A Friday Night of ASL and other Thoughts

So I decided to blog lite tonight. I played a double-header of ASL tonight with my buddies Scott in St. Louis and Dan in Kansas City. Left work around 4:30 today, got home...and set up to play two scenarios. Scott and I have been playing each Friday night through the Starter Kit 4 Pacific scenarios Tonight we started American Devil S71 and after two hours (our normal game length) stopped after 1-1/2 turns completed. All in all a good start after a long week of work...COVID-19 and Great Depression stuff thrown in for good measure. Life's tough right now and like many folks, I'm anxious about my employment future. Losing a job in America also costs most of us our healthcare on top of income. It's devastating and something I hope I can avoid...but nothing is for certain.

I'd be lying if I said, ASL helps me to temporarily forget the current and potential worries that life presents. It doesn't, but that's ok, I certainly don't look to ASL as an escape from life, but instead think of it as integral part of my life. Blogging put ASL front and center in my life in a way I had never imagined. I may not be a top player or scenario designer, but blogging allows me to channel positive energies into something I am passionate about. So when the world begins spinning and threatening to fly apart, I can at least turn to ASL for some normalcy and connect with people who are equally passionate about this board game. In this way, ASL becomes our temple of solitude.

But even Superman's temple was breached by ZOD...and this week I had a similar breach that temporarily cracked my ASL Temple of Solitude. 

On  Wednesday, I was reviewing new comments left on the blog. Currently there are over 600, so managing them can be a chore sometimes. I try hard to delete the ad comments or comments that are unrelated to ASL, discourteous, etc. Moderator kind of stuff. By Wednesday was a different event. A viewer to the blog visited one of my 2014 posts about Hauptman Wilhelm Traub. Over 500 views in a single day were directed at this post. 100 views a day total is average. So something was amiss.

Then I received a comment condemning me for having suggested that good men serve evil causes. This is a deeply  held belief, that far too often in human history, good men fight and die for causes that do not deserve their sacrifice. World  history is littered with this kind of thing. But this individual was not satisfied to just condemn my assertion...but to condemn me and to wish for my speedy death. 

Personally, I think there's plenty of death going around right now...not to flippantly wish death on anyone. I am confident that when it is my time to depart this world, death will find me at the appointed time. I pray it is still far into the future. There's a lot of ASL yet to be played.

My response to this comment was fairly immediate....DELETE. My  next action was to delete the blog post as well as one that dealt with Otto Carius' death at that time. I am not a Nazi fanboy or Third Reich apologist, but I do believe in people and I know that no nation...no cause will ever have a monopoly on righteousness or good and courageous people. The world is never that black and white. But removing the posts, while smacking of censorship in a world corrupted by an overindulgence into Political Correctness felt like the right thing to do. This blog should foremost concern itself with the game of ASL. So losing those posts was a no brainer. 

I have briefly considered eliminating the ability for viewers to leave comments, but at this time chose not to act on that option. This blog exists for its readers and without their feedback...it's just a guy screaming into the internet winds. 

So that's was fun. Just something that needed to be shared. The Internet is an often hostile and scary place. It at once brings us together and tears us apart. Here at Grumble Jones we only give oxygen to the voices that bring us together in a shared joy for ASL. All else fades away and is given no notice.

So let's talk about tonight's ASL double-header. Just game pics tonight and a little discussion and nothing else. 

 So my first game tonight would be ASL Scenario S71 - American Devil. I would be the Japanese against my buddy Scott in St. Louis. He would be the American  Defender. 

 Turns 1 and 2, I would go straight at the Americans and lose three tanks in the process. Never underestimate the BAZ 45's....they are tank killers!

 I would succeed in destroying the American M8 and kill the AT-Gun crew in close combat. Playing against Dan Best for some many games has taught me to be aggressive and especially so with the Japanese. 

 After 1-1/2 turns, I had gained 13 Victory Points of the 25 needed for the win. I was pushing the Americans back all along the line.

The second game tonight would begin at 8:30 PM. Dan and I had discussed playing a later night game today. Dan selected ASL Scenario 87 Good Night, Sweet Prince. It's better name would Good Night, Dead Germans. Long AAR short...I did not enjoy this scenario. I hate just being shot to pieces moving across the open ground with an HMG in a church steeple. I've been in that position before and just don't like it.  

The ROAR stats for the earlier version of this scenario shows 59 Danish and 24 German Wins. The version we played from Doomed Battalions 3rd Edition has 10 German and 9 Danish wins on ROAR and is 3 Danish to 0 German wins on the ASL Archive. Sucks to be the Germans in this one.

 I sent 4 half-squads out to draw Dan's HMG Steeple fire, but he didn't bite. He waited until one of my armor assaulting stacks came into range. He hit me enough to break a squad.  The Steeple was definitely a problem for me.

Turn 2 I continued to move forward, but had taken some hard hits as Dan's HMG got a lot of Rate of Fire. My boys were falling and falling hard. 

Heading into Turns 3 and 4 - Dan had the edge and was inflicting losses on me. I would eliminate his Nimrod motorcycle, but not much else. Dan would MALF his 20L AT Gun with Intensive Fire and lose it for good.

Crossing the open ground is just the first of the hurdles facing the Germans. The canal must be crossed by the two bridges and of course these were wired for bog.

The last picture I took tonight, before I threw in the towel. By Turn 5, I had gotten one tank across the canal and it had a MALF'd MA. My 9-1 armor leader attempted to run past the First Fired AT Gun, but Dan went Intensive Fire, hit and destroyed my tank. I would send my final tank across the bridge and it too would fall to a lucky shot. After that I conceded. Dan had an overwhelming victory. 

So that concludes tonight's lite blog. Sorry, it couldn't be longer, but it wasn't meant to be this time. Dan and I will square off tomorrow for our regular "Out Saturday Game" and a proper AAR will be completed. 

Thanks for spending time at Grumble Jones. Peace be with you.