Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)Wow, this really old school!.Squad Leader was the most awesome board game and so detail-rich..like a sand-box simulation but portable. The game set the tone for what was needed to play war games on PCs. Squad Leader was the entry level game that opened to a whole series of Avalon Hill games that built upon this game as a system.SL is a dozen scenarios designed for WWII Eastern Front action. The opening scenario pits the Nazis against the Red Army in Stalingrad, with action centering around a tractor factory, played on the squad-single man level. There is the most awesome details to add to the action..charismatic leaders,demoralizing leaders, sewer movement, Russians that have the potential for going battle-crazy(berserkers),authentic machine gun characteristics ,elite veterans,green troops,tanks, flamethrowers you can even add weather or night characteristics..terrific! The BIG drawback to Avalon Hill games of that era is that when it's time for battle, there is this huge list of modifiers to the randomness of battle (done in the form of a dice roll).It takes forever to figure out all these modifiers before you roll and it's all done with a pencil and paper. Plus the rules are very,very,long, detailed and legalistic. So it makes for lots of rule 'discussions'. But keep in mind this was pre-PC and all these rules and modifiers were in effect computer-code for the nuts and bolts of game operation. At the time, while it was tedious to go thru these manipulations, it was none the less fascinating to think that the game designers could actually think about game mechanics in such detail,apply history to those mechanics, and then create a game that was FUN to play, if you had that sort of mentality.Like I said before, this is really 12 games in one and there are 4 or 5 more official games that are part of the Squad Leader series. These other games go on to cover WWII action in the West with the Allies vs the Germans. (If you can find any of these other games, it is highly interesting to see how the Americans are constructed-not quite Audi Murphy). If you really look around there was several 'unofficial' versions of Squad Leader that went into the Pacific and pitted US Marines and Japanese for some terrific island action. But AH eventually pinched those guys out for legal reasons. But they were very well thought out game mechanics and great historical game simulations. When PCs came into being,surprisingly SL never followed. The game system screamed for computer assistance.Amazingly to me, it just sort of got left behind. In 2011 there is Call OF Duty and those sorts of games that do an admirable and modern job. But if you have a interest in seeing the lengths that people would go to play Squad Leader..pick this up. It's a window into a time forgotten.
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Very detailed WWII military strategy board game. BIG 22" X 28" four section, full-color Geomorphic mapboard which can be arrange to make literally hundreds of different terrain configurations that can represent large cities, small vilages, wilderness or even the flat plains of the Ukraine. Squad leader is rated Tournament Level IV on AH Complexity scale.
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