I began with Squad Leader then leap frogged all of the "gamette" confusion landing right on an ASL lilly pad. Why bother with all that intercession stuff when i can cut to the chase thought I.
That was then and since then i've decided to take a look back and learn first hand how the whole ASL thing came to pass figuring the best way to do this was with Cross of Iron, the first of the "gamettes". Now I'm not sure why four editions of this were printed but i was able to acquire the second edition for peanuts. Regarding the first edition, the story goes that back in the day, Origins was the big wargame convention and Avalon Hill was in a mad scramble to get COI finished in time. This happened well enough but at the expense of errors etc. There are some other well deserved quibbles regarding the counter colors and the fact that the single board that was issued with COI did not match up to any of the original Squad Leader boards and never would (imagine the anger!) Avalon Hill did include color/paper copies of the original SL map boards in COI (my copy still had these inside) but it seemed a moot point.
So lets take a look inside the box. The most interesting thing you will find in COI is the rule book. Here are SL 2nd edition changes, new arty and armor rules, some new terrain types, a section on SS units and some other less than exciting but still needed additions. One of the more interesting things was the coverage of snipers. Those of you familiar with ASL know well enough that snipers have more in common with ghosts than snipers but this wasn't always the case. In COI a sniper counter had 1-8-8 printed on it which represented a fire strength of one, range of 8 and morale of 8. There was also a drm in the upper right of the counter that could range from -1 to -4. Apparently these guys could fire at whatever they wanted which is probably why the original sniper rules were faded out. These guys were simply too accurate and thus too deadly. It seems a lot was left out when considering these guys and all that stuff was more than made up for in ASL not least of which was precluding a player from having so much control over a sniper. In COI snipers cold be moved and fired at will and I can I can see how the game became a turkey shoot of leaders. Yes, historically speaking snipers were often effective but there was a balance struck between time spent waiting for opportune targets among other things and actually eliminating an opportune target. Nonetheless, this at least for me is the interesting evolutionary path of what we now know as ASL.
Its also interesting to see wind direction counters in COI. Another almost laughable development was the gun and armor stats which consisted of a page to a page and a half each for the Germans and Russians. Compare this to the pages and pages of gun and armor stats for nearly every nationality that is included in ASL and it's like seeing a baby being spoon fed then seeing that same child all grown up and standing before the buffet at Golden Corral. My how things have changed, but its fascinating to see the development take place first hand in actual physical "gamettes" which as it turned out was ASL's kindergarten years. I'm actually kind of sorry i missed those days, but at least i'm able to return to them. Some of you might be well served to do the same if only because it effectively demonstrates one of the most (if not thee most) impressive developments in wargame history without which there might not have been what we now know as the inevitable end result, the Advanced Squad Leader system.
Jason
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