Squad Leader / Advanced Squad Leader / Up Front
Man to Man Combat in WWII
John Hill’s Squad Leader didn’t re-invent the wargame, just changed the scale. Instead of a chit being a tank or infantry unit or division or battalion, each chit represents a single man (or weapon) and the map might not be Europe or a battlefield, but just a small village.
Honestly, I can’t say much more than that … I’ve never played. But Squad Leader was a hit, selling over 100,000 copies (an astronomical number for a wargame). Apart from movement and firepower, Squad Leader incorporated leadership, morale, a flexible turn order and it’s design-for-effect structure encouraged (forced?) players to adhere to actual military tactics.1 It also used Avalon Hill’s “programmed instruction” where each scenario added a few rules, so that you could learn a bit, play a bit, learn a bit more.
But this meant that the rules were constantly evolving as multiple expansions “clarified” or entirely redid rules sections that had problems. This eventually led to a massive overhaul of the rules and … the entire system.
Advanced Squad Leader (with Don Greenwood listed as designer), was a complete revision of the rules … and just the rules. You actually needed to buy the pieces and scenarios separately in Beyond Valor. Grognards grumbled at having to rebuy everything (and some didn’t), but ‘ASL’ was a massive success, breaking one million in sales (combined) before the end of the century. Like ‘SFB,’ Advanced Squad Leader is a game system that provides hundreds of scenarios2, as well as building your own.
Apart from building a franchise, Squad Leader inspired another game worth mentioning.
Courtney Allen’s Up Front is billed as “The Squad Leader Card Game” and is the exception to my rule that “If ‘X’ is a game, ‘X: The card game’ is terrible.” Up Front is backgammon to ASL’s chess, solving one of the real problems of wargaming …. too much information. Just as in ASL, you know what units and weapons your opponent has, but you don’t know what they can do. If you charge forward your opponent may not have a fire card (or the right one) and you can do so safely. The “map” is abstracted … some cards are terrain if you move forward and get a chance to play the card, you’ve successfully made it. But perhaps your opponent will play a wire card and tangle you up before you can make it. You’ll be stuck for several unpleasant turns ….3
Up Front is by no means a simple game4, but is an elegant one (once you get the rules down5). Cards are action and reaction, and also the dice you use and the timer for the game … (so many times through the deck and time’s up!). Some cards are split and do one thing for an American army and a different thing (or nothing at all!) for the Germans.
Unlike SL/ASL — where another company picked up the rights after Avalon Hill was acquired by Hasbro — Up Front has been out of print for decades. Yet it is still played and is recognized as a great game — The fog of war inherent in a deck of cards provides an accurate ‘feel,’ no matter the rules. The Book “Hobby Games: The 100 Best” includes Up Front.
And the genre of small unit tactics is an ever popular field, particularly in modern first person shooters. Even before I personally heard of SL/ASL or Up Front I played Computer Ambush, which let you provide instructions to your squad6.
So while others may have gotten their first, I feel that the combined entry for these three games certainly belongs in the Top 100 Games of the 20th Century. But perhaps they deserve two (giving Up Front its own slot) or even three? On that point, I am less certain.
What do you think?
I’m summarizing Wikipedia, so if you disagree with the above please address all email to Jimmy Wales.
Across many products and magazines, see the wikipedia page.
In his designer notes Allen said the men he interviewed were often keenly aware and worried by the fact that they didn’t know the local terrain they were fighting in, .
A few years ago at a convention some friends came to thank me for writing an “Up Front for beginners” document that I had completely forgotten about.
I’d need to re-read that beginners document if I played again. Especially if the scenario had vehicles.
In a simple programming like language(!), which were then compiled and executed, and you’d see the results
*war game....how tf does my autocorrect go from war game to waytam....
I am def not much of a hardcore waytam fellow but I'd really love to give UpFront a try