What ASL Product Have You Bought Recently?

kcole4001

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Just bought Hedgerow Hell from Noble Knight Games via ebay.

I realized I really want the AFV cards from the module I never really had much interest in buying since I started playing ASL, so I checked ebay fully prepared to be shocked and disappointed by the insanely inflated prices.

A steal at $89.16 Cdn including shipping (which was more than the price of the game TBH).
That's $66.90 US at the current conversion rate.
Well worth that I think.
Might be here before Christmas...it'd make a nice present for me (and my son Tom who will also get the use of the cards!).

edit: I forgot to mention it's unpunched! It won't stay unpunched long, mind you. The box is in 'fair' condition. Don't care as long as it holds the parts well enough to get here, then it'll sit on the shelf holding it's compliment of deluxe maps next to Streets of Fire.
 
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kcole4001

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Whoa!
That's some serious commitment (and expenditure!).
Way to go. :thumbsup:
 
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olli

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Latest Schwerepunkt and rally point now shipping to Scotland
 

Paul M. Weir

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Just arrived within the past hour:

For convenience the non-ASL items first

Avalanche Press:
Panzer Grenadier (Modern); 1967: Sword Of Israel
Great War At Sea: High Seas Fleet (2nd Edition)

RBM Studio (GMT-ish):
C3i Magazine 31: Battle Of Wakefield

And finally what you have been waiting for, the ASL items

Schwerepunkt:
SP 23
RP 14

LFT:
FTC 8

LCP:
Valour At Casa Berardi
Drive For Saint Lo
Anzio -1944

All from SCG. When I placed my order I only expected to get about 5 of the above 9 items before the Xmas shutdown, but they held off for some items to arrive, a gamble that paid off quite well. Without actually breaking out a game or components I will have more than enough reading and studying to keep me in board game heaven over the holidays.

Looking back over the year, while MMP, BFP and LFT have produced enough to meet my hopes, LCP have been the real surprise with such a raft of products. Though quite happy with what I previously got from LCP, I noted some unhappiness about LCP's cookie cutter approach to unit groups. Now I would not class myself as being competent to judge the absolute quality of LCP stuff in the grand scheme of ASL things, if any one item turns out to be a bit "meh", you stand to get something quite good in short order thereafter. No more frustrating waits. Well done to LCP.
 

kcole4001

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Hedgerow Hell arrived today.
Box was described as 'fair': had one split corner, otherwise I'd say it was very good condition, counters unpunched (information markers for the AFV cards) , scenarios still shrink wrapped, boards never used. It is the cards I wanted most.
A great purchase for about what it sold for new, thanks Noble Knight Games!
A deal on OOP ASL gear is pretty rare these days.
 

MAS01

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Just arrived within the past hour:

For convenience the non-ASL items first

Avalanche Press:
Panzer Grenadier (Modern); 1967: Sword Of Israel
Great War At Sea: High Seas Fleet (2nd Edition)

RBM Studio (GMT-ish):
C3i Magazine 31: Battle Of Wakefield

And finally what you have been waiting for, the ASL items

Schwerepunkt:
SP 23
RP 14

LFT:
FTC 8

LCP:
Valour At Casa Berardi
Drive For Saint Lo
Anzio -1944

All from SCG. When I placed my order I only expected to get about 5 of the above 9 items before the Xmas shutdown, but they held off for some items to arrive, a gamble that paid off quite well. Without actually breaking out a game or components I will have more than enough reading and studying to keep me in board game heaven over the holidays.

Looking back over the year, while MMP, BFP and LFT have produced enough to meet my hopes, LCP have been the real surprise with such a raft of products. Though quite happy with what I previously got from LCP, I noted some unhappiness about LCP's cookie cutter approach to unit groups. Now I would not class myself as being competent to judge the absolute quality of LCP stuff in the grand scheme of ASL things, if any one item turns out to be a bit "meh", you stand to get something quite good in short order thereafter. No more frustrating waits. Well done to LCP.

Hey Paul!

What do you think of the Great War At Seas series?

Cheers,


Mark
 

Carln0130

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Schwerepunkt:
SP 23
RP 14
LCP
Anzio -1944

Just heard from Gamers Armory that they shipped today. Should make for a slightly after Christmas, Christmas gift.
 

Paul M. Weir

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What do you think of the Great War At Seas series?
It's a bit of an outlier of my wargaming taste, being naval and to be honest it's not really suited for me as a solo game player. You really need 2 players to really get the most of it. However I do enjoy it. I will try to give a breakdown of the above contradictions.

Campaigns:
This is where you should have 2 players as there is a lot of "hidden" movement, I use quoted hidden as a player would move "fleets" openly around on the strategic board, but a bit like ASL dummy stacks they could be markers anything from the whole High Seas Fleet to a cruiser detachment to nothing. I suppose you could consider them rumours or wisps of smoke spotted on the horizon. However any decent solo player could work out ways to keep him/herself honest. Once 2 opposing fleets are in the same sea area it becomes a "battle" and moves onto a generic tactical map. Fuel usage is kept score at this level. Various tasks like blockading, convoy protection or an invasion support are done at this level also, though an invasion usually just requires so many hits of bombardment and so many transport points of troops unloaded and it's an automatic success.

Battles:
Quite suited to solo play as everything is effectively visible. Combat involves the "bucket of dice" method with a die per gunnery factor and each ship can have up to 3 separate gunnery factors for primary <= 3 hex range, secondary <= 2 hex range and tertiary = 1 hex, torpedo = 1 hex range. Hit locations are die determined and may be repelled by armour and if not then a box is marked off the appropriate category (primary gun, hull, etc). So you need to photocopy or scan and print the included data sheets or downloaded electronic versions from AP.

The battle mechanisms are a mix of detail and abstract with a fair amount of, but simple, paperwork. You won't see "We've just lost B turret, Sir", but you will see your gunnery factors picked off one by one and you could sink while still having undiminished firepower, though that is unlikely. Speed differentiation is a little crude. Overall it's a mix of detail and beer and pretzels type of game. I would guess most would think it as ideal when you want something meaty but suitable when your head is rotating after a heavy ASL session.

A bit like ASL, there are full boxed stand alone games and expansion books. Some of the expansions include historical "what-ifs". The "High Seas Fleet" book posits that the German Navy built more ships pre-WW1, but within their industrial capacity and closer to what the British historically feared they were doing. There even is a Confederate States Navy book! You regularly see the S. American battleships in other's colours, having being bought up when their economies historically tanked.

I have not got any Second World War At Sea games as I fear the dominance of airpower in SWWAS makes it less suited to solo play. I could be wrong. However I decide that GWAS was more than sufficient to scratch my naval itch.

Like a fair few players I have individual and series games that are mainly shelf sitters. However I have a half dozen series that get moderate or better use. In the "serious" category are ASL (obviously) and GMT's GBoH with an occasional dip into GMT's Musket & Pike series. For a lighter mood GWAS and L'n'L's World At War.

I think it a nice system and would rate it at the higher complexity end of the beer and pretzels category, though still quite definitely more fun than serious. YMMV
 

Paul M. Weir

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I got a couple of CoA's naval stuff many, many years ago. While I read through for historical details, I decided that it was not for me as a game, just too much for a secondary interest. It's so far back that I have forgotten what made me decide that. A few years later I tried GWAS and decided that was more in my league. So I am afraid I can't really give a useful review.
 

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So I am afraid I can't really give a useful review.
Thanks Paul. At one point I got quite interested in the fire control problem during the Dreadnought era (after reading Friedman's "Naval Firepower" book). The CoA game seems like the closest approximation out there (it's Harpoon, transplanted to that earlier era), so I've curious about it.
 

Paul M. Weir

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As expected from an ASLer, my main interest was land warfare, initially Eastern Front. Over the years my interest expanded to the other WW2 theatres as well as starting at the other time end of Ancient battles (GBoH). Eventually my reading probes dipped their toes in Naval warfare and I got a few books before eventually finding Robert Massie's Dreadnought: Britain, Germany, and the Coming of the Great War and Castles of Steel: Britain, Germany, and the Winning of the Great War at Sea, both of which I cannot recommend enough. At that stage I think I had got or was about to get GWAS's Jutland.

It's hard to explain why I took up an interest in things naval, some of it due to the impact of naval operations on land warfare especially in the Pacific. Another was that I simply had only the vaguest idea and there was a knowledge gap to be filled (see 1st line in my signature). Fortunately I picked upon a period (pre and early dreadnought) that marked the transition between renewable energy based propulsion (wind) and non-renewable (coal and oil) based systems. The problems like needing coaling bases as well as very heavy industries were either new or a great magnification of prior naval power limitations and were similar in degree to those apparent in WW2 and after. So for me they were an easy introduction into the challenges faced by a navy as a functional system. So less what happened and who did what, but why did they and how did they do it. That may seem weird, but I like to get an idea of how an entire system works or fails together.

If you have got a hankering for feet wet then I would suggest GWAS's Jutland, you can always go for something more complex later. Some of the add ons, without going into the reasons/details, add rules wrinkles for pre fire control table gunfire (my recent HSF book purchase adds that for pre 1913 gunfire).
 

djohannsen

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It's hard to explain why I took up an interest in things naval, some of it due to the impact of naval operations on land warfare especially in the Pacific.
At one point, I also took an interest in naval subjects. There is something compelling about capital ships. They, as a single object, embody the will, and the financial and technological strength of a nation.

Another was that I simply had only the vaguest idea and there was a knowledge gap to be filled (see 1st line in my signature). Fortunately I picked upon a period (pre and early dreadnought) that marked the transition between renewable energy based propulsion (wind) and non-renewable (coal and oil) based systems.
First, amen on the sentiment in your signature; outside family, learning is the greatest source of joy in my life. As a mathematician, my period of naval interest was initiated by wanting to understand the fire control problem, before the advent of radar and analogue computers. It certainly requires an interesting series of estimates and computations and refinements of the estimates to hit a moving ship from a moving ship under various environmental conditions. The development of the fire control director and (essentially) uniform caliber guns (as embodied by the HMS Dreadnought and her successors) is also a fascinating chapter in this evolution. If you have any interest in this direction, Friedman's book is wonderful (only by going to primary sources from the period can you find anything more detailed in print).

If you have got a hankering for feet wet then I would suggest GWAS's Jutland, you can always go for something more complex later. Some of the add ons, without going into the reasons/details, add rules wrinkles for pre fire control table gunfire (my recent HSF book purchase adds that for pre 1913 gunfire).
Thank you for the recommendation. I'm still tempted by the CoA offering, as I've heard it referred to as a simulation and not at all a game. As any naval game I might buy would certainly only be solitaire played, I think that the "simulation" route might be more satisfying (see my remark above, regarding learning). Again, thank you sir.
 

Paul M. Weir

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I think we have started from similar starting positions, the (mechanical) details, then branching into how entire integrated systems work, eg fleets, armies or even nations.

While GWAS Jutland might not be quite your taste it does outline what to do with the various types in a hot war. In the pre-dreadnought era a fair number of ships and classes were to a great extent intended for colonial and flag showing purposes. However once war began in '14, a game like Jutland does give you a chance to explore the somewhat Rock, Paper, Scissors aspect of Battleship, Cruiser and Destroyer. It shines in terms of understanding the naval operational level. It can also sometimes help to understand the requirements that drove the technological changes that naval warfare underwent.

However each to their own and from what little I understand, the CoA is about the best available, just beyond where I would wish to go.

EDIT: I just remembered a third reason for my burgeoning naval interest and that was to understand the German-British naval arms race as another element in the morass of reasons that led to WW1. So in a sense a political curiosity.
 
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Yuri0352

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Thanks Paul and dj for bringing up this topic! (I was going to start a thread on 'Naval ASL' but you beat me to it) :)

I'm interested in a game which could portray WWII tactical level naval combat), i.e. one counter=one ship game which could simulate actions such as Vella Gulf, Guadalcanal, Surigao Strait, North Cape etc. I'm not familiar with the CoA or Great War at Sea series, and I've been wondering if such a tactical level WWII naval game even exists?

Thanks again for bringing up this topic and best wishes to you both for the holidays.
 

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Thanks Paul and dj for bringing up this topic! (I was going to start a thread on 'Naval ASL' but you beat me to it) :)

I'm interested in a game which could portray WWII tactical level naval combat), i.e. one counter=one ship game which could simulate actions such as Vella Gulf, Guadalcanal, Surigao Strait, North Cape etc.
If you want ASL, transplanted to sea (both in terms of detail and bottomless pit of expense as you add more modules), then the Clash of Arms "Command at Sea" series might be something that you want to look at (I don't own it, but have mulled it over). The CaS from CoA is the WWII analogue to FGaDN that I mentioned above (notice the acronyms - again, trying to make it feel like ASL). Just like FGaDN, probably more a "simulation" than a true "game" (it's the Harpoon system, replanted to WWII), but might be something for you to consider.
 
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