Movement Point

Esoteric Actions: ASL Journal #15 (MMP) Released

January 8, 2025 by Chris Baer

Not unlike some hackneyed box of chocolates, one never knows quite what will appear in an issue of Multi-Man Publishing‘s ASL Journal, that irregularly released magazine-and-scenario product dedicated to the Advanced Squad Leader tactical warfare system. Sporting a cover of a random Eastern Front tank on tank encounter by Ken Smith, just released ASL Journal #15 promises lots of (typically bland) German vs Soviet scenarios, but the actual contents prove a welcome surprise, all caramels and cremes and no sour quince logs…

Coming in at a brisk thirty-six pages, including the extra-glossy cover, ASL Journal #15 provides several articles, mostly of a practical and/or tactical nature; replacement overlay sheets for Doomed Battalions 4th Edition; and eleven scenarios, J247-257, on six standard thick, back printed cardstock sheets, one of the scenarios stretching to a second page. Unlike several recent issues of the Journal, ASL Journal #15 does not come with either a HASL map or a selection of geomorphic maps, so the price is commensurately more slender as a result.

I’m on record as being rather uninterested in the vast majority of articles in contemporary hobbyist gaming periodicals, seeing them as a necessary evil in getting the scenarios that I’m really buying the product for, but a few of the articles in ASL Journal #15 strike me as a welcome return to the glory days of the gaming magazine, when tactics and analysis predominated over potted amateur histories and glorified product advertisements. In particular, Johnathan Kay’s exploration of the nuances of lines of sight and Jim Bishop’s mathematically dense overview of offensive tank operations seem well worth the ink. (Full disclosure: I know Jim from way back, when I used to game with the Washington, DC, ASL crowd.) I can see both articles being pored over and referenced frequently, much like Ole Boe’s “Stop and Go Traffic” and Steve Petersen’s “Run for the Money,” two practical classics from the ’96 Annual. Finally, a magazine you really do buy for the articles!

The three included sheets of overlays replace those in Doomed Battalions 4th Edition, adding the center hex dots that were missing from those in the revised module; these “new” versions are the same as those found in the ASL Overlay Bundle and Doomed Battalions 3rd Edition, so if you have either of those products, you’re set.

The scenarios are the real draw for ASL Journal #15, and blessedly there’s not a single Eastern Front action in the bunch. Instead, we’re treated to a refreshing spin through the Plano, with scenarios covering the invasion of Poland in ’39; an attack on Danish positions in ’40, with the Danes using automatic anti-tank cannons; several actions pitting the US against Vichy French troops in North Africa; a few late war affairs between the Germans and, in various combinations, the Americans, Brits, and Free French; a hefty card featuring American troops defending against North Koreans in ’50; plus, so far as I can tell, the first official scenario set in South America, a border clash between Peru and Ecuador in ’41, with the Peruvians presented in Axis Minor greens and the Ecuadorians donning Italian grey. No night or PTO scenarios in this one, but you can’t have everything! Most scenarios do involve combined arms and clock in between 4.5 and 7 turns. They all look playable in a tournament setting or a club game session, with solid but not overwhelming force counts.

As ever with ASL, to play it all you need to own it all. The scenarios use boards from both core modules and various other subsidiary products, including one Starter Kit board, a trend I’m not enamored of. The boards needed are: 4, 14, 16, 19, 33, 43, 46, 53, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 70, 71, 81, 83, 84, 1a, 5b, and x. A smattering of overlays also come into play.

For someone who greatly appreciates scenarios that focus on under-exposed theaters and involve under-utilized rules and counters, ASL Journal #15 is an easy purchase. With cards bringing into play motorcycles, minefields, gliders, air support, and, yes, even a Sturmtiger, there are plenty of obscure rules to look up and counters to dust off. But if you’re like me, MMP had already earned a sale the second they mentioned Ecuador…

Doctor Who Project: Mindwarp

January 2, 2025 by Chris Baer

I endeavour to maintain a certain continuity.

Continuity stands as the primary problem with Doctor Who by its twenty-third season. Long-time producer John Nathan-Turner and equally long-serving script editor Eric Saward take pains to ensure that the Doctor’s weekly adventures not only reflect an awareness of the Time Lord’s nearly 150 prior stories but also refer to them whenever possible, rewarding those devoted viewers who will surely complain should a relevant canonical aside be skipped—or worse, be misconstrued. But those fans with knowledge of the Doctor’s entire history make up a steadily dwindling percentage of the possible audience, and more casual viewers, those vital to the series’ continued success, often feel like they’re entering a conversation they don’t fully comprehend when a call-back to a prior story occurs, especially when it’s not entirely germane to the events on offer.

Sometimes, however, there’s not enough continuity. The decision to present Season Twenty-three as a single fourteen episode story, “The Trial of a Time Lord,” comprised of four tightly interwoven sub-stories, to which Philip Martin’s “Mindwarp” (Story Production Code 7B) contributes episodes five through eight, highlights this dilemma. Viewers who do not watch from the beginning of the story arc need on-ramps to clarify what they might have missed; in theory, the fact that the sub-stories mostly stand on their own should limit what might be missed. Yet Martin’s entry picks up from the events of the first four episodes, “The Mysterious Planet,” with the scantest of recaps, scarcely addressing the most significant plot point introduced by writer Robert Holmes, that of a possible conspiracy on Gallifrey involving the Matrix. “Mindwarp” just assumes that viewers remember that subterfuge, or indeed even why the Doctor is in the dock at all, fighting for his life against the Valeyard (Michael Jayston), jumping headlong instead into the prosecutor’s next piece of evidence in the trial without dwelling on or developing the overall framing device tying the fourteen episodes together.

Doctor Who, it must be noted, has a history of long stories that can confuse viewers jumping in mid-stream—six episodes stories being fairly frequent through to the first half of Tom Baker’s run and the epic “The Daleks’ Master Plan” clocking in at a whopping twelve (or thirteen) episodes—none of which take pains to catch tardy audience members up to speed beyond the traditional cliffhanger reprises. Too, addressing “The Trial of a Time Lord” as its constituent parts is a more recent phenomenon, not in keeping with the experience of the audience at the time, but the lack of an extended recap of the end of “The Mysterious Planet” to start episode five, as would happen in any other story between parts, bespeaks the production team themselves treating the segments as separate narrative entities at the time. For a series attempting to stay alive, then, the lack of emphasis on engaging more casual viewers, perhaps even tuning in just because they saw Brian Blessed’s name in that week’s Radio Times listing for Doctor Who, suggests an overall blindness to the needs of less-than-rabid fans—a failing that has contributed mightily to the series being in its currently precarious state.

“Mindwarp” proper, the “evidence” being shown to the Inquisitor (Lynda Bellingham) and the panel of Time Lords overseeing the Doctor’s trial for incessant interference with other culture and peoples, follows the Doctor and Peri as they land on the pink-tinted planet Thoros-Beta, the source of high-tech weaponry found on a backwater planet. The Doctor seeks to investigate this meddling in the development of a less advanced civilization—the same crime, the Valeyard eagerly notes, of which he himself is accused. Martin immediately leans into the conceit of the story being presented in a courtroom as evidence, with the Inquisitor wondering just why an introductory scene of our time travellers bantering about the TARDIS materializing in water is vital to the trial, leading to events skipping forward, something many a viewer, anxious to get to the action, has doubtless wanted as well.

The Doctor, in that “irrelevant” prologue scene, indicates that they have come to Thoros-Beta because of information received from a “Warlord of Thordon” as he was dying, pointing directly to an off-screen adventure to which the audience is not privy, in effect creating continuity unknown to all viewers, whether they are brand new or have hidden behind the couch since 1963. It’s a contextualized continuity reference, though, lacking the dissonant effect canonical name drops often engender. But the same cannot be said for the main revelation of the first episode, as the news that Thoros-Beta is also home to an oleaginous former foe of the Doctor lands with a thud…

Doctor Who Project: The Mysterious Planet

January 2, 2025December 2, 2024 by Chris Baer

I was beginning to fear you had lost yourself.

Season Twenty-three almost wasn’t to be. In February, 1985, midway through the airing of Season Twenty-two, news broke that the BBC had pulled the plug on the forthcoming season, then already in preparation, owing as much to budget woes as to a general sense of dissatisfaction with the show’s direction and popular reception. Not until December of the same year did Doctor Who get a new lease on life, with the BBC green-lighting a truncated Season Twenty-three consisting of fourteen twenty-five minute episodes stitched together under a single framing narrative, “The Trial of a Time Lord,” putting the Sixth Doctor (and the show itself) in the dock for crimes real and imagined.

The brainchild of longtime script editor Eric Saward, this series of four linked stories—”The Mysterious Planet,” “Mindwarp,” “Terror of the Vervoids,” and “The Ultimate Foe”—presents heretofore unseen events in the Doctor’s past and future as evidence in his trial, with far heavier narrative connections between the parts, written by different authors, than seen in the last thematically linked season, Season Sixteen’s Key to Time arc. The stakes could not be higher, either for the Doctor or for Doctor Who, with nearly eighteen months elapsing since the last time the Doctor appeared on televisions in the UK, in “Revelation of the Daleks” in late March, 1985. Significantly, no repeats of earlier episodes had occurred since then either, the last rerun being “The Five Doctors” in August 1984, this absence itself telling of the series’ regard (or lack thereof) at Television Centre.

Mindful of the need to get it right, producer John Nathan-Turner and Saward turn to veteran hand Robert Holmes for the first four episodes, “The Mysterious Planet” (Series Production Code 7A), returning the Sixth Doctor to the air on September 6, 1986, with a jaunty, revised opening theme. (Of note, the story is presented week-to-week under the rubric “The Trial of a Time Lord,” but most critical discourse has, broadly, settled on addressing the sub-stories by their working titles, corresponding to how the components were commissioned.) After an elaborate effects shot showing the TARDIS being drawn into a space station, Holmes wastes no time establishing the trial framing device, with the Doctor immediately confronting the Valeyard (Michael Jayston), prosecuting the charges against him for the benefit of a panel of Time Lords, presided over by the Inquisitor (Lynda Bellingham).

The Doctor’s crimes? “Conduct unbecoming a Time Lord” and “transgressing the First Law,” that broad Gallifreyan prohibition against “meddling” in the affairs of other peoples. For those paying attention at home, Holmes takes care to note that the Doctor has been on trial for the same charges before—resolved in the conclusion of “The War Games” which saw the Second Doctor sentenced to exile on Earth after a forced regeneration—and also that the Doctor has been stripped of his title as Lord President, last referenced in “The Five Doctors” and originally established in “The Invasion of Time” some eight years prior. Nathan-Turner and Saward here unravel awkward, narrative-constraining continuity while still referencing it, not unlike having K-9 get wet and short out whenever his ray gun snout would resolve a plot too quickly.

The framing narrative, with a jury of Time Lords watching the Doctor’s adventures on screen just like the audience at home, continues the metatextual self-referential tendency of Season Twenty-two; watching the watchers makes up much of the narrative heft of “Vengeance on Varos” and, to a lesser extent, “Revelation of the Daleks,” with “The Mysterious Planet” pausing the action frequently for the Doctor, the Inquisitor, and the Valeyard to comment incredulously on what has just been seen. The Valeyard explains the footage as deriving from the Matrix, that storehouse of all Time Lord knowledge, fed by the Doctor’s own experiences; a surreptitious surveillance device installed in every TARDIS, including the old Mark 40s, apparently, psychically records other moments outside those witnessed by Time Lords—a rather huge alteration to the Doctor Who canon, with potential ramifications for all future stories and also calling into question many outcomes of past stories, but a change necessary for the frame device to function.

And where do the Doctor’s “criminal” activities take place for this initial segment of his trial? Oh, just a barren little planet called Ravelox, in the Stellian Galaxy, devastated by a fireball that Gallifreyan records contend wiped out all life. Ravelox also happens to be known by a different name as well: Earth…

Doctor Who Project: Revelation of the Daleks

December 2, 2024November 2, 2024 by Chris Baer

Suddenly everyone sees and knows too much!

When in doubt, roll the Daleks out. As Season Twenty-Two of Doctor Who comes to a close, the fate of the series rests in the balance. Producer John Nathan-Turner pulls out all the stops to bring Colin Baker’s debut season to a strong finish by headlining the scourge of Skaros in script editor Eric Saward’s “Revelation of the Daleks” (Story Production Code 6Z). The problem remains, alas, that the Daleks, having been on the losing side of a dozen confrontations with the Doctor over the years, each more feeble than the last, have worn out their welcome; their staccato cries of “Exterminate!” and single-minded devotion to evil lack the ability to captivate the imagination in 1985 they possessed in 1963.

By the Third Doctor’s era, some twelve years prior, the Daleks already are little more than hapless tin cans, their worn-down props in desperate need of refurbishment. Indeed, Davros himself, creator of the Daleks (alongside Terry Nation, to be sure), becomes a mere cipher of the cunning, calculating, amoral foe first seen in the Fourth Doctor’s run, and by the time the Fifth Doctor confronts him in “Resurrection of the Daleks,” Davros exists on a one-dimensional plane, all vitriol and no guile. There’s nothing new under the Skarosian sun…

But somehow, Saward, Nathan-Turner, and director Graeme Harper—helming his second “finale” story after a strong showing with Season Twenty-One’s “The Caves of Androzani“—manage the unthinkable: they make Davros and the Daleks interesting again. True to the story’s title, there’s no hiding them, and scarcely eight minutes pass before the first Dalek, in resplendent white with gold roundels and trim, rolls onto the screen, followed by Davros (Terry Molloy)—or at least his head—spinning around madly, rejoicing that the Doctor has fallen into his trap. Wisely, Saward and company realize that there’s little point in sequestering the perfidious pepperpots until that traditional first episode cliffhanger, particularly given that “Revelation of the Daleks” is the last of the two part, ninety minute stories experimented with this season. No, these Daleks are “revealed” right away, and the audience gains awareness beyond the Doctor’s own, emphasizing that they are watching something happen to him rather than experiencing events alongside him. With few exceptions, it’s only the Doctor who is unaware that Daleks are puttering about, and their matter-of-fact presence, patrolling like robotic rent-a-cops amidst humans, adds greatly to their impact.

The emphasis on seeing the Doctor recurs throughout “Revelation of the Daleks,” which follows “Vengeance on Varos” in casting the audience very explicitly at the center of a panopticon; viewers watch others watch the Sixth Doctor and Peri on screens, much as the audience itself is doing at home, and characters frequently speak upwards towards cameras mounted high on walls in the halls of Tranquil Repose, a cryo-mortuary on Necros, devoted to housing victims of disease in cryogenic suspension until cures can be found for their maladies (a concept very much in vogue in the 1980s). The TARDIS arrives on the snowy plains of this necropolis planet so that our time travellers can attend the “funeral” of Professor Arthur Stengos, a renowned agronomist, and their travel by foot to the mortuary is monitored on a screen by Davros—and also, in an exceedingly jarring subversion of viewer expectations, by a nameless DJ (Alexei Sayle), played here as an amalgamation of Wolfman Jack and any number of stereotyped American personalities, who spins tunes from Earth’s past for the frozen inhabitants of the cryo-catacombs.

The viewer really doesn’t know what to expect, a rare experience on Doctor Who, made more intriguing by rather camp segments involving the vainglorious mortician Jobel (the incomparable Clive Swift, in a role inspired by embalmer Mr. Joyboy from Waugh’s The Loved One) and his blue uniformed cadre of assistants; a highly formalized and heavily stylized agri-factory owner, Kara (Eleanor Bron) in thrall to Davros, who stands in the way of her control of the food supply for the galaxy; plus an attack on the complex by corpse snatchers seeking the very body of Arthur Stengos that the Doctor has arrived to mourn. Combined with tense, almost discordant music courtesy of Roger Limb and exceptional direction by Harper, who employs camera angles shifting from point-of-view to (barely) steady-cam close-ups of action sequences and high, long shots showing off the set work and well chosen location scenes, the overall effect is one of welcome disorientation. This is not, Nathan-Turner seems to shout, your parents’ Doctor Who…

Doctor Who Project: Timelash

November 2, 2024October 2, 2024 by Chris Baer

Purposeful travel, not aimless wanderings.

Though it often feels to viewers that the Doctor’s adventures follow one after the other, significant gaps can be inferred between certain stories on Doctor Who. These lacunae offer fertile ground for writers to explore the ways the Doctor’s previous visits to a place have affected its development; at their best, as in the revelation of the Fourth Doctor’s face carved into a mountainside in “The Face of Evil,” such newly invented past interactions both deepen the stakes of the current narrative and remind viewers of our favorite Gallifreyan’s essentially unknowable history. First time series contributor Glen McCoy employs this device in “Timelash” (Story Production Code 6Y), which draws heavily on the Doctor having visited the planet Karfel in one of those heretofore unknown off-screen jaunts.

Karfel, currently under the dictatorial rule of the mysterious Borad (Robert Ashby/Denis Cary), has seen better days since that last encounter. All reflective objects have been banned, war is in the offing with another world, and a rebellion plots against the Borad, who never appears in person, only on viewscreens, attended solely by his tall, blue-skinned androids (Dean Hollingsworth). Those deemed disloyal suffer exile by means of the Timelash, a temporal corridor that, for reasons quite unexplained, leads back to twelfth century Earth. The Doctor and Peri inadvertently encounter this corridor while planning where to go on holiday, the TARDIS passing through right as Vena (Jeananne Crowley), a Karfelon councilor who has just seen her father killed and fiancé sentenced to exile, jumps into the time stream with a key needed to control all the energy on Karfel. She floats, ghost-like, through the blue box, which has the effect of briefly redirecting the Timelash to nineteenth century Earth—1885, to be precise—landing her with a clunk in the Scottish country home of one Herbert (David Chandler), an aspiring writer (hint) who happens to be conducting a seance at the time.

After the death of Vena’s father at the Borad’s surprisingly scaly hands, the ambitious Tekker (Paul Darrow, the second Blake’s 7 star to appear in as many episodes, after Jacqueline Pearce in “The Two Doctors“) takes over the figurehead leadership mantle of Maylin. He uses the Doctor’s subsequent arrival on Karfel to solve the problem of the missing key, which has vexed the Borad immensely. After the briefest of welcomes, he cajoles the Doctor into retrieving the key from the time corridor by threatening Peri. She, in turn, outwits her android captor and escapes into tunnels inhabited by reptilian creatures known as a Morlox (big hint). Members of the rebellion also hide in the tunnels, and they save her from the beast, in order to kill her as a spy. Peri survives only by name-dropping the Doctor, whose last visit has turned into a myth suppressed by the Borad, and then by correctly identifying Jo Grant’s picture in a locket given to one of the rebel’s grandfathers by the Doctor—the Third Doctor, as a hidden mural later confirms. But no sooner do the rebels spare her than one of the androids finds them.

The Sixth Doctor, meanwhile, calculates the exact moment to which the TARDIS has altered the Timelash’s end point and appears in Herbert’s hut shortly after Vena. Upon realizing that the legendary Doctor has returned to keep his “promise” to Karfel, Vena agrees to help him overthrow the Borad. Herbert, fascinated by the idea of a time machine (hint, hint), sneaks aboard the TARDIS, and the three travel back to Karfel posthaste. Tekker secures the amulet as soon as they arrive and orders an android to toss the Time Lord into the Timelash, after gloating at the Doctor’s naivety. And that’s just the first of two forty-five minute episodes…

Red Devils at 80: ASL Arnhem 2024 (MMP) Released

September 20, 2024September 20, 2024 by Chris Baer

Cover artwork detail by Nicolás Eskubi from ASL Arnhem 2024 by Multi-Man Publishing

Multi-Man Publishing, the current license holders for the Advanced Squad Leader tactical warfare system, have long engaged in charitable efforts, with their annual convention, Winter Offensive, supporting the World War II Foundation. In conjunction with the 80th anniversary of Market Garden, MMP have teamed up with the Arnhem ASL Tournament (September 12-15, 2024) to release ASL Arnhem 2024, a four scenario pack whose proceeds benefit the Airborne Museum at Hartenstein and its annex in Arnhem, the Airborne Museum at the Bridge.

It’s a tidy shrink-wrapped package, just four scenarios back-printed on two pieces of standard scenario cardstock, with a glossy cardstock coversheet featuring art by Nicolás Eskubi, and an equally nominal price of $10. As might be expected, the four scenarios all take place in and around Arnhem, pitting the “Red Devils” of the British 1st Airborne Division against German forces of varying quality from September 17 through 21, 1944. In keeping with the association with the Arnhem ASL Tournament, all four scenarios have a “tournament” feel to them: moderate length with a decent but not overwhelming number of counters on each side, intended to be played in fairly tight quarters—if European ASL tournaments are anything like their American counterparts!—in the span of five to six hours by players who don’t dilly-dally.

Two of the scenarios are by MMP’s Brian Youse, and two by Jens Thomander. The longest and largest, AR1 Broken Column, comes in at 8.5 turns and covers most of three half-maps which might be pushing “tournament”-length, while the shortest and smallest, AR3 Bricks in Flames and AR4 The Overlook, come in at 5.5 turns and play out on roughly three-quarters of a single board. Vehicles and guns feature in three of the four, with AR2 Sheep in Wolf’s Clothing being the sole infantry-only affair.

My picks of the scenarios have to be AR3 and AR4 by Jens Thomander, if only because they each feature French B1-bis tanks pressed into German service. One simply cannot get enough Char-Bs in one’s gaming diet!

Quite a few boards and overlays come into play on the cards, so while counter-wise only Beyond Valor, For King and Country, and Croix de Guerre (for the aforementioned AFVs) are needed, a full eight maps (20, 38, 42, 62, 67, 70, 84, and l as in Lima) are needed, plus assorted Brush, Building, Woods, Open Ground, and Orchard overlays. So, certainly one for aficionados with access to a full range of maps, including, unfortunately, an ASL Starter Kit map, l. (I know they’re fully interchangeable with standard ASL maps and that many players of the One True Game™ own a full set of boards from the junior partner, but I’m not a fan of full ASL products requiring their usage, even though most people, myself included, are playing via VASL these days anyway. Consider me old fashioned.)

ASL Arnhem 2024 is a nice pack of scenarios at a pittance of a price benefitting a worthy cause. And if it feels a bit steep, postage-wise, to just grab ASL Arnhem 2024 by itself, then do what I did and pick up the latest issue of Special Operations, complete with four ASL scenarios and a small HASL map, to help lower the per item postage while you’re at it…