Advanced Squad Leader's Predecessors
From ASLWiki
Advanced Squad Leader was first released in 1985 as a reworking of the original Squad Leader game system, which debuted in 1977. The history of commercial board wargaming dates back further than that, to Tactics and Tactics II which were published in the late 1950s.
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Tactical Wargaming
While rules for miniatures have been in existence since at least the 1800s, and modern wargaming can be traced to Kriegsspiel, a form of staff exercise developed by Prussian officers in the 19th Century, the first tactical board wargame was produced in 1969 by Poultroun Press as an insert into Strategy & Tactics Magazine. The game, Tactical Game 3, was later reworked by Avalon Hill and released as PanzerBlitz in 1970. The game featured platoon-sized units and introduced many innovative concepts into the world of commercial board wargaming, including geomorphic mapboards (which in actuality are better described as "isomorphic") and individual scenario cards.
The first wargame to feature squads as the basic type of unit was Grunt, released in issue 26 of Strategy & Tactics in 1971. Other tactical games in other scales followed, such as Combat Command in issue 30 of S&T, a company-level game, and Soldiers by Simulations Publications Inc. (SPI) in 1972, also a company level game set in the First World War.
Other platoon-level games included Red Star/White Star, KampfPanzer, and Desert War, all by SPI in 1973-74. These were later replaced by Tank! and MechWar '77 which introduced new systems for movement and combat.
Avalon Hill in the meantime had released PanzerLeader in 1974, a Western Front version of PanzerBlitz, and Hal Hock's game Tobruk in 1976, a new design with squads and individual tanks modelled. The game's emphasis was on technical detail, and was much different from Squad Leader, a John Hill design published in 1977 that also shared the same scale.
Squad Leader
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.) Pieces in Squad Leader represented squads, weapon and vehicle crews, individual leaders, support weapons, and vehicles. The original game contained counters representing the German, Russian and American armies.
The mapboards were divided into hexagonal grids with each hex representing 40 metres of terrain. Time was said to be two minutes per turn, though the developer admitted in the rulebook that this is 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 mapboards, 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 in SPI titles can be seen in Squad Leader's 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), 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 end the turn in the same hex engage in close combat).
In actual fact, the name of the game was a misnomer, as in some ways the player assumes the role of a company commander (ie he gives orders to platoons and squads). The squad leaders in Squad Leader were actually "factored in" to the squad counters, and only exceptional leaders were portrayed separately, by their own counter. Most scenarios gave each player, generally speaking, enough simulated men to make up a company, though order of battle was 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 added greatly to its popularity were the generic "geomorphic" mapboards, each of which could be aligned to any edge of the same length to any other mapboard (except river boards which were added in follow-on modules, called "gamettes"). This allowed 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.
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; 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.
Squad Leader was a game system by design rather than just one game. The game itself came with 12 different scenarios, 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, as well as additional scenario packs (the Rogue Scenarios, for example). Third parties also produced additional SL scenarios.
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."
- Scenarios: 13-20
Also, Series 100 was released in 1979 consisting of 10 additional scenarios for Cross of Iron, direct from Avalon Hill.
Despite the additional complexity, armor buffs were pleased. Armor researcher Lorrin Bird described the impact that COI had on the wargaming community in Special Issue #2 of Campaign Magazine:
After wading through the infantry-oriented scenarios of Squad Leader, where the occasional rare appearance of one of the really bland and nondescript tank types was widely cherished,...Cross of Iron...has changed the value of the game system immensely. Now, instead of being a good infantry game, particularly with regard to support weapons and leadership effects, the system represents one of the best combined arms representations available from either a boardgame or miniatures approach.
In comparison with the SL system, the new game mechanics for tanks are both terribly involved and interesting, since the degree of tank trivia has both exceeded the infantry and approached a level that only Tractics has previously attempted in the field of miniature armor rules...(a)fter suffering through the rather simplistic armor rules of Squad Leader, the publication of Cross of Iron has not only made up for the inane simplicities of its parent game but has brought into the field of armor miniatures design a host of innovative and highly sophisticated concepts.
Crescendo of Doom
Provided blanket coverage to the Western Front of 1939-1941, including French and British infantry, vehicles and ordnance, as well as infantry for Finland and the "Allied Minors" including Belgium, Norway, Poland and the Netherlands. Like COI, a complete order of battle of British and French armor and ordnance was included, though American built vehicles in British service were not included (which was consistent with the pre-1942 timeframe of the gamette). Whereas COI had expanded the armor and artillery rules, COD gave new capabilities (or debilities) to the infantry, including such things as cowering and pinning, while introducing Scouts and rules for early war infantry facing off against tanks (COD felt that these troops should be at a disadvantage as far as morale went). Additionally, many new terrain types were introduced on the two new mapboards, including marsh, river, large bridges, and orchards, as well as no less than three kinds of boats to cross the river with.
Just as COD was finalizing its playtesting, plans were made for two further gamettes; the September-October 1979 issue of The General Magazine announced that GI: Anvil of Victory would include both American and Italian forces, and that a fifth and final gamette covering the Japanese would be released a year after that.
- Scenarios: 21-32
Lorrin Bird described the current state of the armor game after COD's release in an article printed in Special Issue #2 of Campaign Magazine:
While the original Squad Leader game was a work of art with regard to its fine balance of playability and detail...the gamettes are coming to represent the "masterpieces" of wargamedom due to the unbelievable trivia that is included. From radioless AFV's to the benefits/handicaps of having the commander exposed, the expanding Squad Leader system is investigating and providing rules for many features of WWII armored combat that were previously overlooked in other boardgames and even miniature systems...The end result of the amazing efforts being made to make the SL system as complete as possible is that one is presented with tanks which act pretty much like they did in real life...
GI: Anvil of Victory
This gamette provided 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 that with irony, for the game wasn't released until 1983. The "gamette" was actually bigger than Squad Leader, with 856 more counters and one more mapboard, 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.)
Nonetheless, the game system did go forward in many ways; according to James Collier in his history of Squad Leader printed in Issue 34 of The Grenadier:
Like (Crescendo of Doom) before it, G.I 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...G.I brought a profusion of half-squad counters and also provided a mechanism where a squad could take half-squad casualties... Some of these changes required a reissue of many of the original infantry counters with new parameters (and a distinctly less dynamic counter art). Many AFVs had to be retrofitted with new parameters, but without counters (the player had to remember which changes applied to which vehicle). Many of the parameters chosen for US components proved to be controversial. The outcome was that G.I. was a very disorganized game, difficult to play "correctly". Trying to synthesize all the many rules into a coherent whole was virtually impossible, a fact tacitly conceded by (Avalon Hill) in that the G.I. (rulebook) index was not cumulative and did non cross-reference with the previous rules manuals.
The end result was that German AFV counters did not represent some of the new changes, such as inferior turret armor, and German squad counters did not have accurate representations for such things as smoke making capability or other abilities introduced in G.I. As far as the game system had come, it was clear that much of the foundation on which it was resting had to be redone and/or reorganized. 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.)
