AVALON HILL SQUAD LEADER PROFESSIONAL
AVALON HILL SQUAD LEADER TV

Starship Troopers was the only sci-fi board game I ever played, and only because I loved Robert HeinleinвЂ™s book of the same name.

AVALON HILL SQUAD LEADER TV

DidnвЂ™t hold my interest as long as some other games, but the mix of TV show reminiscence and game make it very memorable. This was a very tactical game given the openness of the terrain, and it was also very specific with a limited set of scenarios. Sheets were also used to track casualties of infantry platoons. The rules were simple and took into account how effective various weapons were against the armor of the tanks used by RommelвЂ™s Afrika Korps and the British Desert Rats (among others).

Any fortifications were represented by counters, such as trenches, barbed wire or bunkers. Of course, being a desert campaign, the game boards of Tobruk were pure orange. Even though the show only lasted a few years (and can still be seen in re-runs), the show was enough to fuel a young kidвЂ™s fascination with World War II. I was attracted to this game because, as a kid, I had watched the TV show Rat Patrol, which followed four Allied soldiers and their two machine-gun wielding jeeps during the North Africa campaign. The units represented single vehicles and platoons of infantry. What made Tobruk interesting was its focus on the North African campaign of World War II, recreating many of the infantry and tank battles featuring the German forces of Field Marshal Erwin Rommel and the British forces under General Bernard Montgomery, with guest appearances by the lousy armor of the Italian army. The game did enjoy some longevity, and in some tournaments (none of which I ever participated in) the cardboard counters were replaced with painted miniatures for a more authentic feel. Too many times I got entangled with another ship and was forced to board or defend, when I should have played it safe. The fun part was plotting your moves, and then waiting to see what position you were in at the end of movement to determine whether to fire your broadside guns or send a boarding party. The game was originally played with cardboard ship counters, with each ship having a sheet where the player kept track of crew, guns and ship damage. Based on naval warfare from the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the rules were a bit easier to comprehend than say Third Reich, but adding in such variables as wind speed, direction, and how many guns you could bring to bear for an effective attack made for a strategy game that was easy to grasp, if a bit difficult to master. This was my first вЂњnon-World WarвЂќ game and one that kept me intrigued for a few months.

AVALON HILL SQUAD LEADER PROFESSIONAL

Heaven forbid a bad die roll when you had 3-1 odds that took out much of your attacking force.Д®ven as I began to get involved in other Avalon Hill games, this one was always my вЂњgo-toвЂќ for large scale grand strategy.ДЄwards: Origins 1975, Best Professional Game of 1974. Another aspect of the game that was always interesting was trying to figure out all your attacks in such a way to get the best вЂњoddsвЂќ while taking out as many stacks of units as possible to gain the most number of hexes. Invariably, we always got bogged down in the summer offensives of 1943, but half the fun was trying new and different things, such as assaulting Malta or Gibraltar, doing a German amphibious landing in England or trying to take out Spain or Turkey. I ended up setting the game up far more times than we ever finished it. The game was massive in scope and an incredible time sink. Players would get resource points for every country they occupied and would be able to spend those resource points through declaring war on various countries, buying units, or declaring the start of an offensive if you wanted to attack the enemy. What made this game so special was being able play the entire expanse of the Eastern and Western front land war of World War II, complete with the possibility of paratroop drops, naval invasions, interdicting air battles.

The German player would take on the Italian role as an Axis cohort, as well as the minor Axis allies of Finland, Bulgaria, Rumania and Hungary. It gave players the opportunity to play as Germany, Great Britain, Russia, the United States, France or Italy, but in the end, my friends and I usually ended up playing just Great Britain, Germany and Russia, with the Great Britain player tackling the French until defeat, and bringing in the Americans when they rolled in in 1942. Of all the Avalon Hill games I played, this was the one that I invested the most time in.

Avalon hill squad leader