As an ASL newbie I’ve been scouring the web for ASL resources while I try to get to grips with this classic but complex squad level WWII war game.

Pretty quickly I discovered Virtual ASL or VASL which is an excellent Java application by Rodney Kinney that allows both play by email (PBeM) and online play with ASL opponents around the world. Using VASL is just like having a board, a box of counters and some reference sheets in front of you. VASL has no concept of the game rules so you’ll still need a copy of ASL to play. There also seems to be an active and fairly friendly community using VASL too, with a mix of ASL experts and new players like myself.

Through VASL I’ve started a PBeM game of “S01: Retaking Vierville” with a gentleman in Germany. Despite the fact this is an inordinately basic ASL scenario using just Infantry and Leader counters and we’re only 2/3rds of the way through the first turn, I’m already having a blast. I suspect I will be totally schooled by my opponent (who’s getting back into ASL after a decade) but hopefully I can provide them with some amusement. I feel PBeM is a good way to play for a newbie too, because it gives you plenty of time to re-read the relevant rules and consider your actions as you play.

Other ASL online resources are the excellent Game Squad ASL forums. I found the “Basic Tactics” links very handy, in particular they linked to some excellent ASL Starter Kits tutorials on Board Game Geek.

By the way, regular viewers may have noticed I’m on something of an ASL jag at the moment. I solemnly swear to return to normal programming shortly with some progress on the various modeling projects I have on the go, not to mention a quick figure painting tutorial I plan to put together. We’re expecting our second child in a week and a half, so I’d better get some modeling in before then!

Addendum: “The Joys of VASL” which is a good description of VASL was pointed out to me by another gentleman I’ve started a second PBeM game with.

I played my first game from the ASL Starter Kit #3 this weekend with Jonathan. We played the simple S:20 Joseph 351 scenario. German infantry supported with LMGs and an MMG basically have to defend a hill in the Brittany countryside from US Rangers, Free French and escaped Russian POW’s trying to mop them up. The scenario is a touch biased towards the Allied forces, with the Germans playing a stalling game to try and deny the Allied player their victory conditions. Although to be fair the Germans do start with three LMGs and an MMG, while the Allied forces only have a single MMG.

We rolled for which side we got and Jonathan ended up with the Germans. Then it was on with the dice rolling and confused consultation of the rulebook. Fortunately I discovered a very handy online resource for MMP’s ASL Starter Kit #1 at Savarese.org. In particular their reference to Grognard.com’s ASL Starter Kit #1 Tip Sheet (pdf link) was invaluable. If you’re wondering why ASL Starter Kit #1 resources are handy for ASL SK #3 it’s because if you remove the tanks and ordnance rules from a scenario you’re left playing the ASL Starter Kit #1 rules.

Highlights in terms of rules were screwing up Casualty Reduction (getting it confused with ELR Reduction for some reason) and some basic points regarding Morale Checks and Leaders (like why Leaders are important)! However I think we got most of the basic movement, firing and close combat phases correct. Applying those little “Prep Fire, First Fire, Final Fire” counters initially seemed like a chore, but it pretty quickly became obvious that was a neat way of keeping all the required book-keeping on the game board.

Highlights in terms of gameplay (for myself at least) were my Elite US Rangers getting pinned down and broken almost instantly by German LMG fire from a single enemy occupied building, while the escaped Russian Conscript POWs weathered fire from another German occupied building and two German groups elevated on the hill behind. Half of one Russian POW group actually got pinned and broken by fire in the middle of a road running through the forest (scrabbling into ditches I assume), only to rally later on and charge the second farmhouse to assault the Germans inside and drive them off! The US Rangers did acquit themselves honorably later on though by assaulting their own troublesome farmhouse and plucking a Jerry LMG out of hands of a German leader and squad they’d gunned down.

All in all quite an enjoyable evening really, despite not quite playing the scenario to conclusion! Having played figure based war games for so long it was a pleasant change of pace having an entire game stored in one flat letter sized box that I could simply chuck into the passenger seat of my car.

One minor annoyance was discovering mid-game that we needed some counters I simply didn’t have (after a German squad got casualty reduced). The addition of more basic counters, more scenarios and map boards may make picking up ASL SK #2 a tempting proposition in the future, but at that point of course becomes the inevitable question: Should I just buy ASL 2nd Edition and a Module pack instead? Mind you that’s quite a bit more cash layout than an additional $28US.

Hirst Arts have just added a new mold to their Fieldstone line! It’s a nifty set of ruined Fieldstone pieces that actually fit together to create whole pieces as well. I know a lot of Fieldstone mold owners have resorted to creating and molding their own ruined pieces but it’s nice to finally have a mold created by the master.

It’s a good mold too with a mix of broken bricks, floor tiles and a couple of ruined arches. It also adds some new Fieldstone columns which will be useful for a lot of people. It definitely goes straight to the top of my Hirst Arts ‘wish list’. In fact I wish it had been available when I started building my Fieldstone Mordheim table because it would have made my life a lot easier!

No doubt it’ll be a good seller for Mr Hirst too because I’ll wager anybody that owns even a couple of Fieldstone molds will find it an attractive purchase.

While I originally created these 28mm crates for my Pulp gaming, several people have expressed an interest in purchasing a set. So here’s a question for anybody that cares to comment:

What would you pay (US$) for three large crate stacks AND three individual crates?

There are also two options for casting materials: Ultracal 30 or Polyurethane resin. Ultracal 30 is a very hard plaster/cement mix with good surface detail. I use it for most of my terrain because it’s cheaper than resin, durable and easy to cast with. Polyurethane resin is lighter, considerably more expensive and more toxic to cast with. It’s one redeeming feature is it won’t chip at all, which can occur with Ultracal 30 pieces if you’re particularly abusive during gaming. So, another question:

If you’re interested, would you prefer more expensive resin casts, or cheaper Ultracal ones?

I ask because frankly I’m a garage caster and find that casting and shipping small pieces like this can be rather a hassle. However naturally that depends on what people are willing to pay for this sort of thing. Anyway, now’s the chance to weigh in with your opinion!

I’ve been struggling to think of decent colour schemes while painting my Cairo civilians. As I typically don’t paint a lot of yellows, greens, blues and reds I’m afraid of picking schemes that simply won’t look good once finished.

A tiny part of my brain has been nagging me that I needed some decent reference material for Middle Eastern civilians, but it wasn’t until I was reading my young son a Tintin book the other night that I realised I’d always had just that in my bookshelves!

Four of Tintin’s adventures occur in the Middle East: “The Cigars of the Pharaoh”, “The Crab with the Golden Claws”, “Land of Black Gold” and “The Red Sea Sharks”. I’m pretty sure I have all four in my home somewhere, but I was reading “Land of Black Gold” at the time. So once my son was asleep I threw it in the scanner and lifted a few panels for colour schemes.

Hergé’s studio was known to send their artists on location to gather reference material for the Tintin books, so I’m reasonably confident they represent suitable clothing choices for mid-20th century Arabic peoples.

It’s interesting to see in the “Land of Black Gold” that the Arabs living in the desert are depicted wearing earthy tones and generally lightly coloured head gear (see the first two images) both of which are eminently practical for hot climates. However the town folk are shown wearing a wider range of colours, particularly in terms of their head-dress and cloaks.

As a bonus we have a panel showing a number of Middle Eastern police escorting the eternally inept Thompson Twins through a street riot they initiated! I don’t really have any suitable figures to represent police like these gentlemen, but wonder if there’s somebody selling WWII 28mm North African figures that would suffice in a pinch?

At any rate I now have plenty of colour schemes to apply to my remaining Cairo civilians!

Years ago, in the late 80’s I remember playing Advanced Squad Leader with a friend a couple of times. I recall being somewhat overwhelmed with details, but still having several enjoyable games getting my German squads mercilessly machine gunned while simply trying to cross a city road.

I suspect a lot of my initial ASL confusion came from my lack of knowledge about the forces and armaments involved in WWII. Playing Flames of War and a lot of non-fiction reading has helped me fill in those gaps in the last couple of years.

I’ve also been keeping an eye on MultiMan Publishing since they licensed ASL from Hasbro, after they acquired Avalon Hill. In particular their ASL Starter Kits have attracted me in the past, but as Starter Kits #1 and #2 lacked any AFV’s I’ve never taken the plunge.

However MMP have just released ASL Starter Kit #3 which expands the earlier Starter Kits by adding tanks and armored cars! Forthwith I ordered a copy from Warchest in Aussie, thanks to Panzerschreck’s recommendation. It was just as well I got in quickly too because I noticed it only took a single day before Warchest were out of stock on SK#3! Either they received almost no stock, or the game is selling like hot-cakes.

The well packed box arrived around a week later and after cracking it open feel it represents good value for money at $37.95AUD, excluding shipping. The box contained two dice, several loose pieces of paper: an intro from MMP, a single errata and a list of box contents (always handy for a new game) along with three hex maps, three colour die cut counter sheets, two game reference cards, four scenario cards (with a scenario on each side), a 28 rule book and a final booklet of “historical notes”. Warchest were easy to deal with and delivered the goods promptly and throughly packed so I can see why Panzerschreck recommended them.

ASL has a reputation for being a complex game to play, and initially glancing at the rules book did make me wonder what I was getting myself into, particularly when you consider these MMP Starter Kits represent streamlined versions of the main ASL rules! I consoled myself by reading the “Vehicle and Ordnance Historical Notes” booklet first which was surpisingly interesting considering it simply describes the various vehicles and guns represented in ASL SK #3.

However I knuckled down and after spending a couple of quiet evenings carefully reading the rules and examples MMP have added I begin to see method in the madness that initially confronts you. Probably the best way to describe the ASL rules included in SK#3 is “dense but logical”. The ASL rules are dense because they attempt to convey the maximum amount of information in the minimal amount of column space. This explains the plethora of acronyms that are used in the game. However they’re also a logical set of rules in that they apply some simple principles repeatedly and seem relatively free of oddball cases and exceptions. For example the firing and morale rules are covered once, but used in several separate phases of the game turn with minor variations.

The alphabet soup starts to clear too once you get further into the rules as you’re repeatedly exposed to particular acronyms and can also glean their meaning largely from the context they appear in. There’s a handy two page decoder sheet around the middle of the rulebook that lists them all with their relevant rules paragraphs. I do wish this glossary was a separate reference sheet however because that would have saved me a lot of flicking back and forth to it.

After reading through the entire rule set once and splitting the glossy counters into several resealable baggies, I tried a dry run of the “S20: Joseph 351″ scenario which requires only SMC (single men counters aka leaders), MMC (multi-men counters aka squads) LMG and MMG SWs (support weapons) by myself and the rules started to fall into place. I’m sure I’ll be screwing up a few of the finer details for quite a while yet but it shouldn’t be too hard to get a mostly correct game played. I also becomes abundantly clear that ASL is a very tactical game and the reckless squad leader will quickly get himself and his squads pinned, routed or killed outright.

Now I just need to get a few games under my belt so I’m confident enough with the basic rules to try some of the other scenarios that include Ordnance and AFV’s. I did notice one of them was a stand up tank battle (”S21: Clash at Borisovka”) so that may be a good one to try later. I also noticed that good old NZ gets a mention in “S27: Stand for New Zealand”.

Overall I’m happy with my ASL Starter Kit #3 purchase. For around $40AUD you get an introduction to ASL that quite happily stands on it’s own. The production quality of the maps, counters and rulebooks is high and the boxed set with it’s eight included scenarios represents a fair amount of quality gaming I suspect, particularly given the rich tactical choices players get to make even in a single scenario.

My only real concern with the Starter Kits is how expandable they are. If you enjoy your introduction to ASL and want more scenarios I suspect the first thing you’ll have to do is purchase the full 2nd Edition ASL rulebook from MMP at $80us. This is because most of the scenarios I can find on the web seem to rely on features and rules (foxholes for example) that aren’t covered in the Starter Kits.

Oh and by the way, Shaun Dorrington, if you’re still in NZ and still play ASL get in touch man!

As I mentioned in my last 28mm Crate post I molded and cast three distinct crate stacks once I discovered how onerous painting single crates was!

It’s taken almost a fortnight, but here are the crate stacks painted and varnished. I’ve arranged them around an Artizan Designs DAK German soldier for scale. They’re cast in Ultracal 30 which is a surface hard blend of plaster and Portland cement I use for most of my terrain.

These crate stacks will make life easier because it only takes a few casts to create enough to fill a warehouse or cover a dock side with them. I’ve actually cast four sets of each that seems enough for my gaming purposes. Throwing a few single crates around nicely conceals the repeated stacks too.

Here they are separated so you can see the three individual styles. The right angle stack is designed to quickly make walls and barricades with the other straight crate stacks. I’ve now got to cast up several extra sets and think of a suitable price before posting them up in the store.