Racconto aslok 2011

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On Friday I also only played one scenario. I matched up against Andrea Pagni, the first Italian ASLer to come to ASLOK, but hopefully only the first of many. He was a very friendly person and fun to play against. We played yet another Schwerpunkt scenario, SP164 (Tanks But No Tanks), from a few years ago. This is a 1939 Polish-Soviet scenario. I took the attacking Soviets; Andrea defended with the Poles. Basically, I had to take 3 of 4 buildings. I started with 14 squads (mostly 1st line) and three T-26 M33 (crappy little tanks with no MG). He started with 12 squads (half Green, the other half elite or first line), 2 37mm AT guns, a lot of MG, and an 81mm MTR. He would later get a platoon of reinforcements that would essentially come up behind me and might threaten the one easy building for me to take. I would get 6 squads of reinforcements, including a 9-2 leader and 2 DC, accompanied by two BT-5 M34, that could enter pretty much anywhere along the edges of the forward half board.

My attack started off pretty well, and I was up on Andrea very quickly, but things went to hell very shortly after that. His dice were amazingly hot. Every roll seemed to have a 1 in it somewhere. I soon started suffering casualties at an alarming rate, which really affected my options. At one point, I only had two squads in good order at the schwerpunkt of my attack. If it were not for the fact that I was consistently able to rally units and get them back into the fight, I would have had no chance at all. Moreover, I had to play fairly conservatively, at least until my reinforcements could get up. Realistically, I was really hurting before the scenario was even half over. I did get a momentary boost in my spirits after he entered his reinforcements. My reinforcements followed his. Essentially, I had three practical options. Enter along a flank but face lots of open ground at a time when I had few casualties to spare, or enter behind his reinforcements and go right up the middle with them. Looking at how he had positioned his units, I realized he had left them vulnerable, or at least potentially so. Through some clever maneuvering, in a single turn, I managed to kill the entire platoon--only his 9-1 leader survived (though it did take out a BT-5 M34). That gave me enough hope to carry on. However, his low die rolling continued (you know you are being diced when your opponent actually apologizes for a roll!). In the end, I had to make a hated last turn rush for the victory areas, with predictable results. Andrea had really diced me, something I think he would fully admit, but he had a good set up and a solid game plan, so he deserves credit for that regardless. Anyway, I had fun playing him and I hope he comes back to ASLOK in the future, and brings some friends, too.

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