Great War ASL

BW92

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I posted the following on The "Desperation Morale" site regarding Critical Hit's WW1 ASL Compliant product...
I thought I would look for intelligent responses here:

This has been a few years now, but I must ask – precisely why is WW1 not portable to ASL rules system?
The tactics, time frame of turns, movement – etc are all the same at Squad-Platoon level.
The 1917 US Army Infantry Manual show that…. So I don’t understand why WW1 combat is not a fit to the ASL system?


I mean, having been an infantryman trained in the 1980, and read the 1917 Infantry manual – the concepts of movement to contact, deploy, lay down a base of fire to fix the enemy front – while flanking and penetrating the flank or rear of the enemy position by rushes to cover, were spelled out in 1917…nothing has changed in 80 years – except the tools available. So if that was valid in 1917, and still valid in 1980…I can’t see why WW2 Infantry combat via ASL is invalid for a representation of WW1 circa 1917-1918.?

Well...?
 

Paul M. Weir

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I agree that from very late '16 onwards, some battles, especially on the less dense Eastern Front, might be suitable for ASL. The early-mid WW1 battles are much less so as the manoeuvre units were the company. By '16 the platoon had effectively become the manoeuvre unit for some units, that depended upon local initive. The Germans under von Hutier adopted infiltration type tactics in '17, though still using company and platoon manoeuvre chunks. It really wasn't until the March '18 Operation Michael that the platoon and squad manoeuvre became the thing. There is no clear division between the battalion/company and platoon/squad basis, some areas like mountainous areas of the Italian Front adopted earlier, others later. It's much less a weapon question than doctrine, training and emphasis on low level initiative.

Most post WW1 like the Russian Civil War, while still in practice more like early WW1 did not have the same density to preclude platoon/squad tactics. One pre-WW1 war that would well fit ASL is the 2nd Boer War, though with often very effective rifle fire up to 1000m would require some unusual MMC counters or SSRs.

So though it could be done in ASL, the early to mid WW1 would be better served by a company/platoon rather than a squad based game.
 

Sparky

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interesting subject. I can't speak from any experience, I have next to no interest in WW1, nor any desire to invest precious playing time playing something.. I have next to no interest in. So I have no idea about the details but never really thought it was much of a stretch to take the system from its ww2 roots elsewhere or back to ww1.

In most ways the conflicts are not that different.. improved means of killing but still the same mechanics. Tanks, MG's, direct fire ordnance, OBA etc. Where they differ though. .could be a problem but in reality not really. For one could argue that ASL itself does not accurately model ww2.. remember.. you hear it all the time.. 'it is just a game' and is to many.. never intended to be a recreation or a modelling of ww2 combat. It's failure... allows a player to play every nationality the same.. when one can argue the way ASL plays out as written really could only apply to the Germans with their superiority in small unit tactics and tactical leadership. Most nations did not operate on a 'squad' level.. but still were company platoon level. Thus the unimaginative tactics that still ruled ww2 actions.

If CH did include some mechanism like infantry platoon movement akin to AFV platoon movement one could say they could have modeled ww1 fairly well. Whether they did? Who knows...
 

Michael Dorosh

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I posted the following on The "Desperation Morale" site regarding Critical Hit's WW1 ASL Compliant product...
I thought I would look for intelligent responses here:

This has been a few years now, but I must ask – precisely why is WW1 not portable to ASL rules system?
The author of the Desperation Morale site has an unhidden bias against anything outside the original timeframe of the system, so I wouldn't take what he says seriously on this score.

Put another way - the First World War is very much portable to the ASL rules, as is any conflict in which infantry was organized into 'squad' sized units and tactics were created to permit the effective use of these small units. This was certainly the case after 1916. A British infantry platoon was divided, officially, into four "sections" - one equipped with rifles/bayonets, another with rifle grenades, another with hand grenades ("bombs") and a fourth with a Lewis machine gun.

That's the key, though. The system is called "squad leader" and uses the 5 to 15 man group as its basic building block. The whole system is a bit out of kilter anyway since the majority of front-line casualties in 20th Century warfare generally happened due to artillery. So the whole basic premise of the game is to shift the historical action to emphasize small unit stuff. If you can warp the history of the Second World War to make an interesting and realistic-'feeling' game, you can do it to any conflict....
 

BW92

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Thank you all for the replies, it's been most interesting to read.
Someone above asked if there were Platoon movement rules - yes there are in CH Great War ASL.

I have been studying very hard to discover the TO&E of major Western Powers on the Western Front circa 1918 (year is important since everyone evolved formations and tactics as the war progressed).
The ONE weapon missing from GWASL...and indeed normal ASL (WW2) is the Rifle Grenade...Everyone featured it prominently in WW1...(and WW2 for that matter) it seems every major nation's rifle platoons featured a couple of these weapons and support for it - in Platoon TO&E to take on machine guns.

Studying WW1 combat and Platoon/Company TO&E, highlights the "modernization" process that all armies went through during the First World War. Armies of 1915 did not fight like armies of 1918....however armies of 1918 fought very much like armies of 1940-41.... the major difference here is the "squad" becomes more important than the "half-Platoon" of 1918.
A terrific resource to read on the subject is Infantry In Battle by George Marshall, experience and lessons in the Great War....it is a useful handbook to this day.

But anyway, thanks for the replies.
 

Paul M. Weir

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The ONE weapon missing from GWASL...and indeed normal ASL (WW2) is the Rifle Grenade...Everyone featured it prominently in WW1...(and WW2 for that matter) it seems every major nation's rifle platoons featured a couple of these weapons and support for it - in Platoon TO&E to take on machine guns.
In late WW1 a Rifle Grenade squad within a platoon was common and that persisted into the interwar period. Indeed until something like '38 or '39 the Soviet rifle platoon had 3 rifle squads and a RG squad. The proliferation of 40-60mm light mortars, 1 at platoon or 1-3 at company level, with their greater range and rate of fire reduced the importance of RGs. Thereafter a single RG per squad was about the limit.

The US kept a single Springfield in a rifle squad after the conversion to Garands partly as a sniper rifle and partly because initially only the Springfield could take a RG discharger fitting. A version for the Garand was eventually produced.

Whatever about the WW1 RG Squad, in the WW2 rifle squad the single RG would be swamped by the squads small arms. Most were a bit awkward to fit and need special blank cartridges to fire. While universal they don't seem to have been mentioned much, if at all, in after action reports or memoirs.
 
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