Advanced Squad Leader – A Return to Face to Face Play

By David Garvin

The effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic are still with us and as gamers, the one thing we all strive to do – play games against an opponent – was a rarity.  Thankfully face-to-face opportunities are with us once again, masks notwithstanding! Such was the case recently for players of Advanced Squad Leader in Eastern Canada.

Players lining up to play at Maritime Mashup!

The D-Day Dodgers, an ASL Club in Canada’s Maritimes, decided to host a at the end of September. The original aim was to take advantage of a larger gaming tournament; however, as the ASL tournament grew in scope, the tournament organizers decided to host the tournament as a separate, stand-alone event.

We may be alone, but at least we’re alone!

As stated in other articles, ASL has thousands of scenarios, and the struggle for any tournament organizer is to get a set of scenarios that can be played in a tournament setting, are fairly well-balanced and have some sort of appeal. For this tournament, the organizers went deep into the vault and selected 12 such scenarios, many from the early days of ASL, many from the so-called Tournament Series.

These early scenarios are all pretty much known as classics by those who play. The style of play over the years has developed and evolved in spite of very little change from the original rules first issued in 1985. One such style that evolved over the years was the use of the half squad as scouts. The game from which ASL evolved, Squad Leader, had a rule for scouts, but it was clunky, prone to abuse and thus was abandoned when ASL compiled.

Typically, a player will use deployment (Rule A1.31) to create 2 half squads out of a squad. Then, with little concern for their safety, a player will move them forward, often using double time (Rule A4.5). The hope is that the defender will be forced to shoot at the half squad, thus revealing at least some of his units. Alternately, the player will move these ersatz scouts into hexes containing concealed units, revealing them to be dummies or at least some if not all of the units in that stack.

Fog of War: Half Squads to the rescue!

Another play tactic that has evolved over the years is the so-called “Bypass Freeze Sleaze”. The real term is target selection limits (Rule A7.212). This rule states basically that if an enemy unit is in your location, you don’t have freedom to fire out of that location. It is rare for infantry to enter locations with enemy infantry already in it (see Berserk, rule A15.4, and Banzai, rule G1.5); however, Armored Fighting Vehicles (AFVs), (Rule D1.2) have very little difficulty entering locations with said infantry.

A popular way to do this so-called “Bypass Freeze Sleaze” is to have the AFV use Vehicular Bypass Movement or VBM (Rule D2.3). Typically, the vehicle will remain in bypass of the enemy unit, thus prohibiting its ability to shoot outside its hex. Using this tactic against infantry with hand-held Anti Tank weapons can be quite dangerous, however, for obvious reasons.

Bypass Late-War German Infantry at your own peril

Finally, scenarios have gotten shorter and smaller over the years. One popular early scenario, Among the Ruins, from 1987’s Yanks! is nine and a half turns long. There are 23 attacking squads with 3 Shermans, up against 12 defending squads, and 7 machine-guns. According to the popular web site , this scenario will take, on average, nine hours to play!

As such, finding tournament-ready scenarios can be a challenge. But as stated, the ones selected for Maritime Mashup were not only designed for tournament play in terms of play time, they are also light on Scenario Special Rules. These are included with every scenario and are alterations to the main rules and at a minimum give the weather for the scenario in play.

With that, the 10 players assembled in Fredericton on the 24th of September and geared up for four rounds of tournament play. After an opening ceremony honouring the memory of Jim McLeod, founder of the , round one kicked off and ended just before midnight. After matchups were done for round two, the players retired for the evening. The next day saw two more rounds with the final round on Sunday morning.

Players facing off in the first round

By the time the dust settled on Sunday, the winners had been determined.  Michael Rodgers from Montreal finished first with an overall record of 4-0. Next was Bill Thomson of Texas with a record of 3-1.  Several players ended up 2-2, but third went to Alain Chabot of Quebec City, based on the third tie breaker.  Finally George Kaloxolis of Hamilton, Ontario got the Sportsman award.

Interestingly enough, of the 12 scenarios selected for the tournament, with three from which to choose per round, all 12 were played at least once!  The battles varied from the extreme winter rules used on the outskirts of Moscow in “The Dead of Winter” to the ground snow covered forests of the Ardennes in “The Attempt to Relieve Peiper”.

General Gavin leading his troops on D-Day in Normandy, as they race to their objectives past a blocking force of Germans.

The win/loss record was secondary to the fun and excitement of tournament play. All 10 players made it known that they would love to come back next year. The experience alone was worth it, according to many. And the free-flowing tall tales as well as scotch, beer and rum probably did wonders to assist in that.

That said, it was a pleasure to see scenarios dating back to 1987 being used, especially the first of the so-called “Tournament Scenarios” being played, “T1 Gavin Take”.  Of note, this scenario has been played no less than 574 times, with the US winning 280 and the Germans 294. This is according to the ROAR. Until next year!

David Garvin is an avid ASL player and ran “Maritime Mashup” as Tournament Director from 24 to 26 September. This was held in Fredericton, NB, Canada and had players from as far afield as Texas and Halifax, Nova Scotia.