I’m not sure why that would be the case - everything is available on the secondary market.
Okay, to be more specific it is possible if you are willing to fork out ridiculous amounts of money to buy used products, well over what they cost from MMP. That was how I got most of the bits I had. I think the only things I got through MMP were the rulebook, Beyond Valor, and Armies of Oblivion. In fact probably the best thing about it was I was able to make a profit when I sold it all off.
Ok. But you don’t need anything more than the rulebook and Beyond Valor to play the game. So anyone wanting to get into ASL can do it easily. I see copies of Beyond Valor for $60-75 on BGG.
If you are talking about collecting, then that’s a different story. But collecting will always be expensive.
Btw don’t be seduced by the words of Apostate Humble ;)
Unless you only want to play East Front Germans vs Soviets, you will need more than that, but I concede. Don’t buy the $100 Doomed Battalions that is incomplete on ebay though :p
I wouldn’t even settle for ATS, ASL or bust!
I think what finally soured me on it back then was trying to get the Pacific theatre stuff, which no seemed to be even selling on the secondary market back then. I realized I would probably never play it enough to justify spending all that money, and I didn’t really have the space for it. I imagine I’ll do it again at some point. I wish they would do an ebook version of the rules.
I guess my question is what do you mean by “worth figuring out?” Does VASL allow two people to play a game online? Absolutely yes. I’ve played it, but not recently. Whether it is an acceptable substitute for whatever else you’d be doing with the time you would not be playing face-to-face ASL is a question only you can answer :)
So, the rules for this (well, the rules for the system) have been posted to BGG and I took a look.
There’s a lot in the rules clearly inspired by Napoleon’s Triumph. If you add the leader optional rule it does feel like Napoleon’s Triumph with dice and extra fiddliness. The fiddliness comes because unit hits are tracked through counters, due to some optional chrome rules, and because the leader rules imply a lot of leader counters for the number of areas in the game (since without leaders units do not move at all).
It’s nice that it seems to model some stuff that NT does not (infantry squares, different artillery types) but it fails to model other stuff that is in NT like corps organization, roads (here it’s an optional rule) or traffic jams (which after reading War and Peace I do need my Napoleonic games to have). Also, weirdly for the lower scale of the game, there seems to be even less modelling of terrain. It’s either open or closed, but slopes are not modeled, at least in the WIP files posted. Also all approaches have the same width.
But overall it’s a very similar system, if perhaps looking at a lower level of abstraction. Some things that are deterministic in NT become random here (number of activation per turn and combat, mostly) so haters of deterministic combat are in luck :P. It does lose the modelling of fog of war, which is a pity, since there’s no more bluffing and to an extent Napoleonic warfare needs a sense of bluffing to feel true to contemporary accounts.
It’s very attractive overall, and since it is cheapish, there’s a likelihood I will get it. I’m just trying to decide whether going PnP or having it sent in a box.
I do have a problem with the combat modelling from reading the rules, but it might not be an issue in actual play and something I’m willing to risk money on. combat plays similarly to NT with die rolls except that you can keep pressing on and trading hits until one side fully retreats. That is, players can choose to keep trading dice rolls until both sides of the combat are heavily worn down. On paper this seems a little bit weird, since it posits a lot of firepower concentration in a small period of time is possible, with no real frontage limits since leading units can keep rotating, which doesn’t feel right for the period unless time is highly fluid in the system (an activation representing a wide range of time depending on attack resolution). Without having yet played, I think I like the way NT limits attack speed and casualty rates by limiting the number of hits due to trading blows in combat (big loses there are due to units being routed and not rallied/organized in time before a subsequent attack)
Since Napoleon has been brought up, I thought people might like to know that there was a patch last year for Frank Hunter’s Campaigns on the Danube. I don’t know if that means he is planning to release more titles using the system, or if he was just cleaning up the game. It can run in a window now (I’m not sure if it did that before). I’ve always thought it had an interesting fog of war mechanic, where if you are using full fog of war what you see on the map is what has been reported (for friendly units as well), and not the actual current state of the battle.
Also there is a really nice map mod available which is a vast improvement over the map it shipped with. The original looked about as appealing as one of the SSG decisive battle maps:
I have a copy of this as it was described on a forum as ‘Napoleonic Command Ops’ where you give orders up the command tree and watch them filter down - but I’ve never been able to get into it.
Same here. Realism does not always elevate excitement level and interest.
It always amazes me how designers replicate the hex/counter aesthetic as a presentation element in a digital game without anything to replace the tactile element that makes this presentation work in boardgames. Watching counters move by themselves in discrete steps separates you even further from the subject. These guys need so much help. The number of people who are good enough programmers, artists, and game designers to pull this off, while still being one person, is tiny, and those people are likely engaged in a more lucrative genre.
Hex/counters systems are used for their simplicity, and because the teams are indeed small. Non-discrete systems aren’t necessarily better. Look at Ultimate General Civil War or Command Ops. It takes some concerted effort to keep things orderly, and more often than not you end up fighting programming choices more than your opponent.
That being said, I’d be interested in games that you think pull this non-discreetness off, or hex/counter games that make the successful transition to the digital.
Interesting question. I would like to leave open the possibility that this is not a desired outcome and that digital wargames should pursue their own path. Aping non digital wargames is only going to get us so far.
Hexes and counters still work as a means to end, I think Unity of Command makes an interesting game out of managing supply. Hexes and counters, beer and pretzels. Good game.
Flashpoint Campaigns deals with decision cycles in a we-go environment. Hexes and counters. Grognardy. Good game.
Granted, for every Unity of Command there are dozens of… less imaginative examples.
I think @Brooski is talking mostly about the presentation, not necessarily the mechanic design. Unity of command is both amazingly tactile and amazingly clear in the information it presents. It might be more about the counters than the hexes.
Exactly. It’s all about presentation. Unity of Command is a fantastic example, btw. I agree that it is incredibly tactile. It is also beautifully clear. And does it in a distinct way.
Hmm. This is interesting.
So, I read the Korea: Fire and Ice rules and I really liked what I saw. It has low unit density (only 2 countersheets) and the combat model seems to represent a shift from odds and combat based combat to something that follows closely more modern approaches. Units have no combat values whatsoever, and there’s no stacking, so it’s all about stuational advantage, prepared attacks and support of combined arms. And incredibly, unless in weird circumstances, loses do not apply to units but the player can choose to distribute hits between retreats, loses, VP loses and even supply loses, so attrition affects overall coordination and ability to resist advance, and ultimately it seems it could be costly, but it does not directly diminish an unit’s combat power (reinforcements and resupply is baked in). There’s little to account different doctrines at the tactical level except for some extra options allowed to the US units, but that’s about the only issue I have from reading about the combat system. The othe rmain issue is that it abstracts the combat system to deliver certain insights, but it overdetails the air system in comparison.
It’s really, really appealing and trying to do something different that follows more modern thinking on operational modelling at a high abstraction level that at leaset reads very playable, but, alas, only one scenario is 2 maps (others are 3), and that’s my size limit, so it’s a pass.
I don’t think this will model Vietnam (that’s the next game in the system) that well unless a metric ton of political rules are added, and I’m very wary of a system trying to model Korea, Vietnam, 1980s WWIII and the Arab Israeli wars (seems too much doctrinal difference) but we’ll see.
What I would love is to see an east front version of this system. It feels perfect for it and the low unit density and high abstraction could make it playable and yet offer insights beyond the bliztkrieg&supply variety.
“The cup of SNAFU!”
I’m reserving judgment on this as it seems like it’s being a bit too clever for the sake of being clever by leaving combat factors off the units. If it isn’t done right it can homogenize things into oblivion.
I wish designers could make purpose-built games for individual situations rather than trying to fit a whole bunch of different eras into a single system, but those are the Times We Live In.