2021 has been a long year and a fast year. It feels long from the standpoint of endless summer heat and COVID. I'm frankly tired of both. And this week brought another moment of sorrow. My boss of 13 years was diagnosed with inoperable cancer last week. He was placed in hospice virtually the next day and on Tuesday of this week...he was dead. I had hoped to at least see him one more time...but this cancer was so virulent and aggressive that Chris taken from us just like that. So I was a bit of it mentally for much of the week. I owe Chris so much for having really built my career and helped me advance into new opportunities. Chris will always be my Captain.
Thankfully, ASL is one of the few things that really helps me to get back to center. ASL is such an immersive experience that it takes you away from whatever else plagues your mind.
This month's scenario comes via an Osprey book. I know you're surprised! Hungarian Soldier versus Soviet Soldier is the latest Combat series tome. I always recommend these books, because they really are well suited to ASL. The color plates and associated action report are really almost tailor made for scenario creation.
I wanted to do something a bit smaller and more focused this month and wanted something with Axis Minors. I don't generally create a lot of Axis Minors scenario. It just not really in my sweet spot creatively.
I briefly considered making this a DASL scenario, but the boards didn't lend themselves well to the historical conflict.
And not every small unit action necessarily translates into a good or fun scenario. This particular action has the Russians ambushing a Hungarian convoy, but the Hungarians are able to recover quickly and make a fight of it. In this scenario, the Russians have the advantage of HIP, but only in certain terrain, which gives the Hungarian player some ability to predict when he may get hit with the ambush from unseen forces. Ambush scenarios require a lot of fire discipline on the part of the defender. Spring the ambush too soon and your opponent can quickly recover and take the fight to you...wait too long and you may allow the attacker to get too close to his objectives. Fire lanes are you friend, particularly against trucks, but you you want to lay if while the convoy is in motion and hit as many trucks possible. A good fire lane will affect all the trucks if they spend delay, stop or move into another hex. And may also keep the affected trucks from disembarking their troops. And of course...roll low...otherwise none of your planning will matter anyway!!!
As always these monthly "Basement Quality" Scenarios are offered for fun only and as a thank you to the readers of this blog.
Remember to open pictures in a new window in order to maximize the size.
And as always, these scenarios can be downloaded from The ASL Scenario Archive
(just search on Grumble Jones).
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