VASLeague Round 2 - AAR Part 4

[Four parts?! How self-indulgent!]

Axis Turn Five

My half of the fifth turn was quiet as I waited for the inevitable counterattack from the remaining Russian squads their reinforcements. Lady Luck was still on my side however. The first-line reinforcement squad armed with the LMG was vapourized by yet another very low roll by yours truly in hex T3. And of course, the Commissar offed another hapless conscript half-squad when they failed their miserably low MC.

In the MPh I even brought in my HMG stack from M5 to O5...

Allies Turn 5

Paul was massing one last big push into the Bread Factory from the east. The question was whether he could mosey around the inevitable blasting from my stacks o' death.

In the interest of brevity and following the axiom of "a picture is worth a thousand words", here is the answer to that question:

OUCH! -- The Wall of Lead

They couldn't make it past the Wall of Lead. Stacks were blasting from O5, P5, R5 and the Bread Factory itself. It was a brave charge that ended in tragedy. Turn Six saw some little bit of maneuvering (one stack approached the Russians directly and the HMG stack went to good ol' N3).

On the final Allied turn the rally checks for the last couple of squads failed and that was that. Appropriately, I guess, the Commissar was the last to shoot in this meeting engagement around the Red Barricades' Bread Factory #2.

S18 Baking Bread - End of Game

Here's a final shot of the map at the end of the scenario. The last of the Russian forces huddled up in R1, their AT Gun still sitting alone in R5, and a ton of their discarded support weapons littering the field of battle.

For the Germans, the MVP was Sgt. Esser himself who, after watching his stack get blasted away, picked up an LMG and voluntarily forfeited his leadership modifier for the rest of the game -- who says there's no "Berserk" in ASLSK?

---

Notes from the Rubble

1. Once again, I'd like to thank LTC Paul for being such a good sport. In retrospect, I think he was a good guy for trying to the very last in the face of such long odds. He definitely passed his PMC.

2. I really, really, like S18. The more I think about it, the more I like the densely urban scenarios a la Stalingrad.

3. I think this was my very first scenario with a Gun. I wasn't too worried about it; AFVs are moving Guns after all... I think Paul did a fine job with the HIP -- perhaps he could have rotated the CA once counter-clockwise? But how would he know that I wouldn't be charging Esser on a route north?

4. A Commissar really changes the rally calculations. I'd say Paul was unlucky for the most part early, but seriously, no halfway decent squad should be failing the rally checks?

5. Gun crews self-rally?! Oh crap!

6. My counter discipline is a LOT better. My language about doing things is not as precise as it needs to be. You must always be very clear in what you intend to do, and with whom or what you intend to do it with.

Example: In the early game I prepped or DFed a line of squads in big FG. Later on, I added anothe squad into the stack in the group. When I DFed again later I said "same guys" doing the DF. Well, when I was placing the Fired markers I discovered I had neglected to mention that new squad and Paul and I had to judge what to do. Had I intended to fire with them or was I holding them back...? The answer was honestly in between... I intended neither but as a courtesy I should have been more precise in my language with Paul and explicitly said what I was NOT firing with I guess. I was a LOT more precise after that. You have to be if you're in a competitive situation -- amongst friends it's a different story.

7. HMGS still rock.

8. Seeing as I hadn't played an ASL game in anger since the last VASLeague round I was a bit rusty at first but I really had no problem getting right back into the swing of things by game's end. I was almost taking a "mini-break" from the game. There's no question it's still in the top echelon of games I've ever enjoyed and this match really reinforced that. I may dabble in Memoir '44 or SCS or Ancients or whatever but I think that ASL is still in that sweetspot of complexity, scale, and sheer nervous excitement over every single die roll.

On to Round Three!

Diving Right In

Remember Rule #1? Don't be afraid to make mistakes?

Well I think I faced Big Hurdle #2 in learning ASL(SK) today by facing down the beast known as VEHICLES!

In wanting to kill two birds with one stone I joined up with Talloaf who I met on the 'Geek when we started posting AARs. Mr. Talloaf was about the same level and we had both had to get our first exposure to vehicles and VASL out of the way for the upcoming VASLeague tourney (you did sign up right? You have 2 days left!).

Well, rather than pussyfooting around we went directly to S21 Clash At Borisovka, one of the vehicle-only scenarios in SK3. Rather than slowly learning we just went whole hog. Here's a pic of the board position at the end of our session today (3.5 hours!):

Talloaf rolled up the German side with two Tiger tanks and some Panzer IVF2s to try to eliminate or prevent my ten or so T-34 M41s and M43s from running off the map to the right (south).

I have to say a couple of things:

1. Talloaf has been a fantastic opponent. I daresay we have been pretty gentlemanly and forgiving of mistakes as we hash out how to move and shoot tanks around. He's been awesome!
   


2. Count Zero graced us with his presence and led us through an early part of the the first turn so THANKS!
   


3. We played for almost four hours and only got through 1.5 turns. Insanity? I can recall being on the edge of my seat for the whole time. If nothing else, ASL is a TENSE game. i use to scoff at tourney reports of players taking six hours for a six-turn scenario. No more. It's not like we sat around chatting about things -- we were on and learning the whole time. Terrific! My wife, who saw me only as she came downstairs a couple of times, said I had a look of intense concentration on my face. I actually was not dressed for the cold basement and have a chill now.
   


4. The Vehicle rules, so far, are like the Infantry rules, a great attempt at making a simultaneous movement system work in I-GO, U-GO. Again, a lot of intricate but very very logical details in the mechanics. More on this in an AAR or something.
   

That's it for now; now the Prawn can start learning the vehicle rules... where the inevitable smashing will commence!

p.s. GO SIGN UP FOR THE VASLEAGUE! VASLeague@gmail.com!
p.p.s. Thanks again to richfam for making this less of a heroic endeavour than it had to be!

AAR #2 - S2 - War of the Rats - Part Three

Wow I better get this second AAR wrapped up because the Prawn has asked-- nay -- demanded a rematch of S2 War of the Rats and it's ON tomorrow!

Okay, the first thing I want to go over was the situation at the end of the game. The Prawn conceded at the end of turn 4. The reinforcements he was to receive sometime starting on turn 2 had still not shown up and there was every reason to believe that even if they had, it would have been too late.

Here's the pic of the final board at the conclusion of turn 4:



According to my pathetic memory, here's what stood in Prawn's way: (A) a first-line squad with LMG; (B) two squads with MMG; (C) two squads with leader and DC; (D) a squad, a leader, a LMG and FT; (E) two squads, one leader and a LMG; (F) a first-line squad mopping up some conscripts who routed north. Versus (G) a Russian squad with MMG and leader. [There was another squad and a half of Germans too.]

The Russian reinforcements would have entered from the south (right side of photo). They would have been two first (elite?) squads, a 9-2 leader and a LMG. I don't believe for a second that they would have advanced far enough in a turn or two under murderous fire to challenge one of the three victory buildings.

Part of our post-game discussion last week was whether the Prawn was right to concede. I think, more and more, that he did the right thing and saved Russian (cardboard) lives. Perhaps a few more games under our collective belts would confirm our suspicions.


Mistakes

1. Well we corrected some of our laziness and actually laid down residual fire counters this time (though we slacked off at the end again). We were pretty meticulous on the DRMs for all IFT rolls -- FFMO, FFNAM, Hindrance, Smoke, Leadership Mods, TEMs etc. I think on the whole we may have missed only a couple of mods which is a good improvement on last time.

2. So what did we miss? Prawn's Russians were mostly "Inexperienced". That means that they had less MF, cowered twice as bad and their B#s were all one less as well [5.4]. To be honest, there was very little cowering for some reason in our IFT rolls so I don't think it was decisive. This probably was balanced by the forgetting that German squads with the FT provided opponents' fire with a -1 DRM -- again though, this wasn't decisive in my memory [4.2]. Even stevens then and we'll get this right for sure in the rematch.

3. Final Protective Fire. I had to check this multiple times because it got nuts. On at least two occasions, Russian squads fired at least half a dozen times versus adjacent German units who had shown up on their doorsteps in MPh. The original DR counts as a NMC every time they fire and they can fire indefinitely until they break [3.3.3]. As I said, on two occasions Prawn's Russian creeps blasted adjacent Germans 5-6 times with FPF to no effect until they themselves broke. In hindsight this breaking of low morale troops probably hastened his demise. The sheer number of shots though was breathtaking.

4. ELR. [5.1] I think we may have ELR'ed a unit or two in Rally Phase. Rallying does NOT equal Morale Checks. ELRing occurs only on UNBROKEN units failing a MC bigtime. I think we may have ELRed a broken unit or even one in RPh -- I'm not sure but this is something to keep in mind for the rematch (and let's face it, not like the Russian Conscripts were ELRing down to "Moron" status).

And that might be it.... As I said in part one, the new rules added from S1 to S2 were basically SWs and ELR. We easily captured those rules into our game. [As an aside, my creation of the eASLSK3 has really helped my proficiency with the rules.]


Lessons

5. Smoke is good. I don't care what the Prawn says, smoke was good in leaving up +2 hindrances so my Germans could cross the big empty streets with a lot less casualties. Having a Russian have to roll a 9 instead of a 7 to force a NMC is a big difference.

6. Skulking. Okay, I finally get what this is about. ASLers are always talking about "skulking". Basically it's a "gamey" technique of Assault moving your squads out of LOS of your opponent when you're the ATTACKER and defending the scenario objectives and subsequently Advancing them in APh back to their original hexes. Why? To avoid the incoming Defensive Fire Phase which is sandwiched between them. "So what?" you say. I think I broke at least a few squads of the Prawn's who sat around in their original hexes who Prep Fired to little effect earlier. The argument against this is that it's "gamey" -- that is, a tactic that is allowed by the rules but is ahistorical or not something the squads in "Real Life" would have attempted. Until this scenario I always thought it was a stupid and "gamey" thing to do but I think Prawn's final results have a bit to say about its effectiveness. Besides, nobody should be arguing about realism when they're pushing cardboard around a paper map.

7. Defensive Options. Okay, Prawn and I discussed this a lot at the end of the game. I felt that his defense across the board was probably sub-optimal. I really felt that his placement of the MMG in the rear was really not good. All it did was dissuade me from going to the back of the map which was, uh, empty of victory buildings. Was this a poor reverse-slope defense? I think so. Would it be better to anchor his flanks with the MGs in front? Prawn's counter to this was that I had the first shot and second set-up so I would naturally put my MMG across the street with the best leader and squads I had and blast away in turn one (and yes I would have). My rebuttal was basically that the MMG in the back was not the solution to this problem. I don't know if there's a proper solution to this puzzle and maybe that's what is so great about ASL -- the fun just in thinking about tactics.

8. Conscripts. They suck. Prawn's current thinking is they are best used to soak and absorb and speedbump the Germans en masse on a specific part of the map and should not have been so spread out. Their primary task is to keep the Germans occupied and distracted until the "elite" Russian reinforcements show up. I think there's no question that the tougher row to hoe is the Russian side in this scenario -- a lot of close sheparding of crappy squads is necessary and a solid set-up and plan is critical. Then again, isn't this what makes games like ASL fun?

So I hope this wrap up of the first War of the Rats was educational. War of the Rats II: The Reckoning lands soon!