A Return to Squad Leader

One day a long, long, long time ago in a wee flat many miles away from Kingsleypark Manor, (Dundee's Hilltown to be exact) I should have been up to my ears with law books studying for my degree exams. But instead, I had been invited by Robert an on/off member of the Dundee University Wargames and Role Playing society to play a game that I had read about many times but had never yet seen in real life - "Squad Leader - The Game of Infantry Combat in WW2". 

Robert brought out of his cupboard the orange and black box, with the sinister looking SS officer on the cover and on opening the box there were dozens of plastic baggies filled with 100's of counters, a fairly meaty looking rule book and 4 geomorphic hex boards.

One of the real innovations of Squad Leader was the "programmed instructions" layout of the rulebook. You only needed to read a certain number of rules to play the first scenario and once you were familiar with those you would read the next rules section in order to play the second scenario and so on. 

The base game was subsequently expanded with the release of the Cross of Iron, Crescendo of Doom and G.I. Anvil of Victory modules and as it happened Robert had all those modules too.

No, this is not a picture of the inside of Robert's cupboard but a picture of the Squad Leader shelf in the Cabin.

So we set to it and played through the first few scenarios and being the impatient gamers that we were, we were soon jumping through the scenarios introducing tanks, flame-throwers, cavalry and even a scenario where German motor-cycle side car riders were trying to capture the Dutch Royal Family (scenario 26 "Assault on a Queen" from the Crescendo of Doom module, if you are interested). Needless to say, I didn't get any studying done that day and so I was hooked and set about getting my own copies (which as you can see above, I managed to do).

Problem was, after finishing Uni the availability of opponents dried up and so for a few years the boxes stayed in the bottom of my cupboard. A move back to Brechin (my original home town) and I did get some games in against my bro but even those games stopped after a while so it must be over 25 years since I last played. 

G.I. Anvil of Victory was the last of the Squad Leader modules to be released. The fabled Pacific War supplement never appeared (although The Wargamer magazine (issue 30) did publish "Blood & Sand" which provided maps and scenarios for some Pacific Battles). Instead, Avalon Hill released "Up Front - The Squad Leader Card Game", a game that I had, played once and sold it and the Banzai expansion module a few years back for much gold. 

And then Avalon Hill released "Advanced Squad Leader". ASL, as it's known, effectively ended any further Squad Leader modules being released and has gone to become a hugely popular, game though with very detailed, micro managed rules. It is now a game series which according to Boardgamegeek now has 428 expansions! I have played a couple of scenarios from the ASL Starter Kit 1 but I found the whole thing too intimidating to invest in.

No. 2 son, Roo (not his birth name but that's what he likes to call himself) had been looking at my games shelf during the holidays last year and was making noises about trying some of those "hex and counter" games. We managed to get a game of Arnhem played (my very first hex and counter game as told about here (which lead me to buy another copy of the game for Roo to keep for himself) but between one thing and another we didn't get another hex and counter game played. Until last week.....

Having looked at the Squad Leader rule book and being unencumbered with rehearsals and the like, Roo announced that he would really like to give the game a go. So it was, that we set up the pieces for the first scenario - "The Guards Counterattack".

The objective of the scenario was for the Soviets (Roo) to capture 2 or more of the stone buildings initially occupied by the Germans (me) OR have a favourable 3:1 ratio of unbroken squads at the end of the scenario, which was to last 5 turns.

Roo wasted no time in opening fire with the 3 stacks of squads situated in the building in the top left corner of the board -

Ouch!

Whilst primarily an "IGO-UGO" system there is opportunity for defensive fire to take place during the opponent's turn. It is also pretty devastating being caught out in the open so when Roo attempted to move Colonel Berki and his 3 squads into hex E5 with the intention of forcing the Germans to retreat out of that building he hadn't realised he was in the line of fire of the German stack located in the large stone building in the middle of the board and with admittedly a very good roll on my part, the inevitable happened -

The late Colonel Berki 

The German turn saw the broken squads rally and in their "Prep Fire" phase cause more casualties to the Soviets so that at the end of the first turn the board looked like this -

The red counter are Soviet Squads which have gone "Berserk" as a result of rolling a "2" when testing morale. This means that they ignore all further morale checks but have to move towards the nearest enemy unit to engage them in close combat.

The casualty count at the start of turn 2

The Soviets pushed on to try and take the German held building on the left hand side of the board. Moving in to an adjacent hex to enemy units is always risky even with the benefit of cover but it didn't help the German cause when this happened -

The dreaded "box cars" result meaning that the 2 light machine guns in Sergeant Kelso's stack suffered a breakdown - not helpful when facing a possible close combat

Scene at the end of Turn 2 -

Turn 3 saw the Soviets assault Sergeant Kelso's hex but the combat was inconclusive and saw the two sides locked in combat. In the defensive fire phase the Germans saw matters swing to their advantage when the 2 stacks in the bottom right of the board opened fire on the Soviet squads in the building before them -

"Snake Eyes!" A welcome sight when you are the firing player.

The close combat in Sergeant Kelso's hex saw the 2 sides annihilating each other (close combat is very bloody if the rolls come off) so at the end of turn 3 the board looked like this -

Sergeant Kelso has fallen but now the Germans have advanced and are occupying one of the Soviet buildings, not good news for the Soviets!

The Casualty tally at the end of German turn 3

As the name of the game implies, Squad Leaders are key. If a squad breaks as a result of a failed morale check then only a Squad Leader can bring them back. At the start of turn 4, the Soviets only had one squad leader left and with a number of broken squads on the board, Roo felt he had to get that leader, Lieutenant Dubovich, to help those squads but again having to move into the open had predictable results and Lieutenant Dubovich, fell in a hail of bullets. With no way of bringing their broken squads back, victory was slipping away from the Soviets.

End of German Turn 4. The Soviets are running out of unbroken squads although they did have some success in capturing a German Heavy Machine Gun.

Casualty list at the start of Turn 5

With no hope of being able to achieve the victory condition, Roo took some comfort in trying to inflict some more casualties on the Germans and another German squad was KIA'd but it was too little, too late.

The board at the end of the game.

The casualty list.

Combat in Squad Leader can be extremely brutal. Cover is key and you have to protect your squad leaders otherwise your force will be eroded away too quickly as your squads fail their morale tests and can't recover. That may be one of the weaknesses of the game in that so much depends on the squad leader. I don't know if the rules in the later modules do anything about that - we'll have to keep playing to find out!!