Some of the weaknesses that keep Squad Leader from being a true simulation of the decisions that a World War Two commander would make are well known and attempts were made to address them; others were simply ignored for the sake of "playability". Some of these include the following:

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. Some fans were much taken aback by the need to replace the four modules they had spent so much money on; only the mapboards of the earlier series would be compatible (indeed, necessary) to play the new games. Squad Leader alone had 520 1/2-inch counters and 192 5/8-inch counters rendered obsolete by the new system (in fact, many had already been made obsolete by the time GI was introduced). GI: Anvil of Victory had 1568 counters all of which were rendered useless by anyone wishing to continue on with the Advanced version. Greenwood's predictions on future gamettes were also inaccurate given the need to redo every counter in the system from scratch; twelve "core" modules would be needed to introduce the wide range of nationalities. The historical gamettes (called "modules" now) did evolve as predicted. The new game was also a minimum purchase of two components, the Advanced Squad Leader Rulebook, and an initial module, either Beyond Valor, which contained a brand new counter mix for the German, Russian and Finnish armies, as well as all necessary system counters, or else Paratrooper, which contained a limited counter mix for system markers, US paratrooper units and their German opponents in Normandy. Either initial module also required ownership of boards from SL in order to play the included scenarios. Future modules also made use of mapboards previously released only with SL. The new game did not feature Programmed Instruction, requiring a thorough reading of at least four chapters of the ASL Rulebook in order to play a game with ordnance and/or vehicles in it. Even the most basic ASL components were no longer introductory in nature, though Paratrooper, masqueraded as such. (This would be redressed in 2005 by the introduction of ASL Starter Kits). Avalon Hill actually suggested that anyone wishing to play ASL also purchase the original Squad Leader and gain experience with that system first, and kept the original SL and three gamettes in print. The necessity of owning boards from these modules in order to play printed scenarios in the core modules of ASL may also have been a factor in this decision. So while ASL was intended to replace SL, there was a certain ambiguity for many years about the status of SL's replacement; the original game was still necessary as a stepping stone to learning ASL, and a source for needed mapboards.

Aside from regular features in the house organ of Avalon Hill, The General Magazine, AH also produced a series of magazines focused on ASL called ASL Annual beginning in 1989; these contained some original SL content also. When MMP took over publication of ASL components, they started to produce ASL Journal on an irregular basis. Both magazines were in the same format as The General, with no outside advertising, and full of articles, variants, and scenarios for all incarnations of ASL. SL-themed content seems to have disappeared from the MMP-produced ASL Journal. Other third party offerings have also declined in the years since the release of ASL. Scenarios: A1-A6

Squad Leader at BoardGameGeek`

1 ^  Squad Leader Rulebook, Designer's Notes (p. 32 in the Fourth Edition rules). 2 ^  Designer's Notes by John Hill, Fire and Movement #16, quoted in MacGowan, Ibid. 3 ^  Advanced Squad Leader: The Phenomenon, by James M. Collier, The Grenadier, Issue 34 (J. Tibbetts & Son, 1988). Collier's pique at the US representation in GI was voiced in a scathing critique of the GI: Anvil of Victory gamette published in The General Magazine, which is also quoted on this page. Collier had been one of the playtesters of that game and was unhappy with many of the eventual design decisions taken. Avalon Hill published several lengthy rebuttals in that issue (Vol. 20 No. 1) attempting to address Collier's concerns.

The mapboards were divided into hexagonal grids with each hex representing 40 metres of terrain. Time was said to be two minutes per turn, though the developer admits that this is fudged and that each game turn should be considered a "module of time, such that the (game's) events can occur and interact with one another."^[1] As well, by being geomorphic mapboards, increased flexibility was given to scenario designers as well as "design your own" players. The Semi-Simultaneous system of play developed in the mid-1970s can be seen in Squad Leader's sequence of play. Each turn consists of two player turns, each of which have 8 "phases": the Rally Phase (in which "broken" units attempt to rally and malfunctioning weapons are repaired), the Prep Fire Phase (in which the player whose turn it is may fire on enemy units; any units that Prep Fire cannot move or fire again for the rest of the player turn), the Movement Phase (in which the player may move his units on the board), the Defensive Fire Phase (in which the other player may fire on units that just moved), the Advancing Fire Phase (in which any units that moved may fire), the Rout Phase (in which any "broken" units must flee for cover), the Advance Phase (in which the player whose turn it is may move every unit one hex), and the Close Combat phase (in which any units from opposite sides that end the turn in the same hex engage in close combat). In actual fact, the name of the game is a misnomer, as in some ways the player assumes the role of a company commander (ie he gives orders to platoons and squads). The squad leaders in Squad Leader are actually "factored in" to the squad counters, and only exceptional leaders are portrayed separately, by their own counter. Most scenarios give each player, generally speaking, enough simulated men to make up a company, though order of battle is not precise and most scenarios only give a flavor of what the real life battles were like rather than a direct simulation. One aspect of the game that adds greatly to its popularity are the generic "geomorphic" mapboards, each of which can be aligned to any edge of the same length to any other mapboard (except river boards). This allows for an almost unlimited number of combinations to create any terrain situation, including player designed scenarios. Printed overlays, first introduced in GI: Anvil of Victory, also provided additional terrain types to mapboards. Line of Sight (LOS) was uniquely done by sighting between the dots in the centre of each hex. String would be used to check LOS, and the printed terrain depictions on the photo-realistic maps were used to determine blockages (hexes were not considered automatically filled by terrain therein). The original game contained mapboards, mounted on heavy durable cardboard, which was expensive but a design feature long associated with Avalon Hill games. Each mapboard measured 10 columns of hexes high by 32 hexes wide, numbered from hex A1 in the top left corner to hex GG10 in the lower right.

Squad Leader is a tactical level board wargame originally published by Avalon Hill in 1977. It was designed by Hall of Fame game designer John Hill and focuses on infantry combat in Europe during World War II. One of the most complex wargames of its time, Squad Leader was the natural extension of the trend towards greater realism (and hence complexity) initiated by several earlier games, including Avalon Hill's own PanzerBlitz and Panzer Leader. Those two earlier games were slightly larger in scope, with counters representing platoons and map hexes measuring 250 metres across, compared to Squad Leader's 40 metre hexes and squad sized units.

Scenarios: 1-12 The design philosophy that John Hill brought to Squad Leader was "design for effect." He rightly hypothesized that no matter what kind of fire you might bring on a squad of infantry, be it a flame weapon, a grenade, a machine gun, or an artillery shell, there could only be three outcomes; the squad would be eliminated by killing/wounding the men in it; the squad would be "discomfited" to some degree; or there would be no effect. Using this principle, he was able to employ a single table to create combat results of the various weapons systems used in the game. Squad Leader is a game system by design rather than just one game. The game itself came with 12 different scenarios, each one introducing more complicated rules in a system called Programmed Instruction. Each scenario card included historical information, victory conditions and play balancers for each side. However, Squad Leader also had a Design Your Own system where forces were selected by drawing playing cards from a standard 52 card deck and comparing the result to a table where different forces were described. There was also a point purchase system for "buying" opposing forces. New scenarios were published in Avalon Hill's gaming magazine, The General, as well as additional scenario packs (the Rogue Scenarios, for example, see below). Third parties also produced scores of SL scenarios.

The quality of the physical components has rarely been equalled by other games; counters were functional, evocative, well designed (free of clutter), and attractive. Especially popular were the red "berserk" counters which added much flavor to the game; Cross of Iron added striking white-on-black counters to represent the Waffen SS. The mounted mapboards (both in Squad Leader and its offspring) were a hallmark of Avalon Hill, and continued right through to the introduction of the ASL Starter Kits by Multi-Man Publishing in 2004 (which featured mapboards printed on inexpensive cardboard stock). The mapboards were also photo-realistic, with an attractive top down view that was also functional, with line of sight (LOS) drawn from hex centre to hex centre and blocked only by terrain depictions (often with accompanying shadows) on the artwork itself, not the entire hex as in other games.

Three expansions (called gamettes by the publisher) were produced, Cross of Iron (COI), Crescendo of Doom (COD) and GI: Anvil of Victory (GI).

Scenarios: 13-20 Also Series 100 was released in 1979 consisting of 10 additional scenarios for Cross of Iron, direct from Avalon Hill. Despite the additional complexity, armor buffs were pleased. Armor researcher Lorrin Bird described the impact that COI had on the wargaming community in Special Issue #2 of Campaign Magazine:

However, the original Squad Leader went out of in print after Hasbro purchased Avalon Hill. Nonetheless, there are still many aficionadoes of the original SL system, who prefer the simplicity of the earlier design to its much more complicated offspring. There are also projects similar to Virtual Advanced Squad Leader (VASL) for the original game system, which allow for live online play of Squad Leader in a virtual environment, like Virtual Squad Leader (VSQL) for the VASAL game engine. At least one programmer is working on an Artificial Intelligence (or AI) for the virtual version of SL. As home publishing software and hardware get more sophisticated, it is possible to produce high quality "unofficial" game components from scenario cards to custom sized mapboard to personalized leader counters.