This is going to a less picture heavy post, because my forces met with disaster right at the beginning of the turn. I'm going to skip over the spawns in the rally phase because they are ultimately inconsequential. The AEO of course won initiative AGAIN, and their order card sent them into melee. After considering for a moment whether this meant the forces next to the crash site or the ones next to my medic and half squad on the other part of the map, I ultimately determined the AEO should be going for broke at this point. (It is the last turn after all.) The Somali stack in N8 therefore rolled for their morale checks. The leader passed and applied his LM to the other units, who also passed theirs. This technically was reinforcing a melee since there was already a Somali unit in the crash site hex. All together, the AEO had 3 FP facing my 5 FP in total.
I thought about how to handle this for the AEO for a few moments. The way the Lock 'n Load Tactical melee system works is that the attacker can choose how many units he wants to attack. The solo expansion considers this to be one of the "judgement calls" a player will have to make for the AEO. The AEO could attack less units, resulting in a more equal fight, but eliminating even one less melee eligible unit would only give them enough VP's to draw at the end of the turn. I eventually concluded that the best thing for the AEO to do was to take on all my units in the attack. While it's true they could still have a chance to eliminate some of my other units elsewhere in order to gain victory points, there was no guarantee. The opportunity for victory was there and then with no turns remaining after. If it had been a more ambiguous situation, and the game was not about to end, I might have came up with several logical options and randomly rolled for what the AEO would do. This did not seem ambiguous to me though.
The moment of truth came, at 2:3 odds they would need to roll a 9 on 2d6. They roll an 8. . . but wait! The leader who followed them into melee gives them a +1 to the roll. So their total, 9, was enough to wipe out my forces in the square. Disaster!
My troops in the square would all be eliminated at the end of the melee. This would reward the AEO with 12 VP's. Even though it wouldn't change the result, I finished up the melee for my side. The Somali forces were eliminated as well. The 15 VP's the AEO has earned overall beat out the 10 possible VP's I could receive for holding the crash site hex. The AEO bested me. All that remains in the square are the dropped weapons of the fallen units.
Well, that about wraps up this scenario. Technically the turn isn't over but I'm going to yield at this point.
I had a lot of fun with this scenario. It seems decently balanced, as the game literally came down to the last turn. I thought the AEO did an admirable job controlling the Somali side. The only issues that came up were honestly mostly just me readjusting to using the AEO after not playing for a while.
I personally do what I can to cut down on having to do judgement calls. Usually by coming up with several decent options and rolling for them. If one option seems a little more sensible than the others I weigh the die roll in its favor a bit. If something is truly obvious I won't roll for it, like what happened in the melee. However most the time you can just let the AEO do its thing and it works out fine. I did think of one addition to it that I might try: If a leader's stack is adjacent to other units when its hex/square is activated, then roll a morale check. If it passes the other hexes/squares are activated. This should take the decision judgement call out of when to activate multiple hexes with a leader.
If you have read through this then I hope you've enjoyed it! Right now I'm considering what to play next. I'm debating between WaW 85: Storming the Gap, more Lock 'n Load, or perhaps trying out a miniatures game using paper units.
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