shermans, pushed straight up the center early in the game. It was looking pretty good for Doug early on, especially when Todd’s AT gun malfunctions. Then a major infantry stack of Doug’s hit a minefield and Todd repaired the AT gun. Some slowed-up infantry and a couple destroyed Shermans later and Todd had bloodied Doug’s nose and blunted his assault. They’ll play until 1:00 in the morning when it will go down to the last turn and Doug pulling out a win by avoiding the CVP cap by 1 CVP.

Ambitious Assault (S9): D.J. gets the Italian defenders in this one. He spreads his defense out through-out the village in the center of the board. He has to defend on both ends as on one flank the US come in and on the other flank the British enter. D.J. will throw a couple of speed bumps up on a hill to slow the US attack down. When Geoff enters on the US side things don’t go quite as planned. D.J.’s speed bump Italian squad, supported by an Italian HMG across the board, hole up in a stone building and decide to earn the Italian medal of valor by stopping cold each US squad that attempts to get past them. That single squad will alone survive 4 turns before finally withdrawing in good order back into the village. On the other flank, Geoff will enter the British reinforcements, but having only 2-3 turns with them on the board, can’t push far enough into the village to make up for the delayed US attack on the other side. Fun game to watch, but D.J.’s experience paid off dividends as Geoff struggled to get the US attack going past the Italian defense. D.J. and Geoff will finish around 10:30 with D.J.’s Italians holding out for a win.

Saturday October 20

Geoff and D.J. had job commitments for Saturday, but Todd, Doug, and I were all back along with a contingent of guys from up north – well, at least as far north as Grand Rapids. Around 10am Mark DeVries, Jim Haller, Ben Richardson, and Larry Zoet pull into the parking lot. We match up for games, pull the grill out, and start day two rolling the dice.

Terrify and Destroy (SP 146): Mark and I had arranged ahead of time to play this one. I had set it up the evening before so it didn’t take long for Mark to settle in and get his off-board US lined up. My Germans get 4 Jagd Tigers and a couple of Flakwagons with supporting infantry, but set up in three different areas that really don’t support each other. The US has three 76L armed M4’s along with two more 75mm M-4’s, a Stuart light tank, and another M4 mounting the 105mm gun supported by a halftrack and 14 elite US squads. The scenario starts off furiously with a pretty aggressive US tank attack from two sides. My defending Germans get a few breaks and by turn 4-5 Mark has lost all the 76L mounted M4’s and his 105. Another M4 75 is staring down the barrel of a Jagd Tiger as is the Stuart. All I’ve lost is a single Jagd Tiger to street fighting and I really haven’t had to give up much ground. Looking over the scenario, Mark concedes that he isn’t going to be able to kick me out of 3 of the 4 buildings needed in the time left and there is still enough time left to get in another scenario. So, we switch sides and play again. The second playing is much more intense. It goes the full distance ending in the CC phase of the last player turn with my US infantry finally taking the third building away from the two 5-4-8 squads defending it. A strange playing as I rolled something like a dozen 12’s and an equal number of 2’s. Definitely not bell-curve rolls on my end. The 12’s were frustrating – but balanced by the 2’s. A key point in the game was Mark’s 9-2 breaking on a NMC caused 6fp +3 shot from a M4’s machine guns. I also got fortunate with DI shots against two of the Jadg Tigers effectively taking them out of the game relatively early on. To his credit, Mark had an outstanding counter-attack by a Jadg Tiger and squad early in the game which bagged about 5 squads and a leader in the first two turns via a melee and then withdrawal behind me to end up eliminating several US units due to FTR.

White Star, Black Cross: Ben Richardson and Todd Wiley went head-to-head in this Scott Holst play test. Ben had brought down one of Jeff DeYoung’s 3-D boards built for this scenario. I didn’t get a chance to watch much of this game – being involved in my own scenario with Mark – but from what I saw Ben got off to a rough start with several malfunctions the first few turns. Eventually though, Ben recovers enough for his German attack to finally defeat Todd’s US defenders. Maybe one (or both of them) will chime in here and add more to this AAR.

Strange Allies: The last three (Larry, Doug, and Jim) joined up to play a three-player scenario by Steve Swann. Not published yet, Strange Allies takes place with in a couple weeks after the end of WWII in Europe. On the island of Crete, communist partisans (Jim Haller) are attacking a unit of British troops (Larry Zoet). The surrounded British send a call out to their recently surrendered German “prisoners” (Doug Lynes) and order them to counter-attack the partisans and ‘rescue’ their British captors. Strange…. Like Ben and Todd’s game, I didn’t get to see much of this one either, but from what I heard Larry and Doug didn’t have a lot of trouble containing the partisans. It sounds like this scenario needs a bit more balancing before it is published as they all thought it was hard on the partisans.

Conclusion

By about 6:00pm all the games had wrapped up. The GR guys had to head back up north so we called it a day. Between my two games I had started the grill and we had burgers and brats available as needed. Lesson learned – don’t try to play a scenario and work a grill. Let’s put it this way – no one could order their burgers medium rare…or for that matter even medium. Well-done was par for the course. Mark DeVries surprisingly finished off the last piece of pie so I didn’t have to bring any back home. It looked like everyone had a great time. We had 9 different guys show up and got in 6 scenarios. Not bad for the very first gathering and on short notice. Doug and I will get together over the next few weeks and start looking at dates for the next gathering. We’ll get the word out much earlier next time. Thanks to everyone who showed up and to all who replied to the original email with support and best wishes. Especially PJ and his phone call on Saturday. Hopefully we’ll see even more folks next time.

Update: Originally this was posted as Officefest West with deferance to PJ's Officefest that he organizes on the East side of the state. At his quite reasonable request I've changed the name of our event to KAASL and have gone back and edited this posting to reflect that change. CG