Although Michael was eager to play another game of Nations, I’d cunningly not brought it in today. Actually, I hadn’t expected to play any games, so having my ASL Starter Kits in the car was pure luck. However, given no Nations, he was more than happy to have a game of ASL, the first one where he controlled counters properly labelled as “Guns”. And what … Continue reading Advanced Squad Leader report: S12 Over Open Sights
As I was browsing the internet (a dangerous activity, for sure), I came across this wonderful blog entry on Rise and Decline of the Third Reich. Avalon Hill was the major player in War Games for much of its history, and as I get older, I find that investigating its older offerings to be quite rewarding. This is not to say that they’re better than … Continue reading Rise and Decline of the Third Reich and other Avalon Hill wargames
My latest game of Advanced Squad Leader saw Mick and me facing each other over the fields of Sicily. The victory condition of this scenario required the Germans to get a certain portion of their force off the far side of the map (lengthwise), whilst not losing too many of his own units. Mick chose to play the Germans (who have a slight advantage on … Continue reading Advanced Squad Leader report: S11 A Long Way to Go
Scenario S10 is the first scenario in the ASL Starter Kits to feature two “minor” nations of World War II fighting each other. In this case, it is the Greeks against the Italians in a chase across the board. Set in November 1940, Italy’s leader, Mussolini, had decided to impress his German allies with a “parallel war”, and so had sent his troops into Greece. … Continue reading Advanced Squad Leader report: S10 Paper Army
Continuing my tour through the ASL Starter Kit scenarios, I’ve come to the first of the Starter Kit 2 scenarios. This is still an infantry-only scenario, but it adds two major features over the first Starter Kit. The first is that the map now has hills on it, leading to different levels in the Line of Sight rules. The second is that the list of … Continue reading Advanced Squad Leader report: S9 Ambitious Assault
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 … Continue reading Advanced Squad Leader report: S8 Ad-Hoc at Chef du Pont
It’s a relief to get away from the first three scenarios, which are really different variations on one, to the wilds of Russia. Hills! Trees! More complicated line-of-sight rules I’ll get wrong! Off-board Ordnance! And no tanks! (This is the last Squad Leader scenario without tanks for a bit. I’ll just enjoy the infantry-only battle for a bit). However, Piepsk has one particular special rule … Continue reading Squad Leader report: Scenario 4, The Hedgehog of Piepsk
The big difference between this game and the play of the previous version of the scenario is that this is the moment that Squad Leader adds tanks to the mix – or Armoured Fighting Vehicles (AFVs) to use its terminology. The rules for AFVs are not particularly difficult, especially in comparison to how complicated they would become throughout the development of the Squad Leader line … Continue reading Squad Leader report – 3c: The Streets of Stalingrad
Kalum wandered by on Friday afternoon and we had a second game of ASL Starter Kit 1. Kalum is quite young, and doesn’t pick up rules as quickly as I do, but his unconventional tactics actually posed a problem for me in this game. I’m also growing old and forgetful, which didn’t help. This scenario sees a lot of badly-trained Russian defenders trying to stop … Continue reading Advanced Squad Leader report – S2 War of the Rats
Thursday evening was a light night for boardgaming – both of my regular opponents cancelled on the day, and so I went home early. I did manage to play through one game of the Advanced Squad Leader Starter Kit though, playing through scenario S7, the first of the scenarios printed in Operations magazine. I have played this scenario before, although I can only remember how … Continue reading Advanced Squad Leader report: S7 Prelude to Festung Brest
