My year in ASL

I haven’t written an AAR for a while, because my opponent kept beating me to the punch. So here are my remaining games from this year in a condensed format, for the sake of completeness.

After “Gavin Take”, we played “The Guards Counterattack“. I believe I lost, and I don’t really like the scenario. It feels very static and inflexible to me, due to the way the OB is prearranged on the board. It is not really the masterpiece it’s made out to be by the veterans.

Next up was “Land Leviathans“, twice with reversed roles. I lost as the German player and won on the Russian side – even though this happened to me:

It is an interesting scenario, but somewhat weird from the German perspective. With dice rolls that are shitty enough, the Russian player can win the game in their second turn, and when I played the German side, Pyro came really close to that. The game requires the Russian player to get three of his ten or so tanks off-board, and he had one platoon of three tanks close to an exit hex in his first turn. I managed to blow up one of them, but couldn’t prevent him from bringing another tank off-board somewhere else a bit later.

The Russians have shitty mobility thanks to their platoon movement, but still I feel like the scenario is slightly pro-Russian. The Scenario Archive disagrees.

Next up was “Ranger Territory” from Paratrooper. It’s an interesting scenario about German infantry with two tanks overrunning an American stronghold on a hill, and even though I hate American Elite infantry with their friggin’ laser rifles, I won with a classic flanking attack I’m rather proud of.

After that, we continued with “Infantry Brigade Model” by Friendly Fire. Again, I’m the German player who gets a whole bunch of cavalry. The game is still in progress, and the only thing I can say so far is that I hate HATE HATE Cavalry. It can’t attack, it can’t stand enemy attacks and it can’t even move in woods with decent speed. I hate Cavalry. It’s useless.

Really.

Thanks to a forced break of several months and my inability to keep PBeM games going, this year was rather lackluster ASL-wise. But it’s been an interesting year, with my first Full ASL AFV game, my first cavalry game, my first Overrun, my first Human Wave… I guess that’s not so impressive for a grognard, but for me, it’s sort of an achievement.