The Rally Phase: An ASL Blog

I'm learning so much as a "new" ASL player that I want to get it all written up someplace in the hopes others won't have to learn what I'm learning the hard way! As with all things, there are as many ways to go about something as there are people. This blog represents my evolving views on ASL and how I've approached it.

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ASL Scenario Card Redesign

Posted by Sparty

03 Nov 2011

Keith Medlin

(medlinke)

United States
Holly Springs
North Carolina

One of the most iconic components in the ASL library is the scenario card. It's nearly perfect in its design which is why so there are so many derivatives created to this day. The original design has a lot going for it after all.

1 - It's a visualization of both the map & counter setups.
2 - It's densely packed with information, but it's instantly recognizable in terms of the data layout.
3 - The card starts with the story of the scenario and ends with the aftermath.
4 - The turn record is right on the card.
5 - There are cues in the turn record to help remind you of reinforcements, and special rules.

All-in-all, a nearly perfect design!

So...what's wrong with it???

Really, my critique is only related to one thing...information layout and design.

Here's my redesigned card and I'll walk through each part of it:

HEADER:
The header has been redesigned to allow for scenarios to be color coded based on a variety of information.

Perhaps black banner scenarios are legacy scenarios from out of print web-only releases like this scenario.

You could do a cross-fade of red & black to denote a Russian/German scenario or a Green & Grey to denote American vs Italian in the desert.

Third party publishers could be assigned their own branded color by MMP.

The logo on the top right would be the only place for a TPP to put their logo to ensure leafing through a booklet would quickly denote the origin of the scenario.

SCENARIO IMAGE:
Why move it to the right?

We read from left to right. I don't want a grainy WWII picture to be the first thing I read! I want to see the background and know the location/date.

SCENARIO DESCRIPTION, VICTORY CONDITIONS, & SPECIAL RULES:
These are the most text intensive, and arguably most important parts of the scenario card when taken together. The forces (clearly) being of equal importance, but they are graphically represented.

The current layout splits up these items so that the BALANCE can be listed at the top of the page. The BALANCE is not used in every case, so it shouldn't be given such prominent real-estate.

The Special Rules, on the other hand, are short-changed by being placed at the bottom of the scenario card where they end up getting split across two columns in some cases, which can lead to that "dangling SSR" getting forgotten!

We start with the flavor text as is the current amazingly well thought out location. Then we move into the victory conditions. Finally, players get the SSRs which gives them some context to keep in mind as they do their setup which comes next in the units!

Often times, players will look at those units and only after read through the SSRs which can be frustrating as you tweak your setup or realize you forgot a specific SSR. This change ensures that SSRs get their proper prominence!

TURN TRACK & FORCES:
This is perfect. Always has been, and always will be. This is the most functionally relevant part of the scenario card and quite frankly...it's beautiful.

The only small tweak I made was to put the balance in with the force setup. I like the idea of splitting the balance so that each side has it's own line, but I've shown it here all smashed together at the bottom.

AFTERMATH:
Again...brilliant thinking to bookend the scenario card with the historical outcome.

I have always loved these scenario cards. They are far preferable to the scenario setups found in other games. I am constantly thinking...boy if they'd only done it like ASL this wouldn't be such a PAIN!!!

I hope you've enjoyed this little exercise as much as I have. What are the things you'd do to improve upon the current scenario cards?

9 Comments

Fri Nov 4, 2011 2:11 am

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Keith Medlin

(medlinke)

United States
Holly Springs
North Carolina

Great ideas. I thought about doing an offset watermark of the logo, but I liked the idea of quickly seeing where a scenario came from while flipping through a book so keeping it at the top on the right makes that easier. My other thought was to make the background of the banner have the image washed-out on it behind the color scheme, but realized that'd make a lot of the "stock" WWII photographs nearly unrecognizable and many of the ASL scenarios show some interesting & perhaps rarely seen pictures.

That said, making the top banner smaller would definitely save a line or two on an densely packed scenario card.

In terms of the sizing. I picked this one for a few reasons:

1 - The intro & aftermath text are on the longer side for an ASL scenario. Also keep in mind that the typeface size is bigger than it traditionally has been on scenario cards here as well.

2 - There are 4 boards. I've found that if you rule out the monster board sizes and the single board scenarios you see a lot of 4 board layouts. This means the sizing for the boards here is pretty average, if not on the large side.

3 - There are more special rules here, and laid out in larger typeface than on a traditional ASL scenario card. Again, I went for information layout & readability first with this setup.

4 - I like the vertical layouts, but I think there's something really fantastic about the balanced horizontal boxes with the traditional ASL scenario cards. Those HOB layouts are pretty slick though when they balance out nicely. The other problem they have, however, is that the AH/MMP scenario cards use vertical space to help define reinforcement and setup differences with the forces. If you're using less than the full width of the page, you're going to have to wrap your force layout a bit more which makes interpreting them less standardized.

5 - I'd love to see the scenario balance on scenario cards just go away. It'd be nice to have scenario balance done by a bidding process that'd be applicable to all scenarios so if you feel like you need to balance you fall back to those rules.

I will have to tweak it a bit more and I appreciate the feedback. I think you're raising a really good point about the "weight" of the header. I also think some of the alternate layouts for force composition panels are very attractive when well executed. Great thoughts and thanks for sharing them!

Posted Fri Nov 4, 2011 1:50 pm
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Michael Tisdel

(jtisdel)

United States
Plano
Texas

The Man with the Pointy Hat

A couple of comments:

1. I agree about the SSR placement, but I think the force boxes should be moved more toward the center of the card. Most folks, I think, stack their counters over the images in the force boxes. Having this more towards the center of the card reduces the chance of counter scatter.

2. As my eyes have gotten weaker over the years, the print on the cards has gotten smaller. If the SR and VC could have larger font sizes it would make in-game reference much easier.

Finally, there should be an electronic template of the form available to help folks with their home grown scenarios.

Thanks for starting such an interesting topic!

Edited Fri Nov 4, 2011 2:32 pm
Posted Fri Nov 4, 2011 2:31 pm
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Keith Medlin

(medlinke)

United States
Holly Springs
North Carolina

Interesting thoughts.

The text size is 2 points bigger in the redesign than on the actual cards. The image size in BGG is making it smaller.

The only thing you'd knock over counters to do would be to get at that turn track. So I almost wonder if the turn track should go below the force setup.

That's another score for the HOB vertical turn track isn't it? Since you're not moving your arm (pesky forearms...) over anything other than the turn track it assists in not knocking things over.

Great feedback!

Posted Fri Nov 4, 2011 6:19 pm
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Michael Dorosh

(Michael Dorosh)

Canada
Calgary
Alberta

It's a good attempt, but makes at least one elementary error that a publisher would spot instantly. You can't have blocks of text go from the left to the right of an 8-1/2" page; this provides no eye relief. You see books and magazines divided into columns for just this reason. Perhaps things are changing because of wide-screen computer monitors, but if something feels "off" when you see this but you can't put a finger on it - that's why.

Also, re: the image on the right - when you are flipping through the scenarios in a book, it's easier to see the prelude paras - and especially the dates - if they are on the right. It makes more sense to have them there, so if you're looking for "D-Day" scenarios, you can flip through and hunt for "June 6, 1944". If you have photocopied scens in page protectors, all facing front, you can flip through easily and read the dates. If the dates are displaced left, all you can see are pictures when you do that.

In other words - what works for one person will not necessarily work for another.

So hunting for the "perfect" solution will be elusive.

Posted Fri Nov 4, 2011 7:38 pm
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Keith Medlin

(medlinke)

United States
Holly Springs
North Carolina

A few interesting design comments in there Michael.

I think you'll find that there are plenty of design no-no's in the existing setup as well (tiny fonts, etc.), unclear grid layouts within the order of battle panels to name a few.

The tradeoff of the full width text is that you can create greater whitespace between lines and provide a larger typeface size. Both of which improve the ability to read the text.

Your point about dates is well taken and actually I have a cool idea for a 2nd edition based on that feedback and some other information folks have provided in the comments.

I think you're right, to some degree, about the "perfect" solution. No design is ever perfect, but it's like nails on a chalkboard when people say that all design is subjective because that's quantifiably untrue.

Interesting thoughts and you've raised some great points about what data is needed for flipping through books of scenarios since that was a stated goal in the initial post.

Posted Fri Nov 4, 2011 9:27 pm
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Michael Dorosh

(Michael Dorosh)

Canada
Calgary
Alberta

It's fun to work on nonetheless, so keep trying, you never know what you'll stumble on till you put your hands on it. I can feel your pain. I was working on a similar project for a kind of scenario-index booklet with Andy Hershey; it wasn't exactly that, but I don't want to say too much because he may still be working on the project and I don't want to give away too much of what it was really about. But needless to say we both had ideas of what the project - which essentially, was going to be a way to graphically disseminate info about scenarios - should look like, and struggled to find a "perfect" way to do it. Not because we both thought we had found the solution, but because we couldn't find something that worked well to incorporate all the data that needed to be in it.

Not to be discouraging - it does make one wonder how easily they stumbled on the original design in the first place. Could it have been as easy as all that - and what did the first drafts look like in 1976 or so?

Posted Sat Nov 5, 2011 12:14 am
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Keith Medlin

(medlinke)

United States
Holly Springs
North Carolina

lol good point!

The trickiest thing going for the scenario card is the sheer volume of text that's on the page!

It's easy to say "trim down the damn flavor text!" but in cases of well designed scenarios...those hold valuable clues. In other cases...they can be thrown away.

I think you're hitting the nail on the head when it comes to thinking about what visually needs to happen when you flip through your scenario books!

I've scanned every scenario card I own (enough to fill one 3" binder and another 2" binder and I know there are still MANY I am lacking!!! In scanning I've also run OCR, but search is almost useless because if you type in 1944...you're going to see a TON of scenarios.

It's actually one case where the analog version is somewhat easier to traverse than the digital. So how much info you can pack into the edges and provide via color coding seems like a good idea, but you start sacrificing horizontal space on the card itself for your text heavy areas!!!

Posted Sat Nov 5, 2011 4:45 am
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Michael Dorosh

(Michael Dorosh)

Canada
Calgary
Alberta

medlinke wrote:

All good points. It comes down to what you want to search for - and there are so many variables, it is almost impossible to pare down. For example, some players want a system of notation that helps them find armour heavy scenarios - well, you can pretty much see that by the number of "tanks" on the cards. Others want a mathematical formula for "monster" scenarios - so stuff like squad equivalents x turn numbers x boards - I guess so they don't have to look at the cards at all. Others as noted want to play only specific theatres, or nationalities (or avoid them).

There is no convenient notation at present for night scenarios. I think MMP started shading the turn boxes on scenarios with reduced visibility during part of the game; would be easy to have black turn boxes for night scenarios in addition to any SSR. The picture often - but not always - gives a hint at this as well.

If you were the kind to only want to play with green, or elite, troops, you would need to check the ELR and troop types and see how they played off each other. Some players have "favourite" units/formations - but there is no consistency in how unit names are recorded on the cards, so if you were a 1st U.S. Infantry Division fan, you might have to search for 16th Infantry Regiment, 1st Infantry Division, "Big Red One", and in some cases even anonymous "Co. K" scenarios might really be 1st Division scenarios.

Many types of things to consider.

Posted Sat Nov 5, 2011 1:34 pm
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Boots

(Boots01)

Australia
Petersham
New South Wales

I personally don't care that much about the historical info/aftermath, so didnt' even notice the long text lines. The re-shuffle of the SSRs and Victory Conditions are a stroke of genius. I also love the colour band at the top, and the idea of a colour-coded bar to tell me who's fighting is just great. I normally pick my scenarios based primarily on who's fighting, then size, then length in that order. This organisation of information would help me a lot.

I would certainly take this redesign over the original, though I do acknowledge both have their flaws.

I would also put my vote in for coloured force OBs - when everyone has a 4-4-7, black and white gets really old really fast, and modern colour printing is hardly too expensive if TPPs are anything to go by.

Posted Tue Mar 6, 2012 1:55 am
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ASL Scenario Card Redesign

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