world war II – Movement Point

Triple Action: ASL Action Packs #20, 21, 22 (MMP) Released

May 22, 2026 by Chris Baer

Fresh—well, semi-fresh—from the fine fellows at Multi-Man Publishing, a trio of Action Packs, numbers 20, 21, and 22, for Advanced Squad Leader, everyone’s favorite tactical combat simulation, to fill out the collection. I say “semi-fresh” because two of these three map-and-scenario packs were first unveiled back at ASLOK in October of 2025 some seven months back, but the latest is genuinely hot off the presses this week.

These packs serve a useful function in the ASL ecosystem, adding a drip-feed of new boards—and a veritable torrent of new scenarios—for the system to tide gamers over between the larger boxed module releases. As has been noted, the last thing the system really needs is new counters, but we all still want new product, so Action Packs fit the bill perfectly, filling up the map-and-scenario binders while leaving the Planos untouched, and the three latest offer a range of experiences with something for everyone, even picky gamers like myself. All three feature now-standard, yet still striking, cover artwork by Nicolás Eskubi.

ASL Action Pack #20 wears its pedigree on its sleeve (er, sub-title), “ASL Oktoberfest XXXIX,” not just released at the venerable tournament but produced in cooperation with it, featuring a dozen scenarios, spread across seven double-sided cards, by Pete Shelling, David Lamb, and Matt Zajac, plus a single new mapboard, 98. These actions run the gamut, with no particular theme tying them together. Aside from a smattering of near-obligatory East Front battles we get a few set in the Philippines, one in Burma, one in Luxembourg, and, as is becoming a welcome tradition, a pair of Korean War scenarios by Pete Shelling, including one with UN Forces. He’s doing more to keep Korean War ASL alive than anyone else at present. Most of the cards come in around six-seven turns, with reasonable force sizes, as befits a tournament-centric pack, though there are a few actions that will take either fast play or a very long session in a tourney setting.

Board 98, designed by Tom Repetti and painted by Jean-Marc Palmier (his first for the system?), is a welter of brown, tan, and green, with a dirt road leading over and through wooded hills. Cliffs and a stone bridge over a dry gully add to the fun, and a smattering of crags makes an appearance, because why not? It’s a busy, busy map, sadly only used by three of the scenarios in the pack. In addition to 98, boards 6, 16, 35, 36, 37, 49, 58, 62, 68, 71, 75, 87, 88, 90, 5a, 7a, 8b, and deluxe boards b, c, and i are required, plus a handful of overlays. German, Russian, American, Axis Minor, Japanese, Nationalist and Communist Chinese, UN, and North and South Korean counters come into play across the scenarios.

The other ASLOK Action Pack release, ASL Action Pack #21, takes as its theme “Blitzkrieg to Paris,” a tightly focused compilation of four maps and ten scenarios all by Gary Fortenberry, centered on actions in May, 1940, in the Netherlands, Belgium, and France. The counters needed, commensurately, come in as a very tidy list: German, Allied Minor, and French (plus Partisans). Stretching across six double-sided cards, these actions are anything but tiny—the substantive scenarios draw on many dusty parts of the Plano for counters not frequently seen, always a treat. Perhaps understandably, the Germans take the initiative in all but one of the scenarios, a French counterattack, but the Allies are not without ample tools to resist. For fans of early-war situations, this pack is a must.

Table for One: France ’44 (Victory Games) Review

May 20, 2026April 16, 2026 by Chris Baer

Wargaming boasts a few eternal chestnuts, conflicts and battles that publishers, designers, and, it must be said, gamers, just can’t get enough of: Waterloo, Gettysburg, Stalingrad, the Bulge, and, of course, D-Day. The evergreen popularity of these topics speaks to their role as hinges, moments when fates of empires and nations hang in the balance; one of wargaming’s attractions is the ability to revisit, in decidedly distanced form, the choices and challenges faced by the real-world combatants, to see how history might have unfolded differently or to understand why the cards played out as they did.

It’s a bold step, then, for Victory Games, that subsidiary of Avalon Hill comprised mostly of refugees from the lamented SPI, to have published France ’44, a game on the Allies’ drive to the Rhine in 1944 and 1945, that starts after D-Day and ends before V-E Day. No invasion, no desperate attempt to break out from the beachhead, no fear of being pushed back into the sea, no drive deep into Germany once the Westwall falls. By the time July 1944—when the game starts—rolled around, the end of the war was scripted but not yet written, with plenty of hard miles between the bocage of Normandy and the shores of the Rhine but the destination little in doubt, plenty to build a game around. Still, without that strong hook of D-Day to grab gamers, how does France ’44 hope to compete with the dozens of similar games on the market? By turning the basic “rules” of wargaming on their dusty heads.

Overview

France ’44: The Allied Crusade in Europe
Victory Games, 1986
Designed by Mark Herman

France ’44 arrives in a standard Avalon Hill/Victory Games slipcase box, irritatingly sized at 8 and 3/8″ wide and 11 and 1/2″ long, just a smidge too small for a sheet of Letter-sized paper. (I would love to hear the story of just why AH made their boxes in such non-standard dimensions, with the concomitant shrinking of all the maps and booklets that needed to fit into them.) The cover artwork, by Jim Talbot, evocatively (if improbably) depicts a Sherman blazing away on the move at multiple enemies at once, the commander firing the cupola-mounted machine gun as the main armament looses a round.

The contents are such that the 2″ tall box feels cavernous by contrast: one saddle-stapled, black-and-white printed twenty-page rulebook; one matte map, printed on thick paper, measuring 22″ by 32″; a single, die-cut, back printed countersheet with 130 1/2″ inch counters (essentially a half-countersheet by modern reckoning); two d6; and a plastic counter tray with clear snap-on lid that fits snugly in the bottom of the box. Notably, all player charts and tables fit on the map, so that there are no loose tables. Such an economical format suggests that this might have seen life as a magazine game in Strategy & Tactics had it been submitted to SPI rather than VG, but it was marketed at a price of US$15 at the time. Though, of course, a game’s true worth is measured by more than its weight in paper.

In 2020, Compass Games re-released France ’44 in a “Designer Signature Edition,” a moniker Compass gives to previously published games that are gussied up (and usually super-sized) for a new audience, featuring a mounted map, a mini-map for the congested Normandy area, two countersheets (adding mostly informational markers), various charts and tables, and custom dice for the revised combat system. This review focuses solely on the original 1986 Victory Games release.

Armor units in France ’44 are divisions while infantry units are corps, with HQ units representing Army HQs. The counters, by art director Ted Koller, hew broadly to Victory Games’ simple yet pleasing palette, Allied units in olive green and German units in a greyish-tan. Standard NATO symbology differentiates unit types, and the various nationalities on the Allied side (American, British, French, Canadian, and Polish) are denoted by the color-fill on the unit symbol. Units receive historical Order of Battle denotations, but other than the British 79th Armored Division, which receives bonuses in certain combat situations thanks to its “Funnies,” the designations are for flavor and initial setup only. (Thankfully, VG does not apply differential colors or rules for the laughably “elite” German units that so many wargames insist on calling out as somehow worthy of special attention.)

The counters in my copy show very tight registration with no instances of color bleed or off-printing, and they round nicely with my handy dandy counter corner rounder. The cuts are not uniformly deep, requiring some extra X-Acto work here and there to remove them cleanly from the counter sheet and each other. The dreaded Avalon Hill/Victory Games side nibs—those attachment points to the countersheet that fall on the side of the counter rather than the corners—do make an appearance here, as in another VG game from 1986, James Bond 007 Assault!. Unlike corner nibs, which are easily removed, side nibs defy simple remediation and just look tacky. The side nibs are not consistent, nor indeed do they even appear with any degree of regularity or discernible pattern. One can but nod sagely, acknowledging that the ways of the Monarch-Avalon Printing Company will remain forever inscrutable…

Doctor Who Project: The Curse of Fenric

May 2, 2026April 2, 2026 by Chris Baer

Behold, the end of the war.

For all the historical periods Doctor Who has mined over the course of a quarter century, the series waits until the bitter end to visit the 1940s, World War II in particular, in Ian Briggs’ “The Curse of Fenric” (Story Production Code 7M). Given the number of period dramas (and comedies) the BBC has set in that era, it’s rather surprising that this specific setting lies dormant for so long—the costume closet from Dad’s Army is available to plunder the whole time, after all. Perhaps the relative seriousness of the topic, and the still somewhat fresh memories of the conflict, keep the series at bay, especially in an era of increasing international sales for Doctor Who, and it’s telling that Briggs’ story hews away from the strictly historical to present instead a tale of ancient horror with a distinctly Nordic twist.

The Seventh Doctor and Ace arrive at a secret Royal Navy base in Northumbria, likely around 1943 given clues about the state of the war, right at the same time that several rafts full of Soviet commandos storm the beaches at nearby Maiden’s Point, suggesting that perhaps the base isn’t so secret after all. The Doctor strolls right in, his air of authority such that several guards with rifles simply let him saunter to the office of Dr. Judson (Dinsdale Landen), a cryptographer working on deciphering German naval ciphers using his “Ultima” machine, an analytic proto-computer that can work through “[m]ore than a thousand combinations an hour, with automatic negative checking.” Like the Doctor, the Soviets also seek the scientist, but their sealed orders further include references to the engraved runes found in the crypt of the local parish church, built, as such things occasionally are, on the remains of an old Viking cemetery.

Briggs and returning director Nicholas Mallett deftly build up the tension in the first of four episodes, establishing a wide cast of characters while drip-feeding the development of the titular curse, one laid upon a group of Vikings forced to land on the British coast when “the fingers of death reached out from the waters to reclaim the treasure we have stolen” from far off lands. Their descendants go on to populate this corner of the British Isles, passing the curse down through the generations. The production team uses the various locations (scattered across England from Kent to Dorset) to excellent effect, much as “Delta and the Bannermen” benefits from its copious and lush location shooting. Several scenes shot underwater, looking up at passing boats and swimmers (in an undeniable homage to Jaws), plus excessive use of a fog machine, keeps the audience on edge, waiting for the creature responsible for the grisly deaths of several Soviet soldiers to finally reveal itself.

Dr. Judson and the camp commandant, Commander Millington (Alfred Lynch), share more than a steely desire to defeat the Nazis, the latter so engrossed that he has turned his office into a replica of “the German naval cipher room in Berlin,” giving viewers the initial thought that, shades of “Inferno,” the British are under fascist control in an alternate universe. (And indeed, it’s an exceedingly odd red herring to throw at the audience, a thread that never goes anywhere beyond signaling that Millington takes his job perhaps too seriously and/or is somewhat unhinged.) The two old school chums also harbor a deep-seated fascination with old Viking legends, collaborating in deciphering the runes in the crypt, which, as it turns out, were partially translated by the grandfather of the current vicar, the Rev. Mr. Wainwright (Nicholas Parsons). The ancient carvings tell of the day when “[t]he Wolves of Fenric shall return for their treasure, and then shall the dark evil rule eternally,” all because the Vikings stole a vase from the Far East. Granted, the squat ceramic flask does hold the incorporeal, sentient essence of all evil…

Bagged Bocage: Drop Zone: Chef-du-Pont (MMP) Released

August 9, 2025August 8, 2025 by Chris Baer

A new historical module for Advanced Squad Leader, everyone’s favorite tactical simulation of World War II combat, typically lands with a thud, representing pounds of paper and cardboard that recreate, in loving and occasionally overwrought detail, the specifics of a particular campaign. Multi-Man Publishing‘s latest, however, makes a more modest appearance on the proverbial doorstep. Drop Zone: Chef-du-Pont, just released, comes not in a box but in the crinkle-wrapped plastic shrouding more commonly seen with paper-only products like Action Packs and Winter Offensive Bonus Packs. Which makes sense, as Ken Dunn’s follow on to his Drop Zone: Sainte-Mère-Église, from 2023, ships with front and end sheets (featuring cover artwork by Nicolás Eskubi), six scenarios on three sheets of cardstock, a single 22″ x 30.5″ semi-glossy paper map, a few pages of special rules for the scenarios and campaign games, and a chapter divider on glossy stock.

That’s right, no counters. And for those of us with groaning Planos that long-since lost any semblance of order or harmony, who despair at trying to fit yet another squad type or vehicle variant into the mix, it’s a welcome change, one representing an awareness that new counters are not necessary for a quality product. Sometimes, working with the colors you have proves a finer design feat than insisting on a box of crayons with a hundred subtly different shades, and Ken Dunn demonstrates his design chops here again. (There is cardboard in the package, though—MMP thoughtfully includes a piece for stiffening the bagged package, which otherwise might wobble like my defensive setups in ASL…)

Drop Zone: Chef-du-Pont focuses on the fighting between elements of the American 82nd Airborne and scrounged-together German forces around the hamlet of the same name in Normandy, which hosted a crucial river crossing needed in the immediate aftermath of the D-Day air drops and invasion. The area is best known in ASL circles for hosting 10-3 Brigadier General Gavin, of “Gavin Take” fame, and Drop Zone: Chef-du-Pont brings welcome context to the fighting in and around the classic scenario, even taking on the sacred cow by adapting it to the historical map.

Indeed, the scenarios, all by Ken Dunn, have a “traditional” feel to them, heavy on infantry engagements with minimal use of special rules. Bocage and slopes do feature on the map by Charlie Kibler, but they seem the only obstacles to jumping right in, regardless of one’s experience with ASL. All six scenarios can be completed in a sitting by reasonably prompt players, with moderate countermixes and restrained turn lengths. No night scenarios, and only one with OBA, of a sort—CdP6 Consolidation lets the German player use an INF gun as an indirect/OBA piece, an interesting tweaking of the basic rules. My pick of the cards is CdP5 Desperate Defense, probably the biggest card of the lot, using most of the map, with a scant nine elite American squads packing a single Bazooka defending against Germans marshaling captured French tanks.

Drop Zone: Chef-du-Pont might seem slim on first glance, but with a commensurately tiny US$32 retail price and six scenarios that are easy to break out at a club meeting or tournament, it’s a value. Players just starting with ASL will find much to appreciate here, with only Beyond Valor (second edition or newer) and Yanks needed to play everything in the box, er, bag. The connection to Drop Zone: Sainte-Mère-Église is thematic rather than in the nature of a sequel, so ownership of that module is not required—but it has cow counters, so why wouldn’t you? Plus you can throw Chef-du-Pont in the Sainte-Mère-Église box with no fuss.

As a fresh type of product presentation for Multi-Man Publishing in these, shall we say, intriguing economic times, Drop Zone: Chef-du-Pont feels like a positive step forward, one that recognizes most players have all the foxhole counters and German second line squads they will ever need. Though I hesitate to speak ex cathedra for ASL players as a whole, we want new experiences—with the polish we expect from MMP, that find their way to the table rather than collect dust in the “eventually” pile—rather than new stuff. I love my chrome-laden monster scenarios as much as the next person, but sometimes you just want to pull a card from the binder, throw some counters and maps down in an interesting configuration, learn a little something about a conflict, and spend a pleasant afternoon rolling dice and pushing counters you already own rather than punching (and rounding!) new counters and absorbing pages of special rules. Ken Dunn and MMP deliver that here, with a ton of bang for the buck.

Fabulous Fighting Finns: Mannerheim Cross (BFP) Released

April 6, 2025March 13, 2025 by Chris Baer

Finland charted a tumultuous path from 1939 through 1945, fighting against the Soviet Union and then Germany as they found themselves wedged between those geopolitical Scylla and Charybdis. Mannerheim Cross, the latest Advanced Squad Leader-compatible module from Bounding Fire Productions, traces that journey through forty-four scenarios, complemented by new counters, rules, and maps for everyone’s favorite tactical combat game system.

Weighing in at nearly four pounds, this hefty unboxed product stands out for both the quality of production and the eye-watering price tag, nearly US$200 retail. It’s not pocket change, and while the pre-order price dropped that to a more manageable $150, it’s still a significant outlay. BFP is, by any measure, a boutique publisher, with commensurately smaller print runs, so their per-unit cost is understandably high, but when compared with some recent official ASL products from Multi-Man Publishing, the cost-per-pound, if you will, compares favorably. This isn’t a cheap hobby, and Mannerheim Cross doesn’t need to find a home on every ASL’ers shelf, given its advanced and esoteric nature. But just on the basis of what you get in the package—four countersheets, six map sections on Starter Kit-style thick cardstock, forty-four scenarios (BFP-150 to BFP-193), several rules pages and player aids detailing lots of lovely chrome and new vehicle/gun notes, and an accompanying booklet—you’re getting your money’s worth if you’re in that target demographic that loves ASL, obscure rules, and lesser-simulated conflicts.

It’s the quality of the poundage, though, that sets BFP products apart—you’re not paying for just paper, after all, but for the mental effort behind the scenarios and rules as well, and on first glance, the included actions in Mannerheim Cross feature something for all interests—well, except Pacific and Desert Theater enthusiasts—covering as it does the full span of Finland’s involvement in World War II. Printed in color on a somewhat floppy, glossy stock across twenty-three cards (several scenarios take up more than one page), these actions stretch from the Winter War in 1939 against the Soviets; into the Continuation War, fighting alongside the Germans while confronting the Soviets as a sideshow to World War II; and finishing with a single scenario set during the Lapland War as Finland tries to evict the Germans from their territory. The scenarios tend, as one might expect from BFP, towards the weighty; most stretch seven to eight turns, and even the shorter actions feature significant counter mixes on both sides. There are a few cards here that might be considered tournament or club-day choices, but don’t buy this expecting a lot of quick scenarios.

The Winter War scenarios look the pick of the bunch, featuring lots of tin-can Soviet tanks trundling through ground snow in built-up forested areas. BFP-161 Red Ice draws the eye, with Soviet flame tanks crossing a frozen river into the teeth of a Finnish defense amidst dense trees and with ski troop reinforcements. Indeed, the Chapter E winter rules get a solid workout here. BFP-174 The Castle of Onega lets the Finns roll out their own flame tanks, attacking a substantial Soviet defense in a sprawling urban setting.

I’d have liked to see more scenarios set during the Lapland War and the halting effort to push the Germans out as part of an armistice with the Soviets at the end of the war. There are very few conflict simulations of any stripe dealing with that facet of the war, but the scenario we do have, BFP-193 Lapland Armor, promises to be an intriguing encounter, with the Germans driving captured French Somouas against Finnish defenders manning Soviet T-26s, a BYO-AFV affair if ever there were one…

Esoteric Actions: ASL Journal #15 (MMP) Released

January 26, 2025January 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. Only some copies of DB4, shipped early in the release process, have the wonky overlay sheets, so double check yours before shelling out here just for replacements. 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, or one of the later shipped DB4 copies, 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, seeing the first official use of the “super” Polish squads introduced in Doomed Battalions 4th Edition; 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…