AAR - VASLeague Game 1 - S4 Welcome Back! Part 3

I'm going to make this post short and just some small thoughts about my first VASLeague -- read that: first competitive game. No offense intended to Prawn but a game between friends, no matter how competitive, for me, is a slightly different beast.


1. COMPETITION. If you're new to the whole ASL hobby and are not adverse to it, nothing beats competitive stress to help you learn and learn FAST. It really magnifies even very small play sequences into titanic struggles. For example, the S4 SSRs have a simple DR at the start of every turn to determine environmental conditions (I think I've got the real ASL term for it) as to whether it's snowing or not. This die roll was crucial in the middle turns as firefights erupted over longer distances and the +1 hindrance involved became a factor.


Another example I can give is when I first started playing Magic: The Gathering competitively in tournaments for "real". It was a far cry from casual play with buddies. I remember my hands shaking in nervousness as I laid my first land down as if it was the end of times... I wasn't that good but darn if I wasn't a much tighter (better) player afterwards, quickly outstripping my local play group and friends.


What is more, I've read countless posts by players of ASL who became, for lack of a better term, "inbred" in their rules knowledge and gameplay. That is, when you play with only a small circle of friends, or with only a single f2f opponent or solo exclusively, you're bound to be getting something wrong and/or are getting into a rut with your tactics and strategy. It's hard to surprise yourself in solitaire play or if your only opponent always preps and never skulks or whatever. Mixing it up in something like a VASLeague seems a great way to beat this "inbreeding" problem.



2. COUNTER DISCIPLINE. This is sort of linked to the first point. Playing with the Prawn, we get very very lazy about counter placement, especially the Residual Fire counters and occasionally the Defensive Fire ones. Play amongst friends leads to this lack of discipline which is clearly not OK in a competitive situation. Reminder/informational counters in VASL are a click away and seeing as some games could take extended breaks in the middle of a scenario you have to clearly mark everything. Does this make you a better player? You bet.



3. NEVER GIVE UP. I was positive I was going to lose on the first half player turn when gwaedin went waaaay left. To be honest, I joined the league to learn first, win second. But you can't help but be a bit crestfallen when it appears your opponent is going to smoke you on the first turn. I've been reading some stuff on the GameSquad forums recently about the "Personal Morale Check" PMC. Failing the PMC basically gives your opponent the game. Luckily I passed -- mainly because I remembered I was there to have fun and learn and making the best of a seemingly bad situation was the best learning to be had. Stay positive and have fun. You'd be surprised what happens sometimes.



4. THE DICE. I'm not really going to complain about the dice because, as I have said before on this blog, I long ago made peace with the Gods of Dice in boardgames and the Random Number Generator in electronic games. Never complain about the dice. You'll lose sleep over something that you cannot control. If it bothers you that much play a diceless wargame like Napoleon's Triumph (amazing btw) or *gasp* Euros! Part of the fun of ASL is in the extremes of dice results anyways. Nothing makes for a better story than those times only two boxcars would save your opponent -- and you roll 12 then... 11! Whew!



5. SKULKING. Long before I started playing ASL I had heard about "skulking" -- the act of Assault Moving your stacks in defense back out of sight in the MPh then Advancing them later back to where they started. If you try and justify this in real-life terms you'll just go crazy. It's definitely a "gamey" tactic -- something that implies unsporting behaviour. I have news for you. If you want realism in a game you're asking for something that will never exist. By its very nature games are an abstraction of "reality" and blah blah blah. It's a stupid argument. I've now embraced skulking as part of my ASL toolkit. So should you.



6. HMGs. Holy crap. Wow. Here's the counter that really helped me win my game:

Let's do a little in-depth counter talk shall we? I think it represents the M2 Browning or something very similar. 8FP all by it's lonesome. On a simple DR of 7 it's already resulting in a 1MC. On snakes it's a KIA/1. It's (unseen) B# is 12 so it's normal, no more brittle than the typical MG. The range is 16 (underscored here is not used in SK-level but I think it means it can spray fire, ie. area fire on two adjacent hexes in one burst) which is pretty well any LOS on the SK maps, especially the "urban" settings. Crossing a field in front of it must be absolute murder. (DR of 7 -1 FFNAM, -1 FFMO = 2MC).


But of course, the most "fun" thing about the .50 HMG in the American arsenal is the 3 ROF. Fully HALF the time you fire, you'll be firing AGAIN, hit or miss. Given that the coloured die at 3 results in a DR of 9 at worst, that's still a PTC on the IFT! So if you do hit and keep ROF it's terribly effective. No wonder I was vapourizing Germans in that last MPh. (Remember, the HMG was stacked with a 10-2 leader so... 8FP, -2 leader, -1 FFNAM, -1 FFMO = average DRs of 7 are now 3s and K/2 results on the IFT. That's "average".)


Drawbacks? It's 5PP to haul around so make sure you put it somewhere you want to keep in place. And as gwaedin mentions, the covered arc of the thing when it's in a building in full-ASL is limited. No crazy Star Wars laser turret shenanigans.

The HMG definitely made me look smart!

7. FTs AND SET-UP. Did I make a mistake putting my FT on a non-elite unit? I know it goes against convention but I knew that out of all my SWs, the FT would have drawn the most attention to start (HMG too). I certainly didn't think they would last long but I don't think I truly appreciated just how bad it is in the hands of the 2nd liners who wielded one. They had a very good chance of breaking it but to be fair, I intended them solely as major threats to try and funnel gwaedin's advance. Or maybe I'm just stupid. It bears a bit more study.

S4, as I mentioned previously, is really the first time you have to get very very careful with set-up in SK1 (provided you play them in order). Not only do you have to put the right pieces in the right places with the obvious consideration of the Victory Conditions but you have to put the right squads with the right SWs and leaders. I have no doubt that I could have easily blown this scenario even before the first turn with a more sub-optimal set-up. There's a lot of replay value in this scenario alone.

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Did I say this was "short"? Man, I'm chatty. Anyways, hope this series of AARs on my first VASLeague was informative. I'm adding another couple of LEARNING TIPS:

TIP #5: PLAY ASL "COMPETITIVELY" IN A LEAGUE OR TOURNAMENT.

And:

TIP #6: REVIEW YOUR PLAY AND LOOK FOR WAYS TO IMPROVE.

Thanks for reading!

Heck, one more:

TIP#7: NEVER GIVE UP. PASS YOUR PERSONAL MORALE CHECK!

AAR - VASLeague Game 1 - S4 Welcome Back! Part 2

Everybody, please welcome guest poster gwaedin (a.k.a. Luca Andena) who I played in my first VASLeague game. I've just copied and reformatted his post from the last update so it was easier to access and read here. My reactions, which I promised earlier, will be up shortly -- I hope!

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Very well, I wanted to first make an AAR myself on the Italian ASL forum but it seems that the arms of the mighty gods pounding the RL hammer on me do not get CX.

My AAR will have to wait but this wonderful opponent and his blog deserve a comment on my part. I'm just putting things in as they come.

Intensity. Absolutely true. I don't have that much experience with ASL (and wargames in general) and for me playing live and pbem is VERY different. While with pbem you have all the time you need to think every possible move, that's not the case while you play "live" on VASL or FtF... even if your opponent is kind enough to allow you a lot of time to think your moves without complaining. That pushes you towards making errors and some of them I made.

I decided to concentrate my troops on the left side because I knew that a single squad had only a very limited number of fire options. Scrub actually managed DF quite well by retaining it and denying me the possibility of bypassing his defenders very early. That could have made a huge difference and it was worth trying to lure him into such a (very naive) trap. On the other hand his Defensive Fire was quite uneffective and that was good news for the krauts.

I think at that point I made my biggest tactical mistake, related to the presence of the FT-toting 546 squad. I should have moved my two killer stacks right: this way scrub would have been faced with the choice of closing the door on my other units OR slowing down the stacks. Instead I went left and had a good chance of putting the squad off his legs.

A couple of good reasons for me to do that: using a FT with a non-elite squad gives you a B#8, meaning that a DR of 8 or more will end up fuel; the squad also had only 6 morale, no leaders around, and the FT gives a -1DRM bonus on anybody who attacks them.

Nevertheless, I couldn't take them off my way and the costed me a LOT of time. If I had moved both my stacks right at the beginning (instead of moving first left, then right) that would have given me a chance to stop his upcoming units in any case. I still tried to do it but a casual shot from his 10-2/667/HMG, firing and something moving in the snow, behind the trees, in a building, actually completely broke one of the two stacks. Scrub was already finishing his defensive fire phase when he saw that shot and wrote "let's try"... good choice!

Another error has been during a seemingly harmless advancing phase, when I was moving my units by only one hex in the woods. I should have kept a squad controlling the road, denying the 546 a chance to fall back further. I immediately realized that and told scrub "I made a mistake"... too late. That's something I wouldn't have done in a pbem game!These seem minor mistakes but they are the reason for which I can't complain about the outcome of the scenario. After that I still had a chance to win, especially when I finally broke his 747 squad near the exit (after 2 turns!). I could have allowed for the '11' shot mentioned by scrub before, you can't think every attack goes well even when you got a lot of firepower. However, i wasn't expecting that his troops would immediately rally even if desperate!

At that time I didn't have any more time to work on softening the defenders and I had to run. Some big-time luck needed to get away with that and you don't deserve to win games by luck when you make mistakes... that's why the obscene carnage set down by ROF of his HMG seems only fair to me.

A note on that: this is a scenario in which application of full ASL rules would have changed things quite a bit (surely making it unbalanced). Two rules worth being pointed out, one obvious and one less obvious:

1) bypass, which allow infantry to skirt the edges of buildings or woods without "entering" them, thus speeding up movement

2) fixed CA for heavy MGs positioned in buildings. Heavy weapons such as guns have a Covered Arc in which they can fire. MMGs and HMGs do not but if they are in a building (or similar hampering terrain) they receive it for any phase in which they shoot - i.e. and HMG cannot fire at a target north and then at another west or south in the same phase. In our case, the HMGs mowed down the poor Germans in every direction...These are just thoughts coming to me without going through the details of the scenario... when I complete my turn-by-turn AAR I will let you know if there's anything else!

In the meanwhile, thanks a lot for a very nice and relaxed game. The six-hours time difference doesn't make it easy for scrub and me to get playing together but I hope pbem will help us finding more gaming opportunities!

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Again, thanks very much to gwaedin for posting his thoughts about our game. It was a very enjoyable experience and I very much appreciate his sportsmanship. I hope readers get a good sense about what happened in the game and it's always interesting to hear about things from the other side of the table.

[EDIT: Luca has sent me a link to his complete AAR posted here:
http://freeforumzone.leonardo.it/discussione.aspx?idd=8267085&a=1
Of course, the hitch is it's in Italian so you might need this if you're really keen but the pictures are excellent!]

AAR - VASLeague Game 1 - S4 Welcome Back! Part 1

Gwaedin and I have just finished our first match in the VASLeague. It was intense -- I repeat, edge-o'-the-seat intense. I think it was about 3.5 hours and it ended on the last half-turn in the Axis MPh.

Though it looked a bit tough for me some lucky ROF rolls with my .50 cal HMG stacked with my 10-2 leader managed to mince enough Krauts to prevent gwaedin from being able to exit the 10 VP worth of squads and leaders off the board. The Germans would not be taking Hosingen from the Americans in this match! [I'm reading the Aftermath part of the scenario card now and noticing that matches up pretty well with what happened in the game!]

I know I already chatted about the first two turns but I'm going to rehash it all here for completeness. Once again, the scenario is S4 Welcome Back from ASLSK1. If SK1 follows any sort of hidden programmed instruction then this fourth scenario is all about being ultra careful in set-up. The Americans are pretty well outnumbered 2 to 1 in S4 and need to be very quick to react to what the Germans are doing.

Again, it seemed clear to me that in order for me to have a chance I'd have to take advantage of the set-up areas well forward and funnel the German advance one way or the other. Then I'd have to hoof my out of position troops into a good rear position. In the above map, the centre has the very tough HMG and 10-2 leader, the right has the FT and more MGs and an elite squad but the left had the third leader with a single MMG and squad to keep the Germans honest. My intent was to try to funnel gwaedin's Germans to the woods on the left as this was the most difficult terrain to traverse to get across the width of the map.

As it turns out, of course, I really didn't think about just how much was coming at me. Gwaedin really really went left hard and 15 squads and 5 leaders with 5 SWs (add one of mine he captured too -- doh!) looked early on like a massive blue tide coming at me. You'll notice that all the squads on the right are CXing like mad to get to the buildings in the centre or at the rear asap. Note too the 8-0 with MMG squad in the left building getting pasted in CC.

Here's a shot of the action later in turn one (Allied side I think). Notice that the Germans don't believe in a fair fight and are piling on in the CC. Boooo!!!

Now, this was where we left the action after our first session. The three squads on the top were the FT with a 2nd line squad (bad set-up I think but still has to be respected by the Germans), another 8-0 with Elite squad, and the 10-2 with Elite 6-6-7 and the dreaded HMG (more on the HMG later). At this point there was an Elite 7-4-7 running in on the right and two broken squads in the middle. The rear broken squad routed there with the final MMG and was lucky to self-rally in a later turn, holding that side of the map closed for exiting Germans. The bulk of gwaedin's Germans were still on the left with one big stack in the bottom who had taken some unlucky shots and routed.

The session tonight started inauspiciously for gwaedin. His Rally attempt with his leader resulted in casualty reduction and he wounded. To balance things out, my crappy 2nd line squad with the FT broke it immediately and they faced a mass of fire and died in short order out in the open on the left.

Here is the map a half turn later (I think) and I've had to retreat my squad and leader in yI2 to yJ1. The squads I've thrown into the middle were all routed in short order and would basically be non-factors in the game. They were target dummies I threw out to keep the rear German units occupied.

The key development at this point in the game was the standoff between gwaedin's mega stack in yI4 and the only guys they could see in yJ1 (the aforementioned 8-0 and squad). Gwaedin's stack could muster up a 20-FP attack at will. In what he believes was a critical point in the match, his first prep fire with the stack was a DR of 11 (+3 or 4) and I breathed a huge sigh of relief. I think, in hindsight this was super important because, if you know the flow of the game, this put him back one turn in terms of initiative. I would get a subsequent shot in the DFPh and be basically "one-up" on him. The other important thing was that gwaedin, by his own admission, thinks he fell in love with the power of the mega-stack. He made the cardinal error of forgetting the Victory Conditions and, in my opinion, spent too many turns just Prepping with that mega stack to break my guys rather than sally forth and exiting for the win.

This is a subsequent turn. The Germans are bringing in their routed units from earlier and testing the middle of the map. My sacrificial squads in the middle were little more than small speedbumps to these two other stacks. But it was getting late...

We could both see that the left was turning into a big logjam that wasn't going to be pretty. However, in the middle, gwaedin attempted to start exiting squads (he had all the way to the Y column to do it and seemingly only my MMG in yP1 to worry about. He dashed two half squads all the way to yV4 and placed a MMG and squad in yO5 to cover for the main stack's run for the border. This is where the HMG I had made it's long awaited debut.

To be perfectly honest, I knew the .50 cal HMG in yK2 was a beast but man, it was absolutely vicious in this game. First, I DFed with the squad in yP1 to no result. This forced my hand and I used the HMG, leader-led on yO5. I not only KIAed them I retained ROF and then KIAed the guys in yV4 -- no cheap exits for gwaedin unfortunately.

Another half-turn and it was the final Axis turn (Allies do not get a sixth turn). Critical points: The 7-4-7 in yJ0 was holding the door shut on the extreme left exit hex (yI1). The 6-6-7 with 10-2 and HMG in yK2 were itching to turn the streets red with German blood. I did some quick math and it seemed clear that the big German stack in yI4 was going to have to be broken up and CX for it...

The Rally Phase did not help -- the broken units in Q6 did not want to move so gwaedin was left with trying a lone squad leader to attempt exit. The funny thing was I ignored the squad and jumped all over the wounded leader who had to make a beeline to the board edge. Of course my idiot squad in yP1 rolls boxcars, cowers and basically Final Fires and we laughed about how they peed their pants seeing a lone sergeant with a limp and covered in blood approach them.

Regardless, the right side was done and we got to the true business of the left.

The yI4 stack started breaking up and rounding the corner on yK2. I let one pass and then had to lay down some residual in yJ3 to keep him honest. I was able to keep ROF (all fingers crossed here) and really laid into subsequent squads that tried to run. An HMG here is 8FP. For the running squads it was usually a -1 FFNAM and -1FFMO AND a leader-led -2. Not only is this very very scary, I kept rate, I think, 4 times. For those of you without an IFT handy, that's an average roll of 3 on the 8FP column for a K/2 result. Of course I kept rolling less than that and squads were vapourizing all over. The residuals on the screenshot were from the squad (2), and the HMG (4) when it finally lost ROF.

By this time gwaedin was forced to try his squads in the G column and one group made it to yI1 where the 7-4-7 who had rallied a turn earlier laid down a 6 residual and broke them. It was basically over at that point. In order to exit, the Germans had to have units move off in the MPh (impossible now) or get to the last row and Advance off -- but these were either covered in residual or I could Final Protective Fire to make difficult.

Here's the final state of the gameboard when gwaedin conceded with not enough German squads left to make the VP total.

Some quick thoughts at the end of the game?

1. Gwaedin was a gracious opponent in defeat. We both clearly were having fun and for me, personally, I was a bit regretful to win over such a great opponent. I've asked him to write up some thoughts and I will include them in a subsequent post. Gwaedin was clearly more knowledgeable on the rules and better with the VASL interface. I learned a lot. There is no question that playing him in my first exposure to the VASLeague was lucky. I had an awesome time.

2. Did I set-up well? Was my plan a good one? If anyone has played this more than once I'd like to hear what you think. I firmly believe I was more lucky than good, but then that's always a given!

3. I have some BAD counter discipline. I frequently forgot to place Prep Fire or DF counters and the like -- granted that's not such a big issue in this relatively small scenario but if I intend to go on to full ASL I have to do better.

Hope this was an entertaining read and not that dry. Part Two soon with reflections and learning, hopefully with some input by gwaedin!

Go play ASL!

[EDIT: Sorry about the size of the maps being so small, I have no idea when and how blogger.com decides when to link to an expanded image. I'll try to upload again tomorrow if I have time.]

VASLeague - S4 game in progress...

Happy Valentine's Day all!

In the spirit of the day I will play wargames and kill kill kill. I just wanted to post up the first few turns of my VASLeague game in progress before my opponent and I start turn 3 tomorrow afternoon (or 9pm in Italy!).

In case you missed it earlier, I'm playing in the Starter Kit level ASL VASLeague. The opponents are from all over the world and our common touchpoint is the game of ASL, over the VASL interface. Games in the league last two months -- a seemingly long time but not when the Hammer of Real Life(tm) intrudes and your opponent is six hours ahead of you. Synchronizing your life to play ASL is more than trivial.

My opponent is gwaedin. Some of you who play VASL may know him. He's a pretty good opponent and probably due in part to his more extensive experience in VASL, a much tighter player. [Aside: those of you who have played Magic: The Gathering, a CCG, may also have dabbled in the online version which enforces the rules -- my point being that playing the virtual version really helped me tighten my play of that game. So too in VASL; I find that leaving the heaving about of counters to the computer and thinking really focuses you.]

Anyways, we decided to play an SK1 game as gwaedin was reluctant to include AFVs and I wasn't going to push considering my experience in them was limited. Our choice of scenario was narrowed by gwaedin's request that the ROAR standings be relatively even. In the end we settled on S4 - Welcome Back.

Above is the set-up of my American troops in Welcome Back (North is right). The scenario has the Germans who arrive onboard (from the bottom of the map) in turn one try to exit 10VPs off the top middle of the map (essentially between the two roads on the west side). The have just 5.5 turns, going first, and I have to stop them. Exit VPs are basically 2 per squad, 1 per half-squad and 1 per SMC (+1 per neg rating).

The problem of course, other than my inexperience, is that I have only 8 squads with some SWs and three above average leaders who have to prevent 15 and a half German squads with 5 leaders and 5 support weapons from rampaging past me. Set-up is pretty critical here. I basically thought about the most annoying area to transit through (I think it's the southern woods mass) and set-up trying to encourage that path. [Another aside: if you use the default publically available VASL set-up file be aware that it has an error in it -- moral of the story? Always double-check your set-ups with the scenario card.]

Now, as I said, I'm not super experienced in this scenario -- it's my first play -- so I was a bit overwhelmed when gwaedin took the hint and went WAAAAAY left. Notice in the screenshot above that I'm CX-ing my squads on the right big time to plug the exits up. I think I also should have given more thought to who held the FTs. Regardless, I made another error in this first turn by forgetting that CXing a squad with a CXing leader adds even more MFs. I could have squeezed out a few more hexes. Next time, I should think about this and deliberately put my squads in hexes they can CX to defend from their initial hexes.

Here's the situation after turn 1 I think. Notice the MG squad and leader I put in front of the woods is enveloped in a nasty CC already (they wouldn't make it - they took one for the team so we could all get into position, haha!). German stacks are already penetrating the woods but have to be very very wary of the FT-toting squad I have lurking in the forest.

Again, here's the situation late in the second turn. The Germans are slowed by the CC and one diversionary squad in the middle (DMed here), but mostly they have a very healthy respect for the FT squad. The movement phase and sequence of play order here is super crucial. We are both dancing around each other trying to get free, and/or full FP shots so moving, whether it be assault movement, and which hex, during what phase is very considered. I only have to kill a handful of squads to win really so the scenario is actually well balanced.

This last shot is the mapboard at the start of turn 3 where we'll pick up the play tomorrow hopefully. The door is seemingly slammed shut with two leader-led squads with MGs and a FT squad. The far right side has a few Americans DMed and hiding in buildings -- but the mass of the Germans are in the woods and getting to the north exit hexes under the overwatch of the MGs will take some doing. It's a very interesting tactical situation. Should be fun -- I have NO IDEA who's going to win but damn it I'm having fun.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: ASL is INTENSE. The game session lasted about 3+ hours and we only played TWO turns; I was on the edge of my seat the whole time. I rarely think that hard in anything. And it was enjoyable thinking, not stressful in any negative way. I think that's why I love ASL so much; the mental gymnastics of playing and concentrating and trying to win (chalk that up to the VASLeague -- I don't think I go this crazy in f2f with the Prawn) is incredible.

Lotsa news...

What's up in the world of TPBF?

1. I decided that giving a 9 to ASLSK1 on BGG was kind of being picky. I look at things this way: if I will drop anything else to play your game then your game is a 10 out of 10. So I revised my ASLSK1 score from 9 up to a "perfect" 10. For that matter, I put another very fun game up to 10 too: GMT's Twilight Struggle. Some may argue about its wargame-ness but you can't argue that it's frickin' awesome... Unless you're the Prawn and still getting smoked by me.

2. I'm still plugging away on my eASLSK3. I'm actually learning a LOT this way. I find that just retyping the rules and revising and checking for typos that I am really getting to be proficient with this system. Just putting together the examples and diagrams with VASL screenshots has been very educational. I think I'm about 60% done the whole of the eASLSK3 -- that includes every single word and diagram in that total. When I'm done I'll post a few screenies and start incorporating the errata and possibly scanning and adding the player aids so I'll have a super portable e-version to cart around with the actual counters and maps.

3. I fixed the masthead of the blog. No more ugly orange on light green map. Should be a little more readable now. I'm going to fiddle with it some more later but for now at least the masthead isn't an abomination against man.

4. Going to probably get to my first turns in the VASLeague with my Italian opponent this weekend. We've been bandying about the scenario choice (it's S4 Welcome Back -- I've never played but looks fun -- I'm the Americans) and I've been feeling under the weather. The six hour time difference makes getting hooked up a little difficult but I think we'll get things going very soon. I've gone over my porous defensive set-up and will be sending it off tonight.

5. I'll be teaching the vehicle rules to the Prawn on Monday too. I'm bringing Optimus Prime. He's going to hurl some AFVs around.

6. Winter Offensive (MMP's annual con) is on. Man, I'd love to be there.

7. And the boys at 2 Half-Squads have posted a new podcast. GO GET IT!