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Publications and Designers
The Avalon Hill Game Company (TAHGC) was the publisher of Squad Leader and it’s three gamettes and several scenario packages. The only ‘official’ third party was World Wide Wargamers which published two scenario packages under license from TAHGC. However other ‘unofficial’ third party publishers and independent enthusiasts supported the system with products, most commonly articles and scenarios. Notable was M.C.C’s fanzine On All Fronts which covered Squad Leader and later ASL and published from 1982 through 1997. A community of players contributed articles and over 130 scenarios to the fanzine.
TAHGC only published twelve Squad Leader scenarios, those in the original game. They published pads and magazine inserts for all the gamettes.
The Scenario Exchange Program (SEP) was managed by Brian Martuzas and twenty-eight scenarios were published in On All Fronts over the years. SEP was a program to which scenarios were submitted for play test, revision and eventual release to the public. The program was terminated for lack of time by Mr. Martuzas in a letter to OAF appearing in issue nineteen published June of 1984. As of February, 1984 SEP offered over forty-five scenarios although i believe the seventeen not published by OAF are lost, i have never seen them in my searches for scenarios.
Eighty-six people have designed scenarios with 32 scenario from unknown designers. TAHGC credits thirteen people for scenario design in the game, gamettes and scenario packages, however this is a blanket credit for the whole product and individual scenarios do not give credit to their designer(s). Therefore Don Greenwood is given credit on 57 scenarios although he probably did not work on all of them. Designers are categorized by “TAHGC” and “Independent” for comparability.
As mentioned previously, Bill Wilder brought the PTO to Squad Leader with “Blood and Sand” and “Gung-Ho!” and additional modern variants “Troubled Times #1” and “Troubled Times #2.” The PTO rules were published in The Wargamer issue 30 but the boards and scenario cards are very rare. I’m looking for these items to include in the database so please shoot me any information or a copy if you have them.
Anyone learning Squad Leader in the ‘90s probably used Alan Ygnve’s “Tactical Training Series” at some point. Alpha, Beta and Gamma introduced me to the tactics of fire and movement with programmed instructions and commentary in a way the confined streets of Stalingrad could not. In my opinion it remains the best tool for learning the Squad Leader system. The scenarios in this database have supplemental comments and discussion from Alan. See "Anthology" in the Scenario Archive for these special edition cards.
When you're comfortable with the tactics of the system then consider the Squad Leader Academy scenarios designed by Bill Thomson. These competitive scenarios make frequent appearances at tournaments and at WBC. This writer has played through most of them and finds them competent and challenging.
The following tables contain the publishers and scenario designers that contributed to the system over the years.
See bottom of page for the table of scenario designers.
Alpha and Omega
"Publication Timeline", the final chart of this category, is quite telling of the life of Squad Leader and it is also reflective of the Golden Age of wargaming. 389 (84%) of the 462 scenarios were published in twelve years between in 1977 and 1989. It took fifteen years to publish the remaining 73 Scenarios. The introduction of ASL as the successor to Squad Leader drew many resources away from the original system. I consider ASL a continuation of the Squad Leader system; one much need by the time GIA came out. As happened with each of the gamettes, TAHGC and third parties moved support and resources to the most current iteration of the system.
Also consider each subsequent gamette (and ASL) left players behind and realized less units sold than the gamette before it. This distillation of, for lack of a better word, the “weak” left a concentrated and loyal player base with ASL and it continues in production today with a strong community. However that doesn’t mean that people stopped playing Squad Leader. Despite TAHGC plans to discontinue production, Squad Leader was sold well into the 90’s. In fact it was still being ranked in The Avalon Hill General in the top ten as late as 1989 (V26i6), 12 years after its release and four years after ASL’s (ASL was first and SL was third.)
Squad Leader also mirrored the fortunes of the wargame industry. Greg Costikyan describes the height of wargaming in “A Farewell to Hexes” as hundreds of players waiting to enter the Dealer Room during Origins 1977 but only to become a rare sight by GenCon 1996. Perhaps the most telling is The Tactical Wargamer’s Magazine timeline with the date of first and last issue. Many of the magazines I associate with wargaming such as Moves, The Wargamer, Battleplan, Campaign are no longer publishing by 1990.
This timeline does not include ASL and i think that provides a more accurate representation of Wargaming as a whole. In many ways, ASL went in one direction and the wargaming market in another. ASL is complex, perhaps the most complex wargame and that makes it less approachable to your average gamer. The players went in the direction of eurogames and left the combat resolution tables behind. Comparatively Squad Leader was simple enough for the average player and thus more representative of the industry as a whole.
Scenario Designers
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