Squad Leader is a tactical level board war game originally published by Avalon Hill in 1977.

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.

[3] [4] [5] [6] 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'.

Printed overlays, first introduced in the gamette GI: Anvil of Victory, enable additional terrain types to be added to mapboards.

The game itself comes with 12 different scenarios, each one introducing more complicated rules in a system called "programmed instruction".

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

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

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.)

In fact, GI: Anvil of Victory had already reached a point where most of the counters from the original Squad Leader game had been made obsolete, as German, British, French and American infantry counters were redone (with controversial "static" artwork depicting soldiers at rest rather than in action poses) with new information for smoke-making capability, and special weapons and morale characteristics (these characteristics would carry over to Advanced Squad Leader.)

Many third-party products were produced for Squad Leader, and it is probable that privately made scenarios number in the hundreds if not thousands.

The artwork published by WWW is poorly done on this offering, which was also printed on flimsy paper, in booklet style, rather than the separate card stock scenarios normally associated with Avalon Hill SL products.

Aside from regular features in the house organ of Avalon Hill, The General, AH also produced a series of magazines focused on Advanced Squad Leader called ASL Annual beginning in 1989; these contained some original SL content also.

James Collier, in a piece entitled "Glass Anvil: A Dissenting View of GI: Anvil of Victory", presented in Volume 20, Number 1 of The General, described the situation: By now it should be recognized that the Squad Leader series is virtually unique among WWII board games by being a game in evolution.

It was clear that the system had grown in ways never dreamed of in 1977; large amounts of "nutmail" arriving at Avalon Hill convinced the developers of the need to streamline the rules.

Originally this was anticipated as being a simple compilation of the rules in existence, possibly redoing the "To Hit/To Kill" system used to simulate armour protection and penetration in tank combat.

Greenwood also, in one of the replies to Collier in the Volume 20, Number 1 issue of The General, described this project as "...a rewritten, succinct and complete compilation of the entire game system in one rulebook."

In Volume 20, Number 1 of The General, he also anticipated "the Advanced SQUAD LEADER Rulebook will be a major publishing event greater than any of the previous gamette releases."

has been under design, I have been simultaneously making copious notes for the project which must ultimately follow it: THE ADVANCED SQUAD LEADER RULEBOOK.

The end result will be both a more comprehensive and a much shorter set of rules.However, the Advanced Squad Leader Rulebook became much more than just a simple rewrite of the rules, it in fact became a complete replacement of the games of the original SL series.

Some fans were much taken aback by the need to replace the four modules they had spent so much money on; only the mapboards of the earlier series would be compatible (indeed, necessary) to play the new games.

As home publishing software and hardware get more sophisticated, it is possible to produce high quality "unofficial" game components from scenario cards to custom sized mapboard to personalized leader counters.

While the play sequence (complicated as it is) is geared more to fun than to an accurate representation of a squad-level firefight, the game does give the players a remarkable feel for close-tactical combat."

Freeman gave this game an Overall Evaluation of "Very Good", concluding, "Although clearly intended only for advanced players, Squad Leader is not unplayably long and does reward the time spent learning the rules.

"[9] R. B. McArthur for Washingtonian in 1980 said that "It is incredible that anyone actually plays these monsters, but the use of programmed rules lets the player start Squad Leader, for instance, by reading seven pages and then working his way up.

Players possess almost omniscient knowledge of the battlefield, cardboard soldiers are all too eager to fight to the last man, key weapon systems and environmental effects are vastly oversimplified.

By exaggerating, oversimplifying, and abstracting, Hill provides a decent primer on World War II infantry tactics — the importance of covering fire and maneuver, the use of machine guns to prevent movement across open spaces, the key differences between German and Russian combatants, and so forth.