ASL AAR: A Long Way to Go

David and I got back on the learning train yesterday afternoon for another round of "figure out how to play ASL." We're very novice still, but have spent time recently re-reading and watching demos.

When the rubber hit the road, I selected the scenario "Along Way To Go" based primarily on the fact that it is all-infantry with very few support weapons - exactly what a we were looking for. David opted for the Germans.

I deployed my two platoons thusly. The half-squad behind the paratroopers has the 60mm mortar. The other half-squad is a "goalie" reserve. Pretty embarrassing reserve, I know. The Germans would have to cross a lot of open ground and a literal killing field to get off the south map edge.

The Germans began a cautious advance but one squad was caught very early by my 6-6-6 platoon in the location circled below:

Even with the hindrances between, the stack was quickly run off and David completely re-thought his attack plan.

Fighting settled in at the "top" edge of the map for a few turns as the HG troops tried desperately to quiet my Yanks long enough to make a dash for it. They did manage to kill the mortar crew; the psychological effect of that little gun was enormous. You can see that one stack did attempt to run the gauntlet but was just hammered and had to fall back.


By the end of turn 4, the writing was on the wall for the Germans and David settled in to attempt some kills. He did manage a few kills on the airborne troops, but had very little chance of exiting units from the far table edge. Final score was 8-4 in favor of the Americans. Flag, Rock and Eagle!


David and I used the same two dice for the entire game and I'm here to tell you, his rolls, particularly morale, were consistently higher than mine. ASL favors low rolls. He did have his moments, such as rolling snake-eyes on a "2" column shot against my mortar, but overall I think fortune favored my hands yesterday. We both really enjoyed the game and we'll certainly be playing more.

Oh, and I finished up 20 more French infantry during the week.

That's 48 down!

Nothin' Quite Like It

Like an evacuation, that is. Being that my county is under mandatory evacuation, it's been a pretty lazy weekend here at the casa. I got some painting knocked out yesterday and this morning - some more Malifaux minis this time.

They're from the Open Graves box - some punk zombies, necromancer, a grave digger-upper and a fun vulture. The flying stand was my addition. Sorry the pics a bit fuzzy. Maybe I'll do some others when the weather outside improves. It's overcast with sporadic drizzle right now. It should heat up quite a bit tonight.

I took out the ASLSK this afternoon and played some solo Squad Leader.

It was Bersaglieri (the gray counters) vs some very well-trained Greeks. The Italians attacked and were trying to push the Greeks out of the village.

The Italians failed to capitalize on this situation.

But then shifted their attack and were able to pull off an assault to clear this building. Avanti!

After another turn or two, the Greeks were well-contained and would continue to be hammered. Call it an Italian victory.

ASL was a nice way to kill time on a Sunday afternoon. We need to play more often and this was a good rules refresher.

AAR - Advanced Squad Leader for Noobs

David and I have been eager to try out ASL since we both picked up starter kits in recent months. Saturday night we got a chance to give it a go. He brought his son Anson which provided enough peer pressure for my son to play as well. It's not often he plays these days - 14-year-olds typically have "better things to do." 😉

Because ASL is not a simple game and even the most basic published scenario can include all the bells and whistles, we took one map board, eight infantry squads per side and just had a shoot-em-up. The kids took the Germans - Anson commanded four 4-6-7s while Junior got four 4-4-7s. David and I were the British commanders - he led four 4-5-7s and I had four 4-4-7s under my command.

The mission - learn the flow of the game and get it figured out. Both sides were highly interested in occupying the 2-hex stone building in the center. The grain was not in season so was just a wide kill zone.

David and I did some hex-counting and decided the best spots for his longer-range squads was right here with LOS at the two hexes most likely to be used to enter the stone building. My squads would hook around (for some reason).

One well-placed shot and two terrible morale tests later, two of David's squads had been broken.

A few minutes later, David's got his boys rallied (we allowed all squads to self-rally) and seeing the writing on the wall, figure we may as well make a mad dash to the building. I sent out one of my squads to draw fire.

They were followed by two of David's squads. Some poor German shooting and terrific British  morale tests helped our case considerably.

But Anson gives his guys a swift kick in the rear and they hustle into the building. Bollocks.

Squad "Neo" braves a wall of defensive fire to reach the building. It is reduced to a half-strength squad but passes its morale test!

Another withering hail of fire is miraculously evaded and the building is now occupied by both sides!

David gets his two squads into LOS of the German pile in the building in an attempt to rattle them. it doesn't work. The squads at the top of the map duel to keep the other side from reinforcing the fight at the building.

My half-squad got run off. David jumped a squad into the building - again, German defensive fire was unimpressive.

A scrum erupted.

The Germans took the upper hand.

At that point we called it a draw, but the Grenadiers were in a better position that the Brits.

It took a couple hours, with quite a bit of rulebook referencing but dang if that wasn't a lot of fun! Importantly, the kids enjoyed it - there's a lot to be said for keeping them off their iPhones for that long. Their tactical plan and performance wasn't bad at all. They were in a more favorable position, terrain-wise and used it to their advantage.

What did we do wrong?
1) Allowing all squads to self-rally. Didn't really do it wrong - this was a conscious decision to allow it, given the absence of leaders. This affected both sides equally.

2) Completely forgot about FFMO and FFNAM bonuses for defensive fire at troops moving across open ground. We Brits would likely have had a bigger problem crossing that open gap. We were very fortunate as it was - the shooting bonuses the kids would have enjoyed could have doomed us.

Ready for another game, that's for sure!