An interesting thing happened earlier this year. This past January was the 25^th anniversary of the announcement in 1999 by MMP that they had secured a license for ASL and would be continuing the ASL line of games, thus ensuring its future.  For the ASL community, disheartened by the sudden collapse of the game system’s original publisher, Avalon Hill, which sold itself to the toy/game megacorporation Hasbro, it was a ray of sunshine. ASL, the wargame above all wargames, would live on.

For longtime wargamers, who earned their spurs playing Avalon Hill games, it may still ring a bit strange in the ears, but MMP been the official producer of ASL for nearly twice the length of time Avalon Hill was (leaving aside the original Squad Leader, which was a different game system).  Advanced Squad Leader debuted in 1985 and was published by Avalon Hill until that company’s demise in 1998—a total of just 14 years (a bit more if you want to consider initial ASL design/development time prior to 1985).  Moreover, though Avalon Hill published ASL, from 1996 to 1998 ASL products were actually created and developed for Avalon Hill by MMP as an external design and development team (MMP began in 1994 as producers of a third-party ASL magazine, Backblast!, then were brought aboard by Avalon Hill a couple of years later to handle the ASL line).

After a quarter-century, it’s a legitimate question to ask, “How well has MMP stewarded ASL?”  The mere fact that you are reading this, so many years later, is an indication that it hasn’t done so bad a job.  The ASL community today is thriving—though, of course, much of that also has to do with third party publishers, as well as the many people within the ASL community who contribute in so many ways.  But could MMP have done better?  Could it have done worse?  What exactly has it done during its stewardship of ASL?  Let’s take a bit of time to explore.

I’d like to start this exploration by briefly describing the stewardship history of a different wargaming system that illustrates the different sort of path that ASL might have taken. I’m talking about the Europa system.  Europa is, or was, a series of (ostensibly) interlocking games designed to simulate World War II in Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East at a scale of 16 miles per hex, with the basic units being divisions, regiments, and brigades. If ASL was designed to showcase all forms of tactical WWII warfare, Europa was intended to do much the same at the operational level. The series began in 1973 with the publication by Game Designers’ Workshop (GDW) of Drang Nach Osten, a monster game depicting Operation Barbarossa in 1941-42. Other games on other WW2 campaigns followed as a fanatic fan base of Europa-philes arose—one so dedicated they published newsletters, held events, and even had third-party publications (sound familiar?).

Unfortunately, in the late 1980s, GDW decided not to continue publishing Europa (GDW itself would cease operations in the 1990s). However, Winston Hamilton, owner of an insurance business and a printing company, as well as a long-time Europa fan and contributor—stepped forward to acquire the license to continue producing Europa products. He started a third business—Games Research/Design (GRD)—to do so.  GRD had a rocky start, with a lot of teething problems, including the need to re-create counter and map artwork, to work with a slow and fiddly designer, to deal with a myriad of printing and die-cutting issues, and more. Winston’s heart was in the right place (something I know from my many conversations with him), but his stewardship was not as stable as it could be, and he was not averse to cutting corners from time to time. Still, he considerably extended the life of the game system, publishing both new editions of older Europa products as well as new original products, including the long-awaited Second Front (think of it as Europa’s Armies of Oblivion).

Alas, Winston died of complications from diabetes in 2000, once more throwing the future of Europa into doubt.  A new rescuer obtained the rights to continue publishing Europa products under the GRD name. However, they only lasted a couple of years and never succeeded in publishing anything beyond some more issues of the Europa house magazine.  Finally, a fourth entity, calling itself HMS/GRD, obtained the rights in 2004 and tried its hand at stewarding Europa. It got a major release published, but things soon went awry. The problem was Total War, a new version of the series’ Operation Barbarossa game (originally Drang Nach Osten, later Fire in the East).  The massive game cost a huge amount to print, money that HMS/GRD simply did not have (despite pre-orders).  Total War eventually became vaporware, with HMS/GRD continuing to promise its release (and to collect pre-order money) while inventing excuse after excuse as to why it had not come out. Eventually, by the mid-2010s, they even gave up inventing excuses and just stopped all communications (their un-updated website is still up to this day). Europa died not with a bang but with a whimper, looking more like consumer fraud than a game system.

In short, the series’ stewardship, at each step, left more and more to be desired, until in the end there was no stewardship at all.  There are still Europa gamers today, in 2024, but the series itself has been a corpse for years, with no chance of resurrection.

Obviously, that’s not what happened to ASL, and we can all thank the dice gods for that. There are some good reasons why MMP was able to avoid some of the pitfalls that befell Europa’s various producers, yet MMP also faced its own hurdles and burdens.  Here I should note that this is not a history of MMP, but an outsider’s observations. I have no access to internal MMP documents or communications, nor have I interviewed anyone at MMP.  But some things are plain enough. The main advantage that MMP had, at the time of the fall of Avalon Hill, was their subcontractor-like relationship with Avalon Hill, which gave them experience with developing products and some familiarity with production issues (because Avalon Hill actually had its own printing facilities).  It was not like a dentist suddenly deciding to start a wargame company and having to figure out every single little thing on their own.  MMP also had projects already in development.  They were not starting from scratch.

Yet, at the same time, MMP would have to acquire the all-important license, they’d have to find and establish relationships with printers and die-cutters, get warehouse space, get an office (at first, MMP was essentially in a basement), develop ties with wholesalers and retailers, create an on-line presence, ensure that the fan base stayed with them, and more—while all the principles had other jobs as well.  They’d also have to come up with cash or credit, because the printing costs for a major project could be $60,000 or more. Moreover, they had their work cut out for them, because many ASL products were no longer even in print anymore, so it was not just a matter of releasing new products, but getting the rulebook and core modules back in print.  Even though such products might sell more slowly than new products, the ASL audience would only shrink unless new players could get the basic content they needed to play. Even after Curt Schilling came through with the license, accomplishing the rest was a daunting task—one I am not sure that I could have succeeded at.

Despite all these hurdles, MMP started relatively strong out of the gate. From 1999-2001, they released no fewer than 16 ASL products (see chart), the second-most of any three-year period of their history.  In 1999, there were six releases, most of which had already been in the works prior to the fall of Avalon Hill.  These included the 2^nd edition of Doomed Battalions, the last ASL core module released by Avalon Hill. It was one of a couple of “final” AH games (the non-ASL Battle of the Bulge game Bitter Woods was another) that were rushed to get it out the door, even with a small print run, before the door closed forever.  Releases also included Action Pack #2 and ASL Journal #1, both of which could easily have been Avalon Hill releases had that company continued, as well as the final two “big flat box” HASLs: Blood Reef: Tarawa and A Bridge Too Far.  Releases also included the sad afterthought of the Provence Pack, a scenario pack of European origin that was simply released online, for free, with little fanfare, despite it being the first scenario pack—as well as the first themed scenario pack—released for “official” ASL (a great project would be to take the Provence pack scenarios—which featured the Free French in southern France in 1994, re-work and possibly expand them, and re-release them, perhaps with new counters, such as French-colored Free French Guns and AFVs).

These 1999 releases were reassuring to the ASL community (I remember rushing to get the two HASLs, even though I wasn’t regularly playing yet), providing a real sign that ASL could live on.  There were also six more ASL releases in 2000, though they looked rather different and served as a warning to ASLers not to expect a flood of new products.  Four of the six ASL releases were new editions of old products (Paratrooper, The Last Hurrah, Hollow Legions, and the ASL rulebook) that most veteran ASLers would already own. In addition to these, there was ASL’s first printed scenario pack, A GI’s Dozen, which essentially was also a retread, as it consisted of old Squad Leader scenarios converted to ASL.  Finally, there was a genuine new release, the rather impressive ASL Journal 2.  The reprint of the ASL Rulebook, though, was perhaps the most important product, in part because it provided the first real evidence of what MMP’s long term stewardship of the game system would be like. The rulebook primarily incorporated errata, clarifications, and fixes for problematic rules.  There were no major changes.  In other words, MMP revealed clearly that it would have a very conservative approach to stewarding ASL.  Over the subsequent decades, this conservatism would sometimes be frustrating, but overall, it was a necessary condition for keeping ASL stable.  Too many other game systems—Europa and A World at Arms are just two examples—did not provide that stability, with the result that there could be major changes, revisions, or ill-fitting additions at the spur of the moment, often rendering previous products non-compatible with newer ones, or rebooting a system before the first iteration of games was even complete.  If some of this sounds familiar, it’s because the original Squad Leader was one of those unstable game systems.  The second module completely replaced the AFV rules of the first module, while the fourth one introduced numerous new infantry concepts and replaced all the counters for Germans and Americans with new ones (leaving other nationalities with obsolete counters). The instability and changing nature of the system was one thing that led to the creation of ASL instead.

The conservative nature of MMP’s stewardship cannot be emphasized enough. It has kept the system stable, prevented ASL from bifurcating into different versions of itself (although see ASLSK, below), and minimized obsolescence of older components.  Admittedly, there were times when that inherent conservatism may have slightly hurt ASL, such as when MMP passed on the opportunity to switch to so-called “whitecore” counters for ASL instead of the “graycore” counters it had traditionally used, because whitecore counters (with their white sides) could be distinguished in a stack from graycore counters (with gray sides).  Whitecore counters are generally superior to graycore counters and, had MMP switched, eventually all the old counters would eventually have been reprinted in whitecore versions, to the general benefit of ASL.  But in the overall scheme of things, this is minor, while the potential negative consequences of an unstable or “activist” stewardship of ASL could have been immense. For what might have happened had there been less stable conservatorship of ASL, one only has to look to Critical Hit and the endless number of weird and/or half-assed things it has tried, as a third-party publisher, to jam onto ASL, including using ASL as a basis for World War I and Civil War combat.  I shudder to think what ASL might be today if Critical Hit rather than MMP had somehow obtained the license to publish ASL products.

The third “dawn” year for MMP, 2001, further scaled back expectations. First, there were only four releases. Of these, two were reprints (Beyond Valor and SASL).  The two new products included ASL Journal 3 (which was substantive in scenario content, though it had no extras) and Operation Watchtower, the first “small flat box” HASL, which overall was somewhat disappointing.

Unfortunately, ASL was about to enter the period we can call “the Doldrums,” when overall production of ASL products slowed and the production in particular of significant new products decreased. Part of this slowdown was due to growing pains, including the acquirement of The Gamers and its many lines of games, as well as the publishing of yet other games.  Even if those games were mostly developed and playtested by others, the production and distribution alone would take precious MMP time away from ASL.  MMP was also too dependent on outside submissions and teams for key projects, especially Armies of Oblivion, the impatiently awaited core module that for many stood as the last missing piece of the puzzle (others held out for an expanded Finnish representation as the last piece).  And again, it is always worth keeping in mind the part-time nature of MMP as a business.

For ASL veterans, the Doldrums lasted an agonizingly long time. While from 1999-2001, MMP released 16 ASL products, from 2002-2004, MMP only released 6.  From 2005-2007, MMP again released only 6 products.  The good thing, from the perspective of veteran ASLers, was that new releases of previously printed materials were relatively low—essentially consisting just of For King and Country, although one should note that Out of the Attic 1 simply reprinted articles and scenarios from third party publishers. But the number of non-minor new releases reached an all-time low during the period 2002-2004 (consisting only of ASL Journals 4 and 5, and Operation Veritable). The most important release during this period was itself only ASL with an asterisk: the release of the Advanced Squad Leader Starter Kit #1.  Such an introductory ASL product was much needed, to help would-be ASLers get into the system as well as simply allowing gamers to inexpensively purchase a product that would give them a taste of ASL to see if they liked it.  The idea of such a product had been around for years—originally, MMP called it iASL (for Introductory ASL) and someone was actually tasked with developing it.  But it was only in 2004 that ASLSK #1 appeared, with a different person, Ken Dunn, as designer.  It was immediately obvious that ASLSK #1 was a tremendous product, excellently distilling the essence of ASL infantry rules—and priced almost irresistibly low.  It was not a product for ASLers themselves, or at least most of them, except to introduce people to the system, but it was something that could help grow the ASL audience, or at least keep it from shrinking.  The disadvantage, though, was that if ASLSK were continued as a system, as opposed to remaining a standalone product, it would be one more thing that would compete with full ASL for MMP’s precious time and energy resources, and could—as a product line—even compete with full ASL for players. MMP was quick to decide to make it a product line, though, with the result that from 2004 to 2024, fully 10 of the MMP “ASL” releases would actually be only ASLSK releases (not even counting numerous reprints of ASLSK products with no or only minor changes), and thus of limited interest, at best, to the ASL veteran. Oddly, MMP never embraced the idea of including both ASL and ASLSK versions in a particular product, in order to appeal to both, though some third-party publishers did (one MMP product on the horizon, though, may finally do that).

The biggest release during the Doldrum years of 2002-2007 was Armies of Oblivion, released in 2006, which finally completed the core ASL system (with the asterisk of the Finns).  It also marked the last appearance of expensive mounted  geoboards (in the old tradition of Avalon Hill wargames).  The new, cardstock unmounted geoboards, however, in the long run proved superior to the original mounted boards, being lightweight, with better mate-ability, and having computer graphics that eventually would become superior to the original artwork. They also proved somewhat more durable than many initially feared.

MMP began to emerge from the Doldrums during the period 2008-2010, when the number of ASL-related products doubled from 6 to 12. In 2011-2013, MMP also released 12 ASL products. Of these 24 products, 2 were reprints and 2 were ASLSK, but there were there 20 new releases, half of which were significant new releases (the non-significant ones consisted primarily of Squad Leader conversions, “Bonus” mini-packs, and reprints of third party materials).  The two most important new releases were historical modules, the long-awaited Valor of the Guards (2008) and Festung Budapest (2012).  Sure, both were more city-fighting, but it was cool city-fighting.  While many ASLers might have liked to have had more major releases, the amount of ASL material that was coming out during this period was indisputably greater than during the Doldrums.  One decision that MMP made to help its ASL production was to hire Chas Argent in 2009 as a “full-time ASL developer and honcho.”  This was something ASL had not had in many years.

As the 2010s progressed, ASLers could finally enjoy a certain regularity of ASL products. During the period 2014-2016, ASL production dipped slightly to 11 products; it stayed at 11 products in 2017-2019 as well. Though fewer products overall were produced, the number of non-minor new ASL products actually rose slightly (from 10 to 12).  These included the unspellable and unpronounceable Hakkaa Päälle! (2015), as well as Forgotten War: Korea (2018), Hatten in Flames (2018), and Red Factories (2019).  Four major new releases in five years were something ASLers had not seen in many years.

During this period, MMP also flexed its muscles by re-introducing DASL, first with new boards in Bonus Pack #9 and then with the release in 2019 of Deluxe ASL, a combining and repackaging of the original 1980s DASL modules Streets of Fire and Hedgerow Hell.  Avalon Hill had abandoned DASL not long after it introduced the concept, and for many years MMP’s position, too, was that it was dead (aside from the occasional scenario). DASL is certainly less popular than normal ASL (it is bulky, scenarios tend to have little movement, and only a few ASLers use it along with miniatures, as originally intended), but the mere fact that MMP felt it could put resources into one of the ASL alleyways rather than a main thoroughfare was proof of the company’s confidence (perhaps not coincidentally, a few years later MMP announced it would be re-opening the gates to another ASL alleyway with a new version of Solitaire ASL).  Another measure of MMP’s confidence was its decision to dip into print-on-demand to publish a softcover bound version of the ASL rulebook, the so-called “Pocket Rules” (2015), which became extremely popular (your Humble Author has himself purchased at least 9 copies of this product: 3 copies of each new version).  Expanding the range of official ASL products to include the Korean War also illustrated a confidence and boldness not previously seen.

The COVID-19 pandemic did not seemingly slow MMP down very much. During the next three-year period (2020-2022), the number of MMP products jumped to 17, its all-time high for any thee-year period during MMP’s stewardship of ASL.  This was made possible, however, by an increase in the number of reprints or new versions of old products, including the much-demanded EASLRB (2021) as well as a “Pocket Chapter H” and “Pocket Charts” to accompany the Pocket Rules. The number of non-minor new releases, though, dropped down to 4, and included only one major new release, Sword and Flame: Manila (2022), which had been in the making for over 20 years.  However, the method of product categorization used for this analysis includes the 2^nd edition of Croix de Guerre (2020) as a module reprint, when in fact that module also includes an entire HASL (the Dinant HASL) that had never previously been published anywhere.  Moreover, it includes a new Free French and Vichy French OB that it had never previously had.  Because of this, Croix de Guerre could also more justifiably be called a major new release than could other expanded re-issues, such as Rising Sun or Hollow Legions.

The most recent three-year period (2023-2025) is not yet over, but to date it has seen the release of 10 ASL products, 8 of which were new ASL releases.  Of those releases, 4 were actually major releases: ASL Journal 13 (2023), ASL Journal 14 (2023), DZ: Sainte-Mère-Église (2023), and Twilight of the Reich (2024). Four major new releases in just two years is really quite impressive, and based on future product announcements, this number could easily increase still further in 2025.

From 1999 through 2024 (to date), MMP has released 101 ASL products (again, not including pure or nearly pure reprints, nor including component reprints such as the Overlay Bundle), for an average of around 4 a year.  These include 73 new ASL products, 45 of which were non-minor in nature (and of those, 21 were major; 22 if we throw in Croix de Guerre). In other words, MMP has averaged just a bit less than 2 non-minor (including one major) new ASL product per year, for the past quarter-century. That’s actually pretty impressive; it is hard to think of any other wargame system/series that has similar numbers—and it is to MMP’s credit that it has done this while also publishing a large range of other games, including many different series.

Of course, not every MMP product for ASL has been a good one, nor has every decision MMP made regarding ASL necessarily been the best decision; there’s no shortage of people willing to second-guess MMP (including, apparently, your Humble Author). Over 25+ years, one can expect some things to be less than perfect. It’s also true that throughout those years the ASL audience has been baby-bird hungry for more ASL products than MMP could give it, which has been one reason why there is such a thriving third-party publishing scene for ASL.  But when you look at the big picture, I think the evidence is overwhelming that MMP proved to be excellent stewards of ASL, keeping the system stable thanks to a conservative hand on the tiller, while still producing (except during the Doldrums) a number of different ASL products of wide variety and overall good physical quality and play quality.  The ASL world has a lot to thank MMP for.

What will the future bring?  In the short term, the ASL audience can expect more of the same, which is great.  In the medium term, things seem a lot more uncertain, as MMP is a small company dependent upon specific individuals (unlike an IBM, which is going to be around no matter what happens to one person in it), and like the general ASL audience, those individuals are aging.  How much longer will they be interested in running MMP (or, in a worst-case scenario, able to do it)?  If that point is reached, what happens next? Would there be some way for MMP to survive? If so, in what form, and with what philosophy? If MMP doesn’t survive, what happens to the license?   The ASL world is obviously graying, and graying fast, so the long-term outlook for ASL is rather grim.  But one would like there to be someone producing official ASL products for as long as an ASL audience exists.  And, who knows, maybe one day Taylor Swift will take up ASL, thus rejuvenating that audience. One can dream of survival even beyond the near to medium future, however unlikely it might be.  In the meantime, I will continue to appreciate MMP’s stewardship of ASL for however long it may exercise it (which, likely, will still be longer than I personally will last).

–MP