Tronsoft Games · Tactical Series
Squad Leader
How to play. Fifteen minutes of reading will save you an action.
1. How to begin
The title screen lists three actions. Each names the boards it is fought on, how many turns it lasts, and which side is attacking.
- Pick an action.
- Pick a command — German or Soviet. One of them is attacking; the other is holding. Both are worth playing.
- Pick the grade of the officer across the table: green, regular or veteran.
The game deploys both sides and hands you the first phase. If you have played before, a Resume button appears at the top of the title screen.
2. Controls
| Do this | To get this |
|---|---|
| Tap or click a hex | Pick up a body that has orders waiting. Tapping the same hex again cycles through the stack. |
| Tap an enemy hex | Lay the slip on it. This does not fire; it fills the form. |
| Tap another of your bodies | Add it to the volley, if an officer’s voice reaches them both. |
| Tap a shaded hex | Move there, in the movement phase. |
| Tap a neighbouring hex | Advance there, in the advance phase. |
| Drag | Pan the board. |
| Wheel, or + and − | Zoom. The square button fits the whole sheet. |
| Rest the pointer on a hex | A card: the ground, everything standing in it, and the range and line from the body under orders. |
| Press and hold | The same card, on a touch screen. The next touch dismisses it. |
| Escape | Close the card. |
| Put it down | Deselect. |
| Phase done | End the phase and hand over. |
Two options may be set in the address bar. #seed=1977 pins the shuffle, so an action can be replayed exactly; #fast=1 skips the pause the machine takes over its own orders.
3. Turn order
Each side takes a turn of eight phases, in this order:
| Phase | What happens |
|---|---|
| Rally | Broken and pinned bodies try to come back in hand. An officer in the hex, or within call, is the whole difference. |
| Preparatory fire | Bodies that have not moved may fire. Firing now gives up the movement phase for that body. |
| Movement | Move what you mean to move. |
| Defensive fire | The other side’s chance to shoot at men who are crossing. When it is the enemy’s turn, this phase is yours. |
| Assault fire | Bodies that moved a short way may fire, at half weight. |
| Rout | Broken bodies run, away from whatever broke them. The umpire works this; you do not order it. |
| Advance | One hex, into contact if you want it. |
| Close quarters | Anybody sharing a hex with the enemy fights it out. Also worked by the umpire. |
Phases in which you have nothing to do are passed over without asking you.
4. Movement
Every body has four movement points on foot; vehicles have more. Open ground costs one, woods and buildings cost more, walls and steep banks cost more again, and some ground is closed to tracks altogether. Rest on a hex to see what it costs.
Cover has to be got into
This is the rule that decides most actions. A body that has moved this turn takes only half the cover of the hex it is standing in, rounded down, and is always counted as caught crossing. Walking into a wood in front of a machine gun is not a way of becoming safe; it takes the rest of the turn to get down into it.
Two things follow. If you are attacking, cross in one bound and cross behind smoke. If you are holding, the defensive fire phase — the one that happens in the enemy’s turn — is when your fire is worth most.
5. Fire and the slip
Pick a body, then tap an enemy hex. The slip fills in, marked DRAFT. Nothing has happened yet.
The slip lists every weapon that contributed and at what weight — a rifle squad at long range counts for half, a machine gun reaches further than the rifles — and then every modifier by name. A modifier that helps you is shown in red and subtracts; one that helps them adds. Under the modifiers is a bar showing what the column actually pays: how often this shot does nothing, shakes them, breaks them, or takes men out.
When you are satisfied, press Fire. The dice are rolled, the slip is stamped with a serial number, and the verdict is written at the foot in plain English. Every slip either side fires is kept on the running sheet.
Firing as one command
Bodies in one hex always fire together. Bodies in different hexes may only fire as one command if an officer’s voice reaches them all. Pick the first body, then tap the others; the game will refuse the group if no officer holds it together. A big column is worth much more than two small ones, so this is most of what an officer is for.
6. Morale — the heart of it
Most fire does not kill anybody. It produces a morale check, and men who fail one are pinned (they may not move and fire badly) or broken.
A broken body is worth almost nothing. It cannot fire, it runs for the rear in the rout phase, it can be shot at while it crosses open ground, and if it is surrounded it surrenders. It also pays the enemy a share of its worth for every turn it stays broken. Two squads broken are worth more to the enemy than one squad killed.
Getting them up
In the rally phase, pick a broken body and press Get them up. Alone, they must find their own courage and usually do not. With an officer in the hex, they usually do. A bad enough failure and they scatter for good.
So an officer’s other job is to go and get them. He is also the easiest counter on the board to lose — alone in a hex he is an easy mark, and the men around him stop being a company when he goes.
7. Armour
Vehicles are resolved separately. Select one, tap an enemy vehicle, and choose the gun. What matters is:
- Facing. Front, side and rear plate are different numbers. Manoeuvre for the flank.
- Range. The punch falls off by one for every four hexes.
- What happens when it goes through. She may burn, or the crew may get out — and then they are a shaken crew counter in the hex, and the vehicle is worth only part of its value to you.
Small arms never open a closed vehicle. An open-topped one is another matter. Infantry can also kill a tank at one hex with a panzerfaust, a demolition charge or a flamethrower.
8. Smoke and indirect fire
A mortar or a vehicle with smoke may lay a screen. Lay it on the ground your men have to cross, not on the enemy — a screen blinds both sides equally, so smoke on the enemy protects him rather than you. A mortar may also engage what somebody else in the command can see, without seeing it itself.
9. Winning and losing
You are scored out of a thousand: six hundred for what you take out of the enemy, four hundred for the ground — half paid out over the course of the action, half at the close. A broken enemy pays you a share of his worth for as long as he stays broken.
Your score is read against par: what the ground and the odds ought to yield for a good officer holding your command, measured over dozens of machine-against-machine actions. In an assault the defender out-scores the attacker by design, so a verdict is only meaningful against par for the side you hold.
| Against par | Verdict |
|---|---|
| +120 or better | A model action |
| +55 | Better than the staff expected |
| −15 | About what the ground was worth |
| −80 | Short of what was asked |
| below that | A costly failure |
10. Saving and restarting
The game saves itself to browser storage at the start of every phase you are given. Menu saves and returns to the title screen, where Resume picks the action back up. Abandon the saved action throws it away.
If the browser refuses storage — a private window, for instance — the game says so on the title screen and plays perfectly well without remembering. Nothing is sent anywhere.
Two things that are doctrine, not talent. Whether to keep a volley back, and how far an officer will go to collect men who have run, were measured over several thousand machine-against-machine actions and neither separated a good officer from a bad one. They are therefore fixed for every grade. The three officers you can face differ only in how well they choose their ground, how hard they work to fire as one command, and how close to the best move they will settle for.