Has anyone ever played the board game called Squad Leader? The "Beer & Pretzel" game about WWII that allows cardboard warriors to fight and die at the roll of a die....
Yes, especially the die roll of the original version of the game that allowed a machine gun to clear a line of hexes . . .
I used to play Squad Leader and the later Cross of Iron. Interesting games, although they took a long time to play. The points system where each side could build their own army was pretty interesting.
Advanced Squad Leader is head and shoulders above Squad Leader...and any other WWII game. Check it out...especially the Armory Chapters
I played Squad Leader a looong time ago - back in high school I guess. I played ASL for quite a few years. It's a great gaming system and as good a tactical WW2 simulation as you're likely to find. My play died off once my gaming buddy and I had kids. Some of the historical scenarios (like Tarawa, the Peiper series, Red Barricades) would take an hour or more just to set up. We still play games, but usually turn-based computer games where we can e-mail turns to each other. If you really want to get into ASL you should find someone else who will play it with you. Or see if there's a nearby club. I think there are still a few ASL groups around. I've been trying to find computer games that come close to the ASL experience. Combat Mission still seems to be the best. I just wish someone would take the Combat Mission engine and re-engineer it with up-to-date graphics.
SL was definately NOT a "Beer & Pretzels" game. It was far too involved for that! As an old subsriber to the AH "General", modern computer games don't cut the grade when it comes to historicity. SL had percieved "realism" that was, admittedly, more to do with the designer's view of just how WW2 infantry combat was fought than anything else, but it was an EDUCATED view. John Hill, the designer, justified the many decisions he had to make in SL to many industry insiders of the day, with the so called "fudge" factor very prevelant in the design concept. Hill was interested in the overall "effect" that the differing nationalities approach to "The Problem" of small unit infantry tactics achieved. At 2.5 minutes per turn, things happened very fast in Hill's cardboard world, and his idea that the style of tactics was essentially based on German thinking between the wars was the cornerstone of the game itself. I even have a reprint of the original article by John in Vol 14 of "The General" where he speaks about just how different the German approach was to other nations and why it produced such impressive results leading to extensive "apeing" of their methods that spelt doom for Germany. If only computer game designers could craft something approaching the board game experience it might well trigger a new growth spurt in interest of military affairs that the current generation seem to have little interest in. Any game requiring as much thought as some of the games I used to play would be discarded by the present generation as "too complex", telling us more than we wish to know about the attention span of the present generation....anything not wrapped up in 45-50 minutes (the time it takes for most modern kids to get that "thousand yard stare" of boredom) is discarded. I despair of modern kids. The media has turned them into MEDIOCRITIES...
Sorry to hear your dislike of the game. Yes, it was a beer and pretzel game. I enjoyed drinking beer and eating pretzels and chips while playing the many scenarios in the game, as well as the DYO stuff we came up with.
