ASL Basics: Infantry Movement Mechanics

Fire and movement is the meat and potatoes of Advanced Squad Leader. While firepower gets the glory, movement is the heart of ASL. Movement at the right moment (and using the right method) will beat a squad that shoots at the wrong moment every time. This Boot Camp (and video above) walks through the mechanics of basic infantry Movement (movement allotments, terrain costs, portage, leaders, the road bonus…) and then turns to the part that actually impacts the game: what the defender gets to do to you while you move.

MF vs. MP

Infantry move using Movement Factors (MF); vehicles move using Movement Points (MP). This isn’t a quirk; it’s just more ASL legalese that differentiates between the two based purely on the term. Context isn’t needed to understand which is being used. Whenever a rule refers to MF, it applies to infantry; whenever it says MP, it applies to vehicles. The same terrain often charges the two currencies very differently (a crest line costs infantry double the terrain cost, while an AFV pays a flat 4 MP surcharge), so keeping MF and MP straight will save you from a whole category of rules mistakes.

The distinction also reflects something deeper in the design. Infantry that stop moving “go to ground” and become harder to hit, so a squad can end its move early with MF unspent. Vehicles are the opposite — a stationary tank is an easier target — which is why vehicle movement has its own mechanics (Start, Stop, Delay, Motion) that infantry never worry about. Vehicles must account for every MP printed on their counter. But more on that another day.

MF Allotments

The base allotments are simple:

That leader bonus is one of the most important numbers in the game. A squad that begins and ends its Movement Phase stacked with a leader, and moves together with that leader, gains 2 MF — effectively moving like a leader itself. Fifty percent more movement, every turn, just for keeping an officer with the troops. This is why leaders in ASL aren’t only just morale managers; they’re important for shepherding squads across the board quicker.

A few ground rules apply to all infantry movement:

• MF cannot be saved from turn to turn or loaned between units. Use them or lose them.
• Infantry may move in any direction, through any passable terrain, changing direction freely, up to their MF allotment.
• Units move one at a time. A unit (or stack) must begin, conduct, and finish its entire move before the next unit (stack) starts. You can’t move squad A three hexes, move squad B, and then come back to move squad A one more hex. Units that start the phase stacked together may move as a stack, and a stack may shed units along the way (one squad stops in the woods while the rest continue), but you can’t interleave the moves of separate units.
• Infantry may never enter an enemy-occupied hex during the MPh — that’s what the Advance Phase is for. (The exception here is for human wave activities like Berserk, Banzai Charges, and of course Human Waves.)

Basic Terrain Costs

Every hex has a cost of terrain (COT) to enter, and your move is simply a running total of those costs until your MF run out. Common terrain costs that are present on 90% of ASL geomorphic boards are listed below (assuming dry ground, daylight, no snow/mud, etc):

Graphic	Terrain	MF Cost to Enter
	Open ground	1
	Road (paved or dirt shown)	1
	Orchard	1
	Grain (in season)	1½
	Brush	2
	Woods	2
	Building (wood or stone)	2
	Change building level via stairs	1 per level
	Hedge hexside	+1 added to the cost of the hex entered
	Wall hexside	+1 added to the cost of the hex entered
	Crag	2
	Graveyard	1
	Crossing a crest line uphill	double the COT of the hex entered
	Moving downhill	normal COT

A few of these deserve comment.

Grain only costs 1½ MF when it’s in season; out of season it is treated as open ground (sometimes plowed field). The half-point adds up: a lone squad with 4 MF that has spent 3 can’t push into grain unless declaring late Double Time (3 + 1½ = 4½ exceeds 4). Don’t disregard the fractional MF of grain. They can trip you up when planning your MPh and overall tactical strategy. But, here again, you can trade mobility for safety. Grain provides hindrances and negates FFMO.

Hills work a bit differently. Crossing a crest line into a higher elevation doubles the cost of the terrain in the hex you enter. Climbing into an open-ground hill hex costs 2 MF; climbing into a woods hex on a hill costs 4 MF — an entire lone squad’s (normal) allotment spent moving a single hex. Assaults that go uphill through cover need leaders, time, or both. Going downhill, luckily, adds no additional multiplier. If you’re on skis in snow or on a bicycle, then going downhill gets interesting.

Walls and hedges are hexside obstacles, so their +1 is added on top of the cost of the hex beyond. Hopping a wall into open ground costs 2 MF total, hopping the same wall into a woods hex eats up 3 MF. A wall or hedge may seem like a minor terrain feature, but they make for excellent cover adding TEM and negating FFMO if your units are skirting their way behind either one of them.

Road Bonus. A unit that starts its Movement Phase on a road and spends its entire move travelling along road hexes earns a bonus of +1 MF — in practice, one extra road hex. A squad-and-leader stack road-marching at 6 MF can therefore cover seven road hexes if it never steps off the pavement. A squad-and-leader Double Timing can cover NINE road hexes if needed. The bonus is lost the moment the unit leaves the road (or under adverse weather conditions), and note that the unit must actually enter road hexes along the route — cutting a corner through the adjacent open ground breaks the chain.

Seven to nine hexes a turn is enormous operational speed in a game where a firefight can stall a company for three turns. The catch is obvious: roads are (usually) open ground, with long lines of sight down them. The road bonus is for reserves moving out of enemy view, for redeployment behind cover, and for the mad-dash turns of a scenario when the shooting is elsewhere — not for approaching a defended position.

Carrying the Heavy Stuff

Support Weapons have weight, expressed in Portage Points (PP), and infantry have an Inherent Portage Capacity (IPC) — 3 PP for a squad, 2 for a half-squad, 1 for a leader (and an SMC may never carry more than 2 PP total). The rule is simple: a unit loses 1 MF for every PP it carries beyond its IPC. Below is a summary of all the infantry portage combinations and how many MF those units have while lugging a certain amount of PPs.

The classic example: a squad and leader move together as a stack. Their combined IPC is 4 (3 + 1), and their combined allotment is 6 MF thanks to the leader bonus. They are lugging a medium machine gun weighing 5 PP — one point over capacity — so they lose 1 MF and are left with 5. Add a DC and the stack slows further.

Portage is why heavy machine-gun teams need leaders twice over: the leader adds MF that the weapon’s weight then eats, keeping the team at a workable speed, and he is on hand to direct the gun’s fire when it deploys. It is also why the manning of weapons deserves planning — a 5 PP MMG is nearly a squad’s entire capacity, and an overloaded squad crawling at 2–3 MF is a squad that arrives late to the battle. Conversely, German machine-guns are downright svelte compared to many nationalities, adding to their superior mobility.

Special Movement Options

Beyond plain walking, infantry have a toolbox of declared movement types, each trading speed/mobility against exposure:

Assault Movement (A4.61). Declared before moving; the unit moves only one hex and may not spend all of its MF. In exchange, it cancels the FFNAM defensive-fire modifier (explained below) — this is the careful advance that keeps heads down. Assault move into a hex adjacent to the enemy, followed by an Advance Phase move into their hex, is a common close-assault mechanic of the game (excluding using smoke, etc).

Double Time (A4.51–.52). The unit gains +2 MF but is marked CX (Counter eXhausted): +1 drm/DRM to many of its abilities for an entire turn, easier to attack in close combat, IPC reduced by one, and it cannot double-time in the following turns. Being winded takes its toll.

Dash (A4.63). A purpose-built rule for a common moment in ASL: crossing a street. A unit may dash from cover, across a road hex, into cover on the far side. This limits the unit’s movement to two hexes, regardless of available MFs, but fire against it in the road is degraded (treated as Area Fire), making the sprint across the street only slightly less suicidal.

Bypass (A4.3). Infantry may skirt the obstacle in a woods or building hex by moving along one or more hexsides for 1 MF (sometimes 2 MF) instead of paying to enter the obstacle itself — faster, but a bypassing unit caught by fire at a hex vertex is treated as being in Open Ground (most of the time). Speed for safety, again.

Minimum Move (A4.134). No matter the cost, a unit can always spend its entire MF allotment to enter one adjacent (otherwise-legal) hex, assuming it has 1 MF available, even if CX. Nobody is ever completely stuck.

Moving in Combat

Now let’s get to the fire part of “fire and movement.” In ASL, the defender shoots during your Movement Phase. Every MF you spend in the defender’s line of sight is a threat. Defensive First Fire lets the defender interrupt after any MF expenditure and fire at the moving unit — and moving units are easier to impact when moving for two reasons:

• FFNAM (A4.6) (First Fire Non-Assault Movement): −1 to the defender’s attack roll against any unit moving normally, not using Assault Movement.
• FFMO (A4.6) (First Fire Movement in Open Ground): a further −1 if the moving unit is in Open Ground with no protective terrain modifier, or hindrance DRM which negates FFMO.

Since lower rolls are better for the shooter, a squad jogging across open ground hands the defender a −2 DRM, on top of having no Terrain Effect Modifier (TEM). Worse, defensive fire leaves Residual Firepower in the hexes it attacks — a lingering half-strength attack that automatically hits any later unit foolish enough to move through the same hex — and machine guns can lay Fire Lanes down a street or across a field, punishing everything that crosses. Stack several squads and move them together, and one good roll can break the whole stack at once.

The flip side is that these penalties only apply while moving: once a unit stops, FFNAM and FFMO vanish. Assault movement cancels FFNAM entirely; terrain like an orchard, though it offers no TEM, at least denies FFMO. And every shot the defender takes marks him with a First Fire counter, limiting what he can do against your next moving unit. Movement in ASL is a duel: your MF and bodies against his ammunition and rate of fire. Choose where and how you move wisely.

Tactics: Moving Without Dying

Everything above converges on a handful of principles that experienced players apply every Movement Phase.

Stay out of open ground unless the payoff is worth the price. Running across a field in view of an unfired defender is the classic new-player choice. Route through orchards, grain, woods, and other ground even at higher MF cost. When open ground is unavoidable, cross it with Dash (if possible), behind smoke, or after the defender’s units have already Def First Fired. Use your vanguard units as lockouts for potential Subsequent First Fire (SFF).

Move one unit at a time, worst first. Since defenders fire at units as they move, lead with your most expendable elements — a half-squad “scout” probing the approach forces the defender to either reveal positions and burn First Fire shots on a cheap target, or stay silent and concede the route. Your valuable stacks (leader plus MMG team, elite squads) move after the defensive fire plan has been stripped. Often the defender doesn’t have enough units to fire at all your attacking units.

Don’t stack under fire; do stack for speed. Stacking gives the defender multiple victims per shot. Spread an assault across parallel hexes so no single attack can wreck it. Stack only where the stacking buys something concrete — the leader movement bonus, portage sharing, a combined close-combat punch, or when you’re sure there’s no LOS.

Spend leaders on mobility, not just morale. A 7-0 leader can still turn 4 MF squads into 6 MF squads every turn, even though they are less effective at rallying and directing fire. Shuttle leaders between waves, use them to drag machine guns forward, and remember the squad must start and end with the leader to get the bonus.

Use terrain to find the defender’s blind spots. Hills cost double going up — so defenders expect you on the gentle approach. Grain in season slows you but blocks FFMO. A road gives +1 MF but channels you down a fire lane. Reading the board as a map of MF costs and sightlines is a core ASL skill. See my article about METT-TC.

Let the Advance Phase do the dangerous last step. The one-hex Advance Phase move happens after all Defensive Fire is spent, and it’s the only way into an enemy hex (see caveats above). The rhythm of a good ASL assault is: move (or assault-move) adjacent under whatever cover you can arrange (terrain and/or smoke), absorb the defensive fire, then advance into Close Combat, at superior odds of course!

Budget MF before you touch a counter. Count the route hex by hex — terrain, walls, crest lines, portage penalties — before committing. Half MFs can strand units in the open; an overloaded MG squad that “should” have made the treeline and didn’t will spend the next turn prone in a field. Some rules lawyers are sticklers. For them, as soon as you start moving, there’s no going back, not even a single hex. More friendly players will let you backtrack a bit, as long as you notice it quickly and don’t abuse it often.

Basic Movement Examples

Six moves on six boards, one rule each. None of them use Bypass. That’s a separate topic.

Example 1 (Figure 1). A squad alone. A 4-4-7 on board 16 has 4 MF (A4.11). Open ground into O5 costs 1, grain into P5 costs 1½, open ground into Q5 costs 1. That’s 3½ spent with ½ left, and half an MF buys nothing. R5 is grain at 1½ and Q4 is open at 1. The squad stops in Q5. Grain’s half point is the one that strands people, so count it before you pick the counter up.

Example 2 (Figure 2). A squad with a leader. A 4-6-7 starts stacked with an 8-1 on board 11 and moves with him the whole way, so it gets 6 MF (A4.12). R3 open is 1. The wall on the R3/S4 hexside adds 1 to the building beyond, so S4 costs 3 (B9.4). That’s 4. T4 open is 1, for 5, and U5 open is 1, for 6. Alone, that squad has 4 MF and spends the last of them entering S4. It ends its turn in the building. The leader carries it two hexes further. The bonus only counts if the squad starts and ends the phase stacked with the leader and spends all its MF moving with him.

Example 3 (Figure 3). A squad over its IPC. A 6-6-6 on board 12 picks up an HMG. The gun is 5 PP and a squad’s IPC is 3, so it’s 2 PP over and loses 2 MF (A4.42). Two MF is two open hexes, P4 and Q5, and the turn is over. Put an 8-1 with it and the sums change twice. The leader adds his 1 PP to the squad’s IPC, so the gun is only 1 over, and he adds his 2 MF. That’s 6 minus 1, or 5 MF for the same load.

Example 4 (Figure 4). A squad Double Timing. A 4-5-8 on board 23 announces Double Time at the start of its Movement Phase and takes a CX counter (A4.5). That’s 6 MF. Four open hexes, O3 through R3, cost 4, and the woods at S3 cost 2. It arrives in cover with nothing to spare. At 4 MF the same squad ends its turn in R3, in the open, in view. The bill comes next: +1 on its fire and +1 in Close Combat while CX, an IPC of 2 instead of 3, and no Double Time next turn (A4.51).

Example 5 (Figure 5). A squad alone, uphill. A 4-6-7 sits at level 0 in Q8 on board 2. Crossing a crest line into higher ground doubles the cost of the hex entered (B10.4). P7 is level 1 open ground, so it costs 1 doubled, or 2. O7 is level 2 open ground, another crest line, another 2. Two hexes, four MF, and the squad stops. Had either hex been woods, that crest would have cost 2 doubled, or 4, a lone squad’s entire turn for one hex.

Example 6 (Figure 6). Leader and Double Time, uphill. A 6-6-6 and an 8-1 on board 9 start together at level 0 in P9 and both Double Time. That’s 4, plus 2 for the leader, plus 2 for Double Time, or 8 MF, the most Infantry can ever have (A4.5). Q9 is a crest line into level 1 open ground, 2. Q8 stays at level 1, 1, for 3. Q7 is a crest into level 2, 2, for 5. Q6 is a crest into level 3, 2, for 7. P5 stays at level 3, 1, for 8. Three levels in one turn. A 6 MF stack without CX stops in Q7, one level short. Both units finish the turn CX.

Debriefing

The Movement Phase is a hex-by-hex tradeoff: speed vs. safety. Leader/road bonuses and Double Time buy speed; assault movement, Dash, and terrain buy protection; portage taxes the difference. Add a defender and ask, for every MF spent, “who sees me, and what’s their shot?” Once that’s automatic, Defensive Fire stops being intimidating and becomes a routine (aside from crazy die roll results!).

Master the Movement Phase (and conversely, Defensive Fire) and the rest of ASL infantry game opens up. Fire is how you hurt the enemy; movement is how you decide where, when, and whether the firing happens at all.

Academy Out!

GET TO THE CHOPPA…!!!

Related Posts

ASL Boot Camp #2: Infantry Components ASL Boot Camp #3: Infantry Movement ASL Boot Camp #4: Infantry Bypass Movement