"JOHN HILL: My personal preference, I think, in…I think ASL has gone too far with too much detail, and too much that slows down the game too much. "
Gee, the designer of Squad Leader feeling that ASL went too far. What a surprise.
I think his "ASLSK is a ripoff" comment was off-the-cuff. And he never did address the part about ASLSK
paring back down the "too much detail/too slow" part of ASL that JH doesn't like. His "counters are different" statement could not possibly have been about SK. And that statement - a good bit of the of the article actually - comes across (to ASL(SK)-biased me anyway) as envy that ASL has "become a legend, it’s become a lifestyle".
The most important thing for me is that ASLSK is ASL WITHOUT the "...far too much detail ... far too slow..."!! But it DOES have a lot of the improvements ASL brought when compared to SL.
Final Statement: ASLSK is 80-90% of the fun of FASL with maybe 1% of the rules. ?