The Tao of Gaming

My copy of Combat Commander: Europe landed on the doorstep with a dull thud earlier this week. (Despite my vows, I pre-order the occasional GMT title). I've opened the box and read the rules (which are online). I've also read the example game in the scenario book.

CC:E seems inspired by Up Front, that not-quite-ageless classic that still looks good, despite the outlandish outfit and the wrinkles. Combat Commander embraces the hex-map, each scenario taking place on a small single board (perhaps 10 rows of hexes with 15 columns). Leaders, units and squads are chits, and actually move around. This eliminates Up Front's Relative Range (a fairly simple concept in a confusing package) but reduces fog of war.

In CC:E, each power (German, Russian, American) gets it's own deck. Up Front managed to handle everyone in a single deck (by having split cards that acted differently depending on your nationality).

Splitting the deck allows for more customization of each power, so it's a draw. Like Up Front, cards serve multiple purposes. If you need a die roll, you flip the top card and use 2d6. Here's where the fun starts: Sometimes a die roll also triggers an event. Some events are standard (weapon jams, sniper attacks, and advancing the time marker). Otherwise you flip the next card and use its event. The rulebook has 35 sections on events, so I assume there are 35 different ones. (These sections take a paragraph, perhaps two. Some of them a sentence).

Additionally, each card has an Order and an Action. Orders are what you'd expect:

• Move
• Fire
• Rout
• Recover
• Call in an Airstrike

You play orders on your turn, and each squad can typically only perform one. Actions can be played whenever appropriate; many of them are small modifiers (like a bonus to firepower, or morale). Others have bigger effects, like laying smoke, or firing while moving. Opportunity fire (by the inactive player) is an action, as is firing while moving.

Another noteworthy rule is Initiative. In CC:E the Initiative is a physical card. When you have it, you can cancel a die roll (and its event). Of course, you have to hand it over to do that. Should the scenario end in a draw, whoever has the initiative wins.

The rest of the rules are fairly standard — Line of Sight, Firepower, Morale, Movement, Objectives. One item is that each map lists objectives (1-5), and then the scenario may direct their value. But more than likely it will direct the players to randomly draw objective chits from a cup. Some of these may be given to a player, which means the exact determination of VPs may not be obvious to one (or both) players during the fight. So they'll try to take what they can, to cover their bases. It's also possible for one player's "secret" chip to be revealed (some chits can't be kept a secret, and some events force them to be revealed), which would lead one player to "know the score," while the other is in the dark.

The rules are clear, but dense. The cards are nice, similar to GMT's CDGs. The box is the Command and Colors: Ancients size, but not nearly as sturdy. Plenty of space for expansions. With three countersheets, it would be nice to have a few treys to seperate squads by type (rather than bags). And I bought a card case for each deck. Apart from the rules, you get the scenario book, play aids, & 6 (double sided) maps. I can see where the money went, at least.

Overall, I don't think anyone primarily interested in Euros will care about this, but I can't wait to try it. To me, CC:E looks like a high-luck 'experience' game, but with a reasonable amount of skill, once you get used to it. Hopefully I'll confirm that soon enough....

Update: Now that I've punched the game, I definitely feel the need for treys instead of bags. There are a few odd decisions on the counters. Like the Order of Battle (OB) counters for each side are double sided, with the back side being general markers. The OB are only used in "Build your own" scenarios (to pick your troops) simultaneously. So really you only need OBs for one side. They could pick them, then the other side announces. That would free up ~25 counters to be double-sided markers.

But that's a nitpick. The BYO scenario looks quite interesting. You get a random map, year. Each side picks their OB which has a VP cost. The player who "spent" less VPs becomes the defender, and can optionally buy fortifications (up to and including pillboxes and minefields, if the difference was great enough).

2nd Update: After running the example of play (and reading up), I suspect ComCom runs longer than Up Front. Partially it's that setup takes longer, partially it's just more turns. We'll see.