Another Point of Singularity

I like skirmish level tactical games. If I'm going to game World War 2 at all, it is usually at the company level downward, or the divisional level upward (and usually block games at that). Or a card game. I don't have any antipathy towards World War 2 games at other scales, I just find them overdone (with a few exceptions) and this years iteration of the same tired old battles.

Squad and man-to-man level battles are different. They certainly are not repetitive. However, with the decrease in scale usually comes an increase in complexity, often to the point where it kills the game for me.

I may be one of the few odd fans of the old "Basic" Squad Leader package from Avalon Hill, using the Revised Squad Leader rules with Cross of Iron expansions. I was one of the many that didn't welcome the armor rules being changed with every expansion, so I just use the rules from the first game (Squad Leader).

Like the many adherents of Basic Squad Leader, I eagerly bought everything with Advanced Squad Leader on it for many years (every module up to Croix du Guerre, except for the historicals). ASL didn't try to give you everything in one rulebook with SL's trademark programmatic instruction. Instead, you got it all in dribs and drabs, chapter by chapter as you shelled out for the latest module. Funny thing. I bought all that ASL stuff, and played it a few times with a local ASL fanatic (Joe Faraone), but only punched out a few counters from BEYOND VALOR, myself. Compare that to how many times I played the original... so much so, in fact, that I replaced my original boxed set twice. I wonder what phenomenon is in effect here? I'm a lot older, that's for certain, and I don't have as much time to devote to gaming. But there's also a dislike for the ASL system because of the way it got presented to me in the first place... I think.

I recently ebayed off most of my ASL collection, and I don't miss it. RIGHT on the heels of the release of the ASL Starter Kit, which might have changed my mind about the game if it had been published about 15 years ago.



I admit, I'm tempted to get the ASL SK and see what the hype is about (Joe Steadman surely pimps it up on his podcast frequently enough). But I'm even MORE tempted to dust off the basic set (what I call "Squad Leader Retro") and give it a try again, perhaps with Gary Graber's RETRO RULE SET, which a friend played with me and I like a lot.

We'll see what I have time for... sometimes something old is something good enough!