So what scenarios have you played Recently?

[JRKrejsa]

I just finished playing series of 14 ASL scenarios one which was a play test that I cannot comment on. The first was Take and Hold from DftB. While I enjoyed the scenario it is an uphill climb for the Japanese. If the Japanese do not get smoke move on to something else. A suggested fix would have the Japanese Mortars have Smoke 9 for their first shot on the first turn only. Otherwise, it is a dice game with Japanese on the loosing end.

Next up was J220 Battle of the Barricades. This scenario suffers badly because the five road blocks can be placed in such a way that it is a shell game. There is not enough time to find them let alone clear one. Enough Said.

Off to Stalingrad we went with HazMo 23 Empty Spaces. Don’t bother, the force ratio is nearly one to one with the Russians having numerous fortifications. The German victory conditions are impossible with the time allotted.

Back to Korea at night with J222 Den Ouden Holds the Line. A fun scenario with an attack / counter attack. Highly recommend with this scenario being night-lite.

Gave March Madness MM88 A Medal for G Co a try since we have enjoyed MM scenarios in the past. Sadly, this will not be joining them. This scenario suffers from a design flaw. There are no German setup restrictions allowing the German player to concentrate his entire force of fortifications on one of the three required victory locations. This breaks the scenario’s time and distance parameters.

Excited to go off to North Africa with a brand-new scenario and boards with FT293 Wild Men from Texas. The Texans are all dead baking in the African sun. If you are fortune enough to get enough WP from your two mortars you will only die later than sooner for you must cross a large swath of open ground under fire from five MGs while your troops have ML6. And then the Texans must ascend a terraced hill side completely full of stone ruble defended by German 5-4-8! And the entire German left flank will most certainly be locked down by wire and mines. Oh, I forgot to mention the ROF 3 50L ATG.

Landing back on mainland Europe with HazMo 6 Great Vengeance. As the Germans if you pick the appropriate four hexes for your two wire and converted AP mines to AT mines you can mitigate the British players armor support.

Off to the Eastern Front with SP255 Anatoly’s Ambush. A fun fast swirling scenario. Lots going on for both sides. As the Germans don’t be afraid to ESB, it might win you the game.

Still stuck on the Eastern Front; It was hot so we went to J202 Down by the River. A fun scenario with two separate actions going on that are interconnected. Don’t forget you can shoot across the river and watch out for route.

Winter came and we are still on the Eastern Front and it is was not the Germans who were suffering. It was the Italians in HazMo 30 Orphans of Saturn. A promising scenario at first glance but broken by the fact that despite it being the 9th day for the Italian breakout they are neither under ammunition shortage nor hampered in their movement by exhaustion thus allowing them to double time when ever eligible which breaks the time and distance set by the Turn record chart. Suggested fix would be not allowing the Italians to double time and place them under ammo shortage.

Transferred to the Western Front to participate in the Ardennes offensive with J242 Courage of Cowen. This is nice tense scenario for both sides. Requiring great skill in a fallback defense as the Americans and requiring aggressive forward momentum by the SS attackers.

Changing Theaters to the PTO we played J239 Shoot or Shovel. This like wise is a nice scenario requiring the same skills in J242. Only this time it is the Marines holding off repeated Japanese Banzai attacks.

Ending our wars end with DbtF170 One Wars End. This is a three player scenario in which my son joined us. He the junior player pulled off a one-point victory. A fun scenario.

That’s about it. Roll low.

Glad you liked J222, Den Ouden Holds the Line. (I know the designer…) Who won?

 

[gorkowskij]

J98 Lend Lease Attack

The tanks really were behaving like big cats. Lots of prowling around, looking for advantage, as the Germans feel back. Got all the way through turn three with only one Sherman and one truck knocked out - see the pic. On the penultimate turn, the Russians made their move, but the Tigers got two more hits, one at 6 or less and one at 5 or less, to end it.

 

[Andrew Rogers]

......

Transferred to the Western Front to participate in the Ardennes offensive with J242 Courage of Cowen. This is nice tense scenario for both sides. Requiring great skill in a fallback defense as the Americans and requiring aggressive forward momentum by the SS attackers.

Changing Theaters to the PTO we played J239 Shoot or Shovel. This like wise is a nice scenario requiring the same skills in J242. Only this time it is the Marines holding off repeated Japanese Banzai attacks.

Ending our wars end with DbtF170 One Wars End. This is a three player scenario in which my son joined us. He the junior player pulled off a one-point victory. A fun scenario.

That’s about it. Roll low.

Hi. Glad you liked those two scenarios - J239 and J242 - from Journal 14. The Marines scenario is a little unique - Americans on the defence; 6-6-8 squads; flat terrain .... Andy Rogers

 

[MajorDad]

Glad you liked J222, Den Ouden Holds the Line. (I know the designer…) Who won?

The Chinese won. I was the Dutch and retook one of the buildings but could not hold on to the the stone building during my counterattack. For those who are afraid of the dark this is a great scenario to cut your teeth on night rules.

 

[wrongway149]

Factory Fodder. Hopefully these are more to your liking. Andy Rogers

I was just about to use this title.

Guess I'll think of something else!!

 

[Gunner Scott]

Hi all-

Bobby and I got together this evening and gave one of the Borisov scenarios a go. We played Backs to the Guns, a smallish offering with bothsides having decent troops and the attraction to play this one were the Armored cars both sides get. The scenario was was alot of fun with us going to turn 5 out of an 8 turn scenario. The best part was my BA -6 overrunning a stack of Germans in open ground. I lost as the Russians due to some bonehead moves ( I forgot I could HIP my guys in foxoles and only pop out when the Germans are in LOS) The map is really nice to play on and the overall feel was a desperate Russian defense in 1941. A very fun evening of ASL!
here is a few pics of the map and scenario below:

 

[commissar1969]

Just finished playing the free HazMo 31 "The Cloak of Disorder" with Bruce Stevenson for our VASLeague game. I was pensive, because most free scenarios tend to be unplaytested and therefore the balance is sketchy. That was not the case for this one. It was a fun game w/ a lot happening, with the issue in doubt until the very last H-to-H CC in the victory building. My Chinese were able to pull it off thanks to a beserk 7-0 and 1-2-7, my SSR DC hero, a sniper (pinning a squad), a dare death squad, 2x8-0s and a 337. All were needed to succeed against 2 Japanese 448s. Great game w/ a great opponent.

Hi Augie,

Thanks so much for giving this scenario a spin. It's one ALL our playtesters (and I'm not exaggerating) really liked, and was - perhaps ironically - the most playtested scenario in Hazmo's short history. We're making it available for free to give players a taste of what kind of scenarios they can expect in Pack 4 (Pre-order: Oct 1, Release: Dec 1 at Albany).

P.S. - If you're on ROAR, we would be deeply grateful if you could register that game so we have an idea of how the balance shakes out. Though the pack is not out, there is an entry on ROAR for Hazmo31.

 

[commissar1969]

Winter came and we are still on the Eastern Front and it is was not the Germans who were suffering. It was the Italians in HazMo 30 Orphans of Saturn. A promising scenario at first glance but broken by the fact that despite it being the 9th day for the Italian breakout they are neither under ammunition shortage nor hampered in their movement by exhaustion thus allowing them to double time when ever eligible which breaks the time and distance set by the Turn record chart. Suggested fix would be not allowing the Italians to double time and place them under ammo shortage.

Hi MajorDad,

Thanks for the AAR! One small bone to pick: yes, the Italians are not hampered by exhaustion. Their desperate state is instead reflected in SSR 3, which provides a harsh penalty for exceeding ELR (and their morale is only 7, with an ELR of 3): 3. To reflect the desperation of the Alpini, all Italian MMC that fail their ELR become Walking Wounded (ABTF CG19) in lieu of Replacement. Walking Wounded MMC that fail their ELR are subject to normal Replacement.

I just wanted to add that, because it's not as if we did not reflect the state of the Italians in the scenario. We just did it with Walking Wounded rather than Counter Exhaustion. When we playtested the scenario, we had a lot of WW running around, with only 3MF, in addition to all the other penalties that come with WW.

Roll low,

Chuck

 

[Augie]

Hi Augie,

Thanks so much for giving this scenario a spin. It's one ALL our playtesters (and I'm not exaggerating) really liked, and was - perhaps ironically - the most playtested scenario in Hazmo's short history. We're making it available for free to give players a taste of what kind of scenarios they can expect in Pack 4 (Pre-order: Oct 1, Release: Dec 1 at Albany).

P.S. - If you're on ROAR, we would be deeply grateful if you could register that game so we have an idea of how the balance shakes out. Though the pack is not out, there is an entry on ROAR for Hazmo31.

fyi, l did put this in ROAR, a great tool for the ASL community

 

[MajorDad]

Hi MajorDad,

Thanks for the AAR! One small bone to pick: yes, the Italians are not hampered by exhaustion. Their desperate state is instead reflected in SSR 3, which provides a harsh penalty for exceeding ELR (and their morale is only 7, with an ELR of 3): 3. To reflect the desperation of the Alpini, all Italian MMC that fail their ELR become Walking Wounded (ABTF CG19) in lieu of Replacement. Walking Wounded MMC that fail their ELR are subject to normal Replacement.

I just wanted to add that, because it's not as if we did not reflect the state of the Italians in the scenario. We just did it with Walking Wounded rather than Counter Exhaustion. When we playtested the scenario, we had a lot of WW running around, with only 3MF, in addition to all the other penalties that come with WW.

Roll low,

Chuck

Chuck fully understand your method with The Walking wounded. Our game we only had two squads of walking wounded which did not reflect the exhaustion. This may be specific to our game. I may want to give it another try to see the impact of more walking wounded. I like the idea of the scenario. Thanks.

My best
Keith

 

[Houlie]

Played AP165 The Chocos in my VASL League game with Stewart King. We played a couple years back and had a very enjoyable game, so was glad to get paired up with him again. This PTO action had me as the attacking Japanese and Stewart as the defending Aussies. This is a smaller tourney scenario coming in at 4.5 turns on board 37 with the Japanese VC to control the hut hexes on a small overlay in the center of the board.

I pressed assertively on the southern half of the board and was in a really solid position at the end of turn 2 with the help of a few banzais. The Aussie positions were under pressure. I launched another banzai to enter a couple of the hut hexes on turn 3. Advancing fire broke a 8-1/457 holding the level 0 hut hex north of the hill. A critical outcome. A back-breaker was a 1-6 HTH from a Japanese 7+1 leader (wounded) who CRed a unit in CC. At that point, Stewart called it. The Japanese had a ton of firepower ringing the defense and were set to take a few more hut locations in turn 4.

A tight, full-tilt PTO scenario that offers challenges for both sides. We talked after the game and Stewart felt, in retrospect, he should have set up further back closer to the village. This may well have helped. A huge thank you to Stewart for another fun game and I wish him the best in his next round.

 

[gorkowskij]

The Last Tiger SP 74

The hilltop Nashorn rolled box cars on its first shot and later bungled the repair attempt to disable the gun! On the bright side, the breakdown happened at the end of the Russian movement phase, so the Germans had impeded Ivan’s opening moves just by being there. Over the next two player turns, the hull down IS-2 bounced two rounds off the hill top Tiger’s turret, partial recompense to the Germans for their earlier boxcars. In the meantime, the ISU-152 and Shermans – popping SM smoke – darted from cover to cover across the center, but the Tiger did kill one of lend leasers. The ISU-152 screeched to a halt and laid sights on the German MMG, but held fire until the much better odds of a hit the following turn. German infantry in the village fired on advancing Russian infantry to ELR a 447 and lay a fire lane that defeated some previously placed smoke. Still, several Allied squads closed to within 80 meters of the victory area by mid game. The IS-2 finally killed the Tiger with a critical hit, kill number of 50 before reduction for the Tiger’s armor! T34/85s raced around the German left flank. One of them ate a panzerfaust shot and blew up. The other went up and over a hill to dodge a shot from a 75L halftrack and then skewer same said box with a pointblank AP hit. With that the German player asked for terms and the last Tiger was no more.

One of several classics that will feature in the DC Conscripts ASL tournament - Human Wave 2023 - just two weeks from now!

HUMAN WAVE 2025

Advanced Squad Leader (ASL) Tournament 11-13 July 2025

humanwaveconscripts.com

 

[william.stoppel]

Played FT127 In the Mouth of Madness from LfT’s FTC 4 Russian Civil War pack yesterday at our SoCal ASL Gameday in Pasadena. This is a three player scenario set in 1920 in Siberia which has the Red Army set up between Bolshevik Partisans and the Mensheviks. Woke Dave got the Bolsheviks, Timothy the Red Army and I the last choice Mensheviks. It is five turns on BFP’s board A with victory conditions based on squad equivalents in the train station. We missed a few SSRs and only were able to complete 3 of 5 turns before one had to depart. The Red Army seemed poised for victory with the Bolshie’s really taking it on the chin. My three Menshevik Commisars (10-0 Woke Dave, 9-0 Plachta and 8+1 Jazbutis really did yeoman’s work bailing me out and putting my guys back on the line. I highly recommend this one with a solid 10 out of 10 for fun factor. Thx for agreeing to play Dave and Timothy. A great time

 

[Eagle4ty]

I have finished off a few games, most via VASL though (sure miss Curtis for FtF and our trips to Mnpls-St Paul for TCASL though).

1. J212 SHOULDER TO SHOULDER. This a fun scenario with the Germans attacking the Americans on the board 10b village. The Germs have a few StuGs while the gangster Americans defend with a meat-chopper ht and are reinforced with my favorite light AFV, some M8 armored cars. My attacking Germans made some early gains, but I got a bit frisky with a couple of my StuGs which resulted in the usual end result that told me, "Don't do that again!" The end result was loss, but a tense and thoroughly enjoyable game against an outstanding opponent.
2. VotG14 PAVLOV'S HOUSE. This was against my long time VASL opponent and a great player, so I was glad it was my turn to defend the said edifice with my Russians. It was going pretty good for the Germans until about mid-way through the game. He had just found and taken out my ATG when my Russkies finally woke from their slumber and started to fight back. As my opponent remarked, everything for him suddenly went sideways. My HMG started to tear apart his assault engineers and the final assault to take a location in the Fortified Strongpoint which he had created a breach into by sacrificing one of his StuGs to do so, was desperate last-ditch affair with very little chance of success. A gratifying win against a great player and good buddy-Yeah, it's pro-Russkie anyway, but I'll savor the victory regardless-especially against him.
3. FrF76 PAIN IN THE NECK. This was against my old buddy Curtis and is the scenario name ever appropriate! I would have the escaping Germans trying to get west to surrender to the Americans through a Russian force that entered in front and behind me. My force would be a conglomeration of some captured Sherman tanks, Pz IV's and a JdgPz with a rag-tag assortment of mixed quality SS infantry vs an assortment of T-34 types coming in from both directions along with some late war Guards infantry. Only a half board fight, it was replete with a lot of action and tense moments. Curtis provided his usual outstanding defense to my front and a relentless attack from the rear. With PF/PSKs & T-34 85s there were a good share of burning wrecks about. Although I made a valiant attempt to escape, I came up short. As always, a great game against a great player and good friend. Fun times, but not as much as if we had done it FtF.

 

[fenyan]

Pain in the Neck is a fun scenario, played it Saturday but I put the Russian roadblock too far back, it needs to be further up the road to slow/channel the German tanks sooner.

 

[Eagle4ty]

Pain in the Neck is a fun scenario, played it Saturday but I put the Russian roadblock too far back, it needs to be further up the road to slow/channel the German tanks sooner.

Yup. Curtis put it at the board edge in the village between Bd41 & Bd50. Boy was that a bugger to move around. All but stopped movement into/thru the village by my armor.

 

[gorkowskij]

J 209 Corking the Chambois bottle turn 2. As illustrated, the attacking Germans get channeled into a few (deep) stream crossing points. A lucky German sniper clocked the Achilles while smoke from a bogged PZ III in the woods to the left of the picture smothered the American machine gun nest in the steeple at the top of the pic. Without those events, progress would have been much tougher. The breach counter is just a personal reminder placed by the defender.

 

[hastrup]

Played 3 scenarios this week (home alone all week
J212 Shoulder to Shoulder vs Derek Ward. I had the attacking Germans and they succeded in getting into the Village in turn 3 without taking more that one squad in casualties and at the same time, managing to kill or capture 3½ squads Americans and in turn 4 kill two M8 AC's. Derek conceded after this.
This is one of my two favorite scenarios from J#13. It is fun, challenging and fairly balanced. The American side is a bit more complex to play, they have to get the most out of their units.
One incident stands out though. I captured an American halfsquad in turn 1, with a 237 as guard and moved forward to the 1st level crest line together with other units.
In the American turn 2 Defensive Fire, the 237 and prisoner was fired upon and had to take a MC. The 237 Boxcared and the Prisoner stod up to it, immediately rearming and subsequently fired with a 4 flat vs. 3 German squads who thought they were safe two hexes back from the crestline
Two squads pinned on the MC - could have been worse, but very fun to see. Never experienced this in my 35 years og ASL

Next was my 3rd round VASLeague vs. Øyvind Bjørkås. We played the classic WCW7 Eye of the Tiger.
I had the Russians with a Øyvind getting the German Balance. It was an intense and fun game that went to the last player turn. I recaptured a building with a Crew form a T34 that had survived a kill from the Tiger, thereby winning the game. Øyvinds Germans had suffered 27 CVP and would lose on 30 CVP - I could have charged with my two remaining T34's and trying to take out an immob Pz4. But no need.
This is one of my all time favorites

Last scenario was J208 Panzerpioniere! vs Bo Siemsen
The is my second favorite from J#13. I played the attacking Germans but fell short. I gave up in defensive Fire turn 3 when my 3rd of 5 PzIV malfed its MA. I was behind the timeline though, so would have been difficult to win anyway. It is a very interesting and also challenging scenario, with a lot of Bocage action and LOS wirednes
I attacked on the left half of board 54, and had captured two Buildings and killed the immob Sherman =3 point out of 12. Two more buildings was with within reach (2 hexes away) but getting the last 7 points seemed very difficult in this situation. Bo played a very skillful defensive game, even though his Americans were cought a bit out of balance by my initial attack in turn 1, and had enough units to block my way...including the 12.7

Both J208 and J212 are very likely Scandinavian Open scenarios for the 2024 Tournament.
Michael

 

[Houlie]

Both J208 and J212 are very likely Scandinavian Open scenarios for the 2024 Tournament.


J208 Panzerpioniere! is a tough call for a tourney selection. I would recommend Germans get the balance (15-6 on ROAR). I played this as the Germans and really wasn't close. Interesting scenario, but may need a tweak. Maybe I missed something, but I feel they need a lot of things to go right to win IMO.

 

[lionelc62]

I agree, German balance needed.