Publisher/Date:
Multi-Man Publishing (2021)
Product Type:
Scenario/Map Pack
Country of Origin:
United States
Contents:
2 x 8" x 22" unmounted geoboards (87, 88), 16 scenarios on cardstock
Action Pack #17 debuted in 2021 with a dual theme. Although called “Oktoberfest XXXV” because it was released for the 2021 Oktoberfest ASL tournament in Cleveland, Ohio, the largest ASL tournament in the world, and primarily designed and playtested by the veteran Cleveland ASL crew, it is also a unit study: the scenarios in this pack all feature the U.S. First Cavalry Division. Indeed, the scenarios follow the First Cavalry Division across two wars. Three of the scenarios are in the PTO in 1944 (two from the Admiralties campaign in March 1944 and one on Leyte in the Philippines in October 1944). Oddly, there are no scenarios from the division’s longest WWII campaign, the invasion of Luzon in 1945. Instead, the pack skips from 1944 to 1950 and the early weeks of the Korean War. The First Cavalry Division fought in Korea–often not very well, it must be admitted–throughout the entire war. Action Pack #17 is the fourth “Oktoberfest” pack (see all the Action Packs here). Next time, they need to produce a Lethargy Pack.
Action Packs, of course, have both scenarios and geoboards. Action Pack #17 introduces two new geoboards: 87 and 88. The geoboards are only partially geomorphic, because they share one side, allowing the creation of a double-sized board. The commanding feature of this big-ass board is a long J-shaped 3-level hill that straddles the map area lengthwise. One side of the long hill is a valley, while on the other side is a village, partially on level 0 and partially on level 1 of the hill. The hill itself is mostly bare, but dotted with brush, orchards and crags, as well as grain on the village side. Oddly enough, it has no woods on it, though there are a handful of woods hexes on level 0. The hill also features a fair number of cliffs and four hillside gullies. A couple of satellite hills lie next to the valley.
The boards could be used in a variety of situations, though the flexibility is limited by the village, which cannot be eliminated by overlays (due to the buildings on level 1 hill hexes). This eliminates a lot of PTO possibilities, though it could still be used for more settled areas, such as the Philippines, Burma, Java or China. It could also be used for scenarios set in the Balkans or Italy or Southern France, among other places. It would be nice if MMP released a large overlay that could be used to eliminate the village. This would make the bottom half of the boards–the curve in the J–extremely useful, as there is no shortage of tactical actions that involved fighting for “horseshoe hills” in the PTO, which could not previously be represented well by geoboards, which force hills to remain uncurved. Overall, the new geoboards are very nice and a welcome addition to the system.
It is a good thing the boards are useful, because it is entirely possible most purchasers of Action Pack #17 will be buying it primarily just to get the boards. This is a possibility because of the relative popularity, or lack thereof, of MMP’s Korean war module, Forgotten War: Korea 1950-1953. That module came out in 2018, six years ago (as of this writing, in 2024). That’s more than enough time for it to have “sunk in” with the ASL community. Curious about how often ASLers actually played Korean War scenarios using the rules from this module, I posted a poll on the subject to the largest ASL group on Facebook in July 2024. Over 600 ASLers answered the poll–a very respectable number. Here is what they had to say:
We can see from the poll results that a surprising 70% of responding ASLers had not played so much as a single Korean War scenario over the past six years. Another 15% “dabbled” in it, meaning that they had played one or two scenarios. Only 15% of respondents said that they have played more than a couple Korean War scenarios. To the extent that this poll is representative–and it probably is fairly representative–this means that the Korean War, as represented by the Forgotten War rules, is just not popular. In all likelihood, a large part of this is simply the subject matter–most ASLers got into the game for its World War II fighting, rather than as a universal simulator, and certainly most ASLers–as average military history buffs–are likely to be far more familiar with World War II than the Korean War as well. It’s quite possible most have never even read a single book on the Korean War. Others may not like the nature of a lot of the fighting–an abundance of night actions and a paucity of AFVs–or may not be crazy about one or more of the specific ways the Forgotten War rules have translated the Korean War into ASLese, such as its representation of the Chinese Communists.
In any case, it may have been a little risky to have devoted almost the entire Action Pack to the Korean War. In any case, the boards are still a draw. However, it was a little bit surprising to discover that only 2 of the 16 scenarios used any of the new geoboards.
The scenarios of Action Pack #17 are divided relatively equally between medium- and large-sized actions; there are no small scenarios. Despite the PTO and Korean War settings, there are only two Night scenarios. One scenario uses OBA; no scenarios have Air Support. For the most part, the scenarios have relatively few SSRs.
The PTO scenarios somewhat dubiously represent the First Cavalry Division primarily as 7-4-7 elite squads (though the division performed about as well as other late-war divisions in the PTO). For the Korean War scenarios, the division is pretty accurately depicted mostly by 6-6-6 and 5-4-6 squads.
One scenario, AP177 (A Celebratory Mood) is a DASL scenario. All scenarios feature Americans, naturally. Their opponents are the Japanese (3 scenarios), North Koreans (7 scenarios) and Communist Chinese (6 scenarios). South Koreans make a guest appearance in one scenario, AP184 (The Order of War), while the Greeks make their own special appearance in AP190 (We are Sparta). A U.S. Ranger Company also shows up, in AP189 (Bona Fide Effort).
The designers strained their eyes looking for actions with AFVs; 10 of the 16 scenarios feature at least a tank or two; a few have considerably more. Neither the Japanese nor Chinese have any AFVs, of course. In one scenario, AP189 (Bona Fide Effort), the Americans have assault boats, as they have to enter half their force from the across a reservoir.
To play all the scenarios in the pack, one needs geoboards 2, 3, 17z, 18, 38, 49, 50, 61, 67, 68, 73, 75, 76, 78, 79, 80, 81, 85, 86, 87, 88, 2a, 5b, 6a, 9b,13b, and 15a, , as well as DASL boards b and d. As you can see, you’ll need a lot of the recent ASL boards.
How much one will enjoy this product is largely dependent upon their liking for Korean War scenarios. ASLers who haven’t ventured into that area yet will have to be satisfied with adding some boards to their collections. Those who do enjoy Korean War ASL will likely be happy having these additional playing opportunities.
“The PTO scenarios somewhat dubiously represent the First Cavalry Division primarily as 7-4-7 elite squads (though the division performed about as well as other late-war divisions in the PTO).”
This was one of my more difficult design choices, so here is the thought process:
1) This was a regular army division and had trained together for two+ years prior to this deployment. Hence they had not been impacted by the ‘repple depple’ replacement system that is often given as the primary reason for 6 ML of US 1st Liners.
2) Armament and TO & E: They still had cavalry weapons : Carbines, SMGs and most carried .45 pistols as well. So, I think the bump in FP/ loss of range is justified.
As the war moved on, they became more like a regular infantry division. (As did many Airborne units, in reality.)
These transformations, changes and evolution/devolution is the underlying theme of the story I was trying to tell.
Good discussion Mark!
“As you can see, you’ll need a lot of the recent ASL boards.”
One my smaller ‘creative’ goals for this work was to not use any board more than twice.