The first HG2 unwrapped. 16 scenarios, 4 boards, half-board overlay, 4 rules pages. All adds up to awesome.

The first box of HG2. 25 copies of goodness.

HG2 shipment for ASLOK expected to day – looking forward to seeing the end result.

Sarge and I played a 5.5 turn SS v Russian scenario this afternoon. I had the SS and believed this to be a lost cause at the end of my Turn 3. German needs to take 17 building locations in 5.5 turns. German has a very small force 11 squads vs 20 Russian squads. Leadership and support is effectively equal.
At the end of Turn 3 I had 5 broken squads with only 1 building take. Rallied the troops and finally began to wither the Russian defenses. Pictures start with the end of German Turn 1 (12) and finishes off with the end of Game (prior to final German advance phase)

Bounding Fire HG2 Update: Everything is printed, just need to trim down the Scenario cards, collate them, and assemble the packets.

How high is a stack of 6000 ASL boards?

I can’t exactly answer that question in inches, but I can share what it looks like. I visited the printers on Friday and signed off on the last details, and was able to peek into the production area and see HG2 in process. It is very impressive to see our hard work in its final state.

That is a palette full of all four maps for High Ground 2 being processed for packaging.

The scenarios cards have been printed as well, and I think it is very interesting to see them in the form that they are produced. There are basically half of the scenario cards shown in the picture, and they get printed together on large rolls and then trimmed down to normal size.

Everything is on track to get production wrapped up soon. I expect to have them in my hands by the end of the month, and in your hands soon after that, especially if I see you at ASLOK!

Thanks,

Sam Tyson

Sarge and I playtested one of the titles that may be included in the giant East Front package that Chas speaks of on the Gamesquad Forums. Using my new flip video camera, I recorded the playing until the battery ran out and want to share it with you but because it is HD video the file size exceeds the allowed limits of this website.

Russians are on the offensive, Germans are defending board 56. Each side has approx 20 squads and 5 vehicles.  Scenario moves very quicky as the Russians enter from offboard and need to reach hexrows N-R in order to get to the victory buildings. 

I lost all of my vehicles to Sarge excellent anti-armor tactics, but tanks can’t take buildings. My first and second line Germans were able to break up his infantry and keep them away from all of the buildings until turn turn 6 of seven.  Scenario came down to the last turn which is not on the video. Russians (Sarge) were able to take 1 of 4 victory buildings. It is a nice, tight little scenario that will be perfect for tourney play.

Tentatively titled Knife in the Flank, designed by Chas…

Here is URL for Youtube for the video   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CyDMRklJS2Q

Chinese: Matt Schwoebel
Japanese: Zeb Doyle

For most of this summer, I was in an ASL drought, but fortunately things picked up in August and I got in some really fun gaming. One of my more entertaining battles was against Matt Schwoebel in BFP-32 Slaughter At Nanyaun. This is a nifty 1938 Japanese-Chinese battle across the relatively open boards 43 and 17, with the Japanese trying to get 80 points of CVP and EVP.

It’s a bit of an unusual scenario, since the attacking Japanese infantry are numerically outnumbered by a 3:2 ratio, and in FP roughly 1.3:1. That’s not even counting the four heavy-hitting 150mm and 75mm ART guns that the Chinese also get. To make up for this, the Japanese do receive some 70mm OBA (made very powerful by an offboard observer at level three, which can see vast expanses of the map) and three flame-throwing engineer vehicles, which operate much like the German SPW 251/16, in that they have two side-mounted flamethrowers and can thus get two shots per turn if maneuvered correctly.

This all makes for great fun if you like brain-teasers. The Japanese need to very cautiously work their way forward, identify the Chinese positions, and then work over any exposed Chinese strong-points with the flame-throwing vehicles. They have 2 AF, enough to ward off most MG fire, but not enough to stand up to the Chinese guns. This ends up being very tense but lots of fun. Every Japanese piece is precious, so there are no throw-away moves, and deciding how bold to be with the flame-throwers and what targets are worth risking the X11 20FP shots on is especially tricky.

In my playing with Matt, I sent my first wave of Japanese all down the left flank. He’d set up his Chinese scattered about in foxholes, and completely ignored the compound of stone buildings on board 43. Initially, I thought that he’d made a mistake, but it turns out the LOS from there isn’t especially good and any Chinese units placed there are probably thrown away. Instead, by concentrating his infantry further back in the foxholes, he maintained his numerical and FP edge, and had better TEM as well when my force finally contacted him. So, nice job, Matt…this is the second time your ‘in-depth foxhole defense’ has caused me all kinds of grief!

I sent some Type 94 tankettes rushing forward as scouts, and managed to find a 75mm and a 150mm gun at the cost of a single AFV….a very acceptable loss ratio to me. I then felt bold enough to send forward a single flame-throwing tank, and it managed to burn out several pockets of Chinese, before finding the last 150mm ART piece at the cost of its own destruction. Unfortunately, that left the bulk of Matt’s force positioned on my left flank, well covered by his big guns, and with no easy way of rooting them out. Things only got tougher in that sector when the Chinese reinforcements arrived with most of them also moving under the protective cover of those nasty 150mm monsters.

With my own reinforcements arriving, I decided not to reinforce failure, and would instead send my second wave of infantry up the middle. I would also redeploy my flame-throwing tanks to that area and see if I could force my way through an area that would have, at most, a single 75mm gun covering it. The downside to this was that the tanks would have to spend two turns moving into position, and since it was already turn four of a 7.5 turn game, I didn’t have any time to waste.

The push up the middle turned out to be a good move. As Matt’s Chinese scrambled to reposition, they had to move through a large patch of woods on board 17, and my offboard observer was able to rain airburst OBA pain on a huge number of them. Several missions, shifting between harassing fire and WP did an amazing amount of damage, with almost every 4-1 attack or 1MC breaking everyone unfortunate enough to be caught in the blast. That really cleared a path for my second wave of infantry to exit, and more importantly, I think it rattled Matt’s morale some. He reacted by bringing the Chinese armor aggressively over to block me. This is one reason I enjoy scenarios that have dual VC, like EVP and CVP-it makes a lot of otherwise easy decisions into painful trade-offs. Here, Matt threatened my infantry EVP with a bunch of 6FP CMGs, but also put a bunch of his 0 AF, 5 CVP vehicles in harm’s way.

As it turned out, my 37mm crewed infantry SW had a field day with the Chinese armor, going on several big ROF tears and killing most of it. That 3 ROF and 7TK has the potential to be deadly to everything in the Chinese armored force. The PSW 222 survived, but I managed to toast that threat with one of my flame-throwing tanks. When a scouting CX’d 9-0 Japanese leader managed to find the last 75mm gun, survive a 24-2 CH and a 24+0 CH, and then advance in and kill the crew in HtH CC, the floodgates really opened up for me, and the game ended on the last turn with the Japanese scoring 100 VP. Had Matt been a bit more judicious with his armor, or had my OBA not been so smashingly effective, it would have been a very tense and close finish.

So, BFP-32 Slaughter At Nanyaun is highly recommended. Since every move feels so vital, we both felt extra-drained and tired at the end, so be ready for that. The balance felt even to me, although I’d say the Japanese might be slightly more fragile. If they lose the OBA and several of the flame-throwers on fluke events, they aren’t going to win this. If the Chinese boxcar out those 150mm guns right off the bat, they are in trouble, but it’s not an auto-loss. I’d still take either side though for some fun Asian early-war action.

Thanks for reading,

Zeb

HG2 update! Scenarios are all final, just need to edit and tweak them for a couple of days, then it’s off to the printers.

Sarge and I playtesting a Japanese vs. Dutch Scenario. 7  Turns, Dutch are defending and the Japanes have to cross a river and take 15 buildings..They have  single bridge to use…Dutch win in 7..Some photos for you to review…