Squad Leader Rules Pdf

[Latarsha Dorrance]

SquadLeader is a tactical level board war game originally published by Avalon Hill in 1977. It was designed by John Hill and simulates on infantry combat in Europe during World War II. One of the most complex war games 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 collectors' 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.[1] Combined with the sales of Advanced Squad Leader, its sales totaled over 1 million copies by 1997.[2]

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.

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."[3]

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.

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.

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:

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:

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 and Firefight), 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 war-game industry has basically ignored the more accurate portrayal of company level combat in (Search & Destroy) for the more glamorous version portrayed in Squad Leader.

This gamette provides expanded coverage to American forces, as well as US-manufactured equipment as used by the British in the last half of the war, as well as certain British equipment like the PIAT that was not included in COD. The rulebook for Crescendo of Doom suggested that this game would not be available before February 1981; Squad Leader fans still recall awaiting this next game, which was finally released in 1983.

The "gamette" was actually bigger than Squad Leader itself, with 856 more counters and five more mapboards, as well as three more scenarios than the original SL. As well, two sheets of terrain overlays were included in the box. The modelling of infantry was again increased in level of detail, with squads now able to "break to green", or be replaced by lower quality units when morale checks didn't measure up to their Experience Level Rating. Many players were upset that the ELR restrictions were almost always applied to American forces and not to other nationalities as a rule. (ASL would remedy this by applying the restriction to all forces of all nationalities). Point values for US forces were also omitted from the game, restricting DYO (Design Your Own) scenarios to non-American forces. Other restrictions on US troops not present in the earlier SL game also angered some players (the original SL had a rule whereby American troops were not subject to "Desperation Morale" penalties, for example, while GI dispensed with this.) And the Italian forces promised as early as autumn 1979 did not materialize (indeed, would not, until the Hollow Legions module for Advanced Squad Leader was released in 1989.)

Like (Crescendo of Doom) before it, GI brought mostly rules changes, including some rather drastic revisions of some of the most fundamental system mechanics. For example, in COD a provision was made to allow whole squads to be deployed into half-squads, but without providing special half-squad counters...GI brought a profusion of half-squad counters and also provided a mechanism where a squad could take half-squad casualties...

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