Took a 4-day weekend this week and with that, gave my wife 1 day and ASL 1 day (a customary thing for my longer-than-3-day weekends). Today's live VASL foray was ASL45 Revenge at Kastelli against Spencer Armstrong. This one was on my list for several reasons:
1.) Having come to ASL (fully) in the early 2000's (2001 I think), and having SL but never having played it really, most of the "old" scenarios are new to me. This happened to be one of the many I have never played.
2.) It's a fairly straight-forward scenario with some easy-to-understand SSR's and VC's.
3.) It's all-infantry and I'm still not very good with tanks.
Having played 4 turns of it, now, we're shelving it. I may do an actual AAR later (or maybe not), but here are my impressions. One of the things I'm finding about the "old-school" scenarios (from the boxed sets) is that they are all 1.) really long and 2.) much more "historically based" in OB and conditions than "newer" scenarios as a general rule.
The key to this scenario is to surround and kill or even better, capture for FTR. I've loaded the south board and while I've certainly taken my licks, have fairly well surrounded the Germans down there. I left a token force in the north to try and force the Germans to move slower to reinforce the south and hopefully give my Greeks enough time to clear it prior to them getting there so that they can redirect their force.
The problem with the game is that there is simply no variety in the action within the scenario itself. The playing area is large and the bulk of the Greek squads are green so they only move 3 normally. It takes longer for them to get anywhere. The hills and woods-to-brush terrain change make for an interesting modification to these boards because the hills make routing extremely difficult, and the brush makes movement-under-cover impossible.
Don't know if we'll pull this one out again or not (either live VASL or PBEM). It's not a very "exciting" scenario (more of a slog-fest) and with there being so many other scenarios out there to play... Who knows?
What WAS fun, however, was playing ASL with my friend Spencer. For those of you that have not had that opportunity, I highly recommend it. A great player, and even more important, a great guy. I look forward to our next meetings both PBEM and live.
The Count
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4 comments:
Yes the scenarios are very long compared to todays offerings, but all the ones from Turning the Tide that I have played have used those turns. Also they have been far more exciting than your experiance.
I have to agree 100% about Spencer, a top guy
Ian
Interesting that you stopped this game so early. In my game, i remember it being a distinct game of maneuver with the Fjs redeploying and using Assault fire as much as possible, to whittle down the Greeks, however Multi location Firegroups are a thing to be feared. There's a lot of time so the Fjs cannot stand and fight for too long. It has been close to 20 years since I played it though.
@ Syincbast: We haven't permanently decided to bag this scenario. I ran out of time in my play for the day So we stopped after turn 4. Neither of us deleted the file that we have so we can come back to it if we want later as we have time.
Have to agree with Peter. I have played this one three or four times. My last recorded game was in '88. I had the FJ. My opponent used the Greeks to good effect and won this match. I think I may have played it more recently. Looking at it today, it does seem awfully long. Perhaps it could have been designed to play faster. But as Ian hints, the scenario often comes to a crescendo in the last couple of turns. Contrary to some pundits, I think that some of these old scenarios have yet to have their last hurrah. ;)
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