Is it still possible to find that game Squad Leader?
It looks pretty cool Today 03:55 PM
Yeah, it was a great game; it was designed for two players, but you could divide the forces to handle up to four players comfortably.
What I own (not for sale for all the $ in the world) is the originally game, what came to be called "Basic"
Squad Leader (though hardly "basic" at all; the rules for all 4 of the "basic" games ran 97 pages of single-spaced small print!!! But you would start with Squad Leader's initial twelve Scenarios, played gradually, with each new Scenario adding a few more of the rules, and then play Cross of Iron with it's Scenarios), and the three expansion games
Cross of Iron (Eastern Front (with the Rumanian Army included),
Crescendo of Doom (the Blitz and the British Army), and
G.I.: Anvil of Victory, which revised a lot of the rules, and had Scenarios about the Normandy Breakout and the advance into Germany.
They even published Scenarios in various gaming magazines of the 1980's, and in separate Scenarios booklets. The game's designers based these all on historical events, except one which portrayed an assault by Russian forces in the vincinity of the Fuhrer Bunker.
One of the innate ideas of the game, was that with the right strategy and with some luck, you could change the outcome of the historical events.
Here are most of the scenarios they published at this website; you'll need Adobe / Acrobat Reader to read them:
www.wargameacademy.org/sqla/scenarios/index.html
Maybe some of you guys who have the computer skills could make some maps based on the historical events described in these Scenarios for RO; don't give them the same name though.
Unfortunately, Basic Squad Leader is no longer sold at stores or manufactured.
The owners of Avalon Hill, Inc. sold their company for something like 6 million dollars to Hasbro, Inc., a giant toy and "game" corporation, and they have chosen to concentrate their efforts on another popular Avalon Hill designed game, Axis & Allies, a sort of Parker Brother's Risk or Monopoly game version of WWII. Basic SL has sat shelved for at least the last 12-15 years.
But there is an Advanced Squad Leader (ASL) game that is commercially available.
ASL is the next generation of the game that started in 1986; I've never played it or got into it; I sort of got a little tired of buying a new gaming module every year or so. I think the final basic game (G.I.) was like $45.00, which would be like $65.00 today.
ASL is availabe for sale, and is a small spin-off division of Hasbro. Since it is a small company, the game modules, except the initial one, are expensive and cost around $70.00-$80.00 (U.S) or more each!!
The initial ASL, to my understanding, was just an extensive revision of the 4 Basic Squad Leader games, bound as one book. It costs $80.00 U.S. + Shipping & Handling. I think they sell a starter game for $24.00, but this is more like 1/2 a game compared to the old Basic SL; and your going to need the full ASL Rulebook sometime if you're going to play ASL. The subsequent ASL Modules do have maps and counters, but I think the maps are just plastic paper, wheras in the original games they were printed on a cloth covered board. I believe they're also packed in a ziplock bag, whereas the old Basic games cames in an attractively designed box.
They've published about 16 ASL Game modules during the last 20 years. I remember seeing them, and they were always very expensive. I think some add the Afrika Korps and the Imperial Japanese forces.
Here's the site where you can order ASL:
www.multimanpublishing.com
SL is a very challenging game that takes a fair amount of time to learn. There are oodles of rules. It makes a very decent WWII simulation for a boardgame, and was the best WWII boardgame game ever on the market.
They are gaming societies that play the old Basic Squad Leader across the U.S. and around the world; there is one in Washington, D.C.
There's also now a computerized version of ASL Boardgame that is played online; you need to own ASL to play it. I don't know much about it.
www.vasl.org
Here's some of Virtual Squad Leader's Scenarios, if you'd like to see them.
www.aslscenarioarchive.com
There were dozens of other boardgames games that Avalon Hill published, now sadly all shelved. Panzer Blitz; Luftwaffe; Richthofen's War; 1914; Stalingrad; Midway, and other games based on the diffrent historical time periods. These games were more similar to some of today's RTS computer games, dealing with entire battalions and utilized railroad transport, and large countries.
Probably the most famous game Avalon Hill ever made was a game called Diplomacy; Secretary of State Henry Kissinger played this and visited the Avalon Hill offices once. I played it twice; it was more of a game that focused on negotiation than warfare simulation.
There were even other companies like Avalon Hill, though a lot of these also died out. Simulations Publications Inc. (or SPI) comes to mind. They had a great game called World War III and a WWI game called Tannenberg.
If you want the Basic SL Games, try maybe Ebay or Amazon.com; just hope none of the cardboard units (you don't need them all) or map boards are missing.
This is what Hasbro is currently working on: Skee-Ball (October 14, 2007, Detroit Free Press, 7F)!!! Do these people even play games???
