ASL: s45 - Revenge at Kastelli

 I finished my first complete game of Advanced squad leader over VASL just recently. VASL is a derivative of VASSAL, a virtual boardgame application which allows you to play boardgames and wargames over the internet. The system enforces very little of the rules in the game. It just creates a virtual board you can move pieces on. The good thing about this system is that you can play against anybody around the world and can load and save large setups in the blink of an eye. You can always put the game away and continue later, no matter how big it is. Also, I really like it when VASL graphically transforms the map depending on season, special rules and so on. Something which is impossible with the boardgame. Having a bright green map and pretending its the middle of January in Finland is a bit difficult.

Anyway, I played the session with my regular ASL opponent in about 4 sessions I think. We played two hours here, and hour there. The game takes a bit longer to play on VASL as it takes time to vebally explain your actions where the same things would be easy to point out to your opponent if he was in the same room. In this scenario, Revenge at Kastelli, German paratroopers stick their nose where it doesn't belong in a Cretan village. The Greek forces, composed mostly of troops inferior to the Germans in quality, have an advantage in numbers.

I was playing the Germans, and my objective was to survive ten rounds against the Greek and prevent him from amassing 20 casualty victory points. I reckoned attack to be the best defence and worked to surround the village occupied by the Greek at the start. 

Everything is still looking good for the Germans at around the fifth turn.

Things were going just fine for half of the match with the Greek troops forced on the defensive in the village. At some point I think I forgot what I was supposed to be doing and tried too hard to take the village. The paratroopers ended up taking some nasty casualties and the Greeks got the initiative back. On the last two turns the Greek forces made a really aggressive, really effective counterattack and scattered the Germans. All I could do was watch the carnage and try to rout to safety. Still, my opponent had no trouble reaching his goals. Only a couple of small pockets of German resistance remained on the table when the greeks hit 20 victory points. I guess this teaches me to keep the objective bright in my mind. 

Overkill?

These two ASL games we've played recently really sparked my interest in the game back to life. We already agreed we'd play a scenario from Valor of the Guards next week so I guess there's some grim Stalingrad action coming up!

First PvP playtest of Fire and Fury (and a bit of ASL)

Today me and my regular wargames opponent, Simo, played a playtest battle for the Fire and Fury rules. We played the Battle of Newmarket scenario taken from http://www.fireandfury.co.uk/scenarios.htm as it wasn't too big and had infantry, artillery and cavalry to try out.

I had played the same scenario by myself solitarire style before to get to know the rules but now we played full Pvp. Simo was quick to pick up what I had learned from the rules and we quickly got a nice pace to the game. I think we played four hours overall. In the beginning as per scenario setup, the scattered union forces face a concentrated attack by conferedate forces. Simo was playing the confederates and he got off to a good start by kicking the butts of the two or three brigades facing his forces with superior troops and solid dice rolling. The confederate forces advanced quickly towards the Bushong farm line while the union forces scrambled in an uncoordinated retreat. The union reinforcements did get to deploy in time and the Sigel was able to dress the defensive line in the last minute.

Now that the Union line was in proper order, the confederates faced a more challenging task. The union guns and muskets started to disorder and whittle down the confederate line and their attack ran out of impetus. The two lines exchanged fire for a couple of turns without either side gaining the upper hand.

At this point we calculated victory points and found out the confederates, having decimated several brigades, were in a healthy lead. Seeing that the confederacy didn't need to advance anymore to win, I attempted a charge with the union troops to even the score. Charging headlong to the front of confederate brigades with cavalry might be a cinematic sight, but it is also suicidal. Several stands removed, the attackers retreated in disorder. We decided that we didn't need to play the final turn of the scenario as it was getting late.

The game was fun and filled with entertaining events, even though the ruleset is fairly abstract. I also already remember a lot of the dice/firepower modifiers in game by heart, which speeds up play nicely. I'll just have to wait for those laser cut bases I ordered from Litko to come so we don't have to play with pieces of cardboard.

Also, me and Juniori (another regular opponent) played a game of ASL yesterday. Scenario 49 "Piercing the Peel" from Last Hurrah. It was a German versus Dutch match in 1940.  The board was countryside with hills, hedges, grain and orchards. The Dutch had a trenchline with three pillboxes but the pillboxes were facing the wrong way. The germans had managed a surprise attach to the rear.

The german objective was to take two of the three pillboxes. The dutch are not very good quality troops especially compared to the Germans, but they managed to put up a fight. In the end, the Germans didn't manage to take more than one pillbox. According to the rules, taking a pillbox isn't very easy as you cannot advance into melee with the occupants but have to shoot them all dead in order to enter. I think we may have gotten some rule wrong with this, as it didn't seem that realistic. I'll have to look into it.