Klementi Voroshilov

I recently started looking at Mark Pitcavage's excellent World of ASL reviews.  Mark and I pretty much agree on everything ASL, I think...unfortunately we disagree most vociferously on the role of law enforcement and that's why he (justifiably) thinks I'm a dick. I have also recently started following ASL sales online and that made me think...perhaps there is a good way to to assess value of ASL stuff that's put up on EBAY and other venues. The World of ASL is more valuable than most people realize, just because of the way the reviews are structured.  Mark goes through the components of the complete sales package.  As I said, I've pretty much agreed with Mark's assessment on all the stuff I've read, but it is still an subjective view of a product's value.  I also suspect, although I could be wrong, is that not all of the products are from firsthand knowledge.  Did Mark actually spring for the ASL Civil War stuff?  I hope not. However, we have other sourc

One of the most despicable tactics I've ever seen is self-breaking an SS squad with a leader, routing back as far as you can and then rallying the squad in the next rally phase.  It is a maneuver for which TEDMS will be judged by his maker very, very harshly. I don't like SS counters and don't think the SS differed much from regular Wehrmacht troops.  But, whatever.  The justification for giving them a higher broken side morale was, as I understand it, because they feared being captured. However, if this is the justification, why don't commissars have a higher broken side morale?  Indeed, after 1941, any Red Army soldier that surrendered pretty much knew that he wasn't coming back (even if he had an idea that it wasn't a good idea for him to come back anyway.) I think, however, there is some justification for this and in fact would be very open to rewriting the rules on War Crimes--No Quarter and Massacre. The penalty for invoking No Quarter is, essentially, tha

Problems with Multi-Weapon Tanks Comparison of certain vehicles with their ASL counterparts is a frequent source of conversation at ASL tournaments. Because I play more quickly than most, I am frequently involved in such discussions. I am also an avid reader of technical reviews of vehicles used on the Eastern Front and French tanks. I don't pretend to be an expert, but I can claim to be knowledgeable. One thing I have observed is that multi-weapon tanks tend to be more vastly more popular in their cardboard versions than they were on the battlefield. I have developed a theory about why that is. Simply, command of the various weapons was such that it created problems for real commanders that don't exist for cardboard commanders. Secondarily, the size of tanks with multiple weapons tended to be large, less strategically mobile and, therefore, failed in a characteristic which does not come into play in ASL. In development of tanks, there are always trade-offs. Armor vs. S

It seems that perhaps I was not clear when I discussed the relative virtues of the PaK36, the PTRD and the Lahti ATR.  Allow me to go back and be more systematic. PaK36 The Panzerabwehrkanone 36 was an anti-tank gun with a 37mm caliber (1 29/64ths inch) and a 1.33m (5' 5" or 45 callibers).  It had a muzzle velocity of 762m/s and could penetrate 34mm of armor sloped at 30 degrees at 100m.  For reference, the side turret of a T34, also sloped at 30 degrees, was 52mm. PTRD/PTRS While there are differences in game terms between these two Soviet anti-tank rifles, there is not a difference in penetration between the two.  It had a caliber of 14.5 and its barrel length was (is, actually, there are some of these still around) just a tad over 1.3m.  It has a muzzle velocity of 1114m/s.    Some sources talk about two different types of ammunition, a steel core and a tungsten core.  The tungsten core penetrated 45mm of armor at 30 degrees, while the steel only punctured 35. Lahti 20mm AT

It's fair to say that I have a bias when it comes to ASL.  I am a Red Army man. I also like to have a little bit of fun poking the game designers over slights to the Red Army.  So why is it that the PTRD is so inferior to the Lahti ATR? The Soviet PTRD (Anti-Tank Rifle Degtyarov) was deployed in the Summer of 1941 as a cheap and quick replacement for the scads of anti-tank equipment the Red Army lost in the early phases of the war.  It used a powerful 14.5mm round that could penetrate 40mm of rolled plate armor at 100m--at 90 degrees.  Around 160,000 were produced before they became hopelessly outdated in 1942.  However, even afterward many units kept them available because they remained effective vs. halftracks and reconnaissance vehicles. This compares quite favorably to the penetration of the 37mm Pak deployed by the Wehrmacht which could penetrate 60mm of rolled plate at 100mm--again at 90 degrees. Yet, in ASL, the BTK numbers are 6 for the PTRD and 9 for the 37L.  Let's ex

During WWII, it was standard German procedure to use Eastern Europeans in second line units.  Particularly anti-Partisan units.  Outfitted in SS black, these units preserved German men for front line combat duty.  In one case, however, it backfired terribly. In August of 1944, the French Forces of the Interior (FFI) were in full on mayhem mode.  The Americans and Free French of Operation Anvil were now making their way north and British Special Operations were providing the weapons to allow FFI to make things miserable for the retreating Germans. Enter the 30th SS Waffen Grenadier Division, a group made up almost entirely of Ukrainians under German leadership.  The grenadiers were taken by train from Poland to Camp du Valdahon in the Jura Mountains of Southern France (this is about 20 miles from where I live, as the crow flies, but to be honest, French crows fly in crazy patterns that take twice as long to get anyplace.) Arriving in Franche Comte, the Ukrainians discovered an opportuni

People in Illinois hate  Missouri drivers.  Why?  Missouri drivers do the speed limit in the left lane.  This jams up traffic for miles.  And you Missourians KNOW this is true.  Driving from St. Louis to Kansas City is enough to make anybody  pull over and spend two or three hours in a well advertised adult store. I mention this because while in Copenhagen I noticed something that I couldn't quite put my finger on, but which drove me into those same well advertised adult stores. Sloooooooow play.  I'm not talking about thinking something through.  I'm talking about doing things that just make the pace of the game unbearable. Full disclosure.  I have a rare brain disease and this condition makes it difficult for me to concentrate and sequence events.  It also makes me a little more impulsive, which as TEDMS will testify, is barely mathematically possible. Also, I live in France, where the pace of a game is glacial.  Can you get bored playing ASL?  Yes, you can.  Sit

Dice rolls balance out in the end... How many times have you heard this one you are on the losing end of a snakeyes? It's not true. This is what is known as  The Gambler's Fallacy . We all know that over repeated samples, dice rolls do tend toward the median (7 on 2D6).  This is because the mean is also the mode (or most frequently occurring number.)  The effect is simply more pronounced if we use a coin flip because there is no mode. The distribution of possible outcomes of 2d6 shows why the mean DR tends toward 7.  Not only is 7 the modal outcome, but likelihoods decline the farther one gets from 7.  In all, there is slightly more than a 44% chance of rolling either a 6, 7 or 8 on any given roll. However, just because likelihoods stabilize with more repetitions (assuming fair dice), does not change the fact that the outcome of each DR is  independent.   That is, the same probabilities exist for each roll.  Dice do not keep track of what prior outcomes are and produce results

 Michael kibbutzing.  Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?  Danish design.  Keeping the chairs off the floor.  You mean Norway sends him a tax check AND he rolls six CH's on my BT's?  That ain't right.  Radio ASO, where the crits keep coming...  The sexy table.  Warsaw uprising campaign game in development by LFT.  Even a heroic 9-2 can't save me from his back to back to back snake MG kills on my tank.  How bad were my dice?  This is an actual still life of one of my rolls with the white die on its corner.  Winner of the Pete Shelling prize--so, you got that goin for ya. My man, Snoop Dog hangin, straight out of Copenhagen.

COPENHAGEN--I am just finishing up with the ASL Scandinavian Open here in the "New Orleans of the North" and I wanted to pass on a few things. If you have never been to this tournament, strongly consider it.  The venue is really good.  The Danhostel is unique, but ideally suited for ASL, venue.  The rooms are comfortable and clean.  The staff is really, really welcoming.  The food (keeping in mind that I live in France) is second rate, but certainly better than the fare that ASL players have become accustomed.  It is a little bit remote from the city, but a light rail station is within (healthy) walking distance. The rooms and the playing area are all connected with a kind of hamster-trail twisting-turning warren of glassed-in hallways.  There is also a lot of room to walk outside if you need a breather.  Remember, however, European ASL'ers are more likely to be smokers. The tournament itself is really well run, with a good plan, a few surprises (too few) and built in fle