advanced squad leader

Winter Offensive 2014 After Action Report

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Another year already? Seems like just yesterday I was walking the halls of the Bowie, Maryland, Comfort Inn for Winter Offensive, the East Coast’s premier Advanced Squad Leader tournament and all-around game fest. The time between these confabs flies by, or perhaps that’s just a side effect of getting older.

Winter Offensive 2014

As ever, hosts Multi-Man Publishing put on a fine show, with Winter Offensive 2014 seeing a record 134 attendees by Saturday afternoon, eight higher than last year’s record of 126. All three ballrooms were open from Thursday’s start, and the extra initial space was much appreciated. Quite a few people were already there by Thursday evening, more than I had seen in years past. The crowd was mostly the same as ever, with familiar faces in abundance and a smattering of new (to me) players.

I started festivities with a playing of Three Crowns/MMP’s A Victory Complete, an operational-level look at the Tannenberg campaign. Chris Chapman, a long-time gaming compatriot, took the overwhelmed yet qualitatively superior Germans against my overwhelming yet qualitatively inferior Russians. The chit-draw game system felt like a comfortable fit for the situation, and we took the game almost to the end before we called it, with the Germans managing to push the Russians out of Prussia, but not enough for more than a marginal victory. Nice graphics overall on this one, though the corps colors for the Russians were nigh indistinguishable from one another in some circumstances, leading to much confusion in a system dependent upon corps-by-corps activations.

The main event (mine, at least) came on Friday, when I matched up with another of my long-time opponents, Doug Bush, in a playing of SPI’s BAOR, part of the Central Front Series focusing on operational-level battles in a thankfully hypothetical WWIII. I had the doughty British Army of the Rhine, holding the Weser River with considerable help from the Belgians and West Germans, while Doug drove the first and second Soviet echelons against my thin line. Neither of us had played the series before, but we soon got the hang of the rather unorthodox attack-as-movement system and the tracking of units’ gradual-then-sudden deterioration via friction points. By the end of the day—we put in a good twelve hours—the Soviets had achieved a substantial victory, with several more turns (and another echelon) to go. They hadn’t breached the Weser, though, so I’ll chalk up a moral victory.

BAOR

The system plays smoothly, particularly for the highly mobile contemporary forces involved. I don’t know that I’ll break this one out again anytime soon, but I’m quite pleased to have finally gotten this old gem (from 1981) off the shelf and onto the table.

For me, this Winter Offensive will probably be remembered as the year I finally broke down and played ASL again, for the first time in years and years. Regular gaming chum Mike Vogt graciously faced off against me and my absurdly dusty rule book in an all-day Saturday scenario, the Chas Smith-designed “The Shan Capital,” featuring Chinese GMD troops holding a town against Thai (!) forces in 1942 Burma. Gotta play something like that, no question, so I took the plunge back into the tactical game system. Mike held on for the victory with a very cagey fighting withdrawal, limiting me to two of the four required victory buildings by scenario’s end. I even managed a Thai hero creation. That’s a feather in any gamer’s hat.

It was good to get some ASL under my belt again. I might have to start playing a bit more—there’s a reason the system is going strong almost thirty years after its release.

No Winter Offensive would be complete without some late-night gaming. I played in fewer than usual this year, only managing one play of Sierra Madre’s Pax Porfiriana, my current card game of choice, and one of FFG’s Battlestar Galactica, a game that has become something of a cult favorite with my gaming crowd. The humans lost in the latter, coming a single jump away from reaching Kobol, but the toasters prevailed, as is their metallic wont.

My thanks to the team at MMP for another great three days of gaming. Now if only I could get three days of sleep to compensate.

Winter Offensive 2013 After Action Report

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Sure, it may have been seventy degrees outside, but this past weekend in Bowie, Maryland, it was Winter Offensive 2013 inside, as Multi-Man Publishing‘s annual Advanced Squad Leader tournament and all-around gamefest took place.

A view from the Winter Offensive '13 trenches

Attendance at the East Coast’s premier ASL event initially seemed a bit off from years past (though no complaints from a table-space perspective), perhaps owing to the slightly changed date. Typically, Winter Offensive is held over Martin Luther King, Jr. weekend, but the proximity of the Presidential Inauguration put paid to those plans this year. Saturday, however, saw a major influx of gamers, bringing the total up to 126 over the course of the event, pipping 2012’s 125 gamers.

The old gang was all in attendance, and, as has become my wont, I managed to play a total of zero games of ASL, though my resistance weakened somewhat when I saw a beautiful scenario featuring bicycle-mounted Japanese troops supported by some of the most obscure tankettes in the game in the Phillipines facing U.S. Army cavalry. Early war, PTO, junky tanks, and bicycles? Yes, please! Time to dust off the ol’ rulebook, I think.

GMT's Bloody AprilI managed to game aplenty, though. After spending much of Thursday catching up with people, I spent the vast majority of Friday playing a huge scenario from GMT’s Bloody April, a World War One grand tactical air game, with my Germans (including von Richtofen himself) facing off against Doug Bush’s British pilots.

Though the Germans tallied far more British flights shot down (the Baron himself had four kills), the Brits were able to accomplish more than enough of their objectives to see them win handily. The system is nice, though a bit cumbersome given the need to track nearly ten variables per flight counter on the map. Still, by the end of fifty turns, we had the climbing, diving, and dogfighting down pat.

Friday evening was given over to GMT’s Twilight Struggle against Chris Chapman, who took the Soviets against my Americans in a replay of the Cold War. Honors were even until the mid-war phase, at which point the Soviets scored quite a few regions. With a +16 VP lead, Chris seemed in control, so I started to play around with DEFCON, but the gamble led to an unfortunate end for the planet when the Soviets were able to push DEFCON to zero owing to my own card play. A rematch has been demanded!

Far too bright and early on Saturday, I faced off against Mike Vogt in MMP’s No Question of Surrender, taking the Italians as they besieged the Free French in their desert fort. This was my first experience with MMP’s Grand Tactical System, a company level, chit-activation wargame. While I like the underlying system—it’s simple to learn but difficult to get all the parts working synergistically—I was underwhelmed by the tactical situation portrayed. The Italians pretty much just crashed like weak waves against the French fort, and Mike was probably getting tired of rolling so much opportunity fire against them. Still, it was nice to see the rules in action, and always a pleasure to match wits with Mike.

By Saturday afternoon, a bit of heavy-gaming fatigue had started to set in, so lighter fare became the norm, and I played through two games of FFG’s Battlestar Galactica. Much to my dismay, I was never a Cylon traitor, though I was accused of such in both games (and even sent to the brig once). The Cylons won the first game without much fuss, but the second saw cagier play by the humans, leading to a narrow escape from the toasters. I’d gladly play this one again, but you need a good-natured group for it—the potential (nay, necessity) for offense in this one requires playing against gamers who enjoy gaming more than they enjoy winning.

Winter Offensive always leaves me drained in the aftermath, but for three days of gaming, I’m ready to put it on the calendar for next year. After I catch up on my sleep, that is.

Winter Offensive 2012 After Action Report

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For many wargamers on the East Coast, the real holiday is not Christmas, when you never get the games you want anyway, but the Martin Luther King, Jr. weekend, when Winter Offensive is held in bucolic Bowie, Maryland.

This venerable Advanced Squad Leader tournament, held annually by Multi-Man Publishing, has transformed from a purely ASL tournament to an eclectic gathering of gamers of all stripes. Twenty years ago, a table occupied by a non-ASL game would have been unthinkable, but now, owing in part to MMP’s growing stable of game lines, roughly twenty percent of the creaking, uneven tables in the increasingly crowded conference rooms host other wargames and even a few Euros.

Winter Offensive 2012

In conjunction with the usual band of misfits (Doug Bush, Chris Chapman, and John Slotwinski), I once again managed to play a grand total of zero games of Advanced Squad Leader. My tally for the long weekend includes a loss as the Russians in The Tide at Sunrise (played using the useless optional Naval Rules), a win as the Russians in Storm Over Stalingrad, a loss as the Egyptians in Yom Kippur, and a second place finish in a three player Le Havre using a civic building strategy that lost to the inevitable coal/coke/steel shipping strategy. A four player Space Empires finished inconclusively, though I must say that my Royal Realm of Red Ravagers was well poised to conquer known space…

As ever, MMP put on a good show, with a record attendance somewhere north of 120 participants. Any more and they’ll have to open up a third conference room, which would help alleviate some of the space issues. These non-ASL games take up some serious table space.

Winter Offensive 2011 After Action Report

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Every year over Martin Luther King, Jr. weekend, droves of gamers (well, about a hundred or so) descend upon Bowie, Maryland, for Winter Offensive, the premier East Coast Advanced Squad Leader tournament, sponsored by Multi-Man Publishing, publishers of ASL and other fine games. After a hiatus of several years, I made the pilgrimage to the palatial Comfort Inn Conference Center, home of nineteen of the twenty Winter Offensives, determined not to play any ASL at all.

My relationship with the One True Game™ stretches back to 1996, and my first Winter Offensive was 1997. But ASL is a Lifestyle Game: if you play ASL, you don’t tend to play other games. So many scenarios to play, so many counters to clip, so many rules to internalize—there’s little time to play ASL competently (which is not to say well) and play other games also. In the mid-Aughts, I set the Planos aside to focus on the other, growing piles of games on my shelves, and stopped going to Winter Offensive.

But I hadn’t seen the gang in ages, and this year I decided to get back to Bowie to catch up with everyone. My plan was to start with a scenario from OCS Case Blue. Being a MMP product, Case Blue would allow me to occupy a table at this ASL fest without too many undue stares. Doug Bush, a frequent PBeM opponent of mine, plays a mean game of OCS and took me on in the first scenario, Edge of the World. It was, perhaps, an ambitious idea, and we put in roughly twelve hours of play over the weekend before calling it, with Doug’s Germans a decent percentage of the way to a win over my Russians in Grozny.

And why did we call it? To play nine hours of Advanced Civilization, of course, roping in some fellow crazies (and former Washington, DC gamers).Advanced Civ at WO'11

From left, you have John Slotwinski (Italy), Chris Chapman (Illyria), Scott “Muzzlehead” Calkins (Babylonia) taking in the span of the world, Doug Bush (Egypt), and yours truly (Crete), rocking a new Giroux Flyers jersey. This shot was taken early in the game, before the fatigue had set in, before the stress of trying to trade away a terrible Calamity Card had taken its toll, before the endless recriminations and broken alliances and fractured treaties had dropped a veil of enmity upon the table. Damn, that was a lot of fun . . .

Doug’s Egyptians wound up taking top spot by running to the end of the Archaeological Succession Table with a heady mix of Achievements, followed very closely by Scott’s Babylonians. My Cretans (that joke was funny for the first hour at the table) came in a distant third as we avoided most conflict but also failed to stunt the leaders’ growth, and Chris C.’s Illyrians were just behind me. John had to step out mid-game owing to another obligation.

Chris C. and I also managed to get in a game of Twilight Struggle, with my Soviets taking advantage of a hand full of Scoring Cards in mid-game to gain an advantage I was able to ride to the end.

And, yes, I sort of failed in my determination to play no ASL, as Joe Jackson, an opponent and all around good guy from way back, enticed me into playing a quick scenario in Advanced Squad Leader Starter Kit, which utilizes a trimmed version of the full ASL rules. It’s not quite ASL, but it’s close enough, and I was almost tempted to start buying up all the plentiful ASL product on offer at WO. I managed to keep the wallet closed, but it was a close run thing.

In theory, Winter Offensive is a tournament. There’s a winner at the end, records are kept, prizes are handed out. But even when I was deep into the ASL scene, WO was never about the tournament, never about the win-loss record at the end of the weekend. It was always, and remains, about the camaraderie. This is not to say that winning and socializing are incompatible—every gamer wants to win, it’s the one immutable thread in our sub-cultural DNA—but winning is a temporary goal, wins come and go, and there’s always another match around the corner. It’s about the people you game with, the experience you create via dice and counters and choices. If you win a game and can’t tell a good story about it afterwards, you lost. And I had some good stories this past weekend…

Counter Culture: Counters as Tools

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In our continuing examination of the physical culture of wargaming, we should stop and consider the typical wargame counter:

Unit Counters

It is a representation, a stand-in. It denotes a particular kind of force or unit or grouping manipulable by the player. People argue all day, in places where such things matter, about using representational figures or NATO symbols or made-up icons to depict different types of units, about whether the first number on a counter should be attack value or armor thickness or movement points.

Or perhaps the counter is a status marker, a chit that provides information about the state of the game—broken, suppressed, mired, impassable, out of ammo, out of control. Here be there trenches, dug into the map:

Status Counters

Standard semiotics stuff. Counters are signifiers. This is not a half-inch square of cardboard—this is a platoon of T-64s that has suffered damage but remains battle-ready. Nothing new here.

But in some games, counters also serve as tools to enhance gameplay beyond merely standing in for some object or state that the game wishes to portray.

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Counter Culture: In the Kingdom of the Board

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Any ludological taxonomy that classifies games by physical features will contain an order, or perhaps a phylum, based on the presence of a pre-defined playing surface—a play mat, a tableaux, or, more simply, a board. Consider it Gamerus non-computericum meepleopile boardiferous. Indeed, boards give their name to this part of the gaming hobby as a whole, boardgaming, even when said games form their “boards” via tile or card placement.

For many people, particularly non-gamers, the board in a boardgame is literally a board, a thick piece of cardboard, usually with a single fold down the middle, with a paper playing surface glued or, less often, printed on top of it. The expectation when opening a boardgame is that you will find such a playing surface.

For wargamers, particularly contemporary wargamers—and wargaming is a genus within boardgaming—the opposite holds true: our boards tend to be printed directly onto heavy stock paper, not mounted to a board. (Wargamers tend to refer to boards as maps, as they most often depict terrain, either actual or abstract.)

Back in board wargaming’s first turn, though, Avalon Hill, the Standard Oil of wargaming, prided itself on producing wargames with mounted maps, only late in their existence switching to paper maps for some games. By contrast, their main competitors in the 1970’s and 1980’s, SPI and GDW, produced games almost exclusively with paper maps. Economically, paper maps are cheaper to print, lighter to ship, less bulky to package, and eliminate the tricky mounting process. As wargaming became more and more a niche market into the 1990’s, mounted wargame maps all but disappeared, showing up in the slow trickle of Advanced Squad Leader modules and not much else.

Modern printing methods and the much-debated resurgence of the wargaming hobby have seen contemporary wargamers spoiled for choice, with three types of maps available—paper, “deluxe,” and mounted:

Paper, deluxe, or mounted?

How do these three types of maps stack up?

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