After sixteen installments, it might not be breaking news that a fresh issue of the ASL Journal, that irregularly published compendium of articles, news, and scenarios and maps for everyone’s favorite World War II tactical combat system, Advanced Squad Leader, has arrived—which is perhaps my feeble excuse for not taking a look at ASL Journal #16, released by Multi-Man Publishing in October, 2025 alongside ASL Action Packs #21 and #22 at ASLOK, until some ten months later.
Wearing an extremely glossy cover with artwork of American paratroopers digging in by James Dietz, ASL Journal #16 clocks in at a relatively slim 38 pages. Several articles recap the “first ever ASL World Championship” held at WBC in 2025, the bespoke scenarios for which are included in this issue. Additional articles by Jim Bishop and Sean Deller focus on rules issues and applications, accompanied by design notes for the forthcoming Kharkov in Flames historical module and the included Carpiquet Airfield scenarios. Most significantly, however, are the proposed rules changes by veteran players Steven Pleva and Mike McGrath, along with new errata to address some of the issues they highlight. (Full disclosure: I played Mike McGrath at Winter Offensive many moons ago; he was unfailingly pleasant as he disarmed my hapless attack with an insouciant ease.)
It’s unquestionably the most consequential set of adjustments to the rules since the Second Edition came out back in 2001. MMP has included the changes in the most recent official errata file, so no need to purchase the issue to find out just how wrong you’ve been playing all these years, but finding out why the changes have been made just might be worth the price of admission, especially since several of the unimplemented proposals in the article could yet make it into official status…
Two cardstock mapboards accompany ASL Journal #16, numbers 96 and 97, from the hand of Don Petros. Board 96 features that most seldom seen of all of ASL terrain, an airfield, with accompanying hangars and outlying aircraft parking areas, all dotted by debris and shellholes; and board 97 adds a fairly nondescript set of grain fields with a few scattered buildings. Of note, the grain field artwork is somewhat textured, a rather fetching recent cartographic development. The airfield board is probably the best new addition to the ASL atlas in several years, though the actions that might use it are fairly few in number across the annals of World War II.
The new maps are designed to accompany Petros’ five scenarios on Operation Windsor, the Canadian assault on Carpiquet and its important airfield, part of the seventeen new scenarios—J258-J269 and WC1-WC5—in ASL Journal #16, which span ten cardstock sheets (several scenarios running to two cards). The WC scenarios are the aforementioned cards from the WBC ASL tournament, all with a fair bit of heft in the OBs despite their tournament nature. WC2 Another Bowl of Borscht by Pete Shelling looks the pick of that group, the rare German/Russian scenario to capture my attention, a night action with Russian conscripts holed up behind wire and mines, holding against a crack group of stealthy Germans in the snow.
The “regular” Journal scenarios, J258-J269, are, other than the Carpiquet cards, the usual mixed bag, from an action in Poland in 1939 to a late war winter showdown between Americans and Germans in France. The oft-overlooked North Africa theater sees two scenarios in this one, with Tony D’Andrea’s J260 Reclaiming Hill 772 featuring a fairly uncommon Italian/America showdown, with a very small but stoutly fortified Italian force confronting a dozen GI squads armed with little but courage in the face of a pillbox. Another standout, J268 Independence Day, by Noah Brentlinger, pits free Czechs (using British counters) backed up by armor against a rag-tag group of Germans on Czechoslovakia’s Independence Day, October 28, in 1944. The five Carpiquet scenarios, though not linked, tell the story of the Canadian struggle for the airfield using a mechanic whereby either side may opt to trade in scenario-given forces for points with which to buy a completely different set of tools to attack or defend, making for campaign game variability (and fog-of-war) that you don’t often see in a stand-alone scenario, surpassing even those Pete Shelling-specials with their extensive OB purchase matrixes.
A fair few maps are required to play all the scenarios in ASL Journal #16, though that should come as little surprise. In addition to the included boards 96 and 97, boards 16, 19, 22, 23, 25, 26, 27, 28, 33, 38, 39, 42, 49, 53, 71, 92, and 10a are needed, along with a smattering of overlays. Thankfully, no Starter Kit maps come into play in this selection—they really should not be de rigueur to own for players of the mainline version of the game.
ASL Journal #16 makes an unevenly compelling case for purchase, at least for me. New boards are always a solid investment, and the rules articles, both on understanding nuances like Control and on proposed changes to the game system itself, promise interesting reading. The scenarios, though, are something of an indifferent bunch this time out for players like myself who tire of forever seeing the Germans on one side of a scenario card, especially when the other half is often Russian. Granted, the Germans were rather central to the events of World War II. Yet the prior Journal, #15, offered a brilliant smörgåsbord of forces and theaters: Danes, Vichy French, Ecuadorians! Not so much in Journal #16. Were I not a completionist, I might let this one pass, though the North Africa scenarios are tempting. But, with fully fourteen of the seventeen cards including the Germans, if you like scenarios with a decidedly Teutonic flair—and admittedly there are some interesting ones here, from a rules perspective if nothing else—this one is for you.