Games over the weekend

Played two games over the weekend, plus got another three turns done in my VASL league game.. The first game was FB12 The Black Ravens are flying (awesome scenario title) with me as the German/Hungarian vs Aaron C's Soviets. This is just a freaking cool situation and design. Definitely a keeper. Reminds me a little of MP11 Vulcan's Forge in the potential for melee shenanigans on turn 1. We ended up with a tank each trying to share the same orchard hex in setup, hilarious. Lost but who cares, this was my first game from FB and a bit of prep for Cancon.

The second game was J129 Mountain Hunters from Journal 9 versus John Knowles. Peter Struif one of the designers watched our game over a couple of sessions, and I hope we didn't stun him with the mediocrity of our play, particularly in the second session where we were at an impasse in terms of poor DRs. In the end, it came down to the Stug clearing the way while John's commissars did more damage to his troops than I did. The soviet guns up on the rearmost ridge were very frightening, especially after my 60mm Mtr permanently xed itself during repairs on turn 2. All in all, a very good scenario, belying its ROAR record. Sure I achieved all the VC options, but it was really tight between getting all three and only getting one.

Confusion Reigns is still going strong, I put a good turn's delay on the US 9-2 stack of doom, but that was only temporary as they are back now and making me keep my head down. In my PBeM games, J148 Last Minute War has been notable by the Slovakian ACs bogging every single turn. It's now getting into the real mid game and is pretty fraught as both sides are still very much intact. SP184 Cornered Beasts has been notable for the Panzer III marksmanship in the first two turns, but everything else has been a little lacklustre although Soviet inf fire has been effective. Finally J147 Into the Grinding Mill has been exactly that with the Japanese Banzaiing into the midst of the defenses but at some risk and I am expecting a significant riposte from Chinese fire now....

With 5 games at Cancon to look forward to I think it might be my fastest ASL playing start to a year in two decades.

2012 in Review Part 2: Scenarios

So today I reached the magic number of 30 scenarios played for the year.  Of those 30 games, I managed to scrape out 7 victories, which looks pretty harsh in the cold light of day. It has been a very good year when you take into account I did not play any ASL from January to March and from July to October.

The Breakdown

There was a bit of a theme to many of my games as I played through the scenarios from several products in series.

6 scenarios were from Friendly Fire

5 scenarios were from SOCALASL's Mèlée Pack III
5 scenarios were from Journal 8
3 scenarios were from the Winter Offensive 2011 and 2012 packs
2 scenarios were from Journal 7
2 scenarios were from an upcoming Action Pack
2 scenarios were from Paratrooper

2 scenarios were from BFP
2 scenarios were from Schwerpunkt
1 scenario was from Doomed Battalions

So 50% of the games I played were published by MMP with the majority of the remainder coming from the usual recommended suspects in Third Party publishing, with a significant sample from a more esoteric publisher. The absence of LFT from this is purely because I am yet to arrange a theme opponent for a playthrough, plus I am tempted to wait until i can arrange some KGS Cholm play. Other publishers just didn't feature because I haven't looked at them this year.

Opponents

An axiom of ASL is that you learn more from playing a wide variety of opponents than you do from playing within a small playing circle. If that's the case, then I have learned a lot this year.

Apart from  John Knowles (8 games) and the Cleavinator (6), I played some 14 different opponents, 11 of whom were first time opponents.

So since ASLOK 2010 , I have pretty much quadrupled the number of people I have played in three short years.

 My 2012 shortlist

FRF 30 Biderman's Escape
SP    87 Fangs of the Tiger
BFP 30 Mèlée near the Coast
ASL 12 Confusion Reigns
MP   17 Bagging Burcorps (the only scenario I played twice in 2012)

So all in all, a much better year for actual play than I've managed in quite some time, and I will probably get two more games in by the end.

next up...what ASL crack did I get this year...and why Festung Budapest did not make the cut.

Theory and Practice: Those two imposters

"Theory is when you know everything but nothing works.
Practice is when everything works but no one knows why.
In my games of ASL, theory and practice are combined:
nothing works, and I have no f%&$ing idea why."

The job hunting continues, which has had an impact on my motivation to post AARs to the blog as supposed to succinct posts on Gamesquad. Things look to be improving though, more of that as matters coalesce.

I've been playing a fair bit of ASL lately via PBeM and especially live on VASL. Since the beginning of April, I've completed 8 games of Live VASL and have two PBeM games in varying stages of completion.

With John Knowles, we've completed our run through of the Winter Offensive 2011 pack scenarios but i haven't won any of them despite being in contention for at least 2 two of them right to the end. Aaron Cleavin and I are almost finished with our playing of the Melee Pack III scenarios, the last of which will probably be started and finished this coming weekend. Again, no wins from the 4 scenarios played so far as could be expected but some close games.

Of these seven scenarios, there are a few that stand out, in fact I would say that MP17 "Bagging Burcorps" is probably the highlight so far, It's a scenario that I have played before as both attacker and defender and enjoyed thoroughly despite losing both times. Suffice it to say, Aaron thought well enough of it to include it in the scenario list for the JunoBear tournament.

Of the other standouts, none features from the Winter Offensive pack sadly, mainly from the point of view of being enjoyable and interesting situations with a perception of balance. Facing three HIP 88LLs with good LOS to expected AFV movement channels is not something I expect to find that interesting given the Hit = KO equation, let alone facing 16 flat HE with 7 morale troops.

Some of this may be coloured by my failure to win a game, but given that the outcomes were close, the enjoyment factor during the games was paramount and I can remember feeling I was just going through the ASL motions in some games, not in terms of my tactics,, but purely because I could not see a way of avoiding expected outcomes.

They say bad ASL is better than no ASL. I now think that is a false equation. If the game is not enjoyable for me, I am at a loss on how my opponent might be enjoying it. For me, part of the intrinsic attraction of ASL as a game is that both players participate in a mutually enjoyable pastime/hobby. 

The other game I played was in Gary Fortenberry's AP9 Playtest Tourney where I faced Randy Shurtz in AP83 Take Two, a good little infantry only PTO design with some small but interesting tweaks on regular ASL fare. A little Pro-Japanese as it stands before fine-tuning after the first round of results, but with minor polishing and some clarifications, this looks to be a very solid tourney playing.

Now Randy is a very strong player, having beaten the Plevanator in a toruney himself, so I was very pleased to pull off the win. the disparity in our skill levels evened out nicely with the scenario, but I am pleased that it was not my dice that dominated the game (although my last turn Defensive First Fire was as usual, rather good) but rather my initial setup and patience in the opening turns. A significant factor was a misdirect involving a HIP squad and leader that did real damage to one of Randy's stronger probes.

So 1 and 7 so far, with one PBeM likely to be decided in the next week or so. I have kept reasonable records of the games so far via VASL so when I have the intellectual energy, I will try and provide some detailed AARs here.

P.S. You know you've been out of the loop ASL wise, when you forgot that you had bought Crucible Of Steel and declined a game on VASL because of this.

ASL: After Action Report - MP17 "Bagging Burcorps" Part 2

The situation after the initial Japanese Turn:

End of Japanese Player turn 1

It's already looking a tad like I've invited the Japanese through an open gate right up the middle.

After regrouping:

End of British Player Turn 1

More to come once I retreive the VASL logs.

After Action Report - MP17 "Bagging Burcorps" Part 1

I've played one scenario from the SoCal ASL guys before and really enjoyed that (MP12 "Vulcan's Forge" - Stalingrad) so when Pierce Mason suggested MP17 as a Pacific Theatre scenario, I was fine. It's not a complex scenario on the face of it, with only Light Jungle and standrd PTO rules in effect, but it is a fighting withdrawal over 7 turns over effectively 1.75 board-depths.

The British are not your everyday plucky tommies, but second line troops, reasonably well equipped but not as cool under fire as their regular brethren. With that in mind I set up as follows:

 

 

And here's an expanded look:

 

 

 

The Japanese enters from the bottom of the picture and so they're going to be in my face pretty quickly. I should have time to redeploy from my reserve as necessary to react to the main thrust. I've looked to cover the Left flank with a picket line of one and a half sections - if the main thrust comes that way, I'll be very surprised as it's the long way around to the Japanese objective (a small ville far to the North). The right flank is protected by a reduced strength platoon with a senior subaltern and a Bren. This should prevent an attempt to use the easy approach down the right.

The centre is guarded by again a trip wire defence of a section and a bit, while the centre is very much where I expect to develop my reserve and a blocking position around the chokepoint in BB6 where a small watering hole constricts the path to the North. One part of my reserves are going to be sent to the north early on to develop a prepared position for the end game, and watch out for infiltrating Japanese recce troops.

Unfortunately in my initial setup I've effectively tried to defend everywhere and left some inviting gaps for infiltration. I didn't fully take note that British 2nd Line still cower and that the paucity of spray fire weapons makes for major defensive fire weaknesses. However if I can fall back in good order without losing too many casualties to Japanese close quarters attacks and fire I'll be happy.