Publisher/Date:
Encircled Productions (2023)
Product Type:
Scenario Pack
Country of Origin:
United States
Contents:
8 scenarios on cardstock, 2 pages rules (for linked-scenario campaign game)
The 10th Mountain Pack is the latest in the series of themed scenario packs published by Kansas City-area ASLers to promote the annual March Madness ASL tournament in that city. As its title suggests, the theme of this pack is the U.S. 10th Mountain Division, the only mountain division created by the United States in World War II. The division only saw action for a relatively short period of time–from January through May 1945, with 114 days of combat–but has since garnered a perhaps outsized amount of attention, possibly because the division had a long history after the war, leading to many people having served in it. One person who served in the division during the war was Ernest Mareske, Jr., father of Dave Mareske, one of the three people credited as the “development team” for the pack, which largely explains the pack’s origins.
The pack is the second pack to center on a U.S. division that fought in Italy; the first was Schwerpunk’s Rally Point #5, which focused on the 45th Infantry Division, though that unit was one of three divisions later removed from Italy to invade southern France. In contrast, the 10th Mountain Division fought only in Italy, much of it during the winter of 1945.
The design of the pack is pretty bare-boned; there is no counter art for OOB units, nor map art, nor are OOB units portrayed in color (though there is color on some of the scenario cards, it occurs primarily only in the form of unit symbols).
All the scenarios in the pack feature Americans fighting Germans. AFVs are quite rare in the pack, with most scenarios presenting infantry vs. infantry actions. Half the scenarios are quite small, while the other half are huge. Though this pack was released in connection with an ASL tournament, only about three of the scenarios are tournament suitable (as one of the scenarios is too small to be suitable).
No scenarios have Air Support, but three scenarios feature OBA and fully half of the scenarios are Night scenarios.
All of the scenarios with OBA and three of the Night scenarios are actions in a four-part linked-scenaro campaign game dubbed “Operation Encore.” I’d tell you what this operation was about, except that the page of historical information is printed in such tiny, tiny type that my eyeballs would fall out of their sockets if I tried to read them. But basically, players play the four scenarios in order, making directed OOB changes (essentially ELR replacement and Battle Hardening) after each scenario. A somewhat complicated campaign victory point table tells you afterwards who won. The scenarios mostly use the big mountain geoboards from Forgotten War. I’m not sure what the audience is for this campaign game (or for the individual scenarios, for that matter). MM84 (Operation Encore – Part I: Mount Belvedere), for example, is a supersized night scenario, featuring an American attack with 42 squads against a defending German force of 32 squads, 4 guns, and 45 fortifications (!). Are there going to be a lot of ASLers hankering for a massive night attack against a heavily fortified position? The second scenario is smaller, but similar, although the Americans do get some AFVs. The third scenario is very similar to the second, minus the AFVs. The last scenario flips the board and presents a massive German night attack with 38 squads and 2 guns against a fortified American position with 20 squads and 2 guns. To play all four of the large-to-very-large scenarios would take an awful lot of work.
In contrast, the other four scenarios are much smaller (3 squads vs. 4 squads, 11 squads vs. 8 squads, 8 squads vs. 8 squads, and 9 squads vs. 5 squads. Americans are on the attack in all four.
To play all the scenarios in the pack, players need access to boards 14, 25, 62, 70, 80, 81, 82, 83, 87, 88, and 5a, plus third party boards DW-5a and DW-5b from Poland in Flames by Bounding Fire Productions. The scenario card, however, does not tell players what boards DW-5a and -5b are, or where they are, so players must figure that out on their own.
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