10 Facts About Squad Leader

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

One of the most complex war games of its time, Squad Leader is the natural extension of the trend towards greater realism initiated by several earlier games, including Avalon Hill's own PanzerBlitz and Panzer Leader.

Pieces in Squad Leader represent regular squads, weapon and vehicle crews, elite squads, individual leaders, support weapons, and vehicles.

Squad Leader is a game system by design rather than just one game.

However, Squad Leader has a "design your own" system where forces are selected by drawing playing cards from a standard 52 card deck and comparing the result to a table where different forces were described.

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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 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".

The original handful of vehicle and ordnance types in Squad Leader are expanded to include just about every type that saw service on the Eastern Front.

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.

However, the original Squad Leader went out of print after Hasbro purchased Avalon Hill.