REFLECTIONS: ASL Starter Kit #2 – by Ken Dunn (MMP)

I’ve previously offered my Reflections – not a Review – of ASL Starter Kit #1, which is the first entry in the Starter Kit sub-series of Advanced Squad Leader. That was a Reflection because I don’t think as vast a system as even the Starter Kit sub-series can be sufficiently analysed after a couple of short introductory games. This piece will be a set of Reflections in the same way. I’d recommend reading my piece on the first game before reading this.

 
Starter Kit #1 (SK1 henceforth) introduces infantry-only actions, with leaders, infantry squads, and their anti-personnel support weapons (machineguns, flamethrowers, and demolition charges). SK2 introduces ordnance, both heavy and light – particularly big guns (artillery, anti-tank guns, big mortars, etc) on larger counters than the infantry, but also including additional light support weapons (small mortars, and bazookas and panzerschrecks).
 
Contents wise, SK2 includes, nominally, counters for five different World War 2 armies: American, British, German, Italian, and “Allied Minor”, representing Poland, Belgium, and the like. The Italian and Allied Minor orders of battle are fairly vestigial, sufficient for the scenarios in which they feature, and include only infantry and machineguns. The other three include bigger guns and more varied equipment. There are 8 scenarios to play through. The rulebook is 20 pages long (compared to SK1’s 12 pages).
 
It’s worth airing one grievance straight away, because it is easily resolved: the rulebook is a slight improvement on SK1, with extra and clearer definitions, but it is still not always clear to me (after several playing) where I will find certain pieces of information, and sometimes that information is unclear – to me, at least, and I am the punter here, so I’ll say my view counts. What is the Starter Kit effect of small arms fire on Guns and attendant Crew, for instance? But the solution is at hand: the SK3 and SK4 rulebooks are clearer again, and there is an online “living rules” version. There is also a great community who answer questions quickly on several sites – though I do not accept this as an excuse for confusing rules writing.
                                                                                                     
Turning materially, then, to the game: how do the new elements add to (or detract) from the system? And how has my experience developed over the first two Starter Kits?
 
All (I think!) of the weaponry SK2 adds utilises the “To Hit” procedure, rather than a straight Infantry Fire Table diceroll. In fact, some Guns can fire “straight” on the IFT, functioning basically as a giant machinegun when doing so. But usually the Gun makes two rolls – one to check whether it hits the target, and then an IFT roll to calculate damage (in SK3, AFV hits are calculated via a different second dieroll). The most helpful Starter Kit provision for Guns is that all of the “To Hit” requirements for each gun are summed up on a playaid – players don’t calculate them manually as in ASL, but take the number on the playaid and modify it by whatever relevant modifiers apply.
 
I found this fairly simple – in fact, I learned the To Hit procedure quite quickly. I forget elements of it much less than I forget some of the stuff in SK1! In the selection of scenarios in SK2, there isn’t really a serious possibility of getting confused on the one thing I found harder to memorise – Target Type (most Guns use Infantry Target Type most of the time, Mortars use Area Target Type the whole time and other Guns will use it sometimes). “Light Anti-Tank Weapons” (bazookas and panzershrecks) have their own To Hit tables printed on their counters, and are perfectly simple to use (with a shorter procedure than Demolition Charges from SK1).
 
One area of material confusion, even checking the SK3 updated rulebook, is small arms fire vs Guns themselves – “Guns as Targets” in the SK2 rulebook is unclear to me, at least. The full ASL rules do include the possibility of Small Arms randomly destroying a Gun via a KIA result on the IFT – so I’m using that for the Gun itself. (Any help or corrections welcomed!)
 
The scenarios are a nice mix – I enjoyed playing with British, Italians, and Greeks (Allied Minor) more than I enjoyed the protagonists in SK1. One difficult design task for this box was to make scenarios with onboard Guns which were historical and interesting – after all, there are AA guns with no aircraft, AT guns with no tanks. Aside from 2 Infantry-only scenarios, the solutions the other 6 scenarios take are various: sights-down American Artillery facing Germans in the Ardennes, emplaced anti-aircraft batteries being attacked by infantry in Greece and Holland, and so forth. It’s a satisfying mix. One of the highest-rated and best-balanced Starter Kit scenarios is in this pack – ‘88s at Zon’ – though I had a slightly odd experience of it, at least in part from slightly misreading the Victory Conditions. The one caveat I’ll add to my general praise for the scenarios – slight balance issues and so forth notwithstanding – is that both the Italians and the Greeks (who are the only Allied Minor nation used here) only have Infantry and Support Weapons, and so are restricted to the Infantry-only scenarios and as allies to the British in a Gun scenario. This seems a bit of a shame – and in fact to get Italian Guns and Crew, and more interesting Support Weapons for the Allied Minor OOB, you need both Starter Kit #3 and the 2^nd edition of Starter Kit Expansion Pack #1. (The only Allied Minor AFVs are a variety of very light machines in Starter Kit Expansion Pack #2, though the Italians gets a small but acceptable selection in SK3. They also get captured French tanks in SKEP1(2^nd), losing the one Italian assault gun that had been in SKEP1(1^st).)
 
The final thing to reflect upon – and really the most important – is my own experience of learning more ASLSK, adding new types of situations to my record, and exploring further into the game system.
 
I suppose the headline is that playing SK2 led me to enter into full ASL. The whole story is more nuanced. What compelled me was not just enjoying the game, but seeing the deeper possibilities of the system, if expanded to its full extent. How about Finnish and Soviet skiers fighting it out? How about a wide range of HASL Campaign Games? How about multi-gun and multi-turret AFVs? I think there are doubtful “alleys” in the great city of rules that is full ASL, but on the whole the leap has been worth it. That “promise”, shown by the Starter Kit series, drew me in – I wanted the whole lot.
 
This box – essentially coincidentally, but it’s still worth noting – is also where I began to actually use ASL tactics, or try to. Infantry laying smoke to provide some inbuilt TEM, interlocking interdiction routes, etc – stuff I hadn’t even touched, really, in my 3 games of SK1. Indeed, beginning to come to grips with what is really involved in playing ASLSK, beyond the raw rules, is part of what led me to see the depth and breadth of the full ASL system.
 
There is another side to this, though. I’m not quite sure how to articulate it without it either sounding like an odd sort of praise, or an exaggerated criticism. Put it this way: there were moments where I felt oddly unsatisfied, or unsatiated. This wasn’t because the game system was shallow – indeed, even Starter Kit has vast depths I’ve barely explored – nor because the rules were annoying (even if some are), nor even because the designs in the box weren’t very good examples. They are, on the whole.
 
But I touched on the issue when mentioning the lack of Italian and Allied Minor tech – there was an odd sense playing this of “half a game”, even combined with SK1. Of course, part of this is lacking AFVs – but it was more the decisions made about what to include, what to design for, and so forth. There’s a quite fun Exit VP scenario with Italians trapped between Greek forces – but this is definitely denied star-billing, being an Infantry-only scenario with no tech and no chrome. The typical commercial realities of wargaming – that American actions and the East Front sell – are writ large on the contents of this box. Part of my move to full ASL has been to access wider vistas, not just deeper.
 
All told, SK2 is – probably – a better box than SK1. It’s certainly a good box and well worth the price. It has fewer Infantry-only scenarios than SK1 (2, compared to 6) and one of those is fun but has notable balance issues, but beyond that, the scenarios offer more variety, the maps are better, the OBs are more interesting, etc. But there is, at points, something that seems like a lack of ambition – hopefully something that is moved beyond in SK3, which I’ll be playing next, alongside learning scenarios for full ASL.