Today's ASL match went really fast. Really, really, really fast. As usual, that means I got my ass handed.

We played Shin 5 "Sparks Fly", from a free scenario pack published by View from the Trenches and downloadable here. As the name implies, it's about Operation Shingle, the US landing at Anzio. Some of the scenarios in there are really weird in a very interesting way. Ever wanted ...

I haven't written an AAR for a while, because my opponent kept beating me to the punch. So here are my remaining games from this year in a condensed format, for the sake of completeness.

There's been a bit of discussion about VASSAL in the ASL community, started by this blog post (warning: auto-play music). The central hypothesis of this is that ASL is a social game (to which I agree) and that VASSAL gets in the way of that (to which I disagree very strongly).

I am a digital native. I have been on the internet for about ten years now, I used Twitter before it was cool and IRC greatly helped ...

This is.

My regular opponent and me sat down to play S13 Priority Target, and then we played it again with reversed sides. I lost twice, which confirms the ASL Scenario Archive’s claim of perfect balance. My opponent wrote AARs for both [games](http://boardgamegeek.com/threa...

I just finished playing S28 Out of Luck, which you can get for free at MMP’s wobsite. I lost so badly that not even blaming it on the dice makes it any better. Was it the scenario’s fault? Probably not.

As most of the times, I completely screwed up my setup, leaving a large blind spot on the hard-to-defend hills in the northwest corner and concentrating on the open ground in the northeast and th...

So my regular Starter Kit opponent and me sat down to play our first match of 2014, “Converging Assaults” (Starter Kit Expansion Pack #1, S48), which was probably the weirdest match I’ve ever played.

What’s it about? US troops advance into a city in Sicily from the West and meet Italian troops advancing from the West. A firefight ensues. For added fun, some Italian tanks are added into the mix and fall into the back of the US infantry.

And I use the words “fun” and “tanks” quite wrongly. We a...

Stating their favourite scenarios of the year is a thing people are doing, which is why I do it now as well.

As mentioned before, I only played Starter Kit so far, so the list will obviously only contain Starter Kit scenarios.

• S1 "Retaking Vierville": My first scenario played ever, with Patrick Ireland, who showed me the ropes when I started. I have since played it once or twice with other players, and even though it is as simple as ASL will ever get, it still manages to be just a bit diffe...