had a rule whereby American troops were not subject to "Desperation Morale" penalties, for example, while GI dispensed with this.) And the Italian forces promised as early as autumn 1979 did not materialize (indeed, would not, until the Hollow Legions module for Advanced Squad Leader was released in 1989.) Nonetheless, the game system did go forward in many ways; according to James Collier in his history of Squad Leader printed in Issue 34 of The Grenadier: Like (Crescendo of Doom) before it, GI brought mostly rules changes, including some rather drastic revisions of some of the most fundamental system mechanics. For example, in COD a provision was made to allow whole squads to be deployed into half-squads, but without providing special half-squad counters...GI brought a profusion of half-squad counters and also provided a mechanism where a squad could take half-squad casualties... Some of these changes required a reissue of many of the original infantry counters with new parameters (and a distinctly less dynamic counter art). Many AFVs had to be retrofitted with new parameters, but without counters (the player had to remember which changes applied to which vehicle). Many of the parameters chosen for US components proved to be controversial. The outcome was that GI was a very disorganized game, difficult to play "correctly". Trying to synthesize all the many rules into a coherent whole was virtually impossible, a fact tacitly conceded by (Avalon Hill) in that the GI (rulebook) index was not cumulative and did not cross-reference with the previous rules manuals. The end result was that German AFV counters did not represent some of the new changes, such as inferior turret armor, and German squad counters did not have accurate representations for such things as smoke making capability or other abilities introduced in GI. As far as the game system had come, it was clear that much of the foundation on which it was resting had to be redone and/or reorganized. In fact, GI: Anvil of Victory had already reached a point where most of the counters from the original Squad Leader game had been made obsolete, as German, British, French and American infantry counters were redone (with controversial "static" artwork depicting soldiers at rest rather than in action poses) with new information for smoke-making capability, and special weapons and morale characteristics (these characteristics would carry over to Advanced Squad Leader.) Additional products Additional products by John Hill