I will confess to you now…….. I love Deluxe ASL. I think the ASL community has a love / hate relationship with DASL. They either love it or they hate it. I don’t think there is a lot of “it’s OK” feelings out there.
For you non ASL players out there, DASL was created with miniatures in mind. But it really just never took off. There were two official modules released: Streets of Fire and Hedgerow Hell. The scenarios are usually on the large side because you can fit a lot of stuff inside the extra large hexes. There have been scenarios developed for it, but they are few and far between. Recently Le Franc Tireur released a deluxe module and MMP has one on pre-order, but it is struggling to get to the pre-order number. If you are a DASL fan, good luck finding an opponent who likes the big hexes. I know of a few, and some will play them reluctantly, but if you find one, congrats!
J158 It Don’t Come Easy is a Pete Shelling design. A prolific designer, Pete gives us a DASL scenario on a fairly regular basis and I love to play them. This scenario is a three board melee, with 548 German units with some MkIV tanks trying to exit the opposite board edge through American Paratroopers. The Americans are well led with a 10-2 representing Major Dick Winters from Easy Company featured in the Band Of Brothers TV show. Major Winters enters the fray with his reinforcements on turn 2. My opponent was Joe Moro, he had the Germans and the scenario is 5.5 turns.
I almost lost this one right from the beginning when even though I read the victory conditions, I forgot that Joe had to exit through the edge of board C, in the center. I needed to have an MMC in two of the three big buildings in my set up area at game end and prevent 14 pts (one of which had to be MMC points) from exiting there.
My on-board force was pretty skimpy, 5.5 squads, but were able to deploy freely and I did so.
DASL is deceptive, the extra large hexes mean there are fewer of them and your enemy can close with you much quicker. Joe’s troops were in my face by turn 2 and pressing the attack.
Major Winters and his seven squad equivalents came on in reinforcement and I made a huge mistake, bringing the 10-2 on board b, on the wrong side of the street, thinking I had to defend the whole board edge. This was on turn 2, you can see how fast Joe got down the length of the board in 2 turns. Anyway, it was a huge blunder on my part.
In typical 10-2 fashion, Major Winters and his crew entered into close combat, had fate go against him, and died in the building, leaving behind a lonely MMG. Disaster, of course and something I could hardly afford.
By turn 3, I had discovered the error of my thinking. Still, things weren’t finished, I had halted the attack on the north board through deception, I really didn’t have much up there and Joe started moving toward the center board to set up his exit.
I had to get crafty to get enough people in the right spots to prevent a easy victory for Joe but managed to do it.
My situation at turn 4, a single unit between Joe and victory.
My situation going into the last half turn. somewhat better.
Joe took what I felt was an ill-advised prep shot in his last half turn, and got no results. I knew that I had almost no shot to stop the tanks, as my bazookas were either with broken units or not possessed, but I could stop the infantry.
I got a pin result and placed my residual. The next unit moved into the residual and passed. I brainlessly hit the advance log button and the unit moved off the screen. I could have punched myself in the face for my stupidity. No going back though, and I missed my opportunity to subsequent first fire and gave the game to Joe.
Another loss, but this one I could pin on no one but me. It’s the ol’ “read the victory conditions, then read them again” rule. I read them and then forgot an important part of them, costing me a stack of units, and my 10-2. Then suffering from brain-freeze when thinking clearly was critically important.
Hopefully I will learn from it, but history has proven that I am a slow learner.
Thanks for reading.
Cardboard Warrior 