Malaya Madness - February 2014 - the Games II

The Games

Game 3

J45 Strongpoint 11 vs George Bates

I have very little memory of this game other than it was a no-contest pretty early on. I really didn’t offer George a good game to my regret.  I owe him a much stronger game next time.

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Game 4

J128 Opium Hill vs Zeke Crater

I’d forgotten that I’d played this game until I read an AAR from Zeke. That’s not an indictment of the game or of Zeke, just reflecting my poor health over the last few months which left gaps in my memory. Rather than try and comment on stuff I can’t recall, I’ll quote Zeke’s AAR. Sad really as what little I can recall of the game was overwhelmingly positive.

“New Zealand's Pete Palmer and I next played J128 Opium Hill. Once again the dice were kind to me but cruel to my opponent. Pete had perfectly positioned his leader directed MMG up on the only hill, dominating the IJA entry zones. Pete's first shot broke the MMG and my armor assaulting IJA moved on in relative safety. A few more equally bad dice rolls for Pete and great dice rolls for me whittled down Pete's Malayan and British troops, delayed his AFV, and Xed his MMG repair roll. As we neared the end game Pete graciously conceded.”

This was where I doubled my Boxcars for the tourney…Snakey Pete was but a dim, distant creature of mythology by now.

The Quick and the Dead.

I swear I play worse at Tourneys than I do normally. I might manage one good game out of 4 or 5 but the rest are generally atrocious displays of tactical ineptitude and poor decision making. However, as per usual the pace of gameplay was pretty good. My natural style of play is conducive to a fast game and even being below par physically didn’t seem to affect this, thankfully.

I will admit to a somewhat skewed sense of pride at being considered a fast player, but I feel that all too often ASLers get too wrapped up in their comfort zone and play at a snail’s pace because they do not know any better. The strongest players I’ve faced are usually among the quickest as well. So I tried to demonstrate for some of the new players that you don’t need to analyse every possible outcome but as you get more comfortable with the core structure of the system, go with your gut.

A fast game is usually a good game, and if you can eliminate some of the ancillary time sinks ahead of time by creating and sticking to a plan, as well as some self-belief in your own play, then you will tend to play faster and smarter. It’s not about your game so much as making your opponent do the hard yards in response to the dilemmas you set. 

But there is one vital corollary to all this:

Speed is Fine, but Accuracy is Final.

Malaya Madness - February 2014 - the Games I

 The Games ( Rounds 1 and 2)

I only managed to play 4 games instead of the planned 5/6, thanks to a stress induced illness that blindsided me completely. Of those four games, I lost three and won one. So my results were pretty dire compared to my pre-tournament expectations. But really the results were immaterial in the wider scheme of things.

Game 1 (Mulligan round)

G46 Triumph Atop Taraldsvikfjell vs George Bates

George and I had both played AP08 A Bloody Harvest previously so I think we decided to opt for this one as neither of us had played it previously. 

I started out pretty well, but a couple of tactical no-nos on my part and George’s consistently efficient play put this one to bed pretty early on. I didn’t pace my game properly and it caught up with me.  I think I played the attacker but my memory is very vague at this remove of time. It seems I played the Germans. 

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Game 2

J103 Lenin’s Sons vs Stanley Neo

This game was a complete 180 degree change for me. I’m really not a good enough player to teach ASL and I’m not suited to teaching. Or so I thought. I felt a bit for Stanley, as this scenario is my Gavin Take/Totsugeki – I’ll play it at the drop of a hat. I modified the pace I play at so that there would be time to go through the whys and wherefores of ASL with Stanley if he wanted to ask questions. 

As it happens, Stanley has a solid grasp of tactics and he can focus…so time was always available and yet we played at a good solid pace. I did the usual Soviet blocking detachment + Commissar in the woods and despite a couple of scares on the ineffective Small Arms dicerolls, pretty much had the game in hand. What this did was allow me to show Stanley why I set up the way I did and what a German Player can do to mitigate the inherent strength of the Soviet wood defence.

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The pic doesn’t quite show how shattered Stanley’s Germans were at the end of the game but it does show the channeling that I created.

Malaya Madness - February 2014 - The Attendees

The Attendees

From the time George first mooted the idea publicly, I’d tried to be involved in promoting Malaya Madness, hoping to get some Aussie ASLers to come along (no joy, unfortunately), and when I saw John Knowles was actively considering attending despite his reservations and disdain for competition-oriented events, well that was even more reason to make damn sure I made it to Singapore.

There were going to be a fair few Gamesquad residents attending, including Mark Humphries and Ian Percy, plus some relative newcomers to ASL like Vlad See and Jackson Kwan. The enthusiasm was definitely there and I felt like my attendance would mean I was actually putting something back in to the ASL community in some small return for the years of enjoyment the game has given me.

So in the end we had a group of 14 attendees in total, some of whom were only able to drop in for one day. Never mind, it’s better to attend at all than spend time after the event wondering why you didn’t.

Of the attendees, I would say there were four or five who had been playing for five years or more, notably Alan Smee, George Bates, John Knowles, Ian Percy and myself.  Then there were the experienced boardgamers who were finding their feet in ASL: Mark Humphries, Zeke Crater. These are people with life and gaming experience.

The newer players had the enthusiasm of the neophyte ASL player, but a willingness to learn, socialise and participate in an ASL event for the first time. Malaya Madness turned out to be their event as George had always intended it to be and his work in organizing this cannot be overstated.

So for Jackson, Vlad, Stanley, David plus Jaime and the others who attended, Malaya Madness was an eye-opener into the all-consuming passion that ASL can become. I mean, what kind of lunatic flies 6000 kilometres to play 3 games of ASL over a long weekend?*

 

 

* I had intended to play 6 games, but there were external issues back home that affected my health  to the point where I had to can playing after the Saturday.

Malaya Madness - February 2014 - Beginnings

Origins:

It all started in the last quarter of 2013 when George Bates floated the idea of an Asia-Pacific ASL Championship as a means of creating a regional focal point for ASL.

Naturally, as the founder and organiser, George was looking to host the event in Singapore, a somewhat central location for the Asia-Pacific Region, given the then-known player bases active in Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong and the Philippines.  Initially, like several Australian-domiciled ASLers, I was lukewarm at the thought of travelling overseas for just 3 days of ASL and the attendant costs involved, particularly as it would occur soon after Cancon, which for many Aussie ASLers is their one ASL event of each year.

However, once I looked into the details of potential expenditure, Singapore did not seem out of the question. As long as I could find budget accommodation, eat on the cheap (it’s Asia after all), four nights was very doable.  I did a quick comparison with what the last CanCon cost me (around $1000.00 to cover travel, accommodation, food and absence from home) and Singapore was looking very attractive.

The original idea for Malaya Madness was for a hotel to act as the venue, but understandably for a new event and committed attendee numbers at a premium, the cost of a Hotel venue was just too high to be borne this time around. Instead the local Singaporean gaming community rallied around and George was able to secure a venue and location that enable him to focus on dealing with the usual “helpful suggestions” from prospective attendees and regional commentators regarding format, scenario choices and sundry opinions on ASL.

George provided a playlist of tried and true official scenarios, taking into consideration that the majority of the attendees would be relatively new to ASL and didn’t have access to the ASL libraries that some of us have accumulated over almost 30 years of addiction. There was some fairly robust discussion back and forth on Gamesquad and via email regarding the initial choices and some of the less stellar choices were eliminated or substituted for alternates that better reflect ASL as it is played and designed today.

The format was to have 5 rounds of play including the Friday evening "Mulligan" round to break the ice. With twelve confirmed attendees, the format was originally single-elimination, but this was quickly done away with, much to the relief of those coming in from overseas.

NB: This was written some 7 months after attending Malaya Madness so there are undoubtedly some errors in my recall of events and discussions. 

November 2013 Paddo Bearz meeting

Trooped down to Sydney for the monthly Paddo Bearz meeting today, and yes I played some ASL face to face.

Jeremy Dibbens and I played a game of BB5/G35/ASL105 Going To Church with Jeremy taking the attacking Canadians and myself playing the point defence SS. I almost made the cardinal mistake of reading the VCs and leaving myself vulnerable to a loss after a single Prep Fire attack, but realised just in time.

Jeremy has good taste in ASL, he picked up  a full Raaco set, an LFT dice tower and Battleschool dice so his ASL gear is all shiny new and freshly punched. However he has not clipped the counters, although as he has been playing Ivan recently, he now knows the True Path of ASL Counter Righteousness.

Here's a picture of my still flawed final setup and tactical plan. The 238 stacked with the hero and 8-0 should have been on Level 2 in E4.

Pre-Game Setup and Plan.

Jeremy is still relatively new to ASL (I felt rather bad handling his shiny new counters - it just felt wrong) so he was up against it a little bit in that I had played this scenario before as both Germans and Canadians, plus I had an idea on how to prepare for the end game with blocking half-squads on stairwell locations.

Despite generating a second hero from the 238 in the belltower, Jeremy was still in a very strong position by turn 3. I feel he wasted time in crossing to the stone wall, particularly as he had managed to get Smoke into G3 on Turn 1 and I was hurriedly redeploying to get at least a 658 and 348 back to the church.

Sadly for Jeremy, he bum-rushed his 9-2 plus 458 into OG adjacent to a waiting 348, 6 down 2: DR: 1,2 = Final DR of 1:  2KIA. The good thing is that my end game was pretty well played, and Hjeremy took away some insights I hope, particularly with the Cleavinator kibitzing with our total approval.

I think I am at the point where I am more comfortable "teaching" ASL to someone who is not a complete novice, because both of us get to learn things. Next up for Jeremy, a delivery of US counters (my duplicate set of Yanks) and Chapter H, plus a few Schwerpunkt scenarios that will help him (and me) with understanding Shermans and US infantry capabilities - there is no way I would ever expect someone to grasp US infantry and Shermans from scenarios such as Kurhaus Clash or Among the (skulking) Ruins.

I also picked up my copy of Friendly Fire 8, so expect a few overviews of the scenarios to come...plus hopefully some PBeM/Live VASL updates - a lot of games on the boil or just starting to simmer now.

J126 Ugly Faces: An Ugly Dicing

John Knowles and I sat down this afternoon to play J126 Ugly Faces from Journal Nine, a Chas Argent design that initially seemed to get some bad press and some fairly rough treatment for the Germans.

The omens were not propitious as I knocked over my best coffee mug onto the tiled floor before the game even started. Cacophonix may even have struck up a dirge about Toutatis and the sky falling around that time. 

John took the Germans with balance (and that additional 20mm FP is damn useful) and we started to play:

Now I will claim that 8 months away from playing ASL stultified my normal defensive brilliance, but we all know that to be an outright falsehood. I set up the 37* INF far too far forward and had nothing really to stop an end run by the Sdkfz 222s on the right.

And so it proved..because I did absolutely nothing on German Turn 1, apart from stunning the Bathtub. I lost the two squads in U9 because I let them get caught in CC rather than leaving one concealed and/or vol breaking the other and john ambushed me. The only shots I was taking were either decent TH shots or 8+ FP DF or 4FP resids, all the DRs tending to match my MCs and PTCs which were averaging 7.5+ already. Not good when you are French.

So after Turn 1 I was in a power of trouble. Turn two was just annoyingly vicious as I was flanked, broken and routed as well as dead from FTR. The 222s were already in the backfield up by the stone wall on the Y hexrow crossroads.

Turn Three was just bad, and I had a chance to rectify it , but I ended up with 14/60 non-wind change DRs being 9+ versus John's 14/50 of 4 or less. There was an opportunity to cause some havoc as Johnhad not safeguarded the ongoing Melee in W1 which if I had surviuved would have allowed me to threaten the three multi-hex buildings in the south. Alas it was not to be, and the final straw was the last possible 4 up 1 snakes vs one of my 18pdrs that took out the truck, the crew, the gun and a 237 hs that was to assist in bringing the gun into action.

An Ugly game of Ugly Faces , but the scenario deserves a lot more respect than it gets. I won't be counting this game as truly representative as the dice were extreme on both sides.

So it didn't even get past the CC phase of Allied Turn 3. Says it all really. Still want to play this again though as either side.