Learning Avalon Hill’s Squad Leader, Which I Put Off for 40 Years
It looks like the opening exchanges of building-to-building fire wobbled the German squads across the lane. Can I take these fuckers in a rush with the rugged elements of the 37th Guards?
Turns out I can, but they dart through an alert German MG team’s field of fire on the way. This was the cost of that little sprint:
First blood: I lost six squads in my first-ever charge. Gotta learn somehow.
While simultaneously exploring my seasonal affective disorder (amateur prognosis) and GMT’s Storm Above the Reich over the winter, I sang this jeremiad:
I was talking to dudes on BGG’s Squad Leader forum about the copy of the game that The Moms got me for Christmas in 1979. She knew I was into WWII history and war movies, because weren’t we all?
I was 10. I opened it, gawped at each bit of it, and put it away. Some of the dudes on the BGG forum mentioned a common denominator: “My big brother and his friends…” They got to learn it under the wing of some adolescents.
And I realize it doesn’t matter how cool these games are unless somebody is there with you, moored at the point of fascination and raised on the broth of brotherhood. And I stopped shopping a bunch of wargames I liked that YouTubers were talking about when I realized I wasn’t shopping for a game. I was shopping for a big brother I never had, or friends I had and don’t have anymore.
As it turns out, I did have a big bro to teach me. When I repeated this complaint on Discord to longtime friend of the show Noisy Andrew, he made this thrilling claim: He knows all the rules for Scenario 1 (The Guards Counterattack) by heart, notching a 100% accuracy rate when his last opponent looked up his rule citations. Now this was a lantern I could follow into this impenetrable cardboard Shangri-La.
We downloaded the Vassal tabletop emulator. He even did the heavy lifting of figuring out the software and Squad Leader module. We are now in our third week of successfully straddling the Perth-Starkville time zones for one-turn sessions and I’m having the time of my life.
And look at this glory: I now have occasion to set up my physical copy so I can retrace the rules Noisy keeps drilling me with in between our Discord turns. More on this welcome late chapter in my life as a board game player in Episode 94’s Game of the Week segment.
Ain’t she purty