Rise and Fall of Axis Nations

The Rise and Fall of the Axis Nations

How can we connect this pool of individual designers’ interest in history and Squad Leader to actual history? Seventy-five designers with unique interest in particular theaters, periods and politics seems almost a random assembly yet when taken as a whole it can provides a picture of what actually happened, crowdsourcing from the 1980s. There are only three reasonably accurate facts in a scenario: nationality, date and location. Lets define the symbol of Axis power as Germany’s Reichstag and Japan’s Imperial Palace. If success can be measured by distance then we can predict as the Axis powers rise then the distance will increase. Conversely as their power wanes then the distances will decrease. The following charts plot the distance between the scenario and the Reichstag or the Imperial Palace on a scatter chart. I have boxed certain battles to provide context and generally the wider the box the greater the duration of battle, the taller the box the greater the battlefield.

Scaling Squad Leader to actual World War II Battles

Squad Leader is on such a small scale that I lose sense of the magnitude of the battles of WWII. If you can imagine playing the first 47 scenarios of Squad Leader, just the scenarios that came with the game and gamettes, that would represent about 20,000 people, both allies and axis. Think about how long it would take you to play through each and every scenario and then assume every infantry counter of every scenario was a casualty (killed or wounded.) How many times would you have to play all 47 scenarios to scale up to the casualties in a particular battle?

“Hence to fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting.” -- Sun Tzu

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