I played this game against Popey, who had played the ASL SK once before with me, but that was now a year ago, so he was understandably rusty on rules and tactics. He chose to play the Americans in this scenario, which required them to take at least one squad and one leader off the central road (Q10) – and if I moved any squads out on that road, he had to match that! With a lot of open ground and a lack of good ranged weapons (although his 7-4-7 paratroopers were quite dangerous), it was going to be a difficult scenario for Popey to win.
Setting up the German forces was challenging. Here’s what I came up with: Popey would be entering from the top-left and the top-right:
My normal tactic of putting leaders in positions the forward troops could retreat to wasn’t going to work here; instead the leaders were placed with my machine-guns to maximise their effectiveness. Popey moved his troops down onto the map, keeping the trees between him and my units. Seeing that he wanted to run down the lower-left, I marched my two squads there to intercept.
Popey was able to move his troops up into the buildings in the bottom-left corner without exposing themselves to my fire, while setting up a line of troops in the woods to the right. Fire from both sides was quite ineffective, with grain and orchards and poor rolls contributing.
There were two solutions here: Get the troops into better position, and roll better! Popey eventually formed a kill stack of three 7-4-7 units and the 10-2 leader, and that managed to break my second-line troop on the far right. Popey also moved up on the left, taking advantage of the orchards and woods as he moved into close combat range; he was aided by both my troops there cowering (rolls of 10 and 12!) In the next two close combat phases, my 2nd line squad was first reduced to a half-squad in an ambush, and then eliminated.
I moved troops across to reinforce the right, and had the leader of my MG nest broken in a lucky roll. Could Popey press his advantage?
It seemed not; he was far too tentative with his greater force on the right-hand side. They managed to make the orchards and buildings on the bottom-right, but could go no further, with his units in the northern grain fields breaking under my machine-gun fire, especially as my leader there rallied and resumed his position. By the end of the fifth of six turns, Popey’s forces were too far away to reach their destination – all they could do was stop my other troops from stopping his left-side forces.
However, those forces were having their own problems. Popey was finally able to get rid of my troop in the woods, and then the second-line troop in the building (O10), but had very few forces at his disposal, with one of his squads breaking in the process. He decided to run for it with his 9-2 leader and a squad. They got a couple of hexes away from the exit, when they suffered a 2KIA result as my squad and better leader in R7 got off a brilliant burst of fire. His other squad broke close to the exit, and it was now impossible for him to win.
If any scenario brought home how aggressive you may need to be in ASL, this one did. Six turns might sound like a lot, but with so much ground to cover, you really don’t have much time to do it in. It was particularly noticeable to me how long it took Popey’s forces to engage me on the right; as others have noted, I am far more aggressive with such attacks – Popey had his troops too far north along the tree-line for my liking.
It’s a very challenging scenario, although I believe the Americans do have an advantage; the inexperience of Popey with the system made it a much harder task!