11.2021 Hazardous Movement Scenario Pack 2: The Un-Civil Wars, 1936-1939

Publisher/Date:
Hazardous Movement (2021)

Product Type:
Scenario Pack

Country of Origin:
United States

Contents:
10 scenarios on color glossy cardstock, 1 page rules, 10 loose-leaf sheets of paper with players' tips

Commentary:

Late 2021 saw the release of Hazardous Movement Scenario Pack 2: The Un-Civil Wars, 1936-1939, hereinafter HMSP2, the second scenario pack from third party publisher Hazardous Movement, published less than a year after their first release.  Hazardous Movement’s first scenario pack was “mixed bag” in nature, featuring a variety of actions from throughout the Second World War.  As its title suggests, though, this new pack is themed.  Its 10 scenarios depict actions from three 20th-century civil wars:  the Spanish Civil War (5 scenarios), the Greek Civil War (2 scenarios), and the Chinese Civil War (3 scenarios).

Its theme makes HMSP2 a very specialized pack and one that has not (as of this writing) garnered as much play as its predecessor.  Some ASLers have commented online that they passed on the product because of its subject matter.  However, that same subject matter might be a draw for ASLers a bit weary of playing their umpteenth East Front scenario.

In terms of presentation, HMSP2 is much the same as its predecessor. It, too, comes in an extra-wide binder with folders for the scenarios and players’ notes–and once more the players’ notes are printed on loose sheets of paper.  The scenario cards are, again, printed on glossy color cardstock, with essentially the same style of layout. The one difference is that the scenario cards now have counter artwork on them, which definitely improves the scenario cards, even though the artwork is just VASL art (slightly shrunken, perhaps to lessen the pixelation of printed VASL artwork). The cards do have a problem, though:  the vehicles have no vehicle name nor vehicle ID on them. This is an irritating absence for people who store their cards (as many do) by those distinctions, though perhaps less so for players who organize their AFV counters by gun type and/or movement points.  Hazardous Movement did subsequently include a list of vehicle names on their errata sheet.

The scenarios are not organized by date (as is typical with MMP scenarios) or by war, but are in a seemingly random order. In contrast to the previous release, most of the scenarios here take up only one side of the scenario card.

As with their first release, the scenarios here were designed by Chad Cummins and Chuck Hammond, and playtested by them and six other people.

The designers had a challenge doing a scenario pack with this theme, as English-language works on the Chinese Civil War are few in number and often at too high a level to derive tactical actions from.  English-language accounts of the Greek Civil War (1946-1949) are similarly rare (which perhaps accounts for the fact that one of the two included scenarios on this conflict takes place in 1944, before the civil war started).  Accounts of the Spanish Civil War in English are a bit more common, but still not generous.  One has to wonder how much that reflects on the accuracy of the scenarios here.  HazMo 20 (60 Seconds of Sacrifice), for example, is set in Shandong Province in northern China (a temperate climate), but the SSRs state that PTO terrain, including Light Jungle, is in effect.

A number of the scenarios use nationality counters for other than their intended nationality (like using Axis Minor counters to represent Spanish Nationalists), but these rules do not appear on the scenario cards but rather on a separate card–so traveling players need to remember to always bring that card with them if they intend to play any of the scenarios from this pack on their trip. The card is also the only place where players are told that all scenarios have No Quarter and Hand-to-Hand CC in effect, which is rather important.

The scenarios of HMSP2 are generally shorter than those of the first Hazardous Movement pack (which were very long), but like those actions, the scenarios here are all medium or large in size. Moreover, all the scenarios here use a maximum of a single board, and many use less than a full board, so a typical scenario here will have a lot of counters in a very small space.  None of the scenarios use OBA, Night rules, or Air Support.

To play all the scenarios in the pack, one needs geoboards 23, 45, 59, 64, 67, 8a, and 11a, as well as Bounding Fire Productions’ third party geoboards BFP DW-1a (from Blood and Jungle) and BFP DW-5b (from Poland in Flames). Note that the scenario cards do not mention which products the boards are from, so you may want to make a notation on the cards.

This pack will probably appeal most to players who like esoteric, large scenarios.

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