Publisher/Date:
Le Franc Tireur (2025)
Product Type:
Scenario Pack
Country of Origin:
France
Contents:
35 scenarios on color cardstock, 1 sheet of overlays, 1 page rules (for linked-scenario campaign game).
The thirteenth–and hopefully not unlucky–iteration of Le Franc Tireur’s long-running From the Cellar series of scenario packs made its debut in early 2025, featuring a hefty pile of 35 scenarios. However, unlike recent From the Cellar entries, From the Cellar Pack 13 contains no historical maps, counters, or magazine. Moreover, the scenarios are not original scenarios, but reprint scenarios from early products published by Le Franc Tireur. Readers of this website may remember that Le Franc Tireur started as a French-language ASL magazine that featured French-language scenarios. Over time, LFT started printing the scenarios in English (though not the magazine content), then had English-language scenarios and mixed French/English magazine content, then eventually made the switch to all-English content, which made their products more accessible to the international ASL world. The From the Cellar scenario packs started in English and stayed that way.
For this scenario pack, LFT chose scenarios from a seemingly random quartet of early LFT products: Le Franc Tireur No. 5, Le Franc Tireur No. 9, From the Cellar Pack 1, and From the Cellar Pack 2. The scenarios of LFT #5 focused on the April 1945 Battle of Authion in the French Alps, where Free French troops attacked to clear a route from France to Italy as a sort of sideshow to the final Allied offensive in Italy that resulted in the surrender of all the forces on that front. The scenarios of LFT #9, in contrast, concentrated on Italy’s other flank: Yugoslavia. They featured primarily partisan warfare. Both FTC 1 and FTC 2 contained “leftover” scenarios from the various themes that were the focus of early issues of Le Franc Tireur, including Barbarossa 1941, France 1940, Normandy 1944, Poland 1939, the French Alps 1945, and the Balkans. Thus the 35 scenarios of From the Cellar Pack 13 feature all of these themes as well, including:
- French Alps 1945: 6 scenarios
- France 1940: 3 scenarios
- Finland 1941: 1 scenario
- Normandy 1944: 5 scenarios
- Soviet Union 1941-1944: 5 scenarios
- Poland 1939: 1 scenario
- Yugoslavia/Albania/Austria 1941-1945: 13 scenarios
- Italy 1944: 1 scenario
It should be noted that From the Cellar Pack 13 does not actually inform purchasers of any of these themes, nor provide historical context. This is most confusing for the French Alps scenarios, where the historical descriptions leave much to be desired. FT13 (Cabanes Vieilles), for example, the first scenario in the pack, has a historical description that assumes players already understand the broader operation in question, starting off with “One of the first objectives of the initial onslaught was the capture of the small village of Cabanes Vieiles, which controlled the area around the forts.” Players, almost none of whom would have ever heard of the battle of Authion, would have no idea of what the “onslaught” was about, nor what “the forts” even were. Presumably, the scenario authors assumed players would have read the historical content in the magazine–but that is missing here.
Because the scenarios in FTC 13 were all originally published in the early 2000s, they all use old ASL geoboards (1-52), which means that this pack might be particularly attractive to older ASL players who have not kept up with all the geoboard releases in recent years. They would still be able to play all the scenarios in this pack.
The scenarios, like all modern LFT scenarios, are printed in color on glossy European-length cardstock. Some of the scenarios have been modified from their original versions to address balance issues or errata–although none of the scenario cards are marked as modified, which can be frustrating to players trying to keep only the most current versions of their scenarios. Although a number of ASLers might own the original FTC 1 and FTC 2, they are far less likely to own the early LFT magazines, especially LFT #5, so even veteran ASL collectors may be missing some of the scenarios offered here.
In addition to the scenarios, the pack contains two other components. The first is a cardstock sheet of overlays (FT1 , FT 5, FT5 Blockhouse, FT6, and FT7), which are all overlays containing or modifying hills. The second is a page of rules for a linked-scenario campaign game, the “7. SS-Division ‘Prinz Eugen’ mini-CG,” which links together three scenarios from the German anti-partisan campaign Operation Schwarz that feature the eponymous war-crime committing SS mountain division. The rules provide victory conditions as well as OB modifications.
The pack contains a lot of play value, and will especially appeal to those ASLers who like obscure or esoteric situations, as there are plenty of them here. But there’s enough standard fare (Normandy, East Front, etc.) to appeal to even the most vanilla ASLers as well. Even though this is a reprint pack, many ASLers will not already own most or even all of the scenarios here (though your humble author did have them all).
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