There are only three words that scare boardgamers more than “Monopoly for Christmas.”
ADVANCED SQUAD LEADER.
With its mythological complexity and an appearance of almost complete inaccessibility seemingly borne out by tremendous, bajillion page rules binders and stacks of decidedly anti-cosmetic, information-packed cardboard counters, ASL is practically the Mount Everest of board gaming. Even self-professed “hardcore” gamers, which these days seems to mean those who are willing to play a single game for longer than two hours, are intimidated by ASL and it’s a pretty common assumption that few, if any, games barring STAR FLEET BATTLES are more difficult to learn and play.
Add all of that to other factors such as an incredibly steep buy-in price (the rulebook without components is $80 retail), the existence of newer and more fleet-of-foot World War II tactical games such as TIDE OF IRON and COMBAT COMMANDER, and a general turn in the hobby away from simulation and toward abstraction and it would seem that ASL is a game strictly for old-timers, the insane, or those who know a little too much about Wehrmacht battle tactics—or any combination thereof.
Even though I couldn’t tell you which Panzers had the Porsche turrets or what year the US Army started issuing the BAR rifle, I had been interested in trying ASL for several years mostly out of curiosity as to why this game scares so many people yet others become completely enamored of it to the point that the game is practically a sub-hobby in and of itself with its own magazines, third party publications, forums, and conventions.
I had heard all the legends: that you had to roll to see if your guy pees successfully or not and that you had to perform wind speed/muzzle velocity calculations to fire a rifle while taking into account the year of manufacture of the unit’s weapon. So for years I was intimidated by the game myself and operated under the assumption that it just wasn’t worth the effort to learn. My interest was renewed when Multiman Publishing, the company owned by bloody sock Red Sox pitcher and longtime ASLer Curt Schilling, started publishing a series of low priced “starter kits” (each essentially a complete game) to introduce newbies to the game. But with so many great wargames coming out from GMT, Columbia Games, and the like I sort of ignored them.
No, it wasn’t a 1GB file of detailed orders of battle, complicated exceptions, and historical chrome. To my surprise, the 12 pages of rules with detailed and illustrated examples didn’t look like the United States Tax Code at all and to my relief reading them neither made my brain explore nor did they suddenly cause me to sprout a 50 year old’s beard and start questioning the technical inaccuracies in SAVING PRIVATE RYAN. In fact, reading through the rules I was surprised that despite a few ambiguities and omissions (likely artifacts from condensing the full rules into a more accessible package) they were clear, readable, and actually some of the most sensible and logical rules regarding infantry combat I’ve ever read. What’s more, the rules appeared to be one of those creative wellsprings from which later games have drawn inspiration- it’s impossible for me to play TIDE OF IRON or COMBAT COMMANDER now and not see certain things that came straight from ASL.
That reading of the rules pushed me over the edge, and when Billy said “I believe that this will be the tactical game that I measure all others by in the future” I agreed. I bought my own copy of the game and studied the rules extensively as well as a few tutorials and play aids available on the internet to prepare for our maiden ASL game. It felt like training for a marathon and this was just for the Starter Kit. Make no mistake- despite the “starter kit” name and the simplification of a lot of material down to the bare minimum, ASL is still a complex game with a very rigorous structure, specific procedures, and lots of the sort of details that today’s more abstract games have largely abandoned. Don’t go into the ASLSK games thinking that they’re going to mollycoddle you with a Eurogamer’s version of the larger affair; the idea is that you learn the game progressively with the starter kits, developing the skills and knowledge you need to build up to the full ASL experience. I would definitely suggest that experience with other wargames definitely helps in apprehending the rules and accelerating the learning process.
But of course, we really didn’t know what the hell we were getting ourselves into despite all the preparation and years of wargaming experience- it could be that the game was going to be too much work, like many other games with high complexity. Or it could wind up being a boring chit-pushing exercise. And it seemed like the most likely negative outcome would be that the mechanics would drown out any sense of fun or excitement. With those last-minute jitters in our hearts, all those years of hearing about ASL and wondering if it was really as difficult as its reputation suggested came down to nothing more than two friends trying out a new game for the first time. Despite an anticlimactic feeling, when I sat down at the table with my quad-shot cappuccino I said to Billy “I feel like we’re going skydiving.”
