Squad Leader is a tactical level board wargame

Board wargame

A board wargame is a wargame with a set playing surface or board, as opposed to being played on a computer, or in a more free-form playing area as in miniatures games. The hobby around this type of game got its start in 1954 with the publication of Tactics, and saw its greatest popularity in the...

 originally published by Avalon Hill

Avalon Hill

Avalon Hill was a game company that specialized in wargames and strategic board games. Its logo contained its initials "AH", and it was often referred to by this abbreviation. It also published the occasional miniature wargaming rules, role-playing game, and had a popular line of sports simulations...

 in 1977. It was designed by Hall of Fame game designer John Hill

John Hill (game designer)

John Hill is an American designer of military wargames, as well as rules for miniature wargaming such as Johnny Reb 3. He is a member of the Wargaming Hall of Fame....

 and focuses on infantry

Infantry

Infantrymen are soldiers who are specifically trained for the role of fighting on foot to engage the enemy face to face and have historically borne the brunt of the casualties of combat in wars. As the oldest branch of combat arms, they are the backbone of armies...

 combat in Europe during World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

. One of the most complex wargames of its time, Squad Leader was the natural extension of the trend towards greater realism (and hence complexity) initiated by several earlier games, including Avalon Hill's own PanzerBlitz

PanzerBlitz

PanzerBlitz is a tactical-scale board wargame of armoured combat set in the Eastern Front of the Second World War. The game is notable for being the first true board-based tactical-level, commercially available conflict simulation...

 and Panzer Leader

Panzer Leader (game)

Panzer Leader is the sequel to Avalon Hill's Panzerblitz game. Like its predecessor, it is a tactical platoon level hex and counter board wargame depicting WWII tank and infantry combat on the Western European front...

. Those two earlier games were slightly larger in scope, with counters

Counter (board wargames)

Boardgame counters are usually small cardboard squares moved around on the map of a wargame to represent armies, military units or individual military personnel. The first modern mass-market wargame, based on cardboard counters and hex-board maps, was Tactics, invented by Charles S. Roberts in 1952...

 representing platoons and map hexes measuring 250 metres across, compared to Squad Leader's 40 metre hexes and squad sized units.
The original Squad Leader was produced in time to debut at Origins '77. (The original print run of 2,500 copies had purple boxes which have become in and of themselves a prized collector's item.)

Gameplay

Pieces in Squad Leader represent regular squads (rated for firepower, range and morale), weapon and vehicle crews, elite squads (with high firepower and morale but shorter range - used to represent paratroops or combat engineers armed with sub-machine guns), individual leaders, support weapons, and vehicles.
The original game contained counters representing the German, Russian and American armies. Russian troops were portrayed as poorly armed (and with poor quality radios, making it very difficult for them to summon artillery support) and with relatively fewer leaders, but with the capacity to become "berserk" in combat (a capacity later shared by SS troops). US troops were shown as having unusually high firepower (representing larger squads, using the Browning Automatic Rifle - unlike other nationalities who have separate counters for light machine guns), but with slightly lower basic morale than German or Soviet troops, representing the supposed greater tendency of more individualistic Americans to break from their orders or the group under fire - however, American troops were easier to rally under fire, as they were exempt from the usual penalty ("Desperation Morale") paid by broken squads in these circumstances. British troops, when eventually added to the game system, were shown as largely similar to the Germans, albeit with somewhat inferior equipment.

The mapboards were divided into hexagonal grids with each hex said to represent 40 metres of terrain, the result of the designer being asked what the ground scale was, rolling a die and it coming up 'four'. In reality, European village streets are not 40 metres across, for example. Time was said to be two minutes per turn, though the developer admits that this is also fudged and that each game turn should be considered a "module of time, such that the (game's) events can occur and interact with one another." As well, by being geomorphic mapboard

Geomorphic mapboard

A geomorphic mapboard is a game board that can be configured in different ways and reused to create different playing surfaces. The concept was introduced in PanzerBlitz, though the number of configurations was low...

s, increased flexibility was given to scenario designers as well as "design your own" players.

The Semi-Simultaneous system of play developed in the mid-1970s can be seen in Squad Leaders sequence of play. Each turn consists of two player turns, each of which have 8 "phases": the Rally Phase (in which "broken" units attempt to rally and malfunctioning weapons are repaired), the Prep Fire Phase (in which the player whose turn it is may fire on enemy units; any units that Prep Fire cannot move or fire again for the rest of the player turn), the Movement Phase (in which the player may move his units on the board), the Defensive Fire Phase (in which the other player may fire on units that just moved), the Advancing Fire Phase (in which any units that moved may fire, at reduced strength), the Rout Phase (in which any "broken" units must flee for cover), the Advance Phase (in which the player whose turn it is may move every unit one hex), and the Close Combat phase (in which any units from opposite sides that start that phase in the same hex engage in close combat).

Actually, the name of the game is a misnomer, as in some ways the player assumes the role of a company commander (i.e. he gives orders to platoons and squads). The squad leaders in Squad Leader are actually "factored in" to the squad counters, and only exceptional leaders - officers and NCOs - are portrayed separately, by their own counter. Leaders can exert a favourable influence on the firing of support weapons, or the morale rolls of squads with whom they are stacked, although if a leader fails a morale check the squads stacked with him must check for morale a second time. Most scenarios give each player, generally speaking, enough simulated men to make up a company, though order of battle is not precise and most scenarios only give a flavor of what the real life battles were like rather than a direct simulation.

One aspect of the game that adds greatly to its popularity are the generic "geomorphic" mapboards, each of which can be aligned to any edge of the same length to any other mapboard (except river boards). This allows for an almost unlimited number of combinations to create any terrain situation, including player designed scenarios. Printed overlays, first introduced in GI: Anvil of Victory, also provided additional terrain types to mapboards. Line of Sight (LOS) was uniquely done by sighting between the dots in the centre of each hex. String would be used to check LOS, and the printed terrain depictions on the photo-realistic maps were used to determine blockages (hexes were not considered automatically filled by terrain therein).

The original game contained mapboards, mounted on heavy durable cardboard, which was expensive but a design feature long associated with Avalon Hill games. Each mapboard measured 10 columns of hexes high by 32 hexes wide, numbered from hex A1 in the top left corner to hex GG10 in the lower right.
Scenarios: 1-12

The design philosophy that John Hill brought to Squad Leader was "design for effect." He hypothesized that no matter what kind of fire you might bring on a squad of infantry, be it a flame weapon, a grenade, a machine gun, or an artillery shell, there could only be three outcomes; the squad would be eliminated by killing/wounding the men in it; the squad would be "discomfited" to some degree (i.e. they must check for morale - if they fail they run for cover until rallied by a leader, and if they fail a second morale roll while "broken" the counter is removed as the men are assumed to have run away); or there would be no effect. Using this principle, he was able to employ a single table to create combat results of the various weapons systems used in the game. A similar principle is employed in dealing with support weapons - rolling a certain number might cause a weapon (eg. a machine gun) to be put out of action, after which a player must roll again each turn until the weapon is either restored to use or lost altogether; there is no need to determine whether the weapon was broken, jammed, or was simply reloading with fresh ammunition.

Squad Leader is a game system by design rather than just one game. The game itself came with 12 different scenarios

Squad Leader Scenarios

Squad Leader was a game system depicting tactical combat in the Second World War. The game, as well as the three follow on gamettes, was notable for its open-endedness, a trend in tactical board wargaming beginning from the late 1960s, and at least as early as far as Avalon Hill was concerned with...

, each one introducing more complicated rules in a system called Programmed Instruction. Each scenario card included historical information, victory conditions and play balancers for each side. However, Squad Leader also had a Design Your Own system where forces were selected by drawing playing cards from a standard 52 card deck and comparing the result to a table where different forces were described. There was also a point purchase system for "buying" opposing forces. New scenarios were published in Avalon Hill's gaming magazine, The General

The General Magazine

The General Magazine was first published in 1964, as a bi-monthly periodical devoted to supporting Avalon Hill's line of wargames, with articles on game tactics, history, and industry news...

, as well as additional scenario packs (the Rogue Scenarios, for example, see below). Third parties also produced scores of SL scenarios.

Strengths

Squad Leader attempted to simulate many types of battlefield phenomena not addressed before in a tactical board game, and enjoyed a cosmetic treatment unmatched then and afterwards. Some of these strengths include:

• The effects of leadership on morale is elegantly handled, with extraordinary leaders (only) having direct effects on the ability of men to move, shoot, and resist enemy attack.

• The rigid turn sequences of war games up to that point in time was dispensed with in favor of the unique eight-phase turns described above. Units could interact with enemy units during the other player's turn.

• The game, as explained by John Hill's Designer's Notes, encouraged players to learn and adopt basic infantry tactics - defenders were encouraged to site machine guns to dominate fields of fire, while attackers were encouraged to have some men give covering fire while others moved.

• Some support weapons could fire multiple times in a phase, and machineguns had the ability ("penetration") to inflict damage through a line of several adjacent hexes - two hexes for a light machine gun, and six or even eight for a heavy machine gun.

• The system was flexible and open-ended; the geomorphic boards could represent reasonably well many types of terrain, and the use of "Scenario Special Rules" expanded these possibilities even further. Victory conditions were also flexible and imaginative, not being confined to mere shootouts between opposing forces, scenarios could simulate all manners of military missions (especially in the follow-up modules), such as successfully escorting convoys (Scenario 15), parachute and glider assaults (Scenarios 33 and 46), the deliberate assault on prepared positions (Scenario 9), the ambush (Scenario 13), the meeting engagement (Scenario 20), the hasty attack/defence (Scenario 7), the passage of obstacles (Scenario 27), the withdrawal under fire (Scenario 40), and even such things as hostage situations (Scenario 26). In other words, missions that real life company commanders would have trained to perform.

• The quality of the physical components has rarely been equalled by other games; counters were functional, evocative, well designed (free of clutter), and attractive. Especially popular were the red "berserk" counters which added much flavor to the game; Cross of Iron added striking white-on-black counters to represent the Waffen SS. The mounted mapboards (both in Squad Leader and its offspring) were a hallmark of Avalon Hill, and continued right through to the introduction of the ASL Starter Kits by Multi-Man Publishing
  Multi-Man Publishing
  Multi-Man Publishing, LLC is a game company formed by baseball player Curt Schilling and his partners to keep the game series Advanced Squad Leader in print. MMP operates some of the former Avalon Hill games under license from Hasbro, Inc...
  
   in 2004 (which featured mapboards printed on inexpensive cardboard stock). The mapboards were also photo-realistic, with an attractive top down view that was also functional, with line of sight (LOS) drawn from hex centre to hex centre and blocked only by terrain depictions (often with accompanying shadows) on the artwork itself, not the entire hex as in other games.

Weaknesses

Some of the weaknesses that keep Squad Leader from being a true simulation

Simulation

Simulation is the imitation of some real thing available, state of affairs, or process. The act of simulating something generally entails representing certain key characteristics or behaviours of a selected physical or abstract system....

 of the decisions that a World War Two commander would make are well known and attempts were made to address them; others were simply ignored for the sake of "playability". Some of these include the following:

• Despite some rules for "concealment" and "hidden initial placement", most of the game is played where each player can always see what forces the enemy has and precisely where they are placed, even if out of LOS of his own units. There is little "fog of war." Attempts to redress this - some have suggested using multiple copies of the game and a third party to act as "umpire" - are cumbersome and in some cases book-keeping intensive.
• Play is not simultaneous but done in predictable turn sequence, one player getting a turn, and then the other. An attempt to redress this was the use of "track" counters introduced in the first section of the rulebook, and the optional rule of "semi-simultaneous movement and defensive fire" which later became standardized in Advanced Squad Leader
  Advanced Squad Leader
  Advanced Squad Leader is a tactical-level board wargame, originally marketed by Avalon Hill Games, that simulates actions of approximately company or battalion size in World War II. It is a detailed game system for two or more players . Components include the ASL Rulebook and various games called...
  
  .

• There are no partial casualties to either men or vehicles. Squads are considered to be at full strength until destroyed, and vehicles suffer no damage aside from weapons malfunctions or immobilizations; partial penetrations, panicked crews, and other battlefield phenomena are not directly depicted in Squad Leader. (However, the concept of the "half squad" was introduced in Crescendo of Doom, though not as a battlefield result, and further developed with the introduction of special half squad counters in GI: Anvil of Victory).

Nick Stasnopolis, writing in Fire & Movement Magazine (Number 73, May/June 1991) made the following comparison:

Few tactical games during this period (mid 1970s) are comparable to Squad Leader,...which is quite popular and is of a similar scale (to Search & Destroy

Search & Destroy: Tactical Combat Vietnam 1965-1966

Search & Destroy: Tactical Combat Vietnam 1965-1966 was a board tactical level wargame designed by John Young and released by Simulations Publications, Inc. , in 1975...

 (SPI, 1975) and Firefight (SPI, 1976)), but has a needlessly complex combat system, leadership rules that would be more appropriate for 18th century combat and ridiculously simplistic casualty rules. It also displays the typical American fascination with gadgets while ignoring war's social, political, and logistical aspects. The wargame industry has basically ignored the more accurate portrayal of company level combat in (Search & Destroy) for the more glamorous version portrayed in Squad Leader.

Expansion

Three expansions (called gamettes by the publisher) were produced, Cross of Iron (COI), Crescendo of Doom (COD) and GI: Anvil of Victory (GI).

Cross of Iron

Expanded the German and Russian orders of battle, including also Axis Minor infantry types. The original handful of vehicle and ordnance types in Squad Leader were expanded to include just about every type that saw service on the Eastern Front. Even before Squad Leader debuted, plans were being made to expand the initial release; these expansions would be called "gamettes" and concentrate on particular eras or theatres, all the while developing the basic game system with additional rules, new weapons types, and different terrain. Cross of Iron expanded the armor and artillery systems considerably. The "design for effect" philosophy that had guided Squad Leader's development gave way in the case of tank combat to "actual data" taking priority over "effect data." An initial intention to simply provide a few extras not contained in Squad Leader, such as SS troops, the Tiger tank, and the T-34/85, gave way in the face of requests by playtesters to what amounted to a complete order of battle for both nationalities for the entire war, including dozens of different models of SdKfz 250 and 251 halftracks and PzKpfw I through VI tanks. John Hill and Don Greenwood admitted afterwards that the project got away from them, Hill sensing that he was too easily persuaded by playtesters who probably had a higher threshold for complexity than average gamers, and Greenwood saying that had he known from the beginning that the gamette would end up so large, he would "have broken it into two expansion kits - it simply is too much for one."
Squad Leader is a tactical level board wargame

Board wargame

A board wargame is a wargame with a set playing surface or board, as opposed to being played on a computer, or in a more free-form playing area as in miniatures games. The hobby around this type of game got its start in 1954 with the publication of Tactics, and saw its greatest popularity in the...

 originally published by Avalon Hill

Avalon Hill

Avalon Hill was a game company that specialized in wargames and strategic board games. Its logo contained its initials "AH", and it was often referred to by this abbreviation. It also published the occasional miniature wargaming rules, role-playing game, and had a popular line of sports simulations...

 in 1977. It was designed by Hall of Fame game designer John Hill

John Hill (game designer)

John Hill is an American designer of military wargames, as well as rules for miniature wargaming such as Johnny Reb 3. He is a member of the Wargaming Hall of Fame....

 and focuses on infantry

Infantry

Infantrymen are soldiers who are specifically trained for the role of fighting on foot to engage the enemy face to face and have historically borne the brunt of the casualties of combat in wars. As the oldest branch of combat arms, they are the backbone of armies...

 combat in Europe during World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

. One of the most complex wargames of its time, Squad Leader was the natural extension of the trend towards greater realism (and hence complexity) initiated by several earlier games, including Avalon Hill's own PanzerBlitz

PanzerBlitz

PanzerBlitz is a tactical-scale board wargame of armoured combat set in the Eastern Front of the Second World War. The game is notable for being the first true board-based tactical-level, commercially available conflict simulation...

 and Panzer Leader

Panzer Leader (game)

Panzer Leader is the sequel to Avalon Hill's Panzerblitz game. Like its predecessor, it is a tactical platoon level hex and counter board wargame depicting WWII tank and infantry combat on the Western European front...

. Those two earlier games were slightly larger in scope, with counters

Counter (board wargames)

Boardgame counters are usually small cardboard squares moved around on the map of a wargame to represent armies, military units or individual military personnel. The first modern mass-market wargame, based on cardboard counters and hex-board maps, was Tactics, invented by Charles S. Roberts in 1952...

 representing platoons and map hexes measuring 250 metres across, compared to Squad Leader's 40 metre hexes and squad sized units.
The original Squad Leader was produced in time to debut at Origins '77. (The original print run of 2,500 copies had purple boxes which have become in and of themselves a prized collector's item.)

Gameplay

Pieces in Squad Leader represent regular squads (rated for firepower, range and morale), weapon and vehicle crews, elite squads (with high firepower and morale but shorter range - used to represent paratroops or combat engineers armed with sub-machine guns), individual leaders, support weapons, and vehicles.
The original game contained counters representing the German, Russian and American armies. Russian troops were portrayed as poorly armed (and with poor quality radios, making it very difficult for them to summon artillery support) and with relatively fewer leaders, but with the capacity to become "berserk" in combat (a capacity later shared by SS troops). US troops were shown as having unusually high firepower (representing larger squads, using the Browning Automatic Rifle - unlike other nationalities who have separate counters for light machine guns), but with slightly lower basic morale than German or Soviet troops, representing the supposed greater tendency of more individualistic Americans to break from their orders or the group under fire - however, American troops were easier to rally under fire, as they were exempt from the usual penalty ("Desperation Morale") paid by broken squads in these circumstances. British troops, when eventually added to the game system, were shown as largely similar to the Germans, albeit with somewhat inferior equipment.

The mapboards were divided into hexagonal grids with each hex said to represent 40 metres of terrain, the result of the designer being asked what the ground scale was, rolling a die and it coming up 'four'. In reality, European village streets are not 40 metres across, for example. Time was said to be two minutes per turn, though the developer admits that this is also fudged and that each game turn should be considered a "module of time, such that the (game's) events can occur and interact with one another." As well, by being geomorphic mapboard

Geomorphic mapboard

A geomorphic mapboard is a game board that can be configured in different ways and reused to create different playing surfaces. The concept was introduced in PanzerBlitz, though the number of configurations was low...

s, increased flexibility was given to scenario designers as well as "design your own" players.

The Semi-Simultaneous system of play developed in the mid-1970s can be seen in Squad Leaders sequence of play. Each turn consists of two player turns, each of which have 8 "phases": the Rally Phase (in which "broken" units attempt to rally and malfunctioning weapons are repaired), the Prep Fire Phase (in which the player whose turn it is may fire on enemy units; any units that Prep Fire cannot move or fire again for the rest of the player turn), the Movement Phase (in which the player may move his units on the board), the Defensive Fire Phase (in which the other player may fire on units that just moved), the Advancing Fire Phase (in which any units that moved may fire, at reduced strength), the Rout Phase (in which any "broken" units must flee for cover), the Advance Phase (in which the player whose turn it is may move every unit one hex), and the Close Combat phase (in which any units from opposite sides that start that phase in the same hex engage in close combat).

Actually, the name of the game is a misnomer, as in some ways the player assumes the role of a company commander (i.e. he gives orders to platoons and squads). The squad leaders in Squad Leader are actually "factored in" to the squad counters, and only exceptional leaders - officers and NCOs - are portrayed separately, by their own counter. Leaders can exert a favourable influence on the firing of support weapons, or the morale rolls of squads with whom they are stacked, although if a leader fails a morale check the squads stacked with him must check for morale a second time. Most scenarios give each player, generally speaking, enough simulated men to make up a company, though order of battle is not precise and most scenarios only give a flavor of what the real life battles were like rather than a direct simulation.

One aspect of the game that adds greatly to its popularity are the generic "geomorphic" mapboards, each of which can be aligned to any edge of the same length to any other mapboard (except river boards). This allows for an almost unlimited number of combinations to create any terrain situation, including player designed scenarios. Printed overlays, first introduced in GI: Anvil of Victory, also provided additional terrain types to mapboards. Line of Sight (LOS) was uniquely done by sighting between the dots in the centre of each hex. String would be used to check LOS, and the printed terrain depictions on the photo-realistic maps were used to determine blockages (hexes were not considered automatically filled by terrain therein).

The original game contained mapboards, mounted on heavy durable cardboard, which was expensive but a design feature long associated with Avalon Hill games. Each mapboard measured 10 columns of hexes high by 32 hexes wide, numbered from hex A1 in the top left corner to hex GG10 in the lower right.


Scenarios: 1-12

The design philosophy that John Hill brought to Squad Leader was "design for effect." He hypothesized that no matter what kind of fire you might bring on a squad of infantry, be it a flame weapon, a grenade, a machine gun, or an artillery shell, there could only be three outcomes; the squad would be eliminated by killing/wounding the men in it; the squad would be "discomfited" to some degree (i.e. they must check for morale - if they fail they run for cover until rallied by a leader, and if they fail a second morale roll while "broken" the counter is removed as the men are assumed to have run away); or there would be no effect. Using this principle, he was able to employ a single table to create combat results of the various weapons systems used in the game. A similar principle is employed in dealing with support weapons - rolling a certain number might cause a weapon (eg. a machine gun) to be put out of action, after which a player must roll again each turn until the weapon is either restored to use or lost altogether; there is no need to determine whether the weapon was broken, jammed, or was simply reloading with fresh ammunition.

Squad Leader is a game system by design rather than just one game. The game itself came with 12 different scenarios

Squad Leader Scenarios

Squad Leader was a game system depicting tactical combat in the Second World War. The game, as well as the three follow on gamettes, was notable for its open-endedness, a trend in tactical board wargaming beginning from the late 1960s, and at least as early as far as Avalon Hill was concerned with...

, each one introducing more complicated rules in a system called Programmed Instruction. Each scenario card included historical information, victory conditions and play balancers for each side. However, Squad Leader also had a Design Your Own system where forces were selected by drawing playing cards from a standard 52 card deck and comparing the result to a table where different forces were described. There was also a point purchase system for "buying" opposing forces. New scenarios were published in Avalon Hill's gaming magazine, The General

The General Magazine

The General Magazine was first published in 1964, as a bi-monthly periodical devoted to supporting Avalon Hill's line of wargames, with articles on game tactics, history, and industry news...

, as well as additional scenario packs (the Rogue Scenarios, for example, see below). Third parties also produced scores of SL scenarios.

Strengths

Squad Leader attempted to simulate many types of battlefield phenomena not addressed before in a tactical board game, and enjoyed a cosmetic treatment unmatched then and afterwards. Some of these strengths include:

• The effects of leadership on morale is elegantly handled, with extraordinary leaders (only) having direct effects on the ability of men to move, shoot, and resist enemy attack.

• The rigid turn sequences of war games up to that point in time was dispensed with in favor of the unique eight-phase turns described above. Units could interact with enemy units during the other player's turn.

• The game, as explained by John Hill's Designer's Notes, encouraged players to learn and adopt basic infantry tactics - defenders were encouraged to site machine guns to dominate fields of fire, while attackers were encouraged to have some men give covering fire while others moved.

• Some support weapons could fire multiple times in a phase, and machineguns had the ability ("penetration") to inflict damage through a line of several adjacent hexes - two hexes for a light machine gun, and six or even eight for a heavy machine gun.

• The system was flexible and open-ended; the geomorphic boards could represent reasonably well many types of terrain, and the use of "Scenario Special Rules" expanded these possibilities even further. Victory conditions were also flexible and imaginative, not being confined to mere shootouts between opposing forces, scenarios could simulate all manners of military missions (especially in the follow-up modules), such as successfully escorting convoys (Scenario 15), parachute and glider assaults (Scenarios 33 and 46), the deliberate assault on prepared positions (Scenario 9), the ambush (Scenario 13), the meeting engagement (Scenario 20), the hasty attack/defence (Scenario 7), the passage of obstacles (Scenario 27), the withdrawal under fire (Scenario 40), and even such things as hostage situations (Scenario 26). In other words, missions that real life company commanders would have trained to perform.

• The quality of the physical components has rarely been equalled by other games; counters were functional, evocative, well designed (free of clutter), and attractive. Especially popular were the red "berserk" counters which added much flavor to the game; Cross of Iron added striking white-on-black counters to represent the Waffen SS. The mounted mapboards (both in Squad Leader and its offspring) were a hallmark of Avalon Hill, and continued right through to the introduction of the ASL Starter Kits by Multi-Man Publishing
  Multi-Man Publishing
  Multi-Man Publishing, LLC is a game company formed by baseball player Curt Schilling and his partners to keep the game series Advanced Squad Leader in print. MMP operates some of the former Avalon Hill games under license from Hasbro, Inc...
  
   in 2004 (which featured mapboards printed on inexpensive cardboard stock). The mapboards were also photo-realistic, with an attractive top down view that was also functional, with line of sight (LOS) drawn from hex centre to hex centre and blocked only by terrain depictions (often with accompanying shadows) on the artwork itself, not the entire hex as in other games.

Weaknesses

Some of the weaknesses that keep Squad Leader from being a true simulation

Simulation

Simulation is the imitation of some real thing available, state of affairs, or process. The act of simulating something generally entails representing certain key characteristics or behaviours of a selected physical or abstract system....

 of the decisions that a World War Two commander would make are well known and attempts were made to address them; others were simply ignored for the sake of "playability". Some of these include the following:

• Despite some rules for "concealment" and "hidden initial placement", most of the game is played where each player can always see what forces the enemy has and precisely where they are placed, even if out of LOS of his own units. There is little "fog of war." Attempts to redress this - some have suggested using multiple copies of the game and a third party to act as "umpire" - are cumbersome and in some cases book-keeping intensive.
• Play is not simultaneous but done in predictable turn sequence, one player getting a turn, and then the other. An attempt to redress this was the use of "track" counters introduced in the first section of the rulebook, and the optional rule of "semi-simultaneous movement and defensive fire" which later became standardized in Advanced Squad Leader
  Advanced Squad Leader
  Advanced Squad Leader is a tactical-level board wargame, originally marketed by Avalon Hill Games, that simulates actions of approximately company or battalion size in World War II. It is a detailed game system for two or more players . Components include the ASL Rulebook and various games called...
  
  .

• There are no partial casualties to either men or vehicles. Squads are considered to be at full strength until destroyed, and vehicles suffer no damage aside from weapons malfunctions or immobilizations; partial penetrations, panicked crews, and other battlefield phenomena are not directly depicted in Squad Leader. (However, the concept of the "half squad" was introduced in Crescendo of Doom, though not as a battlefield result, and further developed with the introduction of special half squad counters in GI: Anvil of Victory).

Nick Stasnopolis, writing in Fire & Movement Magazine (Number 73, May/June 1991) made the following comparison:

Few tactical games during this period (mid 1970s) are comparable to Squad Leader,...which is quite popular and is of a similar scale (to Search & Destroy

Search & Destroy: Tactical Combat Vietnam 1965-1966

Search & Destroy: Tactical Combat Vietnam 1965-1966 was a board tactical level wargame designed by John Young and released by Simulations Publications, Inc. , in 1975...

 (SPI, 1975) and Firefight (SPI, 1976)), but has a needlessly complex combat system, leadership rules that would be more appropriate for 18th century combat and ridiculously simplistic casualty rules. It also displays the typical American fascination with gadgets while ignoring war's social, political, and logistical aspects. The wargame industry has basically ignored the more accurate portrayal of company level combat in (Search & Destroy) for the more glamorous version portrayed in Squad Leader.

Expansion

Three expansions (called gamettes by the publisher) were produced, Cross of Iron (COI), Crescendo of Doom (COD) and GI: Anvil of Victory (GI).

Cross of Iron

Expanded the German and Russian orders of battle, including also Axis Minor infantry types. The original handful of vehicle and ordnance types in Squad Leader were expanded to include just about every type that saw service on the Eastern Front. Even before Squad Leader debuted, plans were being made to expand the initial release; these expansions would be called "gamettes" and concentrate on particular eras or theatres, all the while developing the basic game system with additional rules, new weapons types, and different terrain. Cross of Iron expanded the armor and artillery systems considerably. The "design for effect" philosophy that had guided Squad Leader's development gave way in the case of tank combat to "actual data" taking priority over "effect data." An initial intention to simply provide a few extras not contained in Squad Leader, such as SS troops, the Tiger tank, and the T-34/85, gave way in the face of requests by playtesters to what amounted to a complete order of battle for both nationalities for the entire war, including dozens of different models of SdKfz 250 and 251 halftracks and PzKpfw I through VI tanks. John Hill and Don Greenwood admitted afterwards that the project got away from them, Hill sensing that he was too easily persuaded by playtesters who probably had a higher threshold for complexity than average gamers, and Greenwood saying that had he known from the beginning that the gamette would end up so large, he would "have broken it into two expansion kits - it simply is too much for one."


Squad Leader is a tactical level board wargame

Board wargame

A board wargame is a wargame with a set playing surface or board, as opposed to being played on a computer, or in a more free-form playing area as in miniatures games. The hobby around this type of game got its start in 1954 with the publication of Tactics, and saw its greatest popularity in the...

 originally published by Avalon Hill

Avalon Hill

Avalon Hill was a game company that specialized in wargames and strategic board games. Its logo contained its initials "AH", and it was often referred to by this abbreviation. It also published the occasional miniature wargaming rules, role-playing game, and had a popular line of sports simulations...

 in 1977. It was designed by Hall of Fame game designer John Hill

John Hill (game designer)

John Hill is an American designer of military wargames, as well as rules for miniature wargaming such as Johnny Reb 3. He is a member of the Wargaming Hall of Fame....

 and focuses on infantry

Infantry

Infantrymen are soldiers who are specifically trained for the role of fighting on foot to engage the enemy face to face and have historically borne the brunt of the casualties of combat in wars. As the oldest branch of combat arms, they are the backbone of armies...

 combat in Europe during World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

. One of the most complex wargames of its time, Squad Leader was the natural extension of the trend towards greater realism (and hence complexity) initiated by several earlier games, including Avalon Hill's own PanzerBlitz

PanzerBlitz

PanzerBlitz is a tactical-scale board wargame of armoured combat set in the Eastern Front of the Second World War. The game is notable for being the first true board-based tactical-level, commercially available conflict simulation...

 and Panzer Leader

Panzer Leader (game)

Panzer Leader is the sequel to Avalon Hill's Panzerblitz game. Like its predecessor, it is a tactical platoon level hex and counter board wargame depicting WWII tank and infantry combat on the Western European front...

. Those two earlier games were slightly larger in scope, with counters

Counter (board wargames)

Boardgame counters are usually small cardboard squares moved around on the map of a wargame to represent armies, military units or individual military personnel. The first modern mass-market wargame, based on cardboard counters and hex-board maps, was Tactics, invented by Charles S. Roberts in 1952...

 representing platoons and map hexes measuring 250 metres across, compared to Squad Leader's 40 metre hexes and squad sized units.
The original Squad Leader was produced in time to debut at Origins '77. (The original print run of 2,500 copies had purple boxes which have become in and of themselves a prized collector's item.)

Gameplay

Pieces in Squad Leader represent regular squads (rated for firepower, range and morale), weapon and vehicle crews, elite squads (with high firepower and morale but shorter range - used to represent paratroops or combat engineers armed with sub-machine guns), individual leaders, support weapons, and vehicles.
The original game contained counters representing the German, Russian and American armies. Russian troops were portrayed as poorly armed (and with poor quality radios, making it very difficult for them to summon artillery support) and with relatively fewer leaders, but with the capacity to become "berserk" in combat (a capacity later shared by SS troops). US troops were shown as having unusually high firepower (representing larger squads, using the Browning Automatic Rifle - unlike other nationalities who have separate counters for light machine guns), but with slightly lower basic morale than German or Soviet troops, representing the supposed greater tendency of more individualistic Americans to break from their orders or the group under fire - however, American troops were easier to rally under fire, as they were exempt from the usual penalty ("Desperation Morale") paid by broken squads in these circumstances. British troops, when eventually added to the game system, were shown as largely similar to the Germans, albeit with somewhat inferior equipment.

The mapboards were divided into hexagonal grids with each hex said to represent 40 metres of terrain, the result of the designer being asked what the ground scale was, rolling a die and it coming up 'four'. In reality, European village streets are not 40 metres across, for example. Time was said to be two minutes per turn, though the developer admits that this is also fudged and that each game turn should be considered a "module of time, such that the (game's) events can occur and interact with one another." As well, by being geomorphic mapboard

Geomorphic mapboard

A geomorphic mapboard is a game board that can be configured in different ways and reused to create different playing surfaces. The concept was introduced in PanzerBlitz, though the number of configurations was low...

s, increased flexibility was given to scenario designers as well as "design your own" players.

The Semi-Simultaneous system of play developed in the mid-1970s can be seen in Squad Leaders sequence of play. Each turn consists of two player turns, each of which have 8 "phases": the Rally Phase (in which "broken" units attempt to rally and malfunctioning weapons are repaired), the Prep Fire Phase (in which the player whose turn it is may fire on enemy units; any units that Prep Fire cannot move or fire again for the rest of the player turn), the Movement Phase (in which the player may move his units on the board), the Defensive Fire Phase (in which the other player may fire on units that just moved), the Advancing Fire Phase (in which any units that moved may fire, at reduced strength), the Rout Phase (in which any "broken" units must flee for cover), the Advance Phase (in which the player whose turn it is may move every unit one hex), and the Close Combat phase (in which any units from opposite sides that start that phase in the same hex engage in close combat).

Actually, the name of the game is a misnomer, as in some ways the player assumes the role of a company commander (i.e. he gives orders to platoons and squads). The squad leaders in Squad Leader are actually "factored in" to the squad counters, and only exceptional leaders - officers and NCOs - are portrayed separately, by their own counter. Leaders can exert a favourable influence on the firing of support weapons, or the morale rolls of squads with whom they are stacked, although if a leader fails a morale check the squads stacked with him must check for morale a second time. Most scenarios give each player, generally speaking, enough simulated men to make up a company, though order of battle is not precise and most scenarios only give a flavor of what the real life battles were like rather than a direct simulation.

One aspect of the game that adds greatly to its popularity are the generic "geomorphic" mapboards, each of which can be aligned to any edge of the same length to any other mapboard (except river boards). This allows for an almost unlimited number of combinations to create any terrain situation, including player designed scenarios. Printed overlays, first introduced in GI: Anvil of Victory, also provided additional terrain types to mapboards. Line of Sight (LOS) was uniquely done by sighting between the dots in the centre of each hex. String would be used to check LOS, and the printed terrain depictions on the photo-realistic maps were used to determine blockages (hexes were not considered automatically filled by terrain therein).

The original game contained mapboards, mounted on heavy durable cardboard, which was expensive but a design feature long associated with Avalon Hill games. Each mapboard measured 10 columns of hexes high by 32 hexes wide, numbered from hex A1 in the top left corner to hex GG10 in the lower right.


Scenarios: 1-12

The design philosophy that John Hill brought to Squad Leader was "design for effect." He hypothesized that no matter what kind of fire you might bring on a squad of infantry, be it a flame weapon, a grenade, a machine gun, or an artillery shell, there could only be three outcomes; the squad would be eliminated by killing/wounding the men in it; the squad would be "discomfited" to some degree (i.e. they must check for morale - if they fail they run for cover until rallied by a leader, and if they fail a second morale roll while "broken" the counter is removed as the men are assumed to have run away); or there would be no effect. Using this principle, he was able to employ a single table to create combat results of the various weapons systems used in the game. A similar principle is employed in dealing with support weapons - rolling a certain number might cause a weapon (eg. a machine gun) to be put out of action, after which a player must roll again each turn until the weapon is either restored to use or lost altogether; there is no need to determine whether the weapon was broken, jammed, or was simply reloading with fresh ammunition.

Squad Leader is a game system by design rather than just one game. The game itself came with 12 different scenarios

Squad Leader Scenarios

Squad Leader was a game system depicting tactical combat in the Second World War. The game, as well as the three follow on gamettes, was notable for its open-endedness, a trend in tactical board wargaming beginning from the late 1960s, and at least as early as far as Avalon Hill was concerned with...

, each one introducing more complicated rules in a system called Programmed Instruction. Each scenario card included historical information, victory conditions and play balancers for each side. However, Squad Leader also had a Design Your Own system where forces were selected by drawing playing cards from a standard 52 card deck and comparing the result to a table where different forces were described. There was also a point purchase system for "buying" opposing forces. New scenarios were published in Avalon Hill's gaming magazine, The General

The General Magazine

The General Magazine was first published in 1964, as a bi-monthly periodical devoted to supporting Avalon Hill's line of wargames, with articles on game tactics, history, and industry news...

, as well as additional scenario packs (the Rogue Scenarios, for example, see below). Third parties also produced scores of SL scenarios.

Strengths

Squad Leader attempted to simulate many types of battlefield phenomena not addressed before in a tactical board game, and enjoyed a cosmetic treatment unmatched then and afterwards. Some of these strengths include:

• The effects of leadership on morale is elegantly handled, with extraordinary leaders (only) having direct effects on the ability of men to move, shoot, and resist enemy attack.

• The rigid turn sequences of war games up to that point in time was dispensed with in favor of the unique eight-phase turns described above. Units could interact with enemy units during the other player's turn.

• The game, as explained by John Hill's Designer's Notes, encouraged players to learn and adopt basic infantry tactics - defenders were encouraged to site machine guns to dominate fields of fire, while attackers were encouraged to have some men give covering fire while others moved.

• Some support weapons could fire multiple times in a phase, and machineguns had the ability ("penetration") to inflict damage through a line of several adjacent hexes - two hexes for a light machine gun, and six or even eight for a heavy machine gun.

• The system was flexible and open-ended; the geomorphic boards could represent reasonably well many types of terrain, and the use of "Scenario Special Rules" expanded these possibilities even further. Victory conditions were also flexible and imaginative, not being confined to mere shootouts between opposing forces, scenarios could simulate all manners of military missions (especially in the follow-up modules), such as successfully escorting convoys (Scenario 15), parachute and glider assaults (Scenarios 33 and 46), the deliberate assault on prepared positions (Scenario 9), the ambush (Scenario 13), the meeting engagement (Scenario 20), the hasty attack/defence (Scenario 7), the passage of obstacles (Scenario 27), the withdrawal under fire (Scenario 40), and even such things as hostage situations (Scenario 26). In other words, missions that real life company commanders would have trained to perform.

• The quality of the physical components has rarely been equalled by other games; counters were functional, evocative, well designed (free of clutter), and attractive. Especially popular were the red "berserk" counters which added much flavor to the game; Cross of Iron added striking white-on-black counters to represent the Waffen SS. The mounted mapboards (both in Squad Leader and its offspring) were a hallmark of Avalon Hill, and continued right through to the introduction of the ASL Starter Kits by Multi-Man Publishing
  Multi-Man Publishing
  Multi-Man Publishing, LLC is a game company formed by baseball player Curt Schilling and his partners to keep the game series Advanced Squad Leader in print. MMP operates some of the former Avalon Hill games under license from Hasbro, Inc...
  
   in 2004 (which featured mapboards printed on inexpensive cardboard stock). The mapboards were also photo-realistic, with an attractive top down view that was also functional, with line of sight (LOS) drawn from hex centre to hex centre and blocked only by terrain depictions (often with accompanying shadows) on the artwork itself, not the entire hex as in other games.

Weaknesses

Some of the weaknesses that keep Squad Leader from being a true simulation

Simulation

Simulation is the imitation of some real thing available, state of affairs, or process. The act of simulating something generally entails representing certain key characteristics or behaviours of a selected physical or abstract system....

 of the decisions that a World War Two commander would make are well known and attempts were made to address them; others were simply ignored for the sake of "playability". Some of these include the following:

• Despite some rules for "concealment" and "hidden initial placement", most of the game is played where each player can always see what forces the enemy has and precisely where they are placed, even if out of LOS of his own units. There is little "fog of war." Attempts to redress this - some have suggested using multiple copies of the game and a third party to act as "umpire" - are cumbersome and in some cases book-keeping intensive.
• Play is not simultaneous but done in predictable turn sequence, one player getting a turn, and then the other. An attempt to redress this was the use of "track" counters introduced in the first section of the rulebook, and the optional rule of "semi-simultaneous movement and defensive fire" which later became standardized in Advanced Squad Leader
  Advanced Squad Leader
  Advanced Squad Leader is a tactical-level board wargame, originally marketed by Avalon Hill Games, that simulates actions of approximately company or battalion size in World War II. It is a detailed game system for two or more players . Components include the ASL Rulebook and various games called...
  
  .

• There are no partial casualties to either men or vehicles. Squads are considered to be at full strength until destroyed, and vehicles suffer no damage aside from weapons malfunctions or immobilizations; partial penetrations, panicked crews, and other battlefield phenomena are not directly depicted in Squad Leader. (However, the concept of the "half squad" was introduced in Crescendo of Doom, though not as a battlefield result, and further developed with the introduction of special half squad counters in GI: Anvil of Victory).

Nick Stasnopolis, writing in Fire & Movement Magazine (Number 73, May/June 1991) made the following comparison:

Few tactical games during this period (mid 1970s) are comparable to Squad Leader,...which is quite popular and is of a similar scale (to Search & Destroy

Search & Destroy: Tactical Combat Vietnam 1965-1966

Search & Destroy: Tactical Combat Vietnam 1965-1966 was a board tactical level wargame designed by John Young and released by Simulations Publications, Inc. , in 1975...

 (SPI, 1975) and Firefight (SPI, 1976)), but has a needlessly complex combat system, leadership rules that would be more appropriate for 18th century combat and ridiculously simplistic casualty rules. It also displays the typical American fascination with gadgets while ignoring war's social, political, and logistical aspects. The wargame industry has basically ignored the more accurate portrayal of company level combat in (Search & Destroy) for the more glamorous version portrayed in Squad Leader.

Expansion

Three expansions (called gamettes by the publisher) were produced, Cross of Iron (COI), Crescendo of Doom (COD) and GI: Anvil of Victory (GI).

Cross of Iron

Expanded the German and Russian orders of battle, including also Axis Minor infantry types. The original handful of vehicle and ordnance types in Squad Leader were expanded to include just about every type that saw service on the Eastern Front. Even before Squad Leader debuted, plans were being made to expand the initial release; these expansions would be called "gamettes" and concentrate on particular eras or theatres, all the while developing the basic game system with additional rules, new weapons types, and different terrain. Cross of Iron expanded the armor and artillery systems considerably. The "design for effect" philosophy that had guided Squad Leader's development gave way in the case of tank combat to "actual data" taking priority over "effect data." An initial intention to simply provide a few extras not contained in Squad Leader, such as SS troops, the Tiger tank, and the T-34/85, gave way in the face of requests by playtesters to what amounted to a complete order of battle for both nationalities for the entire war, including dozens of different models of SdKfz 250 and 251 halftracks and PzKpfw I through VI tanks. John Hill and Don Greenwood admitted afterwards that the project got away from them, Hill sensing that he was too easily persuaded by playtesters who probably had a higher threshold for complexity than average gamers, and Greenwood saying that had he known from the beginning that the gamette would end up so large, he would "have broken it into two expansion kits - it simply is too much for one."