Average Dave

Before I start on this post, I should mention what a beautiful site this is - stunning pictures and great writing. If you have children (as you’ll see from my blog a lot of what I’m talking about here is games I play with mine) please read this post. It’s certainly thought provoking that we really only do get them until they’re 18; that’s not many years of game time when you add it all up.

Back to ASL, Martin (my semi regular ftf playing partner) and I finished up a scenario we started last week; Burn Gurkha, Burn. Not the most tasteful of titles, but it simulates a Japanese attack with flamethrowers against some Gurkha’s entrenched on hills in Burma, 1942.

It was Martin’s first time with the Japanese, which handle very differently to normal troops. The essence is they don’t break, rout and return like the standard nationalities. They tend to whither, but continue to press ahead, slowly being whittled down by fire, but decreasing their range to get into deadly melee with the generally more static defenders.

The Japanese are certainly an art form when played correctly and of course in one’s first game using them you can’t be expected to treat them any differently to how you would standard troops, which meant my steady Gurkhas held on to the last remaining hill for the victory.

If it wasn’t hard enough for Martin as it was, my dice were red hot - which pretty much compounded the misery for him, but he took it all in his stride and seemed to enjoy the game. Here’s a position at the end of the game when it was apparent that the Japanese wouldn’t have enough time (2 more turms) to evict the Gurkhas from the hills (the victory conditions require no Good Order Gurkhas to be present on level 2 hexes).

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