01.2024 Twilight of the Reich

Publisher/Date:
Multi-Man Publishing (2024)

Product Type:
Scenario/Map Pack Plus

Country of Origin:
United States

Contents:
4 11" x 16" unmounted two-sided geoboards (16a/b - 19a/b),  9 sheets of overlays (49 overlays total), 2 die-cut countersheets (with ), 17 scenarios, 20 rules pages (Chapter A and Chapter B), 3 mortar play aids.

Commentary:

Twilight of the Reich is a strange product: it comes in a fat box and is dubbed “ASL Module 16,” but it is not a historical module, nor is it a core module. It has the subtitle “Endgame in the European Theater 1944-45,” but it is not even that.  It seems like a scenario/map pack, but it comes in a box. It also has countersheets and more overlays than your neighbor’s kids could cut out.  It even has rules pages.  It doesn’t fit any established category of ASL product.  Desperation Morale had to make up an entirely new product category for it–the scenario/map pack plus, for scenario/map products with substantial additional materials.  That was kind of annoying.  And, actually, the module contains a number of positive features, interspersed with several irritating ones.

Twilight of the Reich, primarily from the creative minds of Bill Cirillo and Sean Deller, with lots of help from others, comes in a big honking box–as thick as the boxes for Manila or the recent version of Hollow Legions.  Its contents, though substantial, could easily fit in a smaller box, like that of the recent version of Doomed Battalions. Twilight’s price, at $164 (as of this writing), is also quite substantial, making it one of the more expensive ASL products (though not, as of this writing, in the top five).

To the extent that Twilight has a centerpiece, it is probably the 4 new geoboards (16a/b, 17a/b, 18a/b, 19a/b).  As their numbers suggest, these are 11″ x 16″ “gary-style” geoboards, printed on both sides, though the only difference between sides is that (as with previous such boards) a few woods edge-hexes are shifted one hexrow. The boards are all dense, inner city urban boards. Except arguably for board 13a/b (from Winter Offensive Bonus Pack #11), the boards here are the first dense urban “gary-style” geoboards.  Board 16a/b features long avenues, punctuated with (wide avenue) intersections and bordered by blocks of tall stone rowhouses.  A couple of churches and one- and two-hex cemeteries provide a minimum of variety.  There are also printed shellholes on some of the roads.  Board 17a/b is also a heavily themed board, filled with large factories (as large as 20-22 hexes in size). There are also a handful of long wooden “workshop” types of buildings, as well as seven or so lumberyard hexes.  The roads are also dotted with shellholes.  Board 18a/b is the “Central Park” board; it features a perimeter of stone buildings, primarily rowhouses, surrounding a very large central area with open ground, woods, and orchards, as well as a few one-hex wood buildings and a pond.  All it needs is a soccer field. And maybe Jennifer Aniston.  It has no shellholes.  The fourth board, board 19a/b, has an urban-residential feel, with lots of two-level rowhouses, and one-hex stone and wooden buildings. It also features a central traffic circle with a stone wall interior hex.

The artwork on the boards is fine and, individually, the boards are all good.  Collectively, their variety is limited, of course, by the fact that they are all dense urban boards. The boards do, however, raise a couple of questions when one considers the overlays.  So let’s consider those overlays, so we can look at boards and overlays together.  Twilight comes with an amazing 9 whole sheets of overlays, with 49 overlays total. That is a lot of overlays–certainly a lot to cut out. Moreover, most of the overlays are large and/or long, making cutting them out a more laborious chore.  The bulk of the overlays are railroad-related. They feature two-track railroads (something that has no practical effect on play) and most are not simply railroad overlays but “rail car” overlays (i.e., stretches of railroads actually containing train cards on them) to go with the new rail car rules (discussed below). Fully 26 overlays have nothing but rail hexes (with or without cars) on them. Some of these, featuring multiple hexrows of railroads are examples of a second new type of railway-related overlay:  the railyard overlay.  Railyard overlays also include overlays with multiple railroad hexes and one or more building hexes (designed to represent rail stations and buildings in a railyard). There are 10 such overlays, a number of them very large in size.

The overlays also include numerous building (X-prefixed) overlays, most of them multi-buildinged.  Overlays X32 and X33 both seem to represent clusters of factories (albeit without any roads).  X35, X36 and X37 are each a mundane single-hexrow line of buildings.  X38 is a round “water tower” type of building. X40 is a huge 35-hex factory that would dominate any geoboard; X34 is an identically-sized overlay with a cluster of multi-hex and single-hex buildings, some seemingly designed to be factories.  X39 has single hex two-level buildings (a feature not much in demand). Overlay 8 is a large, long overlay featuring a number of buildings, including a long wooden building, surrounding (on three sides) a large area of open ground (16 hexes) surrounded by a wall. It seems like it might be intended to represent some sort of stockyard.  Finally, overlays 9 and 10 are both huge–absolutely huge–cemeteries, large enough to fit multiple copies of the large board 21 cemetery within them. Desperation Morale has not seen this many dead people in ASL since the Legionnaire’s Disease outbreak at ASLOK in 2002. Now ASL has not one but two mega-cemeteries, though it is quite likely the utility for these necropoli is fairly limited (one could certainly be used for a scenario on the fighting in the cemetery district in the early days of the 1944 Warsaw Uprising, but are there a lot of other uses?).

Why are there so many overlays?  One reason for the ocean of overlays is the unfortunate lack of these features on geoboards themselves.  One geoboard with a railyard or a rail station, or a geoboard for each, as well as adjacent railroads, would have eliminated the need for many of the rail-related overlays included here; all one would need would be a relatively small number of overlays to modify or vary the basic board(s). It’s likely that a lot of players, rather than having to find and lay down the 9 overlays of scenario 293 (Death Solves All Problems) or the 13 overlays of scenario 294 (No Man, No Problem), would probably rather be able simply to place down a geoboard and maybe a couple of overlays.  There is no reason why there can’t be geoboards with railroads, just as there are geoboards with rivers that go off the board edge. It’s unfortunate that this wasn’t done.

The other missed opportunity with the boards has to do with their reverse sides, which exist for only one purpose: so that a few woods half-hexes along the boards edges match up exactly with woods half-hexes on other, similar boards. As we will see from the discussion below of Twilight’s counters, rules, and scenarios, many of the scenarios of Twilight involve a lot of “urban damage” to the geoboards, including a lot of rubble and debris.  Yet the only damage actually printed on any of the geoboards are the shellholes that appear on just two of the boards.  Instead, players are often asked to use a lot of random die rolls to generate rubble and/or debris in a variety of hexes. For example, scenario 290 (Last Train to Leningrad) requires players to perform “Rubble Generation Checks” on all buildings or rail cars within three hexes of a railroad hex. That’s a lot of wristage and a lot of rubble and debris counters to place–before the scenario even starts.  Rather than these elaborate setup routines, wouldn’t it have been easier simply to have rubble-strewn geoboards?  Here is where the reverse “b” sides of the Twilight geoboards could have been effectively used: as “war-torn” versions of their “a” sides.  For any particular scenario there might be a need for some additional damage, but it would be much simpler and much easier for players than having to use counters to heavily modify pristine or near-pristine geoboards, which is what players have to do with the Twilight boards (at least for the included scenarios; not necessarily for all future scenarios by other designers).

This further raises the larger issue of the reverse sides of 11″ x 16″ boards (and any potential future two-sided 8″ x 22″ geoboards as well), and how the reverse sides could be used more imaginatively than they are now. Reverse sides could be used to damage the terrain, as described above, or they could be used to present “winterized” (i.e., snow-covered) versions of the terrain for use with suitable scenarios, or could be used in other ways (to add a beach or shoreline, or docks, or have the same terrain but with a stream, or any number of other variations).  MMP has had the capability to produce two-sided geoboards for 14 years (as of this writing); it’s time to really take advantage of this capability.

Twilight comes with vampires two sheets of counters. The first countersheet is solely half-inch counters–all of them German.  What does it have?  Primarily SS, SS, and more SS. The counters include an array of 8-3-8 SS squads (and half-squads), another array of 6-5-8 SS, as well as 5-4-8 SS, 4-6-8 SS, and 4-4-7 SS. The only counters on the sheet that are not SS are a handful of 8-3-8/3-3-8 assault engineer counters and some Volksgrenadier squads.

The second counter sheet is half 1/2″ inch counters and half 5/8″ counters.  The half-inch counters bring the NKVD squads introduced in 2008 in Valor of the Guards to Chapter A. The only surprise here is that it was not done long ago, as they are an obviously useful addition to the system. The sheet also contains Soviet, U.S., and British assault engineer squads and halfies, some Axis Minor SW, a handful of leader counters, and two types of markers: control markers and factory entrance markers.

The 5/8″ counters include 28 Axis Minor vehicles and guns (apparently none new) and two German guns. Most of the counters on the sheets are markers, all new to Chapter B, though not necessarily new to the broader ASL system. These include Debris counters (and wide boulevard Debris counters), as well as rail car counters, since apparently the ones on the overlays just aren’t enough.  On the back of the Debris and rail car markers are “Factory” markers, which may be placed on a building to designate it as a factory. They come in two varieties, gray and yellow, to indicate levels.

It should be noted that,as with other MMP ASL products published circa 2022-2024, the countersheets are deeply die-cut, so handle them carefully lest some counters stray before you are ready to separate them from their trees.

Accompanying the counters are Chapter A and B rules pages (A51-63 and B41-B46); they are essentially replacement pages to provide rules for the new counters.  A25.01 introduces Assault Engineers, while A25.11 introduces the “late war SS” (the counters for which were first introduced 25 years earlier in A Bridge Too Far).  A25.13 provides 7 lines of rules for the Volksgrenadier counters, while A25.25 contains the NKVD rules (including Commissar Creation).  A25.9 provides rules for specific Polish Allied Minor counters (which do not appear here but rather in the latest edition of Doomed Battalions, which contains the same A/B rules pages as this product).

The Chapter B rules pages include rules–a lot of them–for rail car hexes and counters, including some rules that perhaps could have been left out, such as allowing bypass movement in rail car hexes and allowing “wrecked” rail car hexes to become Rubble. These add complexity without having much of a corresponding benefit. The pages also include rules–a whole page of them–for Debris counters.  Note that only rules for Debris counters are provided.  Debris hexes–as in terrain printed on geoboards–still do not officially exist, even theoretically, within Chapter B ASL.  It seems rather silly to go through all the trouble of introducing Debris to the main rulebook and yet not provide the rules for printed terrain. There’s nothing wrong with having printed debris, as HASLs have clearly shown, and if in the future MMP finally decides to allow it, they will have to do these pages all over again.  After more than 20 years since their first appearance, printed Debris (and Rubble) have earned a place in the rulebook.  As an aside, the Debris Creation rules note that Falling Debris is generated as part of Falling Rubble creation–but MMP does not provide a substitute page for the Falling Rubble rules to acknowledge and provide a rules reference for Falling Debris. So someone following the Falling Rubble process might not even realize they also have to check for the possibility of Debris.

Twilight, with 17 scenarios, is generous with the number of actions it provides players to game.  It is also “generous” in the number of playtesters that it used. The list of Twilight playtesters seems longer than the Night rules, and a lot more interesting: it is practically a who’s who list of prominent ASLers from the U.S. (and a few from beyond). Now, there is no telling how many scenarios each person playtested, and it is altogether possible that the designers’ moms actually did most of the playtesting work, but the list here is certainly reassuring that real playtest and development work went into this product.  Time will tell how good a job they did; as of this writing, too many scenarios have not yet had enough playings to get a good grasp on their balance.

The module purports to cover late war East and West Front actions, although the first two scenarios are from 1941 and 1942, so perhaps the real title of this module should be Late Morning Then A Long Nap Then Twilight of the Reich.  The scenario breakdown is this: 2 1941-42 East Front scenarios, 1 Market-Garden scenario, 7 Budapest scenarios, 1 later Hungary scenario, 2 U.S. vs. German scenarios set in Heilbronn, 3 Berlin scenarios, and 1 scenario in Prague in May 1945.  Given the designers, another possible title of the product might be Budapest Stuff We Couldn’t Fit In the First Time Plus Some Other Stuff.

Though there are 17 scenarios, it might seem from the stack of scenario cards that there are a lot more, and that is because almost every scenario in Twilight takes up (at least) two pages. This is primarily because all of the scenarios have extra charts (see below), but also many scenarios have a lot of SSRs and the historical descriptions/aftermaths for some scenarios are very long. Two-page scenarios are inherently irritating (even if sometimes necessary), but MMP made the decision to not use the reverse side of the card but to include the second page on the back of some other scenario card. The ASL world seems pretty polarized about this, with some players wanting two-page scenarios to occupy a single scenario card, while other players preferring the pages on separate cards (so that a player can have both cards in front of them at the same time).  There’s no right answer, but Desperation Morale is a founding member of Team One-Card, having too many times taken a scenario to an ASL event only to discover once there that the scenario had a second page on the back of some other card that was left behind. It’s also frustrating simply having to find the other half of a scenario.

In the case of Twilight, ASLers wanting to play a specific scenario will have to remember to bring not only all the scenario cars, but also an additional card, because Twilight comes with an entire page of SSRs that apply to every scenario in the product over and above all the SSRs that may apply to a specific scenario.  In this, the designers seem to have been influenced by the 2018 Death to Fascism scenario pack, which itself had such a page of product-wide SSRs, including several that resemble rules here. These Twilight SSRs include some “grudge” rules (“grudge” SSRs are SSRs implemented primarily because the scenario designer does not like the official rule they change/contradict), including prohibiting Kindling and prohibiting crews from abandoning vehicles voluntarily.  It’s a little odd to see “grudge” SSRs in an official product.  Other rules, as in Death to Fascism, broadly allow units in concealment terrain to set up concealed and give a HIP squad to any side setting up on-board.

One big chunk of the rules on this page involve rubble. It’s fair to say the designers love rubble. Here they reproduce the Rubble Generation rules that were originally used in Festung Budapest. These rules provide a system for randomly creating rubble and debris around buildings or other locations. It’s a laborious process that can add time to setup. Because of this, Desperation Morale is not a huge fan.

The other big rules chunk is another Death to Fascism idea: purchasable SWs and Fortification.  Each side in each scenario is given a certain number of points which they can use to purchase SW or Fortifications (as well as concealment markers, SAN increases, etc.). Though the costs are constant from scenario to scenario, the purchases available for each player vary from action to action and are given in charts on the scenario cards. In scenario 295 (Death Box), for example, the Soviet player has an at-start force that is given 7 points and a reinforcement group coming on later that is given 4 points.  The player can purchase an ATR for 1 point, a DC for 1, an LMG for 1.5, an MMG for 3, an HMG or FT for 6, 4 concealment markers for .5, 2 foxholes for 1, or a +1 SAN increase for 2. Other purchase possibilities are not allowed.  Rules mandate that no item may be purchased more than three times, except LMG, which can be purchased four times. Options like this are popular with players and theoretically add variety, although in practice there are often optimal purchases. Such rules do add to the setup time, which makes combining them with the Rubble Generation rules in a scenario perhaps not so great an idea (it should be noted that, although every scenario in Twilight has purchases, not all have Rubble Generation).

Because of the large number of SSRs, as well as the complexity of some of them, as well as other factors, Desperation Morale has graded this product as an advanced product, meaning it may be challenging for newer/less experienced players.

The scenarios share some common features. All but one of the 17 scenarios are large or very large in size (one scenario is small). All but one also use only one or more of the four geoboards included in the module; this is rather unusual. The sole exception uses geoboards 70 and 71 (only). No scenarios use Night rules, Air Support rules, or OBA. About half of the scenarios include pre-game Rubble Generation procedures.

Finally, a number of the scenarios have fairly complicated victory conditions. Scenario 292 (Four Stars of Valor), for example, awards victory to the U.S./British player if the Germans do not have 24+ CVP, plus either a) there is only 1 or less German squad equivalent in a railroad hex and/or a ground level building location next to a railroad hex or b) The U.S./British control 2 factories on overlay X33 and control 4 of 6 specific buildings.  A number of the scenarios, like this one, have CVP caps.

The most unusual, and also most complicated, action is scenario 305 (No Brothers, No Friends), which is a three-player scenario set in Berlin and played on a single geoboard. This scenario pits a German player against a “Russian Ukrainian Front” player against a “Russian Belorussian Front” player, the latter two being references to the 1st Ukrainian Front (under Konev) and the 1st Belorussian Front (under Zhukov), which both participated in the Battle of Berlin, competing for its conquest.

The scenario does not have two allied Soviet players against one German player but rather converts the rivalry into a full-fledged shooting war (as opposed to mere friendly fire casualties, which was primarily the case historically).  The last man standing alone in one particular building wins; barring that, there’s a laundry list of VP calculations. All three sides have large forces, which can make this scenario a long, drawn-out affair, despite having only 5 turns. This will be extended by set up, which has purchases and rubble generation, but also has hidden written simultaneous setup, in which all players secretly record their setups (including location, covered arc, buttoned-up status, wall advantage, and everything else). That is a lot of writing. In this scenario, players not only purchase SW and fortifications but can also purchase additional units as reinforcements. The scenario contains an entire page of SSRs; combined with standard Twilight SSRs, this scenario probably has the single longest set of SSRs in ASL. The SSRs include a rule designed to push the Soviet players into conflict with each other by providing additional German purchase points each turn that a Close Combat does not occur between the two Soviet forces. It should be noted that one of the Soviet forces derives its counterset from the Chinese Communists of Forgotten War, the Korean War module, so ownership of that product is necessary to play this scenario. All in all, it’s a lot more complicated than the old chestnut The Dogs of War.

No Brothers, No Friends is a scenario that makes enemies out of friendly forces, but other scenarios feature Allies fighting together. Speaking of Dogs of War, Scenario 306 (Roads to Perdition) is another Prague 1945 scenario featuring Russian turncoat soldiers who fought as Nazi collaborators but at the very end of the war changed sides again to fight alongside Czech partisans (both communist and non-communist) against the Soviets. Scenario 292 (Four Stars of Valor), on the other hand, is an Operation Market-Garden scenario that brings British and American troops to battle the Germans for control of Nijmegen.  Scenario 295 (Death Box) and scenario 297 (Breaching the Devil’s Playground) are both Budapest scenarios featuring Germans and Hungarians fighting the Soviets. Scenario 298 (The Dead and the Dying) and scenario 2999 (Rails to Perdition)  also Budapest scenarios, both feature German and Hungarian troops fighting against Soviet and Romanian forces.

Finally, a couple of scenarios utilize unusual play aids included in Twilight. The three strips of thin cardstock contain information for mortars held offboard but allowed to fire onboard thanks to spotters. The information is also included on the scenario cards, but as the play aids don’t name the scenario they are paired with, nor do the scenarios mention the play aids at all, essentially these play aids fall into the category of Things You Will Immediately Lose. In fact, Your Humble Author lost at least one of them twice during the three days he had the components strewn about while composing this write-up.

Twilight of the Reich comes with a lot of play value, but also requires a lot of effort–from initial setup to figuring out victory conditions. Some players may look at some of these scenarios and decide they’d prefer a little simpler fare.

Back to Top