Advanced Squad Leader Practice.

An earlier game to learn about High Explosive fire from guns

In anticipation of the soon to be reprinted Advanced Squad Leader Starter Kits, I have set about doing something small every day with the game that will re-build my knowledge of the system, whether by simply reading a few sections of rules or creating some incidental minor gaming situations with a few counters to embed the rules to memory via play.

I have mostly been commenting about this over on the ‘Commanders’ pages (link below), but a recent contact from a visitor to the Commanders site, who is doing something similar (Hi Mike) set me thinking that a fuller article might be enjoyed.

Advanced Squad Leader is a complicated system, due mainly to the volume of rules and the number of rule exceptions that it carries. The starter kits are meant to slowly introduce the player to the system bit by bit.

I have now hit ‘vehicles’ and suddenly the grey cells have decided to go on strike! So these mini situations that I am playing are helping and through the ‘repeat process’, they are slowly getting me over the vehicles hurdle.

With small chunks of game, it is easy to spend a bit of time absorbing a particular mechanic or two.

Today, we are somewhere on the east front, probably in early 1944. A German Panzer IV platoon is leading an advance and approaching a low hill, which promises to give a narrow gateway through the woodland for the rest of the company to follow ….. but what lays ahead!

At around 350 metres beyond the hill is a small orchard and if you look closely through your binoculars, there are two Soviet SU 85 Assault Guns (brown counters) amongst the apple trees, their guns trained on the hill, ready to ambush anything that moves into view.

Oberleutnant (1st Lieutenant) Otto Müller the German platoon leader (Vehicle A - lowest blue tank) has halted the platoon on the reverse of the hill while he edges ahead for a closer look.

For this ‘incident’ I have set up the SU85 seven hexes from the front slopes (crest) of the hill. Moving up from six hexes just adds a bit of stress to the Soviet ‘To Hit’ number. At this range the 85’s have a penetration value of 17, while the German frontal armour is a 6 ….. so any hit is almost certainly going to see a German tank off!

Going the other way, the German 75mm gun at this range also has a penetration value of 17, but the SU 85 armour is rated at a much more impressive 11 factors, so (11 from 17 = 6) if the Germans get a hit, they will only go on to harm the SU 85 on a further score of 6 or less (2D6).

This is an engagement directly to their front, so the fact that the SU 85 is not turreted is unlikely to be of significance.

In this action we will meet the To Hit / To Kill process, bounding fire (fire on the move), motion rules, bog tests when moving through woodland, machine gun effects on target vehicles that have their commanders heads popping out of the turret, target acquisition, gun malfunction, rate of fire and possibly intensive fire - so a nice sprinkle of rules.

As gamers, we generally want and generally get a good grip of the rules from a once or twice reading of the typical  game, but here, there is a lot of depth and I think it is a game that if you are learning alone, you have to be happy initially with roughly knowing it and just get on with it, getting some things wrong along the way, having some things not fully understood, but going back to the rules and tightening your grasp over a number of plays. You have to embrace that you may initially feel a little overwhelmed and work past that, because in the end, it is the nuance of the game that delights.

A sticking point for me has been the thing of vehicle ‘Motion’. In this game, if a vehicle moves it has to use its entire movement allowance. So what do you do with 16 points of vehicle movement! This might mean creating ‘delay’ by spending more movement points in a hex than you need to, but you can see where this starts to matter when a gun fires on you and their die roll modifier takes into account how many movement points you spent in their view etc.

Another thing you learn (after repeatedly doing all the calculations!) is that it is very hard to hit something if you moved or are moving yourself (rightly so). By extension, it is hard for an enemy vehicle to hit you if you are moving, but the best chance of getting a hit on an enemy is to fire while stationary, so there is a bit there to unwrap in understanding how best to use vehicles.

It is all about progress, so today I played a little faster than yesterday and automatically remembered that if the Red dice is greater than or equal to the White dice on a To Hit roll, that the shot hits the enemy hull and not the turret …. tiny steps :-)

And so to play - Müller presses forwards, crests the hill and hove into view of the two SU 85’s. In most games, the assault guns might respond with opportunity fire now, but here there is a die roll modifier penalty of +4 for a target being in your view for just 1 movement point worth of movement, also there is +1 penalty for height advantage (the panzer is on a hill), so the Soviet To Hit DRM penalty is +5 and they need an 8 or less to hit on a 2D6, so they would need to roll a 3 (5+3 = 8). They decide to wait.

The German spends another movement point to stop. Then calls out the spending of some more Movement Points of delay, which will eventually help their own Bounding Fire …. but the impatient Ivan Sokolov in the SU 85 on the left, is trigger happy and fires. 

Müller has now been in view for 4 movement points worth of time. The Soviet DRM penalty is now reduced to a total of +3 (+1 for height advantage, +2 for time spent in the view of the firer). The shot misses, but allows the SU 85 to place an acquisition marker on the Müller’s panzer. This will help with future shots.

It is still the German movement phase and the other two Panzer IV’s move up. Both will have to enter woods, so will test for bogging down.

The panzer on the left has to come down off the hill to enter the woods. It is now on ground level, the same as the SU 85’s, so when it occupies the woods, the grain in front of the orchard will visually get in the way and count as a Hindrance to firing.

Next turn - The SU 85 that fired, fires again and thanks to that acquisition marker it placed last turn, it JUST gets a hit and that big old 85mm gun destroys Müller’s tank (flipped to white side - below).

The other SU 85 enthusiastically fires and rolls a raw Double Six ….Ooooh Noooo that makes the gun malfunction and for now at least, the Soviets are one gun tube down. They get a chance each turn to repair it each turn, but roll badly when trying and it will be permanently disabled.

Soon after, both SU 85’s are hit and destroyed.

Re-set and play again. 

After getting into firing positions, one of the panzers uses its machine guns against a SU 85. The Soviet commander commander has his head out of the turret for a better view! The machine gun fire is effective and the tank has to take a morale check, which they fail. The consequence is they have to immediately button up and are marked ‘stunned’. 

The other SU 85 fires and hits a panzer IV on the turret, destroying it. Then a second panzer is destroyed. 

The remaining panzer sees the writing on the wall and retreats. It tries to fire its smoke pots to cover the withdrawal, but they fail and then as they retreat through the woods, they fail their bog test and become bogged.

Next turn they try to un-bog, but they roll badly and it becomes worse and they ‘Mire’ instead and then on their next attempt in the next turn it gets absolutely worse as they become immobilised for the rest of the game!

Well, that was two shortish sessions and quite a lot of different rules were touched upon. I picked up a few things, such as don’t fire unless you need to, as a shot with a very poor chance of hitting might just well roll 12 and malfunction the gun. Also try spending more movement points amongst trees to reduce the risk of bogging.

Since doing these mini situations, that was the first time that I managed to Stun a vehicle, so another rule is explored in practice. The effect of Stun is that it can’t do anything for the rest of the turn and then for the rest of the game, it suffers a +1 DRM on all of its ‘To Hit’ attempts.

If they can land a hit, the SU 85 gun tubes are deadly to panzer IV’s. Their weakness is that they are not turreted, so pulling them out of position by threatening a flank forces them to turn and they get a penalty on shooting. That could happen in a more wide ranging situation than this one.

Tomorrows task is ‘rule book’ day. I want to re-look at that whole thing of vehicles using their machine guns in the movement phase (bounding fire) and their impact on ‘crew exposed’ vehicles.

Every day is a learning day.

Anyone on an ASLSK journey will benefit from a short series of 7 YouTube videos by the ASL Academy - link below.

Resources

Commanders is my other bit of webspace that is a bit more magaziney than here. Link

https://commanders.simdif.com/dear_diary.html

ASL Academy, here is a link to the first vid.

https://youtu.be/Dy96qtLqAbI?si=fqGn793SkO9ooHAy

Marengo June 1800 (Napoleon at War)

Marengo is one of the four battles in the recently released deluxe boardgame version of ‘Napoleon at War’ by Decision Games.

The original Napoleon at War ‘quad’ was published in 1975 by SPI. It presented the battles of Marengo, Jena-Auerstadt, Wagram and Leipzig. Each with their own map and having less than 100 game counters. 

A seven page rule book services all four battles, with each battle then having some historically based special rules. This is  driven by a system that is at the very low end of complexity.

Marengo is the smallest affair of the four battles and also described as the simplest and so becomes a good place for us to start. 

The original games had single sided counters with their backs blank. Here the counter rears are used to show which hex the unit sets up in, which battle the counter belongs to and whether the unit enters as a reinforcement. This is a great help in setting up the game and faster than using the supplied rosters.

Above - Here is our Marengo map with units in their starting positions. The Austrians (yellow) can be thought of as having just advanced onto the board, passing through Alessandria and advancing across constricted terrain with the intention of capturing the villages where the two dice are shown and going on to destroy the French Army. 

The villages of Pietrabona (white die) and Marengo (red die) are victory locations. The very pale blue waterway is impassable river (except at bridges) the darker blue is the Fontanone Stream. It is crossable along its length, but being a sort of steep sided ditch, it is defensible to the defender and expensive to cross in terms of movement points.

The ditch offers a good defensive line and the Austrians will need to get across this if they are going to contest Marengo beyond it.

Historically the outnumbered French did a good job at holding on, but eventually they were pushed out of Marengo, falling  back onto that high ground in the middle of the map with the Austrians in Pursuit. At this point the Austrians were pretty sure that they had won a victory …. But! A significant French counter-attack then pushed the Austrians all the way back to their starting positions. Napoleon is popularly quoted as saying “I lost the Battle of Marengo at 5 O’ Clock and won it back at 7”. This may not have fallen from Napoleon’s lips, but it nicely summarises the day.

Important stuff - The system scale is 400 - 800 metres to the hex. The Marengo map says it is using 400 metres to the hex. Units represent brigades and demi-brigades (though in Leipzig units are divisions with their artillery absorbed into the divisional counter). Zones of Control are what are commonly termed ‘sticky’, so that once units engage, they will only disengage following a combat result. This greatly matters because combat between adjacent units is mandatory, so units that get locked together with opponents are forced to fight.

There is some scripting going on in the game. On turn 1, the French can’t move more than half their movement allowance and cannot enter an Austrian Zone of Control. From turn 9 onwards the French can announce their main counter-attack. For three consecutive turns, all French attacks will be enhanced to double strength (defence remains normal).

The victory conditions look at the proximity of friendly units to the villages of Pietrabona and Marengo, together with casualty rates. To win, the French need only control Marengo and the area around it, while the Austrians need to control both villages.

This is a 14 turn game and the general rules say that a game turn represents between 1 - 2 hours, so since the numbered game track does not include the time, I am going to assume, for the sake of narrative, that in the Marengo battle, 1 turn is 1 hour and that this is a full days fighting (which it was).

Playing the game.

I was not to know it yet, but success for the Austrians in the early turns is essential for them. On Turn 1 (shall we call it 8 AM)  the lead Austrian units make contact with the French, just outside Pietrabona, but they are repulsed!

Turn 2 (9 AM) - The next set of Austrian attacks are also repulsed. The French stay on the defence and simply choose  to develop their line, while some reinforcements move across the hill to occupy Castel Ceriolo village on the western slopes.

Turn 3 (10 AM) - The initial Austrian failures means that they are becoming rather bottled up against a firm defence and they do not have the space to adequately deploy against the French in a decisive way.

[Historical notes - The French did a good job at holding the Austrians back, but by 10 AM the Austrians had taken Pietrabona and were attacking across the Fontanone Stream].

Turn 4 (11 AM) - Above - The French still hold a firm line, but the Austrians have given themselves a little more room to breathe. That Austrian strength 7 counter (Latterman’s Brigade) is making space, but is now very vulnerable to counter-attack!

Turn 5 (12 noon) How is it possible to roll so many sixes! (Bad).

Turns 6 - 8 (1 - 3 PM) The Austrians finally take Pietrabona! The French re-take it. The Austrians capture it again ….. and the French retake it!

[Historical notes - by now, the French are over the Fontanone and they have taken Marengo].

Turn 9 (4 PM) - Unsupported Weidenfeld’s Brigade has by-passed Pietrabona and taken Stortingliona a little further south. This is stretching the French line. from this turn onwards the French can announced their 3 turn counter-attack, but at the moment, they don’t have enough troops in the right places to make it worthwhile, so it is delayed. ABOVE photo - Never-the-less their attacks are going well and things are turning in their favour. In the north Murat has just arrived with his cavalry and he is pressing the Austrian left.

[Historical Note - French Consular Guard are destroyed and the Austrians pursue the French towards the higher ground].

Turn 10 (5 PM) the French clear the Austrian threat at Storingliona by destroying Weidenfeld’s Brigade and so now have the spare capacity to launch their three turn counter-attack. They will be doubled in strength on the attack.

Turns 11 & 12 (6 PM - 8 PM) - The French slowly push the Austrians back towards their starting positions, but their extra efforts has seen them suffer heavy casualties and they leave the way open for the Austrians to once again strike at and capture Pietrabona!

[Historical note - at 6 PM the French counter-attacked].

Turn 13 (9 PM) - the fighting is starting to die down, with both sides concentrating their efforts around Pietrabona.

Turn 14 (10 PM) The French ‘mop up’ in the north. At  Pietrabona they put in a 2:1 attack against the village which has a 66% chance of ejecting the Austrians ….. but fail. The game ends with the Austrians controlling Pietrabona, but getting no where near Marengo!

Above - final positions.

Victory - Neither side eliminated the number of enemy strength points needed to raise them a victory, so it just goes by holding  objective conditions. The French only need to hold the area around Marengo with at least 10 strength points, which they did, while Austrians need to hold both of the Pietrabona AND Marengo village hexes, which they didn’t! So the game declares a French victory, which seems about right as the French certainly had the better game.

Conclusion

The game was enjoyable to play and kept both sides continuously engaged throughout. Those early persistent Austrian failures seem to have pretty much cost them the game. They were generally attacks that had a 50 / 50 chance of pushing the French back and giving themselves room to expand, but the dice were cruel and so on another day, perhaps an Austrian success might show its hand. However today, with so many sixes rolled early on, it was not good for the Austrians and after that, they just couldn’t hope to keep up with the historical timetable.

Containing the Austrians meant that the fight was pretty much kept to the upper left quarter of the map. The terrain here is fairly restricted and troublesome if trying to move or attack into. 

An interesting dynamic is that Austrian infantry generally have a movement allowance of 3 (French generally 4), this starts to matter in the dense terrain as a bad terrain hex costs 2 movement points to move through, so the Austrians are disadvantaged in terms of manoeuvre, often moving at just 1 hex at a time - they need to break out into the open ground.

Early on the French took a decision to defend ‘forwards’ around Peitrabona rather than sitting back behind the defensible Fontanone Stream and I think that worked well for them as it left the Austrians with little space to manoeuvre amongst that constricted terrain and it kept them away from the Fontanone.

Because the system is simple, I had decided to play with the one page of optional rules, but I missed the artillery rule that states that if they move their full movement rate, then they are marked with a ‘limbered’ counter as a reminder that they cannot fire that turn. This of course adds more grief to the Austrian side, as they need to work hard to bring up their guns to support those early attacks.

Even though the Austrians today were banging their head against a brick wall, (we might well call it Peitabona’s Wall!) it was still fun to play them and it gave a good game, but I would like to see a game that opened things up to be a bit closer to the historical narrative, simply because I want to see that range of results demonstrated and to know that the historical is possible. I would happily play the scenario again.

It is the case that the game is putting playability above simulation and so you may not find the Marengo that ‘you’ are looking for here. If you think of it as a themed game in which a correct order of battle and terrain are largely informing play and that some things happen that are typically guarded against in more sophisticated designs such as cavalry not being able to attack villages / towns or artillery being restricted when moving in some types of terrain etc.

The engine is so solid that if these things mattered too much, you could easily introduced them as house rules, but overall one has to balance these things against getting a game that is highly playable.

EDIT - I have just played a second game and though I got another French victory, it played differently.

The Austrians were able to fight their way into Marengo, but with tremendous losses and so when the French counter-attack came, it overpowered the reduced Austrian army and pushed them back across the Fontanone - though they kept hold of Peitrabona.

Above - Marengo is in the hex under the blue die. The top end of the map generated a lot of tense play. The French pushed into that wing but suddenly found themselves facing potentially surround attacks. The Austrian attack that really mattered could only fail on a ‘6’ ….. so of course that is what they rolled! Within a turn or two, the tables had turned and the French destroyed the Austrian left, capturing the bridge leading to Alessandria. Strategically this would have cut the Austrian retreat route and so our French victory today is all the more total for that ….. but my point is, had the Austrians won that elusive attack, it would have turned the tables on the French and so I still have hope that the Austrians can win in this game! 

Historically, the Austrians contested Marengo and then had enough steam to pursue the French back to the higher ground and after a couple of games, I am not seeing that, though the designer notes give the impression that it is a potential outcome, but they also suggest that the French should not be drawn into playing a ‘forward’ defence, while my limited play experience leaves me feeling that they should. 

I am playing face to face on Friday evening, so there is another opportunity to explore all of this.

Further EDIT - The face to face has been played and another French victory, again the Austrians suffered high losses and didn’t get across the Fontanone Stream and consequently did not reach Marengo. 

We both felt that either the French 3 turn counter-attack at double attacking strength felt misplaced OR that the Austrian can’t really match the historical timetable in the morning by getting to Marengo by 10 AM (around turns 3-4) ….. or even at all, if the French defend forwards and keep the Austrians contained. 

For now, I will park it and move onto the other scenarios, just so the entire package can be explored, but I would like to come back to Marengo. Once again the rules stayed in the box (good), it met our short play goal (good), we enjoyed the play (good) …. but, a Marengo without a Marengo, that’s not so good. I will start to read through CSW and BGG for posts on the original print and see if I can pick up any tips there.

Final Edit - I have played the scenario a fourth time, but made an adjustment to the rules. For the French, their turn 1 movement restrictions are now also imposed on turn 2. For the Austrians, on their first two turns, they have their attack (only) strength doubled. This is not as drastic as it sounds as they Austrians have few attack opportunities on the first few turns and it just helps ensure that DR happens more than AR.

Both tweaks are already present in the scenario, so it is not introducing something too new, rather it is just expanding the designers thoughts of 50 years ago.

Together, the tweaks serve to ensure that during the morning, the French are encouraged to develop their defences on ‘their’ side of the Fontenone Stream, giving the Austrians a timely jump off point to assault Marengo, while still ensuring that there is plenty of fight and contest going on before Marengo falls.

My game did give me that, but the French hung on and took heavy casualties. In this system, once one side ‘thins’ the other side has more opportunity to overwhelm, break through or turn flanks and start to cut the enemy retreat and this is what happened here.

In the end the French were desperate for their reinforcements just to hold the line, rather than going on the counter-attack and re-taking Marengo. So we end with a very clear Austrian victory.

The scenario was more fun to play than the previous ones of a ‘contained’ Austrian force, but it would need to be played a few more times to make sure that there is also the chance of a French victory. The teaks may have given us the right opening and a good contest for Marengo, but if they fail to show the French counter-attack in all of its glory, then we still have a problem.

For the next play, I may remove Austrian double strength attacks for turns 1 & 2 and just stick with the French movement restrictions for turns 1 & 2 and see how that goes. Regardless, four enjoyable games of Marengo in just a couple of weeks without the rulebook being used is its own minor victory.  

Complexity - The box rear scores this 1 out of 5 (Minimal Complexity) and it is absolutely right. I looked at the rules once during play! The rules are very close to the Blue & Gray rules. This is reinforced when I set up and played the second and third game without using the rule book at all.

Size - The maps are bigger than the originals due to bigger hexes being employed, but still only come in at 22” x 25½”, so the map and a play aid card don’t take up much room. The hexes are at a comfortable size. This is a quick play game, so the family dining table can be hijacked without disturbing meals etc.

 

Solitaire - This is a two player game, that plays fine solo. I played this game (and the second game) solo and had no trouble what-so-ever.

Time - The box describes these games as playable in 1 - 2 hours. One might assume that with Marengo being the easiest of the four battles, that it would be coming in nearer the 1 hour mark, but both my games came in at a tad over 2 hours each, while the third came in at 1 hour 45 mins of actual play, but we ended that game 4 turns early because the Austrian situation was untenable.

Resource Section.

My sister webspace ‘COMMANDERS’  showcases the various figure and boardgame systems that I am enjoying and gives a flavour of where current projects are up to. Link.

https://commanders.simdif.com