Zweiter Pickup

Nach langer Zeit mal wieder eine Erweiterung für den Fuhrpark meiner Orks: ein zweiter Pickup.

Fahrzeugübernahme: der stolze Boss Gruukk (ganz rechts vorne) übernimmt das neue Fahrzeug aus der Hand von Waaghboss Donnerbirnä. Auch Armeestandartenträger Donnerschäd'l hat es sich nicht nehmen lassen, bei der Übergabe teilzunehmen.

Dieser zweite Pickup ist weniger stark umgebaut als der erste - er ist etwas höhergelegt (was auf den Bildern kaum zu erkennen ist), wird von rechts gelenkt und hat als Schützen neben dem Fahrer das Modell vom alten Ork-Buggy.

Seitenansicht mit der doppelläufigen Wumme vom Buggy.

Auch dieser Pickup ist mit einer Ramme ausgestattet, die aber eher mit organischem Design überzeugt :) Auch die Frontplatte über der Ramme ist vom Buggy-Modell.

Der gesamte Fuhrpark

ASL Diary ep. 3: SASL Bunker Busting

Once again I failed to take photos so a text report from my first Solitaire ASL outing after several years' hiatus will have to suffice.

The mission was Bunker Busting from the outskirts of a village on board 11 into the huge forest covering most of board 5.

The company was in good shape (full size and more than half were already battle hardened 4-6-8 veterans). I only received a single section of engineers and used them on the right flank where I suspected some buildings to be fortified and strongly held.

However, my initial relief to face the enemy (with a huge amount of ? all over the woods) with a low enemy AC# of 2 soon turned into near despair - although I sent several courageous half squads spread out across most of the front checking out the many potential enemy hideouts (I only avoided the few ? hexes on the very left flank) they encountered nearly no opposition at all, except for a few unentrenched stragglers.

Halfway through the game I started to get seriously worried that I would not even find enough potential VPOs to balance the VPs the enemy would surely get (1 for my engineers section, a handful for ? remaining on board and some casualty VPs). I had just started to run my engineers with the two remaining DCs across the complete width of the board to help subdue the one pillbox I had managed to find (of course, that was on my weak left flank that I had initially planned to hold only...), when the first of two surprizes hit me: a convoy of six horse drawn transport led by a T37 came driving along a road on my left flank, apparently unaware of our advance into their route.

The transports didn't carry many troops and the T37 fell after several rounds of inconclusive firefights with my ATR teams (providing some much needed additional VPs) but the exchange blocked my lateral movements enough so that my poorly led, often panicking troops on the left had to take the pillbox alone.

They had just managed to do that when another surprize hit: apparently, some other parts of the Soviet machinery had noticed our advance after all and sent a seven hex human wave crashing through the woods we had just cleared. They caught my company commander with just one half squad who was on the move after mopping up a lonely foxhole in the woods, and I barely managed to extract him after reinforcing the close combat with all available troops (just a few heavy weapons teams who were trailing the other squads on their way to the left flank). After this skirmish and another with a straggling squad of mine that fortunately broke under the Soviet advance fire in time to retire without melée, the wave just rampaged on through the part of the forest I had already cleared of any enemy presence without encountering any VPO locations.

So at the end I managed to pull off a close, very low scoring win (would have been even closer without the T37 chugging along) and lost three half squads to various Soviet stragglers.

ASL Diary: SASL (pre-)history

Just to keep tabs, and to preserve at least some history of my earlier round of games, I'll collect some summary information in this post.

Scenarios played in the SASL campaign game so far:

Game	Mission	Result	CG VPs	Summary
1 - Jul. '41	1 - Cautious Advance	Win	1	Suiting the mission title, a very cautious advance with some losses and limited gains, just eeking out a win. Killed the first enemy tank of the campaign (a T28).
2 - Jul. '41	3 - Recon	n/a	1	Mission aborted after acceptable progress due to heavy thunderstorms (ok, I knocked over the box with the maps between gaming sessions ;)
3 - Aug. '41	2 - Pockets	loss	0	Ran into heavy armored opposition (early appearance of a KV-1 platoon, later supported by a GAZ 4M MM). Lucky to get out of the mission with limited casualties.
4 - Aug. '41	4 - Bunker Busting	win	1	Clear win - captured an AT gun and ca 130 enemy, with limited own losses.
5 - Sep. '41	8 - Patrol	win	2	Large number of Russians encountered and vanquished in slow but determined advance. 9-2 officer lost at start to enemy mortar fire.
6 - Oct. '41	4 - Bunker Busting	win	3	Had to clear a huge forest which turned out to be nearly empty, ended up with a low scoring close win. Lost 3 half squads.

Evolution of the company (numbers after receiving replacements for losses):

Game	1	2	3	4	5	6
C'y cmdr	9-2	9-2	9-2	9-2	10-2	10-2
2nd off.	9-2	9-2	9-2	10-2	8-1	8-1
3rd off.	8-1	8-1	8-1	8-1	8-0	8-0
4-6-8	2	2	4	6	7	7
4-6-7	9	8.5	7	4.5	5	3
4-4-7	1	1	1	0.5	0	0
SW	full	full	full	full	full	full

ASL Diary Episode 2: RB3 The Bread Factory

Dear ASL Diary,

ok, I'll admit that the cliffhanger at the end of episode 1 was not 100% open ended - I only started writing it when I knew I had already pushed some real counters around at least once. Unfortunately I did not think of taking photos from that first ASL session in many years, so a text summary will have to suffice.

Although I had read through most basic passages of the rule book during the last few months I felt really rusty and thought that a solo playthrough of a simple infantry only scenario might be a good way to reactivate the few synapses in my brain that still remember some ASL rules stuff.

On short notice I arranged to get a table in my favorite game store (Spiele-Pyramide in Karlsruhe) to give others a chance to take a peek at the game, too. It turned out to be too short notice for anyone to join explicitly for this event, but maybe someone will at least come across the announcement in the future and notice that there is some hardcore ConSimming to be had there.

To show off one of the graphically nice historical maps I chose one of the small standalone scenarios from the original Red Barricades historical module, scenario RB3 Bread Factory #2.

The Soviets set up mostly towards the South and Southwest, with the medium and heavy MGs in the central buildings. They fortified the Eastern one of the VP buildings and one hex of the three hex building in the center of their position, and used the trench to connect the VP buildings with this three hex building (in RB trenches allow direct access to adjacent buildings).

Consistent with my usual playing style, the Germans advanced slowly behind the railway embankments. In the South I had the officer with one 4-4-7 in one building and the elite squad with DC in the other. Unfortunately the elite squad broke under fire and when the officer went berserk per scenario rule, in turn 3 in this game, he found himself alone in close combat with one Russian halfsquad.

He was then reinforced by another German officer, but he also lost the squad accompanying him before reaching the building, so the Soviets had an easy time defending their buildings.

The ROAR entry for this scenario shows it somewhat in favor of the Germans, so I guess I need to learn to be more aggressive with my units if VCs are control based.

Overall I liked the scenario, it seems to offer both sides an opportunity to attack resp. counterattack. It also served nicely as a way to come across all typical events and rules for infantry fighting in constrained terrain, brush up on the RB special rules for terrain and generally get a feel for the game. So looking at why I pulled it out it's a neat "Mission accomplished" for this refresher game.

For the next few games, also to introduce a few new players, I have a few scenarios from an old Heat of Battle Firefights pack. These are very small, played on beautiful scenario specific maps and show off some special rules like snow / winter without becoming too complicated.

ASL Diary Episode 1: A New Hope

Dear ASL Diary, sometimes people start a diary when they set out on a journey even though they don't know how far they will get. Maybe you will be a documentation of failure, maybe you will become a nice account of the rediscovery of a great game I haven't touched in a long time. Time will tell.

For the last few years my ASL collection has been gathering dust in the basement (the usual story - no time, no space to leave games set up, no opponents, and too many other easier options for the limited gaming times I manage to find).

However, about a year ago or so I discovered an ASL podcast, and just as I am probably spending more time listening to Magic the Gathering podcasts than I spend actually playing that game [although I do play Magic occasionally], I spent a lot of time listening to past episodes of the 2 Half-Squads, a podcast that hits just the right mix of topical discussion, information, fun banter and the occasional offtopic excursions.

I have still not caught up with the most recent episodes of that podcast (I'm currently listening to episode 61 and the most recent one as I write this is #76). But listening on a regular basis brought my mind back to a lot of ASL stuff, reminded me of a lot of half (but apparently not completely) forgotten rules lore and at least made the thought of pulling out my old ASL rules binders again a thinkable one.

And then a few months ago my regular games shop (Spiele-Pyramide in Karlsruhe), who knows my gaming preferences well and is good at suggesting stuff that suits my tastes, told me that they came across a distributor who can supply them with ASL stuff. So I wrote a huge email suggesting a hand full of items they might want get (starter kit, rule book, Beyond Valor and another entry level set and one or two more recent publications), and they have a copy of Starter Kit 3 and the Festung Budapest historical module available now.

I re-read the basic chapters of the rule book in June/July and started looking for occasional opportunities to play. 

Future episodes of this diary will show whether it worked out (and if there are none, it didn't :).

Ankerbaukasten 12: Bärenzwinger

Jakob und ich haben im Anleitungsbuch für GK-NF noch was gefunden, was wir noch nie gebaut hatten: Den Bärenzwinger.

Ein Gebäude mit mehreren bemerkenswerten Eigenheiten:

• Steile und von Lage zu Lage anders in die Mauer eingepasste Treppen 
• bis auf ganz wenige innenliegende, von außen unsichtbare Steine komplett symmetrischer Bauplan, das Gebäude sieht von hinten und vorne genau gleich aus
• sehr große umbaute Fläche und doch eine raffinierte Art, oben den Freiraum für eine Art Dachkonstruktion zu verkleinern (das Dach ist allerdings nicht ganz geschlossen)

Heutzutage hätte ein solches Gebäude sicher keine Chance mehr, die Baugenehmigung zu bekommen - die Treppen sind viel zu steil und ohne Geländer, und von oben würde das Publikum bestimmt alles mögliche und unmögliche zu den Tieren reinwerfen...;)

Eine der Seitentreppen im Entstehen

Draufsicht: Verkleinerung des Querschnitts

Nächste Schicht inkl. einer etwas kuriosen Verwendung diverser roter und gelber 69, 70 und 72

Ankerbaukasten 14: Aufbewahrung

Heute hab ich nach dem Abbauen mal einen Schnappschuß von der Aufbewahrung der Steine bis 12A (also Kasten 14) gemacht - ich mache mir nicht die Mühe, immer wieder in die Originalverpackungen zurückzupuzzeln, sondern staple einfach alle gleichen Steine beieinander, nach Farben und Typen in die Kästen sortiert.