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Keith Medlin
United States
Holly Springs
North Carolina
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I was luck enough to get in a game of ASL on Saturday with a local gamer. I wanted to try out a scenario featuring some Americans and we settled on a scenario from Paratrooper - ASL Module 2 called Lost Opportunities.
In the scenario, a small American Airborne force must hold off a significant German assault on a town. The Germans have a superior number of troops and bring some very light armor with them. The Germans are tasked with controlling any 4 buildings on the board where the Americans have set up.
The modest forces provided to the Americans have some definite advantages:
- Spraying Fire
- 10 Concealment Markers
- HIP for 1 squad + leader
- 7-4-7 Elite Airborne vs. 1st line Germans
- Self Rally
- A 3 factor for smoke placement making shots harder to take for those German attackers.
The Germans have time on their side (8 turns) and relatively easy access to 3 buildings. There are, for example, 2 buildings at the edge of woods from which the Germans can advance.
So what's the hitch for the Germans? If at any time, there are only 9 unbroken German squads, the Americans win. So, simply marching into a well placed American defense is suicide and the German player is punished. This ultimately slows the Germans down and makes them have to pay a bit more attention to the American dummy stacks that are sure to be placed.
So... let's kick this off!
SETUP - Losing Before You Begin
I managed to lose this game in the setup...and here's how:
1 - I set up far too conservatively. As mentioned, there is nice cover which can be taken away from the Germans right at the start of the game. There are essentially 3 avenues of approach. I covered 0/3.
2 - I used concealment markers to conceal units that would gain concealment in turn 1 during my setup and neglected to create enough dummy stacks.
3 - I put my gun in a useless position. It was toward a location where nobody was going to advance and I didn't take advantage of my free HIP for it. Likewise, it's under 60mm which meant I could have set it up in a building to boot!
4 - I created a rigid wall of defense, without first considering what buildings were going to be easy to retake before control of 4 buildings could be reached.
Here's a picture of the initial setup:
TURN 1 - German Assault Begins!
Here's a picture from the start of the game:
Well I made some huge miscalculations... Switching between ASLSK and ASL is not always easy. For example, the whole ruleset covering HIP for guns & concealment gain/loss were largely ignored by me. I used my 10 concealment markers to cover up stacks that would have already gained concealment on turn one. Likewise, this meant that I only had 1 dummy stack sitting out there and it wasn't long before some well done probing by the Germans revealed it...but more on that later!
The German setup was a giant wall of troops basically set up to exploit the cover provided on the flanks that I left open. In the center the Germans put the majority of the armor with smoke rounds in order to help cover their advance and block any long range gun fire. A single Marder was placed on the east edge to take advantage of armored bypass and sneak into the battle on one of the flanks.
As soon as I saw the German setup I was aware that I had lost the game due to poor set up. That's how quickly and how important good set up can be in ASL. Now...that said, one of the greatest things about ASL is that it can be punishing to watch poor dice rolls fritter away your best laid plans. Things were not a total loss and I was ready to see how to adjust.
The Germans moved into the eastern tree line just outside of an objective building within the first MPh. Smoke was placed in the dead center of board 1 blocking any chance I had from my stronghold buildings in the center of Map 1 to exert any useful firepower against the onrushing Germans.
To achieve this incredible advance and take advantage of my overly conservative setup the Germans were forced to CX, which should have bought me time, but I squandered the following turn and the adverse effects of having the entire enemy force CX'd and stayed relatively in the same position.
I initially put a squad into the building on 1D2 and decided when I saw the advance that I should try to dash into the building and use their firepower to make a decent firegroup. During the dash...my squad was cut to shreds and broke. During the route phase they moved where they had originally intended and I thought I'd be okay in another turn or so. I, however, failed the DM MC for those units. In the subsequent German turn, these troops wouldn't be looked at and I missed an opportunity to self-rally!
In addition to this advance I underestimated the power of the stack in A4. I had some clean shots from E4 that could have made a difference in breaking up a fire group, but never took the shot. This brings me back to my main problem...
Here's a little close up of this situation:
TAKE THE SHOT.
There are optimal shots. There are sub-optimal shots. Until you know what's best...shoot! I always end up waiting too long and by then everything has moved and I've not taken a shot and no longer have valid shots. Total newbie move. Take the shot.
Here's how things looked at the end of Turn 1:
As you can see, the Germans are uncontested for 2 buildings on the east (right side) of the map. Despite being CX, they can get halfway there in the next turn. My lone dummy stack on the west edge in IIRC 1C7 won't stand much longer, but it at least kept the Germans at bay.
In hindsight, that building in 1C7 isn't a bad one to just give up. You're never going to defend it, and almost everything on the west (left) side of the map is going to have a shot into that building. So, it's not like it's going to become a staging area. The smart German player is just going to gain control of it and back out. There's a lot of open ground to cover, so there's no reason why you wouldn't want to make getting more on the western flank harder to get at!
American Turn 1:
I just goofed around. I tried to move that squad and it got cut down. I made some insignificant adjustments in forces well behind the line and took a lot of failed shots at the Germans. Rolling 8, 9, & 10 never helps and when you are setting yourself up to take MANY shots...those are killer.
Remember... TAKE THE SHOT and CREATE YOUR OWN LUCK!
So by creating your own luck, I mean playing the odds. The more shots you take the more likely you are to get some good rolls. You can't rely on just getting one killer shot lined up regardless of how good it is because there's just too much that can go wrong.
In my case, I had a lot of great rolls that were with low FP groups that were not leader directed natural doubles (3,3 x 2, & 4,4 x 1, and 2x2 x 1) Those were great shots that ultimately had little effect because of the cowering firepower reduction.
Snipers each triggered once and were largely ineffective. Just a few pins rather than anything dramatic.
You'll remember that little squad mess on A4... Well the Germans managed to create a Hero & Battle Harden!
German Turn 2 -
The Germans won. Yeah... 2 MPh and it was over. That's how poor setup makes the difference in this scenario. If you look on ROAR you're going to see that this is won slightly more by the Germans, but it's not a runaway conclusion that the American Paras can't make things happen.
Some notable actions from Turn 2...
I had some nice shots with my mortar team and managed to drive units back. My Bazooka shots all pinged off of the weak german armor unfortunately. This allowed the armor to move up, get in some nice licks on my "alamo" building. Meanwhile, I sat on my shots again and let some half squads tie up my units. Take the shot!
I did manage to have some success on the western edge of the map in terms of actually getting a German squad to disrupt! That was something I haven't done before and my opponent and I quickly read up on the rules. This is a point I want to make about this though. ASL's rulebook now comes with a great index and that makes things incredibly fast just to look up.
That said the initial, uncontested, rush of German forces into TEM advantageous locations swamped me and it only took 2 of the 8 turns for the American paratroopers to hang their heads in shame as they retreated cursing my name all the way. My opponent, Jamey, is as kind and gracious a winner as there is in the ASL community. He was willing to do a quick post mortem with me and we talked through a few of the things that were mentioned in this article.
Here's what things looked like just before the Germans grabbed their 3rd & 4th buildings.
Here are the d6 lessons I learned from this scenario:
 TAKE THE SHOT!
 Be aggressive in your defense so the attacker has to pay for every hex they try to advance. There's no reason to give up terrain if you don't absolutely have to after all!
 Deploy to half-squads to ensure that you can create some firegroups without having to refocus full squads.
 Use you freebie HIP squad + leader + SW to make sure you can get into a position to try to knock out at least 1 AFV.
 Bore Sight. Firelanes. Concealment.
 American Squads can: Self Rally, Spray Fire, & has a smoke factor of 3...use those to your advantage!!!
It was a lot of fun, as always, and I think I learned a lot from this scenario. I hope that you can glean a bit from this article about the lessons I picked up along the way! Until next time...roll low.
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