Learning to Play ASL part 1

I have 20 minutes. I've decided I would like to spend some time talking about ASL. I actually want to turn this into a series and if I were better organized it would have its own blog, but I am not better organized so this is how this is going to look. Sorry. Moving on. So I am about to get into ASL and that is very exciting to me. It really is. Unfortunately in order to do so I need to resort to piracy. I legitimately feel bad about this but I am a dishwasher and some other things gotta come first. I am pretty certain that if it catches on with me I'll end up honestly picking up a rule book as well as Beyond Valor and then maybe Yanks if they ever reprint it. Then at least I will feel better about myself. But before I commit that much money, or any more beyond my initial 30 dollar investment I want to play a game or two...or you know 5. I dunno and in order to do that I am gonna have to teach people.

Teaching people how to play games is one of my strong suits though and I think I am up to the task. It has FINALLY gotten to the point where when I read the ASL rules I am not going, what the fuck does that mean, every 5 minutes. So that's a big help. I can now explain concepts such as residual fire, encirclement, and I have a pretty good handle on fire lanes. Not that most of those concepts are in the starter kit rulebooks at all but hey, whatever, lets keep going.

I decided pretty much at the onset the best way to learn/teach ASL is to just take it in steps. I have PLENTY of senarios that involve just troops. So we can start there. I've also found senarios that involve just vehicles. So we can learn how to use those in a nice controlled environment. Then there is the artillery. Artillery isn't that complex to use and it is never really present in enough force to really muck up the game. So once we get down how to use vehicles, troops, and vehicles with troops artillery should be a snap. While it is exciting to use everything at the same time it just isn't that smart. Getting down the fundamentals and mastering all the basics is what needs to be done so that way when we add new elements into the game play it won't be as tactically crippling as it would be then it would be if we tried to learn everything all at the same time.

Patients is the key. Take it slow and learn each element throughly along with how it interacts with other elements is gonna be key to mastering the game. Troop usage is the most important thing though, especially when you want to do some of the larger, more exciting scenarios.

However, now my 20 minutes are up and I am going to back to toiling in the dish area.