offspring. There are also projects similar to Virtual Advanced Squad Leader (VASL) for the original game system, which allow for live online play of Squad Leader in a virtual environment, like Virtual Squad Leader (VSQL) for the VASAL game engine. At least one programmer is working on an Artificial Intelligence (or AI) for the virtual version of SL. As home publishing software and hardware get more sophisticated, it is possible to produce high quality "unofficial" game components from scenario cards to custom sized mapboard to personalized leader counters. Reception In the 1980 book The Complete Book of Wargames, game designer Jon Freeman noted that "The game is exciting, colorful, and almost endless in its variations and scenario possibilities. While the play sequence (complicated as it is) is geared more to fun than to an accurate representation of a squad-level firefight, the game does give the players a remarkable feel for close-tactical combat." Freeman gave this game an Overall Evaluation of "Very Good", concluding, "Although clearly intended only for advanced players, Squad Leader is not unplayably long and does reward the time spent learning the rules. It seems to be that rare bird: an instant success with staying power." R. B. McArthur for Washingtonian in 1980 said that "It is incredible that anyone actually plays these monsters, but the use of programmed rules lets the player start Squad Leader, for instance, by reading seven pages and then working his way up. Certainly such games could exist only in a modern urban setting. No one could play them if they had to get any plowing done."Squad Leader was chosen for inclusion in the 2007 book Hobby Games: The 100 Best. Game designer Ray Winninger explained: "Hill's design recreates World War II combat in the same way that a great caricaturist recreates a face — by exaggerating the important bits and abstracting everything else. Many of the game's individual concepts are decidedly 'unrealistic.' Players possess almost omniscient knowledge of the battlefield, cardboard soldiers are all too eager to fight to the last man, key weapon systems and environmental effects are vastly oversimplified. Yet, added together, these details produce an end result that somehow feels real. By exaggerating, oversimplifying, and abstracting, Hill provides a decent primer on World War II infantry tactics — the importance of covering fire and maneuver, the use of machine guns to prevent movement across open spaces, the key differences