ASL in the Desert: the West of Alamein replacement product

[Yuri0352]

Expanding upon this, DTO might benefit from a couple of dimorphic boards, boards with two distinctive halves that can be configured with other boards. EX: a board with a small settlement of stone buildings and compounds on one half, and "hilly," broken terrain dotted with occasional patches of scrub, brush, and "palms" on the other.

However, I think that DTO double-wide boards were tailor made for DTO. Boards that can better represent uninterrupted lengths of less-linear wadi, escarpments, undulating expanses composed of hillocks and deirs, etc.

Yes!

I think that some of the aforementioned specific desert terrain features could also be incorporated in to 'Fort' style/,sized desert boards. Whatever form any new desert boards appear in, I think it would be appropriate if the boards were in a larger dimension than the existing desert geo boards.

 

[Bob Walters]

Yes!

I think that some of the aforementioned specific desert terrain features could also be incorporated in to 'Fort' style/,sized desert boards. Whatever form any new desert boards appear in, I think it would be appropriate if the boards were in a larger dimension than the existing desert geo boards.

Perhaps the 11" x 16" size

 

[RobZagnut]

A 'wow' product like what BFP did with Crucible of Steel would create interest in DTO:

32 scenarios
9 x desert boards with 4 of them being double-wide
A 30 x 40 hex mapsheet with a 4-5 scenario campaign
3 or 4 scenarios on this mapsheet
2-3 countersheets of Commonwealth, German and Italian units

 

[Bob Walters]

A 'wow' product like what BFP did with Crucible of Steel would create interest in DTO:

32 scenarios
9 x desert boards with 4 of them being double-wide
A 30 x 40 hex mapsheet with a 4-5 scenario campaign
3 or 4 scenarios on this mapsheet
2-3 countersheets of Commonwealth, German and Italian units

Maybe even adding Free French, Mid Eastern, and African units with their associated scenarios like Blood and Jungle in the PTO.

 

[Cpl Uhl]

I would propose 3 terrain features that need improved/different treatment in the DTO context.

Hills. There are NO hills in current DTO! We have hillocks and Escarpment. Bd 25 is a mess. Algeria, western Tunisia is all hills, regular old hills with scrub and crags. And there are plenty of regular, bald hills in Libya/Eastern Tunisia. I played WCM 2 Scotch on the Rocks which uses bd 3 with SSRs changing all woods to crag so that you have a barren hill with lots of crag - very nice desert feel and a real hill mass w/out the Bd 25 craziness. Maybe the Korean War hills will help support better desert hills, but need some boards or overlays with "normal" hills for desert.

Streams/wadis with vegetation. Go to any arid part of the world and the vegetation is concentrated around streams -duh! But in ASL all the stream and wadi overlays are devoid of plant life. So some boards/overlays with these features would be good, could include some Valleys too, little "flood plains", to break up the monotony of the blank boards, provide phase lines and objectives, cover etc

Desert villages. We have individual desert building overlays, but no villages/cities. Must have been some fighting in such terrain. Lots of narrow streets, low buildings, could do desert colors.

All of these features could also be used for non-DTO theatres, Crete, southern Italy, Greece.

I agree with others in this thread that something "different" and "special" needs to be done with DTO IOT raise interest. The current approach is obviously not working and of course, the core module has to be reprinted. And that is a shame because there is a lot of rich history only lightly covered currently in ASL.

FWIW, I have no problem with the overlay approach and it does make sense for DTO. Would love to see bigger, more complex overlays that work with the "Fort" boards used more and DTO would be a good place to experiment with that.

 

[JRKrejsa]

A Tunisia Pack, with lot 'o maps would be nice...

 

[Tuomo]

Gah. Unable to find the thread I created a while back where I showed off some ideas for desert boards.

Would love to do some for a real product. Particularly DTO villages, which IMO have never been done realistically - they need the Walled Compounds that Bob Walters mentioned earlier. Those are staples of Middle Eastern village topography.

I do wonder, though, if this is a hammer in search of a nail. How much fighting actually occurred in DTO villages?

 

[Michael Dorosh]

I do wonder, though, if this is a hammer in search of a nail. How much fighting actually occurred in DTO villages?

Exactly.

The idea of DASL desert boards is a bit laughable to me also. The whole idea of DASL was to find tightly concentrated terrain with short fields of fire/LOS so that you could fit a typical engagement on the table. Thus, bocage and urban. Engagement ranges in the desert were somewhat longer. I suppose you could do night-fighting or sandstorms, or possibly a single wadi or escarpment fight on DASL, but it wouldn't be true desert.

 

[Bob Walters]

Gah. Unable to find the thread I created a while back where I showed off some ideas for desert boards.

Would love to do some for a real product. Particularly DTO villages, which IMO have never been done realistically - they need the Walled Compounds that Bob Walters mentioned earlier. Those are staples of Middle Eastern village topography.

I do wonder, though, if this is a hammer in search of a nail. How much fighting actually occurred in DTO villages?

Actually more than you might think. Back when we first discussed this I reviewed pictures of some of the battlefields in question and it was the choke points where quite a bit of the actions occurred.

 

[Michael Dorosh]

I agree with others in this thread that something "different" and "special" needs to be done with DTO IOT raise interest.

This makes no sense. MMP is out to sell people stuff that they do like to play.

If desert, solitaire, deluxe, or whatever are relatively unpopular (by which I mean don't sell as well), it makes no business sense to keep throwing unpopular stuff out in the hopes that people will grow to like it.

That's like McDonald's pushing broccoli instead of French fries. Yeah, it's healthy, but it's not why people go to McDonald's.

 

[Bob Walters]

This makes no sense. MMP is out to sell people stuff that they do like to play.

If desert, solitaire, deluxe, or whatever are relatively unpopular (by which I mean don't sell as well), it makes no business sense to keep throwing unpopular stuff out in the hopes that people will grow to like it.

That's like McDonald's pushing broccoli instead of French fries. Yeah, it's healthy, but it's not why people go to McDonald's.

Except that the desert is popular in wargaming, indeed, one of the classics that built Avalon Hill was Afrika Korps. ASLs treatment just needs to be tweaked a bit.

 

[Michael Dorosh]

Except that the desert is popular in wargaming, indeed, one of the classics that built Avalon Hill was Afrika Korps. ASLs treatment just needs to be tweaked a bit.

I can see it being popular in miniatures, where desert terrain is probably easier and cleaner to play. (And at the operational level you are talking about, something very 'pure' about the desert, no rivers or cities (for the most part) to get bogged down in, just all maneuver in the open.) In ASL, for me, all I see is more layers of complexity (dust, terrain, etc.), on relatively uninteresting maps, with no real dramatic history. I'm familiar with the events - the siege of Tobruk, El Alamein - and don't wish to downplay the bravery of the men who fought there or the importance and drama of the battles. But I can't see many people having the same relationship to that material as they do with Stalingrad, the Bulge, Normandy, or Market-Garden.

 

[Paul M. Weir]

Others have outlined many objections to the existing DTO board set and what would be required to correct that.

So I will take a slightly different entry angle into this debate. What do I dislike about the current DTO board set? Of 7 boards, 6 of them are all the bloody same for practical purposes. The density of Hammada and Scrub varies only a little between 26-31. For those two terrain types we need much greater variation in density and size of the clumps.

For some of the previous suggestions:
Vegetation in wadis/gullies. After a downpour desert vegetation does bloom afterwards, but dies back quite quickly to a semi hibernation state. So vegetation alongside a stream sounds fine, but not much in a wadi. The existing ETO streams would be fine for a wet season, wadis for dry season.
Villages/small towns: Any settlement will have some vegitation in its vicinity. For larger towns/cities you could get away with using some existing boards, maybe board "r" might fit. For smaller towns/villages we do need a splash of green amidst a desert board. Someone did some desert urban trial boards with walled compounds/houses, something like that.
Hills: Definitely.

In addition I suggest a transition board or two which would act as a half way between an ETO and DTO board. Suitable for where desert meets the sea, a cultivated area or more fertile areas like Tunisia.

 

[BattleSchool]

The idea of DASL desert boards is a bit laughable to me also.

A bit laughable?

It's frickin' genius!

Up for preorder now, the DTO DASL Map Bundle. Sixty desiccated boards moderately salted with hammada, and lightly peppered with scrub.

Coming soon, the DTO DASL Overlay Pack. Escarpment sold separately.

 

[Yuri0352]

A 'wow' product like what BFP did with Crucible of Steel would create interest in DTO:

32 scenarios
9 x desert boards with 4 of them being double-wide
A 30 x 40 hex mapsheet with a 4-5 scenario campaign
3 or 4 scenarios on this mapsheet
2-3 countersheets of Commonwealth, German and Italian units

And there is the key point!

I don't think it is realistic to expect MMP to produce anything new or improved for the ASL DTO players. A some-unknown -day-in-the future reprint of Hollow Legions with SK versions of the desert boards seems to be the extent of their commitment to North Africa. I don't know about you guys, but the inclusion of a re-worked version of poorly equipped, barefoot Ethiopians fighting poorly trained and badly led Italians seems to be a weak and yawn inducing selling point. Not nearly as exciting as the French Foreign Legion fighting the Afrika Korps I would think.

If there are going to be any further expansions of the DTO, it would most likely have to come from a TPP. (For which there appears to be no evidence of such an endeavour beyond the many renamed CH reprints).

I have long ago given up on expecting any new desert products from MMP. As much as I enjoy their products, the reality is that MMP'S projects and products are firmly ensconced within the Eastern Front and 1944-45 NW Europe. (Red Factories, Russian guards division action pack, Ponyri, Hatten). Also, possession of the British core module is essential to play in the DTO, yet MMP has allowed FKaC To go out of print.

To be clear, I wouldn't hold my breath for the release of the Hollow Legions reprint anytime soon either. Do you remember the several year gestation period for Hakaa Paale?

 

[Yuri0352]

I can see it being popular in miniatures, where desert terrain is probably easier and cleaner to play. (And at the operational level you are talking about, something very 'pure' about the desert, no rivers or cities (for the most part) to get bogged down in, just all maneuver in the open.) In ASL, for me, all I see is more layers of complexity (dust, terrain, etc.), on relatively uninteresting maps, with no real dramatic history. I'm familiar with the events - the siege of Tobruk, El Alamein - and don't wish to downplay the bravery of the men who fought there or the importance and drama of the battles. But I can't see many people having the same relationship to that material as they do with Stalingrad, the Bulge, Normandy, or Market-Garden.

I'm regarding the majority of your post to be based primarily on personal opinion, and there is certainly nothing wrong with that. I'm not sure of what you meant by describing the North African campaign (and I'm including Tunisia here) as being devoid of "real dramatic history".

In my personal opinion, I've always considered the North African campaign to be especially dramatic and unique compared to the other theaters of WWII.
LRDG, ANZACs, Bir Hacheim, proper treatment of POW's, long range tank battles, Kasserine, the ascent of George S. Patton... all good stuff.

 

[Robin Reeve]

To be clear, I wouldn't hold my breath for the release of the Hollow Legions reprint anytime soon either. Do you remember the several year gestation period for Hakaa Paale?

HP took a lot of years, because it was a brand new module and I would guess that the team involved was quite intent in going into minute small details.
HL is mainly a reprint of already used material.
Surely, the counters will have to be redone from scrap as with all the reprints.
The Sons of the Negus addition, as well as the revision of the HL (and additional Annual and Journal ) scenarios and the rewriting of the erraticized chapter F would take some more time.
But I don't think that it would linger as HP did.

 

[Bob Walters]

And there is the key point!

I don't think it is realistic to expect MMP to produce anything new or improved for the ASL DTO players. A some-unknown -day-in-the future reprint of Hollow Legions with SK versions of the desert boards seems to be the extent of their commitment to North Africa. I don't know about you guys, but the inclusion of a re-worked version of poorly equipped, barefoot Ethiopians fighting poorly trained and badly led Italians seems to be a weak and yawn inducing selling point. Not nearly as exciting as the French Foreign Legion fighting the Afrika Korps I would think.

If there are going to be any further expansions of the DTO, it would most likely have to come from a TPP. (For which there appears to be no evidence of such an endeavour beyond the many renamed CH reprints).

I have long ago given up on expecting any new desert products from MMP. As much as I enjoy their products, the reality is that MMP'S projects and products are firmly ensconced within the Eastern Front and 1944-45 NW Europe. (Red Factories, Russian guards division action pack, Ponyri, Hatten). Also, possession of the British core module is essential to play in the DTO, yet MMP has allowed FKaC To go out of print.

To be clear, I wouldn't hold my breath for the release of the Hollow Legions reprint anytime soon either. Do you remember the several year gestation period for Hakaa Paale?

Indeed, they do seem to have somewhat of a fixation. I mentioned that awhile back and was kind of flamed for it. As to miniatures being easier in the desert, that sounds a bit odd. I can not see miniatures ever being physically easier than a board game. If the rules are easier then perhaps they desert rules in ASL need to be tweaked so that is not the case. I have also heard complaints about the desert being too armor centric. This also does not make much sense. If that were the case then why is Kursk so popular an ASL theme? However, I think the problem mostly comes down to the desert boards. If we had boards depicting the terrain discussed in this thread it would be a great deal more popular.

 

[Michael Dorosh]

I'm regarding the majority of your post to be based primarily on personal opinion, and there is certainly nothing wrong with that. I'm not sure of what you meant by describing the North African campaign (and I'm including Tunisia here) as being devoid of "real dramatic history".

In my personal opinion, I've always considered the North African campaign to be especially dramatic and unique compared to the other theaters of WWII.
LRDG, ANZACs, Bir Hacheim, proper treatment of POW's, long range tank battles, Kasserine, the ascent of George S. Patton... all good stuff.

Naturally we're not going to disabuse each other of our personal opinions, but it's interesting to talk about, and if anyone feels the desert is not well loved by MMP, all I can do is offer my own view why that might be.

Tunisia had a lot of continental type terrain so I don't include it in comments about the desert. Longstop and the Churchills come to mind, this was all to my mind rather conventional stuff and you wouldn't need the desert chapter rules to do it.

I don't doubt the desert is unique, but that's why it's a turn off for me. Heavy rules overhead and probably not going to sell in the US as well as PTO, which despite the rules overhead seems to attract more popularity.

Note that most of the things you mention as appeal aren't really applicable to ASL. Long range tank battles - they were firing 88s out several kilometres, you're not going to see that in an average ASL scenario, and if you could, what fun would it be? POWs - irrelevant. Patton? Irrelevant. ANZACs? Irrelevant (just British counters with a different unit name on the scenario card).

LRDG are represented in the Special Forces module I think - I obtained a copy via Justiciar if I remember correctly. I'll give you that one - but of course, that wasn't MMP.

I enjoyed AN ARMY AT DAWN and found it fascinating to read about the early US Army going against the Germans. All good stuff, but far more interesting to me to read about Lloyd Fredendall and his bunker than any of the stuff that could be replicated in ASL as a scenario - be it Patton's son in law's tank unit being surrounded, or Patton winning El Guettar with massed artillery.

 

[Mister T]

Making DTO more attractive = using the announced recast of Chapter F to cut down DTO rules to make them more palatable for all of us.

Two exemples:

- remove the tons of DRs needed for hammada immobilisation and replace it with something more elegant
- simplify hillock rules, maybe not as simplified as BFP's European hillock but certainly more compact than the current ones

Errare Humanum est
Perseverare Diabolicum
(or something like this)