Cross of Iron

Cross of Iron (COI) was a "gamette" - an expansion module for the Squad Leader game published by The Avalon Hill Game Company.  COI was released at ORIGINS '78.

The concept for the gamettes had undergone great changes since we first proposed them a year (previously). Not just hastily thrown together collections of new maps and counters, CROSS OF IRON with its massive new armor system grew into a major design and testing process that matched or exceeded the development of SQUAD LEADER itself. As a consequence, the project grew until it took on all the physical and time costs of a full scale AH game - which it is, except for the oddity of being a game based on another game. In any case, CROSS OF IRON didn't take 6 months as was initially planned, but an entire year. The second kit...A RISING CRESCENDO (since renamed CRESCENDO OF DOOM) was set back accordingly, and due to the many changes in CROSS OF IRON will now have to undergo a second playtesting period. Don't expect it before next spring (1979). As for CROSS OF IRON, although many expressed surprise at the cost ($12.00), we sold out of the 350 copies on hand during the first 4-1/2 hours. Reports of the game being scalped thereafter for $25.00 a copy were probably exaggerated, but did lend a considerable buzz to the exhibition gossip.¹

According to Al Bisasky, the concept of the gamettes actually went further back than even the release of the first game:  

Even before Squad Leader made its debut at ORIGINS '77, the braintrust at Avalon Hill was already hard at work developing ideas for future expansion games that would transform it from a game unto itself into an entire gaming system with literally endless possibilities. Each of these expansion games, called 'gamettes', would concentrate on a particular theme such as the Russian Front, France 1940, etc., and each would build onto the basic system and its predecessors. These future gamettes would introduce the personnel and weaponry of the major and minor antagonists that took part in the Second World War.²

The concept, however, was not popular in all quarters if a letter to Don Lowry, the editor of Campaign is any indication:  

I'd be interested to hear your opinion of the latest Avalon Hill sales tactic, the "Gamette." When I heard of Squad Leader and its sequellae, the Gamettes, memories of Dungeons & Dragons and its interminable supplements immediately came to mind. I began to consider: "Squad Leader costs $12 for the basic rules, counters and four mapboards. Then comes the first Gamette, Cross of Iron, also $12, with one additional mapboard, more counters and some charts, to be followed by - Great Ghu! - five more Gamettes."

At that point I sat back in awe, pondering the brilliance of Avalon Hill. I smiled ruefully and shook my head in wonderment. The equations were so simple, so elegant:

(a) Squad Leader x 1 = $12
(b) Squad Leader x 1 + Gamette x 6 = $84³

The gamette expanded the German and Russian⁴ orders of battle, including also Axis Minor infantry types (troops from Romania are featured in one scenario but theoretically a number of nationalities could be represented by the "Axis Minors".) The original handful of vehicle and ordnance types in Squad Leader were expanded to include just about every type that saw service on the Eastern Front. COI expanded the armor and artillery systems considerably. The "design for effect" philosophy that had guided Squad Leader's development gave way in the case of tank combat to "actual data" taking priority over "effect data." An initial intention to simply provide a few extras not contained in Squad Leader, such as SS troops, the Tiger tank, and the T-34/85, gave way in the face of requests by playtesters to what amounted to a complete order of battle for both nationalities for the entire war, including dozens of different models of Sd Kfz 250 and 251 halftracks and Pz Kpfw I through VI tanks. John Hill and Don Greenwood admitted afterwards that the project got away from them, Hill sensing that he was too easily persuaded by playtesters who probably had a higher threshold for complexity than average gamers, and Greenwood saying that had he known from the beginning that the gamette would end up so large, he would "have broken it into two expansion kits - it simply is too much for one.^"5

The focus in the series, then, had firmly changed. Armour enthusiast Lorrin Bird was thrilled:

After wading through the infantry-oriented scenarios of Squad Leader, where the occasional rare appearance of one of the really bland and nondescript tank types was widely cherished, the first Squad Leader gamette, Cross of Iron (a particularly catchy title in view of the book/movie's great popularity, but don't look for Sgt. Steiner 'cause he ain't there), had changed the value of the game system immensely. Now, instead of being a good infantry game, particularly with regard to support weapons and leadership effects, the system represents one of the best combined arms representations available from either a boardgame or miniatures approach.

In comparison with the SL system, the new game mechanics for tanks are both terribly involved and interesting, since the degree of tank trivia has both exceeded the infantry and approached a level that only Tractics has previously attempted in the field of miniature armor rules.⁶

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