Clearing Colleville

I mentioned in a previous post that a co-worker (Troy) had approached me to see if I was interested in playing war games. So on Saturday I went to his place in Hastings to play some Advanced Squad Leader (ASL). Short version: I got my ass handed to me.

We played Clearing Colleville. It's a scenario from the ASL Starter Kit (#1) and, historically, the Americans rush in to try to push the Germans out of Colleville only to meet stiff resistance and a lot of friendly casualties at the ends of their own 5" destroyer guns. Having seen 5" guns modeled in a computer game, that had to have been absolutely terrifying. However, it seems the Germans of the 40's were much more experienced in their ASL skills than I was. I made the mistake of setting up a few hexes back, so I couldn't slow the Americans down as they advanced, which was really the goal. I should have set up as far forward as possible so they had to smoke and crawl their way to the first row of buildings, only to discover I'd already backed up the inner buildings with reinforcements. Instead I threw my reinforcements at Americans that were entrenched on my own defensive territory. Doh.

Good gaming, though. Troy has a great room in his basement for spending 3-4 hours throwing my troops at a lost cause.