Publisher/Date:
Multi-Man Publishing (2025)
Product Type:
Mini-Scenario/Map Pack
Country of Origin:
United States
Contents:
3 scenarios on cardstock, 1 8" x 22" unmounted geoboard (93).
One of the interesting things about ASL, as compared to so many things in this world that are fleeting, is its combination of age and stability. ASL was released in 1985, maintained by Avalon Hill from then until its demise in the late 1990s, then continued by MMP to the present day. The game system will turn 40 years old the very year these words are being written. In fact, as many years have passed from the end of the Second World War to the release of the ASL Rulebook and Beyond Valor as have passed from then until now. ASL has been around for four decades. The average television show lasts for three to four seasons. The average length of an NFL football player’s career is 3.3 years. The game has been around long enough that many of its initial players and contributors have passed on–a phenomenon of which many ASLers have become painfully aware–while other players were only born after the release of the game.
One of the byproducts of the length and stability of ASL is that so many things connected to ASL are amazingly long-running. While the ASL world has seen many things come and go–Kinetic Energy, ASL News, Tactiques, Heat of Battle, and many clubs and tournaments, to name a few–so many other things connected to ASL have been, by the standards of the wargaming world, amazingly long-lived. The newsletter View from the Trenches debuted in 1995–and just had an issue come out in late 2024. Schwerpunkt Magazine first appeared in 1996, and also had a new issue come out in late 2024. The ASL Oktoberfest (ASLOK) tournament in Cleveland, Ohio, has been around pretty much as long as ASL has. There are many other similar examples–all to the benefit of ASL players everywhere.
One additional example of long-lived goodness is MMP’s Winter Offensive Bonus Pack series of mini-map/scenario packs. MMP’s first “bonus pack’–which typically consist of 1-2 new geoboards and 2-4 new scenarios–was actually not for ASL but for the ASL Starter Kit; Beyond the Beaches: ASL Starter Kit Bonus Pack #1 came out in 2009. The following year, MMP debuted the first Winter Offensive Bonus Pack at, appropriately, its Winter Offensive tournament in January 2010. Every January since then, MMP has come out with another Winter Offensive Bonus Pack (although three of them have only contained DASL boards rather than regular ASL geoboards). Even in January 2021, when COVID-19 prevented a Winter Offensive tournament from taking place, the Winter Offensive Bonus Pack still came out. The 16 years of Winter Offensive Bonus Packs have added a combined 18 new geoboards and 10 new DASL boards to the system (59, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 10z, 17z, 74, 75, 76, 10a/b, 11a/b, 13a/b, 14a/b, 89, 90, and 93, as well as DASL boards i, j, k, l, m, n, o, p, q, and r). The series has also added 52 ASL scenarios and one lonely and almost never used overlay.
Bonus Pack #16 is interesting in that it is a themed bonus pack, with a geoboard and three scenarios all designed by Andy Goldin. The three scenarios are all set near La Luzerne in Normandy on July 15-16, 1944, and feature clashes between the U.S. 29th Infantry Division and the German 352nd Infantry Division. The scenarios are:
- WO50 (Kenny’s Attack). 5.5 turns. Boards 65, 93. U.S. attacks with 11 squads and 1 AFV against 7 German squads and 1 Gun. Bocage in effect.
- WO51 (Kordiyak’s Woods). 5.5 turns. Boards 65, 93. U.S. attacks with 12 squads against 6 German squads and 1 Gun. Bocage in effect.
- WO52 (Continue the Attack at Once). 7 turns. Boards 52, 93. Sequential set-up of 4 U.S. and 2 German unit groupings. Total 16.5 U.S. squads, 12 German squads. U.S. have 7 HMGs or MMGs (!). Bocage in effect.
Given that the scenarios feature the same units in the same area in a very short time span, it is a little surprising that MMP did not include rules for a linked-scenario campaign game to allow players to play all three scenarios in succession and determine an overall “winner.”
As all scenarios feature bocage, is it not surprising that the included geoboard, board 93, has bocage features–at least, part of it does. Board 93 is an odd little duckling of a board featuring hedge-enclosed fields at its top and at several places along one wide end, while the bulk of the map has no hedgerow terrain but features instead two large patches of woods, a lot of very open terrain, and two small valleys or depressions, also featuring nothing but open terrain (with the exception of two gully hexes, one in each depression). It’s an unusual board, not really fitted for a lot of situations. Your humble author heard feedback from two different prolific scenario designers on the board. One was highly critical of it, while the other had a positive impression of it, looking at what each half-board offered rather than the whole board. It will be interesting to see how many scenario designers actually choose this board.
In any case, new geoboards and new scenarios are always welcome. Perhaps MMP will published a linked-scenario campaign game for these scenarios in one of its magazines.
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