Squad Leader is a tactical level board wargame originally published by Avalon Hill in 1977. It was designed by John Hill and simulates infantry combat in Europe during World War II. One of the most complex board wargames of its time, Squad Leader is the natural extension of the trend towards greater realism (and hence complexity) initiated by several earlier games, including Avalon Hill's own PanzerBlitz and Panzer Leader. Those two earlier games were slightly larger in scope, with counters representing platoons and map hexes measuring 250 metres across, compared to Squad Leader's 40 meter hexes and squad sized units.
The original Squad Leader was produced in time to debut at Origins 1977. (The original print run of 2,500 copies had purple boxes which have become collector's items.) Avalon Hill sold well in excess of 100,000 games of Squad Leader, making it one of the most successful war games ever made.Wargames Handbook: How to Play and Design Commercial and Professional Wargames, by James F. Dunnigan, iUniverse; 3 edition (January 3, 2000), p.198 Combined with the sales of Advanced Squad Leader, its sales totaled over 1 million copies by 1997.
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 contains counters representing the German, Russian and American armies. Russian troops are 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 shared in later expansions by SS troops). US troops are 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 base 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 are 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, are shown as largely similar to the Germans, albeit with somewhat inferior equipment.Squad Leader rules, scribd.com website.SQUAD LEADER ACADEMY RULE CONVENTIONS Sept 2017.Squad Leader (1977), at boardGameGeek website.Squad Leader Core Rules PDF, posted at scribd website.
The mapboards are 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 meters across, for example. Time was said to be two minutes per turn, though the developer admits that this is also inexact 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."Squad Leader Rulebook, Designer's Notes (p. 32 in the Fourth Edition rules).
The semi-simultaneous system of play developed in the mid-1970s can be seen in Squad Leader'''s sequence of play. Each turn consists of two player turns, each of which have eight "phases": Rally phase (in which "broken" units attempt to rally and malfunctioning weapons are repaired) 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's turn) Movement phase (in which the player may move their units on the board) Defensive fire phase (in which the other player may fire on units that just moved) Advancing fire phase (in which any units that moved may fire, at reduced strength) Rout phase (in which any "broken" units must flee for cover) 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)
The name of the game is actually a misnomer, as in most ways the player assumes the role of a company commander (i.e. 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 counters. Leaders can exert a favorable 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 the gamette GI: Anvil of Victory, enable additional terrain types to be added to mapboards.
Line of sight (LOS) is determined by sighting between the dots in the center of each hex. String can be used to check LOS, and the printed terrain depictions on the photo-realistic maps are used to determine blockages (hexes are not considered automatically filled by terrain therein). These LOS rules were innovative for board games when introduced in the 1970s.
The original game contains mapboards mounted on heavy durable cardboard, which was (and remains) expensive but a design feature long associated with Avalon Hill games. Each mapboard measures 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.
Board 1 Urban terrain Board 2Hill terrain Board 3Village terrain Board 4Rural terrainScenarios: 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 might be brought 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 or 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 (e.g. 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 comes with 12 different scenarios, each one introducing more complicated rules in a system called "programmed instruction". Each scenario card includes historical information, victory conditions and play balancers for each side. However, Squad Leader also has a "design your own" system where forces are selected by drawing playing cards from a standard 52 card deck and comparing the result to a table where different forces were described. There is also a point purchase system for "buying" opposing forces. New scenarios were published in Avalon Hill's gaming magazine, The General, as well as additional scenario packs (the rogue scenarios, for example, see below). Third parties also produced scores of SL scenarios.
StrengthsSquad 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 earlier war games was dispensed with in favor of the innovative eight-phase turns described above. Units can interact with enemy units during the other player's turn. The game, as explained by John Hill's designer's notes, encourages players to learn and adopt basic infantry tactics - defenders are encouraged to site machine guns to dominate fields of fire, while attackers are encouraged to have some men give covering fire while others moved. Some support weapons can fire multiple times in a phase, and machine guns have 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 is flexible and open-ended; the geomorphic boards can represent reasonably well many types of terrain, and the use of "scenario special rules" expand these possibilities even further. Victory conditions are 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, parachute and glider assaults, a deliberate assault on prepared positions, an ambush, a meeting engagement, a hasty attack/defence scenario, a passage of obstacles, a withdrawal under fire, and even such things as hostage situations. Missions that real life company commanders would have faced and performed. The quality of the physical components has rarely been equalled by other games; counters are functional, evocative, well designed (free of clutter), and attractive. Especially popular are the red "berserk" counters which add much flavor to the game; Cross of Iron adds striking white-on-black counters to represent the Waffen SS. The mounted mapboards (both in Squad Leader and its offspring) are a hallmark of Avalon Hill, and continued right through to the introduction of the ASL Starter Kits by Multi-Man Publishing in 2004 (which featured mapboards printed on inexpensive cardboard stock). The mapboards are also photo-realistic, with an attractive top down view that is also functional, with line of sight (LOS) drawn from hex center to hex center 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 of the decisions that a World War II commander would make are well known and attempts have been 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 their own units. There is little "fog of war." Attempts to address 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.