Average Dave

A common entry into ASL begins with a newbie stumbling across either the starter kits or reminiscing from old SL days. They perhaps find this forum, or a club where there are some established players. They set up a game.

Perhaps a couple of starter kits games later, they’re ready for full ASL, and after a couple of simpler scenarios (Gavin Take/Puma Prowls/Ranger Stronghold/Pouppeville exit/Guards Counterattack) they’re released into the wild to sink or swim.

Some jump straight into a full game after reading the examples of play, and get the hang of it within a few full scenarios. They learn the rules like this but miss out on learning the basics. Not the basic rules, but the basic building blocks of tactics.

The tournament scene often shows that what generally happens is if newbie comes in they’ll go 0 or 1 - 5 for the first year, and similar for the next 2 or 3 tournaments. Then they start to find their feet and depending on ability/regular playing partners/dedication they’ll slowly be able to compete on a kind-of-even keel and with a few exceptions, up to an average ability.

What got me thinking was that there’s obviously a real pull to get into the funkier scenarios as quick as possible. They’re interesting - tactically challenging, they’re new, people are talking about them but they are difficult to win!

When I look back at the older scenarios many of them have quite prescriptive set ups, relatively simple VCs and straightforward OoBs. Pouppeville Exit is a good example. It’s a fixed defensive setup so if the newbie is taking the Germans here they won’t lose the game in the set up phase (something that is very easy to do on the more advanced scenarios). I don’t see many AARs about it though, perhaps because it’s not that fashionable - or it’s seen as a bit old in the tooth.

When you begin your game on the early scenarios, I think they’re actually subtlety teaching you tricks that you’ll use throughout your career. Guards Counterattack is teaching you how to firegroup effectively, how to use multi-level buildings, how to cross a road. Later on it’s teaching you how to conduct Human Waves, the value of smoke, rout paths, etc.

Gavin Take is there somewhat to show you how to manoeuvre past a defensive position, residual fp, the value of leadership, assault fire, and subsequently entrenching attempts and firelanes. I’m not talking about simply the rules references and the mechanics here, I mean the actual value of the item, the strengths - the decisions behind whether to leave resid or keep rate - that kind of thing.

Without this grounding in place, larger scenarios can be daunting during the play because they are formed of many small subsets of larger tactical problems that experienced players have broken down before. Newbies can’t see the patterns, so can be overwhelmed by the task at hand. Even though they can play the scenario competently; tactically it can seem beyond them.

Maybe it’s just me - but I think I’ve experienced this, with my asl career, so perhaps others have too.

I know there’s the programmed instruction, which goes a long way to showing the way tactically it all fits together, but I can’t help thinking there’s a better way to accomplish a better grounding for newer players, in the form of a beginners tactical scenario pack.

I’ve been kicking around some ideas and have the beginnings of some scenarios that try to teach the basics. The idea for some of these scenarios is that the newbie takes one side - which is an “un-losable” VC (Take That Building!) which has reinforcements trickling in every turn, and no turn limit, against a set defensive OoB, and plays until they win. Then the sides are swapped and the “winner” is determined by how quickly the VC can be achieved. The pack will have 14 scenarios which slide all the way up from infantry only, through to OBA, vehicles, Night and even a glider landing.

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