ASL First Dates

MrP

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What is it with the first time you meet someone to play ASL?

First time I met Vinnie, Steve and Tony, we played at Martin's place, had a powercut and ended up playing by candlelight.
First time I played in Brisbane, we played through the sound of the couple next door having very noisy and energetic sex about 10 feet from where we were playing.

Both bizarre events - what's yours?
 

Psycho

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What is it with the first time you meet someone to play ASL?

First time I met Vinnie, Steve and Tony, we played at Martin's place, had a powercut and ended up playing by candlelight.
First time I played in Brisbane, we played through the sound of the couple next door having very noisy and energetic sex about 10 feet from where we were playing.

Both bizarre events - what's yours?
I was banging this chick and the noise of dice kept bugging us so I went next door and... ;)
 

Vinnie

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I was so dissappointedvthat you didn't offer noisy and energetic sex even though I romanced you with both asl and candlelight. :(
 
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MrP

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I was so dissappointedvthat you didn't offer noisy and energetic sex even though I romanced you with both asl and candlelight. :(
It'd normally work, but hey, it was a first date and I never put out on a first date. Even with the allure of candlelight, soft music, the aroma of cardboard and the gentle tinkle of dice pirouetting in a glass.
 

rdw5150

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I had tooled around with ASL with some friends, but, I was the only one who had read the rules, so you know how that goes (bad rules play).

I was on the MMP page in 2001 and saw the name and e-mail address for a guy (Cliff) who lived about 45 minutes south so, I scooted him and e-mail and we set up a time. Clearly I lost (hell I did not even realize mts could fire SMOKE), but it was the beginning of a good friendship and an obsession with ASL.

Though the look on my wife's face when I said "Hey I met this dude from Meadville online and I am going to his place to play a game" was priceless.:laugh::cool:

ah 10 years later and I still suck at this game:smoke:

Peace

roger
 

Curtis Brooks

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17 years ago I was moving into the parsonage of my first parish (I am a Lutheran pastor) and the pastor 15 miles North of me was helping me move in. He saw my collection of war games and asked, "Have you ever played ASL?" I had played SL back in the 80's but never moved to full ASL. He sold me an extra copy of the RB and Beyond Valor and I've been neck deep in this game ever since.
 

M.Koch

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11 years ago, after a two year absence from ASL i had an arrangement with a guy who was totally strange to me.
We met in a games shop where ASL was played on regular meetings by a bunch of players.
I got my a$$ beaten but i was happy ( yes Psycho, i´m a pervert too :p )

The guy was Christian Koppmeyer, the Grenadier tournament director and the bunch of players are now very good mates of me...
 

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My story is one I've told before on here, but I'll tell it again, as I like the story.

Martin had arrived to play "To the Square" - a beast of a scenario for his first ever game. I'd laid out the 4 boards across the dining room table but with no overlays required the need for perspex was negligible. For some reason I laid it out anyway.

Mid way through the game my then 5 year old daughter ran into the room and with a magic wave of her hand knocked a cup over managed to spill a half-full cup of tea across the entire board. No one said a word as we watched the brown (staining!) liquid roll across every board and with an almost magical effect curve around every single counter on the board. If ever a girl was saved by a guiding force...

Being in polite company (and not knowing Martin's stance on child beatings for such a crime) I played it safe and ushered the offending girl out of the room whilst we applied rule A12.153 in its literal sense.

The boards, counters and little girl all survived un-harmed and that was the first of 143 games that we've since played with each other.
 

olli

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The most recent first time for me was a few months back had arranged to play a dutch player, we had exchanged e-mails etc and set a date, i traveled down to his place by train, was picked up at the local station, and arrived at his place, on entering his living room I was all of a sudden feeling unsettled, as along his sideboard were several ASLOK trophies that he had one!!! they were the first I had ever seen and he had sooo many, Gulp I thought to myself, out of my depth etc, but as we started playing I had and excellent time, I lost, but as always with our hobby it was the camaraderie that was so good, before I left he even gave me a birthday present in the form of an ASL module that I did not have or had even seen before. So my hat is tipped to Hennie Van Der Salm, A true gent and an excellent player, looking forward to the next time , probably at Arnhem next month!!!
 

Fort

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I showed up to an Origins looking to play in the Squad Leader tourney...I had not seen ASL yet...
There was a small huddle of disreputable looking rogues at a side table talking and cackling amonst themselves. Every once in a while they would go completely silent and scan around the room, kinda like the buzzard of the serengeti looking for a meal. Seeing no one else around, I wander over and ask if this is where the SL tourney is...I get a chuckle from the scrawny, unshaven, serial killer lineup standin dude I find out there IS no SL tourney, only ASL. I muster up the courage to ask if anyone would care to show me the main differences in a game?
A fleeting glint of something sinister flashed in his eye, or was I mistaken...and the scrawny dude, says sure.
So we set up a game of Ranger Stronghold with me as the provebial turtle in between where the rubber meets the road. I got a single 'nice move' when I used infantry smoke to try to escape certain death of my last stack of Americans...followed soon after by a 'but it ain't gonna save 'em for long'.
His cronies cackled in glee as my pieces were destroyed and then humiliated one by one.

This was my introduction to ASL, my first game with Bill 'Fish' Connor...as well as my introduction to Darrell Burke (who I had played at an earlier origins in a game of SL), Eric Baker and Mark Nixon.
 

rdw5150

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I showed up to an Origins looking to play in the Squad Leader tourney...I had not seen ASL yet...
There was a small huddle of disreputable looking rogues at a side table talking and cackling amonst themselves. Every once in a while they would go completely silent and scan around the room, kinda like the buzzard of the serengeti looking for a meal. Seeing no one else around, I wander over and ask if this is where the SL tourney is...I get a chuckle from the scrawny, unshaven, serial killer lineup standin dude I find out there IS no SL tourney, only ASL. I muster up the courage to ask if anyone would care to show me the main differences in a game?
A fleeting glint of something sinister flashed in his eye, or was I mistaken...and the scrawny dude, says sure.
So we set up a game of Ranger Stronghold with me as the provebial turtle in between where the rubber meets the road. I got a single 'nice move' when I used infantry smoke to try to escape certain death of my last stack of Americans...followed soon after by a 'but it ain't gonna save 'em for long'.
His cronies cackled in glee as my pieces were destroyed and then humiliated one by one.

This was my introduction to ASL, my first game with Bill 'Fish' Connor...as well as my introduction to Darrell Burke (who I had played at an earlier origins in a game of SL), Eric Baker and Mark Nixon.
Great description of Fish!:clown:
 

Michael Dorosh

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Mr. P obviously didn't realize the Universe was desperately trying to warn him about the dangers of locking himself in a room with three other dudes to stare at a cardboard map. The subtle approach with the power outage didn't clue him in, and so the Universe went nuclear, and that sailed over his head too. tsk. :p

My first "date" with Portal...well, only date... was entirely normal. I was living in an apartment at the time, he came over, I believe he brought a hockey bag with his favourite scenario binders, dice, dice tower (?), rule book, we picked something, played it, I warned him in advance that if he wanted something to eat or drink he should bring it with him though if he liked Diet Pepsi and whatever it was I had in my cupboard, he could help himself to all he wanted.

Only strange part was our game went for four hours or so and I don't remember him ever going to the bathroom.

Or blinking, come to think of it.

Hmm.

The fellows I played with in high school I met by circumstance; we had to introduce ourselves to our Social Studies class in the first week of Grade 10 and tell about our interests. I must have wanted to get beat up pretty badly because I seem to recall mentioning wargames. The fellow in front of me turned around and asked which ones. I can still picture him in his 1980s muscle shirt and gelled hair. When I said "Squad Leader" he told me that he and his friends played in the Chess Club at lunch. So I joined them. You can imagine the types that hung out in the Chess Club; it was not a formal club in any sense, I think it was just a refuge for the awkward kids who didn't want to get shaken down for their lunch money. I started hanging out with the two or three Squad Leader players there, who had all known each other from junior high - a different school than I had gone to, and became friends away from school also.

That Christmas, ASL came out, and I was the one to make the investment - or rather, my mom did, with dad's credit card. Wouldn't have bothered if not for those fellows. Couldn't tell you about which scenarios we played - we mostly did DYO - but buying ASL all went back to being made to introduce ourselves in Social Studies class, and sitting behind a dude with a pony tail entirely by chance.
 

Psycho

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I showed up to an Origins looking to play in the Squad Leader tourney...I had not seen ASL yet...
There was a small huddle of disreputable looking rogues at a side table talking and cackling amonst themselves. Every once in a while they would go completely silent and scan around the room, kinda like the buzzard of the serengeti looking for a meal. Seeing no one else around, I wander over and ask if this is where the SL tourney is...I get a chuckle from the scrawny, unshaven, serial killer lineup standin dude I find out there IS no SL tourney, only ASL. I muster up the courage to ask if anyone would care to show me the main differences in a game?
A fleeting glint of something sinister flashed in his eye, or was I mistaken...and the scrawny dude, says sure.
So we set up a game of Ranger Stronghold with me as the provebial turtle in between where the rubber meets the road. I got a single 'nice move' when I used infantry smoke to try to escape certain death of my last stack of Americans...followed soon after by a 'but it ain't gonna save 'em for long'.
His cronies cackled in glee as my pieces were destroyed and then humiliated one by one.

This was my introduction to ASL, my first game with Bill 'Fish' Connor...as well as my introduction to Darrell Burke (who I had played at an earlier origins in a game of SL), Eric Baker and Mark Nixon.
Should've called the cops instead of joining those scumbags! :angry:
 

RobZagnut

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1992 Spokane Game Faire. I had been to all the previous faires where I had run Rail Baron, SL and D&D sessions. I wanted to get into the Civilization game, but it was full with the majority of players being in the Air Force. Another guy had come late and was watching the game. He was in the AF and was buddies with all the guys. We started talking and discovered that we both played ASL. I had dabbled with infantry and told him I had never played a scenario with AFVs. He said he had brought his ASL stuff and would teach me, so we setup Blazing Chariots. I discovered his name was Jess Ward and got his phone number. We started playing twice a week and now he's my best friend. Another guy who was playing Civ became a regular opponent until he moved was Pete Dahlin. He designed One Log Bridge for ASLUG and is heavily involved in the Korean module.

I soon discovered GEnie online and my first bpem games were against Phil Pomerantz and Russ Bunten. I met guys like Fort, Brian Sielski, Carl Fago, Mark Hanna and argued with Scott Holst.
 

Vinnie

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Id acquired BV and the RB from a friend second hand and while at uni had got WoA and HL but never played them (except for one gMe of hill621).

I was sitting at he highland open watching the ladies épée final ( a dull match made marginally more interesting by the fact that one girl was a squealer when she hit) next to an Australian sabreur who was working in Aberdeen at the time. I'd known save longworth a good two years by this point and although I tried to avoid mixing with such lower caste fenders (a sabreur by god! That's almost as bad as a foilist) it's a small sport and Wendy fenced with the uni club.
Anyhow we got on to talking about Statis pro football and from there I discovered that he dabbled in asl. He taught myself Yony and Steve how to play. I still recall him saying "cooking with gas" every bloody time he got rate and annihilated my guys. Don't think I've ever beaten him but he ran away to Australia before I got competent.
 

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I went to play Col. Neil Stevens at his military base one evening. I said " I'll just fire this mg" when a real one opened up a few hundred yards away on a range. Didn't bother with the 'dagga-dagga-dagga' obligatory sound effect for that shot!
 

Aaron Cleavin

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Last week a gave a local chap his first game of ASL after he had dabbled lots with SK.

He bought a 6 pack to my pace with him which was a great sign.

We played Gavin take and he had the Americans with balance of course. Anyway we were using a pleva Dice tower with Battleschool precision Grofaz dice; and about and hour into the game he asks: "What does Grofaz mean?"

A short explanation ensues and for some strange reason he looks a little like a deer in the headlights; then a few minutes later one of his 747's HoB's goes fanatic and generates a hero. You don't of course have to ask which American hero counter I pull :crosseye:

(Lets just say it is one from Journal 9 which most members of the Paddington Bearz here in Sydney have already ritually burned)

Shortly after this a lowly German 237 rolls a snakeyes in CC versus the now Fanatic heroic Gavin (Ami 10-3) and the game is over.

Do hope he returns for another go around, he played a very good game, in terms of the
Grognard intimidation factor it may have been a little overwhelming :p

p.S. He has just confirmed he is returning for another bash :)
 
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Morbii

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17 years ago I was moving into the parsonage of my first parish (I am a Lutheran pastor) and the pastor 15 miles North of me was helping me move in. He saw my collection of war games and asked, "Have you ever played ASL?" I had played SL back in the 80's but never moved to full ASL. He sold me an extra copy of the RB and Beyond Valor and I've been neck deep in this game ever since.
Ok, now THAT'S awesome.
 
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