ASL

Editor’s note: This week David takes a look at how the hobby of TT Wargaming helped him through a tough emotional time. In this story, he reminds us that our games are not just about the counters, the figures, the little toy soldiers, but about the people across the table from us. The hobby can be community as well. And that can help us all.

By David Garvin

On the 4th of July this year, my mother died. She lived her last days at a hospice near the shores of the Bay of Quinte in eastern Ontario, Canada. Almost as if on cue after her passing, a pair of CF-188 Hornets of the Royal Canadian Air Force flew overhead as they conducted a series of touch-and-goes at nearby 8 Wing at Astra, Ontario. A fitting tribute, especially how much my mother loved going to the base to watch the air shows.

Personally, I was at my mother’s side in her last days, being able to visit with her while she was still lucid and able to ensure that her spiritual needs were fulfilled and being able to pray in her presence, finishing with an Angelus for her less than an hour before her death.

By David Garvin

When I first played Squad Leader back in 1983, I found that 35-page rule book to be rather complex. The rules were laid out in Programmed Instruction in order to facilitate ease of learning. This just meant that the player only had to read a few pages, play a scenario and then progress.  By the time the player had gone through the book, he or she could then play any scenario.

This method of instruction continued through the original series, up to and including GI: Anvil of Victory. By that time, the player could play any of 47 scenarios released with the games, and a number more of officially-released scenarios. There were a few third-party scenarios, including some from On All Fronts and even Dragon Magazine. That said, as I attempted to parse some of the rules while hanging out with my friends, the language was at times dense.

Later as I delved into Advanced Squad Leader, (ASL) I found the rule book to be too much for me to initially comprehend. It was around 1986 and I failed to put any serious effort into learning the rules or the game.  Programmed Instruction was now a thing of the past, and even though there was a learning chapter, my friend Gary and I just never really got into it.

Imagine my surprise then, many years later as I was learning how to play, that not only were many people playing ASL – likely more than at any other point in its history – but also that there was a very large and vibrant international community of players. In fact, one of the first of many third-party producers made ASL scenarios in French!

By David Garvin

From March 23 to 26, I attended the 27^th Annual Nor’Easter Advanced Squad Leader (ASL) tournament in Fairhaven, Massachusetts. With the restrictions of the COVID pandemic waning, this tournament saw quite a resurgence. 49 players registered in advance, and in spite of a number of late-notice cancellations, just over 50 players showed up to roll the dice in the field of cardboard combat! That said, there were actually four tournaments: the main tournament and three mini tournaments. As well, and as is becoming more common, there was some ASL Starter Kit (ASL SK) play as well.

By David Garvin

From 14 to 16 October, I was the Tournament Director for an Advanced Squad Leader (ASL) Tournament in Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada. I hosted one there last year and had about a dozen gamers show up, from as far away as Hamilton, Ontario and even from Massachusetts.  This year, in spite of some buzz generated online, a number of unfortunate situations such as illness, moving, work and more caused many to cancel. In the end, a mere 4 gamers showed up to play. But in the end, that didn’t matter. We had our games, we had our opponents and we all soldiered on. This is a story of gaming in the face of adversity!

By David Garvin

In a previous post, I interviewed Dr. Andrew Hershey, designer of many Advanced Squad Leader (ASL) scenarios and Historical ASL campaign games, colloquially known as HASLs. It was quite evident after reading that interview, that there is quite a bit of research behind many ASL Scenarios and especially HASLs.

As such, by playing any well-designed HASL, one can gain a better understanding of the nature of the conflict at large and the feel of certain battles. For me, one of the best examples is found in the HASL Kampfgruppe Scherer: The Shield of Cholm (KGS). It was produced by le franc tireur in 2011 and designed by the aforementioned Dr. Andrew Hershey.

By David Garvin

In my previous article, I discussed how the designers of Advanced Squad Leader (ASL) took the characteristics of real-world tanks and then incorporated them into the game. The tanks of ASL all have the same three characteristics as their real-world inspirations: Firepower, Mobility, and Protection.

As promised, this article will tell you, the player, where to find the information to tell you what kind of Firepower your tank has, how mobile it is and what its protection is. The inspiration for these two articles came from a 5-minute conversation with a new ASL player and this was about a week or so ago. He was just learning how to play and he wasn’t sure where to look for information on the vehicles in a certain scenario. This article (and the previous) are the result of that conversation.

The Desert War comes to ASL

By David Garvin

From the 10th of June 1940 until the 13th of May 1943, Axis and Allied armies struggled against one another across North Africa until the Axis surrendered 275,000 prisoners of war. Many of us know of many of the battles and famed figures of the war. Kasserine. El Alamain. Tobruk. Rommel. Montgomery.

They all evoke images of the hot, dusty sand and the sweeping tank battles across the desert. There are many games that depict battles in North Africa, but few do it at the tactical level. After how, how does one maneuver over a barren landscape bereft of cover? Well, the folks at Avalon Hill came up with a way to do this with their Advanced Squad Leader (ASL) series.

So that’s what I’m going to discuss: how tactical desert warfare is gamed using ASL and some of the implications of fighting in the desert. Finally, I will discuss how Multi-Man Publications have brought the desert back to ASL after 34 years.

By David Garvin

Snipers are an important part of modern war, having gained great importance in the Second World War. , trained to provide highly detailed intelligence on the enemy and engage him only if the opportunity presents itself.

However, in World War Two they were largely employed as marksmen, trained to shoot a man-sized target out to about 300 yards, often with only using iron sights. In practically every tactical-level war game that I have played, snipers have often been ignored. It is a tricky problem as to how to mimic the effect of a single rifle-armed soldier taking that one shot that alters the fate of a battle.

Not all games ignore them, however, and in this article, I will show how that aforementioned problem was dealt with by the developers of . In so doing, I will explore back through the original Squad Leader system and how it first tackled the problem. Finally, I will give an anecdote about how it affected me, the human player, in one memorable match I played many years ago.

By David Garvin

There are many people who are much better gamers than I. From them, I have learned so much. I have discussed elsewhere some of my education in gaming, especially in Advanced Squad Leader. Many of these lessons were learned the hard way. I have set up some units illegally, only to have them removed upon discovery. I have miscalculated the Dice Roll Modifiers (DRM) of an attack. I have done many egregious errors.

But none have been as bad as misreading the victory conditions for a scenario. Or, more accurately, misunderstanding them. A of mine here on No Dice, No Glory led to some great discussion out on the internet. One point that kept coming up was that in about one-third of all games, one side or the other will have an incorrect idea of how to win. This article will discuss what players ought to do in order to ensure a complete understanding of how to win their scenario.

By David Garvin

A few days ago, I received a game in the mail. It was a copy of , a magazine game from Strategy and Tactics magazine. This was published in 1983 and was set in the late 1980s. As I was setting the game up, I noted some obsolete terms, such as “USSR” and “Leningrad”.

I simply smiled and then out of curiosity I went to my games cupboard to have a look at my collection. The majority of my games are based on the Second World War; however, a sizable number of my games simulate combat between two factions, one of which no longer exists! Although some of my games date from the Cold War itself, such as those in the series, I have some that were made well after the Berlin Wall fell in 1989! This got me thinking: what is the appeal of simulating combat from a war that never happened? In this article, I will look at the history of these games and then wax philosophical as to why they keep such great appeal.