Choosing scenarios

One of the more difficult things I find in ASL is choosing a scenario to play against a new opponent.

With the Cleavinator, it's all about playing something neither of us have played before, something fresh and probably from Bounding Fire or more commonly from Friendly Fire, due in no small part to the quality of playtesting that has gone into them and their track record.

I call this aspect of scenario choice, the ASLOK syndrome: where it's all about the scenario packs released at or just prior to ASLOK. It's testament to the impact of ASLOK on my playing psyche that what was once anathema to me is now part and parcel of playing the Cleavinator and face to face play. I still have issues grokking a new scenario, but I am improving.

With John Knowles, it's more about completing playthroughs of the official scenarios, this can mean going through the GI's Dozen pack, Turning the Tide or filling the gaps from Journals and Action Packs. As I've been playing John since 1988, we've worked our way together through BV, Para, Yanks, Partisan, West of Alamein, Hollow legions and Streets of Fire of the official modules, with a scattering of scenarios from the rest of the modules, although neither of us are pre-disposed towards the PTO when playing each other. Some habits and prejudices die exceptionally hard.

John and I have gone through most of the Annuals as well, plus a couple of Journals (One and Seven notably) along with Pegasus Bridge and Watchtower/Veritable. We don't play as often as we'd like, real life gets in the way all too often these days, but when we're able to, we crank out about 1 scenario over two or three VASL sessions.

I would dearly love to get into a themed series of scenarios against the one opponent, something like Playing each of the ToT packs, AP 3 or harking back to the old days, the Market Garden linked series from Annual 91. Currently my own personal theme is trying to play scenarios that feature the T35 or T28. there aren't that many  as it is, but as it generally involves early Barbarossa, the scenarios are usually less about Hit and Kill than Hit, hope you kill and try try again.

This whole business of choosing a scenario without a theme or inbuilt selection limitations has become somewhat harder given the breadth of scenarios available. And that's why I've taken the step of listing the ASL I own, on the new pages at the top of the blog. this means that I can easily direct a potential opponent to see what scenarios I have access to, and my preferences/grails so to speak are determinable at a glance. there is nothing worse than spending 3-6 emails just working out which scenario is going to be played. Particularly if you are in a time limited PbeM round such as can occur in the VASL Open league when timezones are out of whack.