A Vietnam RSG: Capturing the Core of the Combat Commander System

While the game comes with 12 scenarios, there is also a 2-page roll-your-own scenario system that will generate a HISTORICAL situation in about 5 minutes, after which both players secretly choose from one of many historical forces of platoon-to-company size with which to fight.

-Chad Jensen on Combat Commander: Europe (2006)

Magical Realism

The premise of Combat Commander’s Random Scenario Generator teeters close to absurd for a board wargame. Not Campaign for North Africa absurd where you’re tracking pasta rations, but “is that even possible” absurd. Random variables that generate plausible wargame scenarios across the breadth of World War II sounds like magical thinking. The number of permutations that can be generated from the variables of the RSG are astronomical. Just the two Allies and their troop quality, across the five years in the base Europe box, has tens of thousands of combinations. Balancing the outputs, so that a high percentage of the generated scenarios exist within a margin of error for fidelity sounds impossible. Yet, you roll one up and the evidence is right there waiting to be played. Magical. I became obsessed with that magic, and as I studied it I soon found Chad’s secret – research and data. Understanding how this data bridged the gap between history and the model, was central to our design process for Combat Commander: Vietnam. 

Wargame systems are notoriously data driven. Variables on counters placed in hexes with scale measurements and visual references for terrain with modifying effects. Detailed play sequences, with phases referring to one or more charts to resolve actions with sub sequences. Where Combat Commander differs is that the majority of charts in the game are for the Orders of Battle (OoB) and Support. In other words, the tables are focused on the receipt of units and their weapons, not about their use. 

A design decision Chad made was to put most of the actionable data onto the unit counters and in the fate decks. Many mistake this shift to card driven mechanics as an abstraction that might reduce the game’s fidelity. Yet these asymmetric decks pack more faction and game data across their card counts than you would find in most of the tables and charts from other wargames.  They also keep the games flowing smoothly, the actions immediately resolved, with little need to consult a table to determine a result. The heavy lifting of the design is not in the play itself but rather how each game is set up. Becoming a strong Combat Commander player includes understanding how setup impacts play. This is taken one step further with the RSG, which includes scenario as well as unit set up. For Combat Commander: Vietnam we wanted to provide a similar level of agency for players, grounded in the history, but balanced by their choices. 

The Balancing Act

To shape the balance of the RSG system, Chad provides agency in the setup process. Players are able to build formations with a bid for initiative balanced against available support weapons and fortifications. Playing through the RSG and having to make these decisions takes practice but it is where the model reveals itself. With experience, players will find the fidelity of the scenarios they generate increase. This comes from an increased understanding of the Orders of Battle and Support tables, and their competitive values in various situations. That they map closely to their historical values for the theater and period generated reinforces the decision space of a historical company commander, and we wanted to take the same approach with Combat Commander: Vietnam.

The first two volumes of Combat Commander, Europe and Mediterranean, were originally designed as one box, a point stressed to us by Kai Jensen when we first started working on Combat Commander: Vietnam. In order for the system to work across multiple years and areas, all of the faction data had to be balanced against each other, which meant that they all had to be designed at once (the following volume Pacific, redesigned the system to account for the additional theater). The primary reason for this was the central role the RSG system had on the whole design. Even some designed scenarios are balanced against what the RSG might generate.  

This is a testament to just how powerful Chad’s design approach was. By putting so much of his research and data into getting the variables of the RSG system right, he designed a sandbox from which any WWII engagement at the tactical level could be modeled and validated. Appreciative of this, our first goal for Combat Commander: Vietnam was to build from the premise and design an RSG system that could generate scenarios for any region, with historical combatants, across the 15 years of the Indochina conflict. If we got the RSG right it would mean we could design and validate scenarios for any engagement at the game’s scale. 

We went through a number of iterations for the Order of Battle tables for Combat Commander: Vietnam, sourcing documentation of the force composition and weapons across the factions. Translating this data to unit values on the OoB formed the basis of the RSG system. As we started working on building out the maps for the base game, pulling from the 1:50,000 scale maps used during the conflict, we could immediately check the composition of forces from the primary sources against how they would be represented by the RSG. After months of iterations we started to find the magic.

Campaign for Randomness

As the map count for Combat Commander: Vietnam increased and we continued playing RSG scenarios across them, something started to feel missing. In isolation the playthroughs gave a decent overview of the types of small-scale engagements seen across the conflict, but, without the context to really place where and how they fit into the broader war effort. To provide that context, we had to bring something completely new to the Combat Commander system.

When it comes to military operations, the easiest way to provide context is to go up in scale, and understand the significance of an engagement to the higher command. Combat Commander was originally called Company Commander in reference to the scale it models. Going up from the company is the battalion. We posited that if Combat Commander: Vietnam players could play a series of connected games as a battalion campaign it would contextualize the choices made in the individual engagements to better understand why fighting in Vietnam was so different. 

Campaigns have been in Combat Commander since John Foley introduced them in the second battle pack. To this point however they have primarily been a way of sequencing scenarios, both designed and randomly generated, to play in a historical succession. This allowed players to fight out multiple days of battle in Normandy or Stalingrad to great effect. Yet, these campaigns have only existed as add ons, not parts of the core rules. The last challenge we gave ourselves with the Combat Commander: Vietnam design was to build out a campaign system that was a part of the core. This meant expanding the system to be able to generate random campaigns across the factions, for any region, at any time during the conflict. 

Composing the large battles are any number of small fights, little connected, and sometimes at cross-purposes one with the other. Each is local and limited in the feelings of the men who engage. Company fights company, platoon goes against platoon. How the regiment or brigade fared as a whole is something that has to be computed later.

-S.L.A. Marshall, Battles in the Monsoon (1967)

From the Combat Commander: Vietnam core box, using the Random Campaign Generator (RCG), players will be able to generate an area of responsibility for a battalion commander over a month-long operation as a campaign. The perspective provided by this form of play contextualizes the individual engagements in a way that allows players to experience the decision space of Vietnam at the tactical level with the context to understand the implications of their decisions operationally. 

With the RCG system in place we are also able to design historical campaigns which allow players to replay known operations. So much of the research that went into the design captured primary accounts from all sides including their operational maps. The campaign framework is a direct reflection of this, with the historical campaigns providing the decision space of their historic counterparts. 

What will come in the base box for Combat Commander: Vietnam will be all of the things players already love about the system. 24 scenarios that can be set up at any time for a dynamic game full of the flavor but grounded in the historical realities of the conflict. The RSG system will expand the scenario potential from those base maps increasing replayability. The amount of variety you will get playing one off scenarios will be satisfying to system veterans and newcomers alike. 

For those looking to form a better understanding of the war and how it progressed over time, Combat Commander: Vietnam’s Random Campaign Generator will prove to be the central experience. Playing campaigns with a single faction will provide a deeper understanding of their strengths and weaknesses. Across multiple campaigns you can see how their capabilities changed over time. Explore how the terrain in the different corps zones affected how formations operated. With the historic campaigns you can face the decisions of your historic counterparts. 

All of this has been done in an effort to make Combat Commander: Vietnam the most comprehensive tactical wargame experience on the conflict. It gives players infinite replayability with the opportunity to enrich their understanding of the challenges faced by all sides during the war. Even more, all parts of the design are fully extensible which means future battle packs and expansions will provide even broader coverage. For anyone looking to immerse themselves in the Vietnam Experience, this is the starting point. 

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