Hull Down

  For my next series of articles for newbies I thought I would concentrate on something that tends to cause issues with all new players and that is simple tank combat. Literally one tank on one tank to try and get some safety concepts into new players heads.   Tanks are precious resources in ASL. Most scenarios are designed with 'basic competence' in the rules ingrained so if you have a tank (especially a late war tank) then the scenario is often balanced on the owning player knowing how to use that tank properly. If due to lack of experience it isn't used competently or gets destroyed fast then the actual game balance is suddenly drastically against you which can lead to bad gaming experiences. In my own ASL career for probably the first few years my own tank experiences went something like this Ooo I have a panther. Supposed to be one of the best tanks in the war..Great this will be fun. Ok lets start up and move to attack. Enemy approaching I will take a shot!. Wha...

  Another blog rescue posted August 30th 2014 originally. ASL has a habit of letting you coast for a bit then suddenly reminding you that you don’t really know the rules and have become too set in your comfort zone. In my last game a nasty line of sight issue involving crests had arisen and at the ‘Double One’ competition an opponent had explained a way of approaching this that made sense. Then I started my next game and in this game was a hill and I the hassle this multi-level hill caused in the first few turns was unbelievable. Fortunately due to fog this did not disrupt the game play too much (beyond much head scratched and rules delving) but it did cause me to decide that I really need to get my head around crest lines and line of sight properly. So as is normal these days I piled into the internet and read the various excellent articles out there and believe I have this better settled. As I blog so obviosuly have some deep seated need to place my blatherings for all to read I ...

Are yes a report of November 14th 2014. I made a slight mistake in this topic of mentioning some tactics a player (who will remain nameless but might be guessed if you have followed the re-posts closely) actually used…Still smarting from something really…. I was hit recently with a thought whilst reading one of sitreps latest post ( in an excellent series of articles on the starter kits) at a similar time to eion posting a link to a blog post concerning the death of wargaming that I had first read years ago. The bit that I found interesting was the ‘Death of Wargaming”  articles comment on ASL  Death Article link  “culminating with the release of ADVANCED SQUAD LEADER, a game so complex than one could teach college-level courses in its play, so convoluted that its developer, Don Greenwood, felt compelled to include such minutiae as the Kindling Availability Table and the Sewer Emergence Chart. It is hard to believe that even the most macho of ‘I-know-the-rules-...