I think my dog figured out if she sat next to the board then she'd get to cuddle with me. It didn't work. All my hands were in use holding the rule book and scratching my head.
For the non-gamers in my audience, ASL is Advanced Squad Leader - a World War II squad level game. Think of it as the game of Saving Private Ryan where you're Tom Hanks' commanding officer. In this particular scenario, the Americans have occupied a French village called Vierville and the Germans are attempting to reclaim it. This is my initial set-up with Sgt O'Brien controlling the crossroads.
The Germans attack from the top and the bottom (east and west) and the American reinforcements arrive from the right (north). As there was good cover for the Germans on the left hand side of the board, and not much on the right, the Germans chose to attack from the southeast and southwest. O'Brien and his men held off the German commanding officer, forcing him to retreat into a building, but the half squad at the other end of the road was quickly eliminated.
Eventually the Germans realised they'd made an enormous strategic error by not occupying the building in hex R7 (the rightmost American unit). That unit controlled a vast area around it, and along with O'Brien they protected the entrance to the village for the American reinforcements. The Germans probably should have occupied the building even further to the north as well.With the roads open to American reinforcements, the centre of Vierville was soon decorated with stars and stripes and apple pies and photos of Mae West, and the German forces suffered some heavy fire and were forced to retreat. They eventually sent O'Brien crying back to his mummy, but Highsmith arrived with more firepower and prevented any hope of German occupation of the centre of the village. O'Brien had won the war for the Americans!
Overall, this was a decent experience, but I did spend an awfully long time trying to figure out all of the rules which applied to each situation. I think I've made enough sense of movement and Defensive First Fire now, and will be able to play a lot more smoothly next time. Routing (i.e. broken forces retreating, potentially under fire) wasn't so bad, but I know that I missed the rule about units which fail morale checks being degraded. I remembered it too late and decided not to apply it. I'll have to read the rule book again and play again to see how it works.
It seems to me that the game is not so much about killing, but about controlling area. It was very often the case that forces crumbled under fire without taking casualties, and became ineffective without being dead. In a real world scenario, this might relate to everybody hiding behind buildings and being unable to progress or reunite; or getting lost in some trees. In Saving Private Ryan a sniper effectively stalls the progress of the squad as they struggle to find a safe way past him. There's much more of that sort of disablement, and not so much death. If a squad can establish a position overlooking a road they can lay down so much firepower on the road that anyone who tries to use it will break and so cannot progress down the road. There's enormous power in controlling the paths to the objective.
Next time, the Germans will know that.
5 comments:
My first game didn't actually get played to its conclusion... I'd made way too many massive rules errors. Oh, and discovered why moving units in stacks was a bad idea. :)
If you haven't seen them yet, I advise reading Jay Richardson's tutorials.
Good luck, John! :)
Cheers,
Merric
It sounds like I didn't do as badly as you. The Americans moved their units in stacks to get the leader movement bonus and also because they had undisputed control of the roads. After 5 turns each (and 6 hours) the Germans conceded defeat - it was their turn, and their few good order units would have to cross the street in the face of overwhelming fire power at point blank range, which sounded like a recipe for disaster.
Occasionally, the Germans might be able to lay smoke to cover their advance, but it is generally a losing proposition at that stage. :)
6 hours? Yeah, it takes a while to get used to everything. I can play one of the ASL SK scenarios now in about an hour to ninety minutes. They're of a managable size.
Some of the full ASL scenarios are huge - there's one with about 80 units on each side, and goes for 14 turns. I've a feeling that it'd take over 24 hours to play the entire thing. Most scenarios are shorter, thank goodness!
It's funny that you're talking about solitaire wargames, because I've been starting down that path myself. I just played Field Commander: Rommel myself over the weekend.
I put a session report on my blog.
I'll vaugly second Ken's comments and say.....
It's funny that you're talking about ASLSK1 because I only ordered that last week (though chances are my opponent will be Simon, not myself)
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