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Jason came over last Sunday for a long-overdue day of FtF gaming. It was my choice, and there were a number of good possibilities, but I stuck with my original provisional plan of introducing him to Advanced Squad Leader, so he can start comparing it to the other tactical systems he’s played. I cast around for a bit for a good starter scenario, and settled on the on the old tournament scenario, “Strayer’s Strays”, which was originally T16 in The General Vol 29 #1 (and Squad Leader scenario O in The General Vol 20 #4) and republished in Yanks as 182.

A hodge-podge of American paratroopers are trying to get to a Utah Beach exit on D-Day, and have to cross board 6 with the bulk of their forces (10 EVP out of 19 possible) in 3.5 turns. The catch is that they’re doing it the narrow way, and the full width of the board is in play, so the Germans need to delay them with twelve squads to cover 33 hexes. Much worse, the only machine gun in the scenario is an American MMG. The Germans have no support weapons at all, other than inherent PFs. There’s a few tricks that could still be done, but I settled for a skirmish line that would hopefully delay the Americans near their board edge while I raced to concentrate.

Once Jason arrived, we went over a lot of basics (and showed him the old and new versions of board 6). Once we got going, one of the things I had to warn him about is “don’t stack”, which thinking about it, is the opposite lesson of Last Hundred Yards, where you generally keep platoons grouped together except when you desperately need to cover more area. At any rate, he came in in the U-Z area, looking to use the road across the board. The MMG set up in Z9, and I had to self-break a squad in V9 to keep from being taken out in CC. Poor dice rolls hampered both of us for a turn, though my one good roll (3) broke a squad. A squad and a half (including the self-break) ended up isolated and surrendering in W7 on his second turn. At the same time, his 8-1 and a squad got too aggressive down the road, and had to take shelter in X5.

As to be somewhat expected with a small and short scenario, things flip-flopped between looking very and and very bad for the Americans. The main thing was to keep moving and not get tied down with prep fire. My efforts to get in front of him was harder than it initially looked, but my occupation of the edge of the direct road helped, especially when a timely low roll got two squads with a 1KIA. After a good lecture on the ASL concept of Random Selection, I yahtzeed the die rolls, killing both outright. Meanwhile, ELR 2 was steadily eroding my force, and a couple squads disrupted by the end of the game.

All said, he got a lot of troops to the edge of the board, ready to exit through woods on turn 4, but it was only 9 EPV worth. For his final RPh, the 8-1 self-rallied to provide additional possible EVP, and survived a shot in the open to exit as well. (I thought I had got him on a second shot, but then realized I’d miscounted ranges and I couldn’t manage SFF on him.)

Afterword

It’s an interesting little scenario, and provides a nice dynamic situation. I could have certainly done a bit better, but my attention was a bit split with rules explanations, and that is fine. Certainly, placing one of the 467s in 6M6h2 was a worthy idea, since there’s a lot of ground they can see from there, and use 2FP long-range attacks on. It’s also not quite as tactically intricate as “Gavin Take”, which is a good learning scenario, but both sides need to have some grasp of the options available.

Jason seemed to enjoy the game, and certainly appreciated all the little details (understandably) stripped out of games like LHY, such as defensive fire, Dash, and bypass. Something with good opportunities for fire lane use seems like a good next scenario, which certainly suggests something like “Gavin Take” (though switching to different nationalities would also be nice).