Issue four of The Advanced Squad Leader Companion is here (I’ve had it for a fair bit), and the pace hasn’t slipped. Le Franc Tireur (LFT) promised Jim Stahler’s whole project at roughly three 100-page issues a year. Four issues in, they’re on schedule. That’s important, because the entire ASL opus is long. We’re 400 pages in and still on infantry.
Same disclaimer as the last three. I’m not a reviewer. Nobody can fairly “review” an ASL product without playing every scenario or reading every page. There’s more cardboard out there than any of us will get through. So think of this as a scouting report, an overview, done on video this time. Here’s what’s inside, so you can decide whether it belongs on your shelf.
Finishing Infantry Movement
Issue three ended partway through Chapter 7, Men on the March. This one picks it up where it left off. Movement Phase actions that cost Movement Factors without actually moving you. A full table of terrain costs, running from one MF up through your whole allotment. Moving uphill, and how building-and-woods stacks work. Then come the extra costs, the ones that catch people. Crossing a wall or hedge, doubling for the climb uphill, entering sand.
From there it’s hazards of movement, the stuff that punishes you for being in the open. Entering open ground, Residual Firepower, Height Advantage, artificial terrain like a wrecked vehicle. Then Assault Movement and Minimum Move.
There’s a genuinely useful section on Infantry Bypass Movement. Woods, buildings, water hexsides, several worked examples, and what happens when someone fires at you while you’re bypassing. If you’ve never read the Bypass rule closely, even at Starter Kit level, this section’s worth your time.
Dash gets more MUCH more attention here than it does in the actual rulebook, where it’s one paragraph. The Companion pulls it apart with a table. Full firepower against a Dash target’s halved firepower, and the odds of at least a NMC at each level. One detail I hadn’t comprehended before reading it. Dash against 6 firepower and you land on the same firepower column as dashing against 4. That’s because 6 halved is 3. The standard IFT rounds that down to the 2-column, exactly where 4 halved lands too. And if only one firepower factor can reach you, dash and it doesn’t touch you. Half of one factor doesn’t even reach the table’s lowest column (unless using the IIFT).
Rifles and Machine Guns
Chapter 8 opens with the infantry firefight itself. Fire attacks, firing procedure, firepower factors and how they get modified. Fire Groups, how they’re formed and their restrictions, with examples. Then firing machine guns specifically. Who can fire one, and what it costs a leader or a hero to do it. Where a heavy or medium can’t fire from (rice paddies, for one), Covered Arcs, Field of Fire, and a table of roughly ten dice roll modifiers.
Then it takes a hard turn into results of fire, leadership, and the effects of a bad die roll. Cowering on doubles, Morale Checks, pinning. The different ways a unit breaks, ELR, Berserk and Disrupted units, prisoners, Casualty Reduction and wounds. There’s a results-by-unit-type table that’s genuinely handy. It walks through exactly what a Pin, a Break, or a Casualty Reduction result does to an unbroken squad versus a broken one. That includes the Japanese wrinkle, where a unit strips down before it actually breaks. Losing a leader gets its own section too: the task check, the morale check, and the different treatment Commissars and Japanese and Communist Chinese leaders get.
Only after all of that does the book circle back to the Infantry Fire Table itself and the fire phases: Prep Fire, Defensive First and Final Fire, Bounding Fire, Advancing Fire, Assault Fire, Opportunity Fire, Spraying Fire.
Organization Quirk
Here’s my one real complaint, and it’s the same kind of nitpick I’ve had with each issue so far, which keeps getting smaller as the series goes. Chapter 8 opens on fire attacks, then swerves hard into leadership and results of fire, then swerves back to the fire table and the fire phases at the end. Reading it front to back, that’s jarring. I’d have grouped everything about how a fire attack actually works into one run, from Prep Fire through Spraying Fire, and put results of fire, leadership effects, losing a leader, encirclement, into a section of its own right after it.
One more thing I went looking for and didn’t find: any mention of the Incremental Infantry Fire Table. I’m a purist and use the IFT exclusively, and I’d have expected at least a note about the IIFT here, unless I missed it. It might be coming in a later issue alongside Fire Lanes, which also aren’t in this one yet.
Like the first three, this issue is written for someone learning or relearning the infantry game, but it keeps getting more useful to everyone as the series goes. Veterans will get a solid reference and a reminder of the why behind a rule. Newer players get the book they wished they’d had. There are no scenarios or optional rules here, and that’s fine. That was never the job.
What’s Coming
LFT’s own preview for issue five: the rest of Chapter 8, machine gun malfunctions and ammunition shortage, then Chapter 9 on moving targets, which is where Defensive Fire, Residual Fire, and Fire Lanes finally show up. Chapter 10 covers the whole Rout Phase.
That’s an ambitious amount to fit in one 100-page issue. Defensive fire and the entire Rout Phase in the same book feels like it could be two issues on its own, and I’m already warning our co-host Stew that Chapter 10 might be coming his way.
Where to Order
Ritterkrieg carries the series in North America and has been bundling the earlier issues, so check there before paying overseas shipping.
Academy Out!
GET TO THE CHOPPA…!!! 
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