madorosh
Posts: 390
Joined: 3/2/2003 Status: offline
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This is about as silly a thread as "what's your favourite colour?" It lacks focus. Board games can be divided into a) historical periods - First World War, Second World War, Arab-Israeli wars, "modern" era, American Civil War, Ancient, etc. b) scale - Grand strategic, strategic, operational, grand tactical, tactical, and man-to-man There are a great many combinations within these general parameters. If one wants to examine just tactical (defined by me as having key units representing platoons, squads or single men) board wargames, taking place in any 20th Century conflict, published before the year 2000, there are 120 titles alone (including Squad Leader and ASL and all modules up to the end of 1999). That's a lot of games. I doubt anyone here has played them all. I doubt anyone has even seen most of them in person. I own examples of all but 15 of them, though I haven't played many of them. Is there a "best"? What do you mean by best? Most playable? Most realistic? They aren't the same thing. Sometimes they are polar opposites. Compare Firepower/Close Assault and Sniper!/Special Forces for example. Both are Man-to-Man wargames covering WWII and the modern era. Both are radically different in their approach. Which is "best"? It's all subjective. The idea that Advanced Squad Leader is the "best wargame ever made" is, in my opinion, unprovable at best and complete falsehood at worst. Certainly they have a fanbase willing to spend exorbitant amounts of money. A look at Squad Leader and a comparison to all other squad-based wargames before it does show an elegance of design that John Hill should be thanked for. There were several squad-based games to precede Squad Leader, beginning with Grunt in 1971 or so, and Search & Destroy in 1974 or 1975. Combat was resolved by an odd-based CRT, just like, oh, just about every wargame since Tactics II onwards. Squad Leader was revolutionary. But that doesn't make it "best". ;)
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