Having eventually piled up a fair chunk of ASL and found someone else willing to have a go I have recently kick started my ASL collection. I originally bought ASL when I lived on Anglesey by post and on the odd trip to Chester. This was a while ago and I got through a few games by reading all the rules for scenario 1, playing it then went on to 2 and so on. I think that I got up to 6, my problem was that I had played quite a bit but hardly dented the rules. This time I brainstormed the thing and after the obligatory scenario 1 tried to learn all the common rules as quickly as possible. Briefly I moved on to mortars, played a scenario, then AFVs played a couple more games again and finally went for the Off Board Artillery and another game. There are still wads of desert and jungle pages that have yet to be turned but the basic concepts have probably been covered.

This is a good point to reflect on ASL before I become overconfident and cite those dreadful acronyms that fill up the rules or more likely I give up and find another game. ASL is basically pretty straightforward but suffers badly from being so long. It is also easily forgettable requiring a proportion of all gaming time to be devoted to it to keep those rules concepts in upper memory. There are plenty of other big and expensive games but these are simpler and longer. World in Flames for example is shorter and easier to learn, it takes weeks to play after which it can be put away in the satisfaction that the game has been tried and tested. The cash outlay has been repaid. The time involved in learning ASL can result in a 3 or 4 hour game and then it is over. This is good on space and time but requires ASL to be constantly got out and played again rather than leaving set up for a long slow game. Even with many of those games a great number of the copious counters will remain unused and scenarios unplayed.

The Internet has been of some help in starting out with ASL. It is no surprise to find a large number of sites. Alas many are home pages with the same old intros; the key sites are accessed from multiple home pages. Some of the articles on the net are potentially interesting but set up with hot-links rather than as a single file to copy and print. This requires jumping through more than 1 page to read the article and the high chance of key links being broken so the end is never reached. Add to this the time spent surfing rather than reading print outs and the eyestrain courtesy of the monitor screen. There are a few handy introductory bits plus an index and question and answer file. The index is not that different from the one in the back of the rules but because it is going to be heavily used will save the official version from wear and tear. The Q and As are copious, over 100 pages in A4. I have scanned these on screen but not printed them due to the serious ink and paper requirements. I tried shrinking the font and printed area of the page but there is not a lot of whitespace to play with here. The last file can be confused with the official ASL FAQs that tells you about ASL but does not help you play it. The FAQ file is basically some answers to the question "what is ASL?" The other obvious aid to starting up are back issues of The General. At last count I only have 7 of these and 1 ASL annual, still the clinics and playthroughs show what can be done. It is easy to miss the potential of rules; you know what they say do not notice some significant side effects on play. There must be dozens of these handy interpretations to play that I am not aware of. Some may seriously affect the way the game is played. I am not bothered with this sort of competitive aspect and find struggling with the rulebook to make the game work quite enough of a challenge. My most serious omission so far was in forgetting that 1945 Germans have panzerfaust thingies to shoot at tanks. Still I got to try infantry close combat against tanks. Like many ASL events you read a lot of rules for something concerning a single hex and then find that nothing happens when the dice are rolled.

I have ASL GAP and gave it a run on my 1^st 1998 game to see if it helped. To some extent it did but the frequent turning from game to keyboard was less desirable. Laptop users will be at an advantage here. ASL GAP has been around for a while presenting an old fashioned blue screen interface accessed by hot keys. Luckily it is quite happy with Windows ’95 unlike many old DOS programs. To its credit the GAP is handy for rolling dice to check morale and for infantry fire. It automatically checks and reminds for all those extra events that the dice can turn up. Snipers, unit substitution and such are all pretty hard to remember as well as having to consider what the dice was originally rolled for. This was a big help for a 1^st game, as I would have forgotten to check for most of these events. Balanced against this is the inability of GAP to take care of modifiers. It will call up a list of all die modifiers for firing but it is easier to check these from the original playsheets. Some die modifiers are not on hand so you will have to remember at least when a unit is under desperation morale or gets a morale –1 for the right sort of cover. Infantry fire is a case of adding up and pressing a button but ordinance requires more details to be input allowing the GAP to know the gun type and range. If the gun fires again in the same situation it can remember these details but it is quite likely that at least some modifier will have changed. From my limited experience many 1^st shots from AFVs in ASL have no chance to hit but are used to acquire the target. The vehicle then stops and has a better chance of a hit. The dice are only rolled for the initial shot on the odd chance of the gun breaking or a lucky low roll making it worth searching the charts. In other cases it can be assumed that the shot will miss. In this sort of situation it is not worth the trouble in punching in data for a GAP shot. There are of course situations with a good chance of a hit and others with AFVs chasing each other where even a vague chance of a hit now is better than waiting and being shot 1^st. Even so from limited experience the GAP becomes harder to use when more variables are in play which is unfortunately when it might be found most useful.