Below is an article featuring Combat Commander: Europe insights and first impressions from first time player and InsideGMT contributor David Wiley of Swords and Chit and Cardboard Clash. You can also find this article on David’s blog. Enjoy! -Rachel
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David
It finally happened: we got a tactical squad-level game to the table from one of the handful of systems we collectively own. It was on both of our hit lists for the next games we wanted to try out, and it was pretty much a guarantee it would get visited sooner rather than later. We had a chance to try it a few weeks earlier on a day when one of us was exhausted, but opted to give some more time to prepare and play Arquebus as planned instead (which was a good time). And then we placed the game into the planned rotation…well, its allotted time isn’t until next week. So when we had time remaining after a few plays of other games (C&C: Napoleon and Battle Ravens), I asked if he still had Combat Commander in his car. After the briefest of moments of hesitation, he confirmed it was there and bought into my suggestion of playing that first scenario. After all, it would let us wrap our heads around the game, letting us prep even better for the planned Combat Commander evening.
Let’s just say that I don’t regret that decision, although I could have picked a better evening to push for it. I failed to consider how absolutely hot his dice were in Commands & Colors: Napoleonics, and how he also had some pretty epic defensive rolls in Battle Ravens. In our two plays of Commands & Colors, I was absolutely decimated. Battle Ravens was a much closer affair, with me winning via a slight edge on the tiebreaker. So I should have expected a loss in Combat Commander.
I was the German side for the first scenario, and he played as the Russians. I started outmanned in terms of troop numbers, and my starting position was relatively clustered. I probably did a poor job of placement for my units, too, but that ends up being a live and learn sort of experience that comes with the territory of wading into uncharted territory. Mistakes were made – something we’re used to doing (and part of why I wanted a sample scenario play ahead of our planned evening with the game – something I’d like to repeat with some of the other squad-level tactical systems we have on-hand) but we did catch and correct the big error mid-game (see Insight #1) and, well, it was a pretty lop-sided affair. My Germans couldn’t seem to land a hit to save their lives, and opportunity fire ended up wrecking two of my four units. He took a spot I needed and held it, denying me the desperately needed points as he eliminated two of my units (and I failed to remove any of his).
And yet I find I want more. Shoot, we’re playing War of the Ring tonight and I want to play Combat Commander as a cooldown if time allows…even knowing it will be played next week. That’s how much I enjoyed the first sample, in spite of the terrible luck and the misplayed rule. Because this time, it’ll (hopefully) feel at least a little closer.
Carl’s Intro
David tells the story better than I can. I was hesitant due to time and the fact that I am trying to not over plan our game sessions and want to give my full attention to the games we have planned. My hesitation was mostly due to the time that had elapsed between that date and when I last read the rules. I knew it was not overly complex, but the procedures of how, and what order, to resolve dice events was specific.
We did have to reference the rules quite a bit as we went through that first play, but by the end we had a much better understanding of how things should flow.
In total the messed up allocation of activations was for two, or at most three, hands of cards. It did make a difference but was caught early so the imbalance should have been minimal.
David
Insight #1: Soldiers don’t go pew-pew-pew
It took a few turns for us to catch a mistake: each counter can only activate once per player turn. Oops. Well, the Russians took full advantage of this, advancing clear to my part of the map, squatting onto an objective with three units and a leader, and then mowing down one of my Germans with a triple Fire activation. Shortly after that I was checking on something in the rules and, lo and behold, right there was the reminder on the activation limitation. Well, that certainly changed the landscape for what followed, amounting to a domination by the Russians on the scenario, but I took it in stride and wanted to just push forward instead of restarting (it was getting late, and I really wanted to get the full play in the bag). I don’t regret the decision to finish, either, but I do want a second stab at that scenario with the Germans to try and do better. Or maybe we just move on to the next one, remembering that really key piece of information: you can’t move and shoot, or move and move, or shoot and shoot with the same guy on your turn (unless you get Actions allowing such things – but you can’t Order the same guy twice). Don’t be like us. Don’t mess this one up. It changed EVERYTHING, and made us look at all of our units instead of just a few key ones.
Carl’s input
This was a mistake and once we realized it I stopped focusing on the south-eastern entry point and started to move units on the west of the map (as the allies the one on the orientation hex pointed toward David, so I am using that as north).
Insight #2: Opportunity fire: ‘tis but a scratch
David
Oh man, my Germans must have felt like the Black Knight from Monty Python and the Holy Grail because they got absolutely decimated by Opportunity Fire in a few key instances. Including two times I tried to move forward twice to use a card that gave me an Action requiring the enemy adjacent (instantly breaking them) but I was unable to get that off because, well, my units died before they could get adjacent and attack. Horrible! The key thing I noticed with the Opportunity Fire is that using the Action for it as the defender allows you to fire with every MP spent from that same Order card by the opposing player. That can be brutally powerful if they activate several units via a commander and are all moving several times within range. Of course, the defender actually has to hold the card and play it for the correct movement phase, but it can be incredibly powerful to use. My own Opportunity Fire attempts, of course, all went off into fields and along the sides of buildings. Bigger targets, you see. I’d say my German’s couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn, but I’m pretty sure that is what they hit while aiming at the Russians…
Carl again
One of the interesting aspects of this game is how the fate decks are arranged to try to model the forces involved. This is also reflected in the discard limit. I know that as the Russians I cursed the fact that I often had unusable cards and it took time to cycle them out of my hand.
This is one of the aspects of this game that some people have a hard time dealing with. It is important to remember that the time scale in the game is a few minutes, even if you take a long time to figure out what to do. Thus a hand of bad cards represents moments of confusion, or waiting for the other side to move. Basically, a pause in the battle.
The Russians had great morale. Range and firepower were not always the best. The dice on my cards also tended to be lower rolls, so the maximum attack I had was 14 if I remember correctly.
David got a 19 or 20.
The cards I was dealt also seemed to tend to be rout cards more than anything. My first hand was all rout and command confusion cards. Once you have a hand like that you run the chance of having a significant part of your hand plugged up with useless (for the moment) cards.
Insight #3: Snipers are a losing player’s best friend
David
There’s something fun about the Snipers in this game. I think we had them trigger at least a half dozen times and, well, they only had a unit in range twice – once was Carl’s turn and his own unit in range so he opted to not take a hit. But wow, how fun it was to have a sniper make his unit break from a hit! That one hit I believe amounted to 50% of the hits that the Germans successfully rendered on the Russians. Maybe 33% – he might have Rallied once successfully mid-game to essentially negate a hit. Certainly, a winning strategy shouldn’t include reliance on Snipers. However, it was a fun and neat mechanic to have the Snipers, Events, Jamming of weapons, etc. via the deck of cards. It adds an additional layer of fun, tension, and uncertainty into the game system. Those are all things I can enjoy, especially in a game with small squads of troops and relatively quick playing time like this game offers.
Carl
I was hoping for help from a sniper but it did not come to pass. Maybe next time.
Insight #4: Unclog your hand early and often
David
Don’t hold onto a card because it might become useful. Shoot, don’t hold onto four useless cards just because you can make use of one of them on the next turn – unless it is ABSOLUTELY critical to make use of that card at this very moment, it can wait a turn. Far better to trim away the fat in your hand, replacing it with (hopefully) at least a few other useful cards to make your next activation much more effective. I failed to do this too often, opting instead to play the 1-2 cards that actually would work and holding on to Rally or Rout cards in the hope that they would eventually become useful. Well, by the end of the game I had been able to try a Rally once (and failed) and never did get to use a Rout card (because it was about 2 turns from the end when it could finally be used, and I eventually tossed them when I had a hand full of useless cards). Holding onto cards and waiting for that “perfect turn” to use them all is a dream that should be abandoned. The situations, and the game’s timer itself, can change far too often to make it worth having a series of subpar activations while trying to set up for a perfect turn that may never come.
Carl
See my response to insight number two.
Insight #5: The game is relatively simple – in spite of how the rules might seem – and extremely fun
David
Every time I open a rulebook lately, I feel a sense of dread. They are all long. And some like Holland ‘44 were just plain tough to grasp prior to playing. This one is no different in terms of size (30-ish pages) but, thankfully, about half of that is mentioning all the different event/order/action effects in the game and what they do. Let me tell you, that was a HUGE relief. The game’s system, really, is extremely simple and straightforward, where you just need to address the exceptions as they arise during gameplay. Did Smoke just drop down? Well, now you can look that little nuance up. Most of it is moving and firing, taking things as they come your way. Which helps the action to be fast-paced, and after a few games you’ll have fewer and fewer little things to look up as you go along. I enjoyed the back-and-forth nature of the game quite a bit, and as a whole the basic mechanics click really easily once you see things laid out for the first scenario.
Carl
As I said in the opening I hesitated as the rules were not fresh in my mind, but I did agree to play as after having read what the rulebook said to read before playing the first game it seemed to not be too bad.
As with anything, more experience will make for smoother play.
Wrap-Up
David
About ten months ago, I would have never given a game like Combat Commander a second glance. I wanted to explore Wargames, but I wanted them to all be on the time periods and battles I could get excited about. That meant pretty much anything before gunpowder – and let’s be honest, I’d still rather play (and read about) those periods of history. But I’m extremely glad that I have broadened my historical horizons, so to speak, because it brought me to Combat Commander. I love the small squads, the card-based impulses, the dice and events triggered by the same cards, the timer moved by your deck of cards, objectives to capture and hold (both open and hidden), and having a threshold for the dead to end the game early. There’s so much GOODNESS packed into the one system (at least, from what I can tell after one play) that I can’t wait to dive in and explore it more. The game commands some of the strengths of the Commands & Colors system, mainly the variety of scenarios and the fast playtime allowing several games in a single session, which helps bump this one up even higher on the “let’s play this again” rating.
Carl
I like that David addresses this aspect of where our wargame journey has led us. Early on I was excited about the early history of warfare. I had no interest in anything having to do with Napoleon.
The Great War? Not much feeling evoked.
World War II? My grandfather fought in the war so there was some family history that provided a tie to the conflict, but no real desire to dive into things in detail.
Korea? I had heard of this one. My middle school bus driver was a vet from this conflict. He was an ornery… you get the idea.
Vietnam? I have family that served abroad and stateside in this one. My interest was lukewarm at best.
Over time I have come to appreciate all of these conflicts. The scientist/engineer in me finds the development of weapons and tactics to be fascinating. There really is not any conflict I am not willing to explore. In addition, I want to try and understand why the conflict occurred.
This is coming from someone who hated history class. I now am exploring topics I never would have considered, and that my gaming prior to 2020 never touched upon.
David
As we explore more games in the Wargaming field, I think we’ve both come to really appreciate that factor in some of these games. Not only a fun system to play, but also a good mix of scenarios of variants to tinker with which encourages it to return to the table for another fresh, yet familiar, experience. That replayability is something severely lacking from a lot of the games we played before 2020, which boil down to finding ways to be more efficient at generating points, and so it is exciting to want to replay a game even after half a dozen plays in a single title (or over a dozen across a single system). Each different setup provides its own unique challenges and opportunities to identify and attempt to leverage in your favor, and I have a lot of fun trying to work around those things.
Carl
I’ll echo what David has said. There were maybe two or three games I owned that I wanted to replay by the time I decided to explore wargames. Euros became a chase for the next exciting thing. It fed upon the cult of the new.
Does wargaming have this as well? You bet it does. The difference is I want to come back for more.
Even games that play long and only have a short and long campaign mode are more interesting to replay than many of my old favorites. One roll of the dice can change the flow of any of these games. No matter how many times you play (well, that may be going a bit too far) the story that unfolds will be different.
David
This is why I was excited, in the “Games we want to try next” post, to explore several of the tactical squad-level game systems out there. This was the first of them we explored, and if this first play is any indication the rest will be enjoyable in their own ways for the unique approaches they all provide. Which is both good and bad. Already I find myself playing new titles and wondering if I’d rather be playing a Men of Iron title or a Commands & Colors title. Add Combat Commander to that mix. It makes it harder for a game to really stand out in a way to last in my collection, much in the same way that games like Charlemagne, Master of Europe have made it a challenge for solitaire experiences to impress me within the Wargame arena. It isn’t so much that other games are bad or unenjoyable, but rather that the others are so good that it makes it hard to top that experience you know will be enjoyed. I had a similar experience last month in going to a movie with a friend – we saw the 2005 film Serenity and had a blast watching a movie we’d both seen before. We knew what we were getting into, and that we’d walk away having spent the evening watching something enjoyable and less of a risk than seeing something like The New Mutants (which could be great).
Carl
Between the two of us we have enough games to last the rest of our lifetime.
As David said this is a mixed blessing. I am torn between returning to past favorites and exploring all that is out there. This is part of why we now have a schedule of what to play. We are trying to make time to visit old friends, as well as expand that circle.
To quantify what David has said about this group of “friends” I need to point out that I am a completionist. This is especially true when I find a game or system I like. David mentioned Commands & Colors, Men of Iron, and now Combat Commander. Of those three series we are missing one game, and two expansions, across all titles that use the system. That alone is hundreds of scenarios.
Add to that Conflict of Heroes (Guadalcanal, Awakening the Bear, and Storms of Steel), OST (Volumes II and III), The Last Hundred Yards, and ASL (starter kit one… for now) and that covers a lot of ground.
David
And let me tell you, I am pretty sure Combat Commander will become one of those evergreen titles that we’ll revisit time and again, both on scheduled nights where we binge several scenarios and on impromptu plays when I get decimated quickly at whatever the primary game planned happened to be so we pull this one out. I don’t own a copy of this game, Carl does, but I’m now watching for anything and everything Combat Commander I can get my hands on going forward. And that should say enough about how much I genuinely enjoyed this one.
Carl
David, make sure to P500 Combat Commander: Mediteranian. It is on the second printing, is otherwise hard to come by, and is required for Battle Packs 2, 3, 5, and 6.
It also gives you the French. Their discard limit is one…
Previous Articles:
A New Wargamer’s Reflections on Sekigahara: The Unification of Japan
A New Wargamer’s Insights and Impressions from Peloponnesian War
A New Wargamer’s Insights and Impressions from Nevsky: Teutons and Rus in Collision, 1240-1242
A New Wargamer’s Insights and Impressions from Pendragon: The Fall of Roman Britain
A New Wargamer’s Insights and Impressions from Holland ’44
A New Wargamer’s Insights and Impressions from Commands & Colors: Napoleonics
Author: David Wiley
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