Post #90 – ASL Rulebook

The ASL 2nd edition Rulebook is back in stock. It has been updated with all of the errata.

Pocket Rat Charts V3 Update:

There was an issue in the printing process and Xavier, unwilling to compromise on quality, decided to destroy the entire shipment and reprint them. This is expected to put delivery back about 2 weeks. My apologies but I promise it will be worth the wait. Here are some more photos of what to expect:

Contest #90

The prize for Contest #90 is a set of stack guards in a custom ammo box from your choice of nationalities. N.B. if the winner lives outside of the USA, the prize will will a $20 gift certificate instead of the super cool ammo box.

Situation:

October, 1944. It is the RPh of the last (German) Player Turn of the game. The Germans need to control rowhouse building R3 for the win. What actions should the German player take to have the greatest chance for victory. The same person is ineligible to win two contests in a row but please try to solve the puzzle anyway. Please send your entry to dr******@tr***.com with the subject line ‘contest #90’. One winner will be selected from the correct entries.

N.B. – The PzIII is in the R4 building hex (not in bypass). The Germans are Assault Engineers. SAN and ELR for both sides is 2 and 3. No Quarter is in effect for both sides. The counter in R5 that is partially obscured by the image of the PzIII is a PIAT.

Contest #89 Winner:

After reviewing thousands of entries (actually only about a half dozen), the closest to what I think would give the German player his best chance of winning is the solution from Joe Arthur. Congratulations Joe. Here is his entry:

PFPh: None

MPh:

K6 AM to K7

R9 to Q9-Q8-Q7-P6

APh:

P6 to O7 (to prevent 4-4-7 from joining melee in turn 7)

K7 to L7 (to prevent 4-4-7 from joining melee in turn 7)

CC:

Kill 237 on a or 7 or less (two chances). Prisoners re-arm to give 4 VP in the required buildings.

ASL Zoomed Out (and back in):

Back around 1991 or so, my brother Dylan and I were playing a lot of ASL as well as other great games such as 3rd Reich, Russian Front, World in Flames, etc. Dylan was much more of a strategic kind of guy, enjoying production and planning over the course of game years. I on the other hand loved tactical games. I wanted to get the feel of the individual men and tanks (and all the sound effects that go with that). So we compromised and came up with a hybrid game that was played strategically on the 3rd Reich map, using the system found in Hitler’s War (Avalon Hill) to keep track of the contents of the Army Groups off map. Each Army group ended up being represented by about a company’s worth of ASL counters. It it was the most incredible and novel idea to ever hit wargaming, or so we thought. It actually ended up being horribly tedious with the zoomed in scenarios being beyond boring. So the idea stayed forgotten and tucked away in the back of my head until I saw an ad in Le Franc Tireur 14 by a company called Advancing Fire for a game called Brevity Assault. The system zooms in and out to fight it out in the Desert of Egypt. Is it possible that this is the final frontier for ASL? There are already more scenarios than could ever be played in a lifetime and every major encounter has been represented. This got me thinking about a game that has been sitting on my shelf for a few years now called ‘Operation Dauntless’ by GMT. Although I have never actually played it and struggled to learn the rules, I realized that it has all the makings for a great hybrid game mixing a slightly larger tactical system and ASL. The hexesides are 425 yards across which is just about 10 ASL hexes. The designer notes are incredibly thorough down to the exact composition of each company by men,leaders, mg’s, guns, and vehicles. The terrain is mostly bocage, villages, and open fields and best of all, there are excellent stand alone rules governing O.D. that allow you to pick and choose which battles you wish to resolve using the Operation Dauntless combat system and which battles you wish to fight in ASL. The artwork on the map is from actual photos of the battlefield not generic bocage drawings so it is easy to represent the maps with some reasonable historically accuracy. The units are British vs. Pz.Lehr and 12thSS. Firefly’s, Panthers, Tigers, Artillery, Typhoons, etc. There is also another game in the system called Red Winter. The maps I am making are hexagonal and connect to whichever adjacent hexes you need for the scenario. So I am looking for a crew to brainstorm this including a project manager (as I have little time and even less skills) and have some fun. This is just for fun and NOT for profit. Whatever mechanics we come up with I plan to post as a free download for everyone’s enjoyment, Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could get some of those GMT players to try out ASL for the first time. Drop me a line if you are interested in this. dr******@tr***.com

Rendition of O.D. hex 0802 in ASL map scale