ASL: Valor of the Gaurds up for pre-order

[KG_Kharkov]

The newest Stalingrad ASL module is up for pre-order at the MMP website. Here's a link to the north portion of the map (covering the railway station in central Stalingrad). How can you resist: http://www.multimanpublishing.com/pr...rthmap-web.jpg

[KG_Kharkov]

Here's playtester quotes from the Strategy Zone site:

Playtester Quotes
Rob and Tork have already weighed in a bit here, but they, Mike Allexenberg, and Charlie Hamilton were gracious enough to provide MMP their opinions on Valor of the Guards from their playtesting experiences:

Charlie

The terrain types added for this module give a much different feel than Red Barricades The gutted buildings, railway cars, and partially collapsed buildings, as well as the large number of open city squares give Stalingrad a new feel."

"The scenarios in this module offer Tom Morin's usual combination of balance, chrome, re-playability, and creative ways of simulating well-researched small unit actions.

Jim


What makes VOTG special? First of all, the map. It is beautiful. I'm thinking about framing mine..."

"Central Stalingrad ranges from blocks of large multistory buildings to the rail yard to the riverbank. The large open squares are a particular tactical problem; they are easy to defend when covered by fire, but when the defenders are smoked or suppressed, they are a highway to the heart of the defense."

"The scenarios are cool. They range from the initial German entry into central Stalingrad against the NKVD, through the battles for the Central Railway Station, and then to the duel with the Guards along the Volga riverbank.

Mike

Wish to fight the battles for Pavlov's House? Wish to fight around the infamous crocodile fountain featured on covers of older editions of "Enemy at the Gates"? Wish to fight out Von Paulus' surrender in the Univermag? It's all in Valor of the Guards!

Valor of the Guards has far fewer factories than Red Barricades; instead, you have to fight your away across the board in tightly packed stone buildings. Some of these blocks are separated by large city squares which are treated as wide boulevards.

VOTG contains fortified strongpoint rules to better reflect protracted Russian stands in places like Pavlov's House, and after the very early stage of the battle, the Russian defenders consist of 458s and 628s, complete with the heavy weapons you'd expect with elite forces.


Rob

Why do I like VOTG?

The new terrain. The burnt out stone buildings that are harder to move through, +1 MP to go up levels, but allow you to shoot Mortars from the top level. There are partially collapsed buildings which are Rubble hexes with one story walls that block LOS. The Plazas (see Runways) that stretch across key areas are a bloody mess to try and attack across. The new terrain gives VOTG a feeling all unto itself. You will find yourself nodding in appreciation of the design of these features and hope that some day these will be made into overlays, so future scenarios can share use of them.

The scenarios. I strictly kept to playtesting the scenarios and did not play any of the campaigns. I have playtested many an ASL scenario and I would stack the set of VOTG scenarios against any group out there. They are diverse, unique, difficult, brilliant and flat-out fun to play.

I won't give too much more away but the VOTG scenarios give a little something to everyone: smaller quicker scenarios, good tourney-sized scenarios and large slugfests. Oh yeah, one more thing, when you've got to charge across that damn four hex wide Plaza at -3 TEM listen carefully for the evil cackle of Tom Morin.