ASL: St Louis Tourney AAR (Part 1 of 2) Listers, Due to a very conveniently timed business trip, I attended this weekend's St Louis ASL tournament. Attendance was strong with 25-30 participants, many from a state or two away (which means more in the midwest than the east coast). Jim Burris Jr (to distinguish him from his dad who also played) ran a great tournament with lots of prizes, an awesomely fun ASL bingo game ("I'll declare a +6 ESB overrun, damn I passed, no bingo box for me") (How do you make 2 nuns curse? Have a third yell 'Bingo!') Jim used another now-famous collection of good, yet eclectic scenarios. Jim published the ROAR victories for each scenario a couple weeks before the tourney, which I think is a nice touch. It was great to catch up with my buds in St Louis where I lived for '95-'99. Round 1 Tac 44 Lebanese Drama vs Ryan Allen Ryan flew in from AZ on a conveniently timed family visit. I never played/have seen the Tactiques scenarios but Jim had listed quite a few (there were six choices per round) and this one looked good. RS gave me the Vichy vs. Ryans Brits. The Vichy have 6 turns to cross half a length of either the big hill on bd 9 or an open ground board and exit 22 vp without taking more CVP than inflicted. In hindsight, I think the french have just too much firepower. Their 3 tanks are untouchable except by the brits sole non-HIP 40L gun (10 tk vs a circled 6 armor) and the 7 brit squads with a single MMG are outnumbered 2:1 plus the french have an HMG, 2 MMGs, a 60 and a 81 mtr. PLUS the french have an OBO with 70mm HE/Smoke module. The brits get 3 marginally useful carriers with mg's + atrs turn 1, and then get 3 squads on turn 4. The bottom line is that the french can easily neutralize the gun with fire/OBA/mtr smoke and then the armor can just roll off the board for 18 cvp. The brit atrs can't even try for DI. In our game I smoked Ryan's bd 9 firegroup around the 'castle', my infantry then overwhelmed the defenders there in CC. Meanwhile Ryan's infantry in the valley couldn't redeploy due to all my MG's + mtrs. I personally don't see how the brits can win this one but ROAR is 50/50. Am I missing something? We did assume the french went first but the colored circles don't show in b/w copies, is that wrong? 1-0 Round 2 SP62 Ils ne passarant pas vs. Jeff Ital My bud Jeff and I played a few times when I lived in St Louis. RS gave me the Quebecois. This is a very cool scenario featuring 5 shermans and 12 squads led a by a heroic 10-3 vs. 8 or so 548/467s plus a PzIIIN and a PzIV. 2 more PzIVs with 4 548s enter turn 4. Germans need to keep a central village clear of canadiens and are forced into a forward setup. Jeff set up a strong defense but couldn't hit my tanks as they rolled on due to vca changes and infantry smoke. His turn 1 Jeff ran his PzIV (facing 2 shermans in open ground and a malf'ed gun sherman) back but I was able to kill it. If he had stayed and killed 2-3 shermans I would have been behind the 8-ball. These kind of choices make defense often harder than offense. Personally, I like to have my defenders try to lash out rather than retreat if they have a TEM advantage and/or things wouldn't be significantly easier further back. Sometimes I get lucky and can disrupt the attack, sometimes I get squished like a bug. Despite an 11 ROF tear (bingo box was earned at 5) by his 81 mtr and 1-hex-range PFs, my 5 otherwise unopposed tanks with strong escort (plus an active sniper and a couple german boxcars) roughed up the remaining infantry. 2-0 Round 3 TAC 43 Massacre in Paradise vs Steve Brasseur I've had the great pleasure to play Steve maybe a good dozen+ games before and know him to be a big man with a big heart, sharp wit and an excellent ASL'er. This famous pre-Dunkirk battle (the first publicized atrocity of the war, SS shot ~100 brit POWs) had about a dozen poorly-led 468 SS with a 81 Mtr vs about 8 generally concealed 457s with a couple lmgs. SS start in the big woods on bd 10 need to take 21 stone locations in six turns. RS gave me the SS. Steve set up 2 hs in the forward woods + three hex building cluster. I got very lucky with Steve's dice (which he lent me for the tourney) and placed 4 smokes in open ground in my prep. This let me get across the large open ground area and into some cover with just a few losses. Turns 2-4 Steve and I fought a sharp battle over the first block of stone bldgs on my left while his men in the block on my right held fast. Two things broke open the game. First I was able to spring a squad around the far right to get into the big 9-location bldg on turn 5. They could mop-up and gain control of all 9 locations on turn 6. Secondly, I advanced 2 hs into melee with full brit squads. One got waxed but the other rolled snakes to kill the squad and created a ldr. This hs then KIA'd a re-deploying brit squad+leader trying to get into the 9 location bldg on a 2(-2) shot. 3-0 Part II to follow tomorrow. Paul Sidhu