Annuals, hands down. You can go back and read and discover new bits of wisdom.
Or dull and tiresome expositions on
Squad Leader topics of vanishingly little interest.
Or "eight million," long-winded discourses on [insert nationality here].
Or obscure* subject matter: Here, Pigi-Pigi!
Or sub-spuddy, occasionally gauche, humour such as "UPS (
Untermensch Parcel Service)."
Need I go on? I shall.
In the early, heady days of ASL, the
ASL Annual was full of promise. Indeed, by '95--in an issue riddled with errata, it began to deliver on some of its missed potential. Notwithstanding the excellent contributions of Nixon and a couple of other ASL luminaries, taken as a whole, the publication fell short of providing the volume of innovative reflection on the game that began to appear more frequently in its successor, the
ASL Journal. And that's the point.
Taken as a whole, as a singular body of work, the
Annual doesn't compare favourably with a HASL module that has taken ASL to new levels of historicity, design, and creativity. The
Annual encapsulates almost a decade of ASL, and yet there is remarkably little "evolution" to be found in its articles and its (occasionally noteworthy) scenarios. In many respects the
Annual simply reinforced and regurgitated what had gone before; it seldom pushed the envelope. In fairness, ASL as a system remained incomplete throughout the magazine's life.
Doomed Battalions and
Armies of Oblivion, for example, had yet to see the light of day. Therefore, in many ways it's understandable why much of the
Annual's content seemed like more of the same. Useful it was. Of FB stature it's not.
*With apologies to Mr. Swann. We're still waiting for your scenario with Fijian commandos in native canoes. 
