TooFatLardies' Chain of Command: First game and impressions

There's been some buzz on the net about Chain of Command lately. It's a "platoon plus" sized WW2 skirmish where each player typically controls a platoon of infantry along with a bit of support like a tank or weapon teams. The intro videos TooFatLardies have published showed an interesting spawnpoint based system and even though the game looked like there's a lot of randomness going on I bought the PDF to give it a go. I went to my friends' place where we set up an eastern front scenario and played it with three players learning the rules as we went on.

The game starts with a "patrol phase" where players alternate turns moving patrol markers on the table. These markers must form a continuous chain with max. 12 inch gaps and once the markers encounter enemy markers, they are locked 12 inches apart. This serves to draw the line of battle on the table and is a nice little metagame to try and get an edge over your opponent with. When all the markers are locked, they are used to deploy three or four "jump off points" on the table. Let's just call them spawnpoints because that's what they are. These spawnpoints are placed in cover outside enemy LOS and can be used to deploy units on the table during the game. The idea behind this is that they represent areas on the field where the platoon leader can send his units to without the enemy seeing them advance, giving the game a fog of war element and the players some tactical flexibility. It pays not to deploy all your troops at once but see how the situation develops and keep some reserves. The spawnpoints also serve as victory locations and their capture denies the enemy of their use. A bit quirky but works well in practice.

We played a very basic match with just two platoons (3 squads and a commander) of similar infantry facing each other. Additional support was minimal. The German side got an adjutant leader to the platoon and the Soviet side took a sniper team. The terrain was laid out to represent a village in some woods so there's plenty of cover and LOS obstacles around.

The opening setup

The core gameplay happens in "phases" which each player alternates taking. During these phases the phasing player rolls typically five dice and consults the pips. 1's allow him to activate small teams, 2's allow him to activate whole squads (which typically consist of a rifle section and a LMG team), 3's activate junior leaders (squad NCO's who have better flexibility in commanding the squad than what you get on a 2), and 4's activate senior leaders (typically the platoon HQ who can command all troops in his command range). The amount of 6's rolled indicate whether the next phase will alternate to the other player, whether you get a double turn, whether the turn will end or whether there will be a random event.

All rolled 5's increase the players' "chain of command dice" which is another special mechanic to activate special abilities. You accumulate pips on the die for each 5 rolled, and once you have six pips, you have one special ability to use. These abilities range from moving spawn points to interrupting the opponent's turn to springing ambushes. Having one of these points in use while still having some troops undeployed is a good way to keep your opponent on his toes.

The Soviets move fast to claim a German spawnpoint.

The Soviet player got a good start by rolling a double turn on his first roll. This means he rolled a double 6, and was allowed to take another turn after completing his first. This allowed him to deploy a squad of infantry on the table and move it to take one of the German spawn points before the Germans could deploy anything. I guess they really caught the Germans with their pants down! The Germans quickly deployed one of their squads to the nearest spawn point and moved to reclaim the lost one. If a turn ends when one of your spawn points is in enemy hands, it is a bad blow to force morale. Too bad the Soviets had time to deploy their squad on overwatch, and there was no other way to get to the spawn point but over open ground.

The Germans lurk behind the house as the squad leader tries to figure out what to do.

Reasoning there is no other way, the NCO split his squad and had the LMG section set up on the right side of the house pictured above to lay down covering fire and have the rifle section assault the Soviet position from the left. Too bad it was the LMG team which drew the Soviets' overwatch fire and the team sustained a casualty and enough shock to pin them.

The LMG is pinned.

The Rifle section advances on the Soviets.

Meanwhile on the Germans' right flank, the Soviets began deploying and moved to take a fence along the road in the middle of the table. This game them hard cover whereas the Germans advancing towards them from the woods had only light cover. A firefight started and the Germans were indeed racking up more casualties and shock. This prompted them to deploy their third and final squad to help the second one, and the increased firepower helped them pin the Soviet squad. This was not before the German squad lost their NCO though. The Soviets deployed their third squad in the center of the table and advanced towards the ruin near the center.

The Soviets take position behind the fence.

The Germans gain numerical superiority and whittle down the pinned Soviets

Meanwhile near the captured German spawnpoint, the Germans launched their attack. They could not stall any further because the third unengaged Soviet squad was one move away from coming to assist the ones who captured of the spawnpoint. The platoon adjutant commander came to the scene and after some verbal advice, the squad NCO attacked. The rifle section lobbed a grenade on the Soviets causing a casualty and a point of shock, and then charged. The result was messy. Since the Soviet squad had not been pinned, they were all too ready to receive the Germans and killed them all in a brutal round of rattling dice, losing only one man in return. The Squads' LMG was shot up by the center Soviet squad. The platoon adjutant found himself alone against two operational Soviet squads.

A grim result of the German charge.

On the other flank, the Germans got their only success of the day. The fresh..er German squad charged the pinned Soviet squad at the fence with much more success than their compatriots, routing those who would not die. When they tried to advance across the road to threaten the Soviet spawnpoints, they were caught in Soviet fire from the Squad at the center of the table and were pinned.

The platoon adjutant was captured in melee, and at that point the Soviet player used one Chain of Command point to end the turn, which crippled the German morale. Their morale had dropped steadily during the match because of losses and the spawnpoint was the final straw. A total defeat for the Germans.

Closing thoughs:

Chain of Command seems like a fresh contender to the platoon-sized ww2 ruleset race along with Bolt Action, Rate of Fire and the like. The game introduces mechanics I haven't seen elsewhere and the system works well. The rules are written in a way that might confuse the player a bit. There were several points where we were uncertain on how to interpret the rule, and the command system takes some getting used to. The book refers to Units, Squads, Sections and Teams with different rules, which can add to the confusion. The book says squads and sections are the same thing, but could they not have used just one of the terms since you already have to differentiate between units, squads and teams when doing activations?

The game can also be a bit random. The melee system seems to give a lot of dice for leaders in melee, making a lonely leader more than a match for four men attacking him. Rolling poorly on activations might leave you frustrated, but since each phase represents only a few seconds, having a squad unable to activate for two or three phases is ok realism-wise. People have complained that the game only lasts for a turn or two, but they're missing the point. The end of the turn means a "significant lull in the battle", which might not even happen in every match. It didn't in our game.

Apart from these gripes, the game works well. Movement and firing is easy and the suppression system works as it's supposed to. I'll need to play a couple more games to see if this is a keeper however.

Oh, and we played a game of Talisman too.

Mount and Blade: Napoleonic Wars. A tabletop wargamers' first impressions

Without much fanfare, a new official expansion to Mount and Blade: Warband was released. The new expansion, Mount and Blade: Napoleonic Wars, allows you to have some excellent Napoleonic multiplayer action with you playing as a single soldier in the battles. Have you ever played Total War games and thought it would be cool to play a game where you controlled only one man in the middle of all that? Well, this game comes very close. By looking at the official launch trailer you get the idea on what to expect:

I bought this expansion yesterday and was quite happy that I did. I played a session of the commander mode, where each player commands a company of about 20-30 AI soldiers. I took control of a German line infantry unit fighting for the British. How it worked was that I played a sergeant/officer armed with a telescope, sabre and a pistol, and was followed around by 25 AI line infantry soldiers armed with muskets. The server had about 15 players on each side, all commanding similar forces, so the battle would have looked something like a 28mm wargame from a birds eye view. Of course, I don't get a birds eye view because I'm down there, which is part of the charm. If that dragoon unit is sneaking around my flank in the cover of terrain, I won't see it until it's too late. It gives the tabletop wargamer a whole new perspective into the action. The graphics look good (not great) and the game should run on older rigs as well, even though your framerate may vary when there's a lot going on.

Commanding the AI teammates takes a bit of getting used to, but you can drill yourself to learning the correct key combos for commands quickly. You can order your men to hold a certain position, follow you, charge the enemy, change formation, hold fire etc. The best thing, which wasn't possible in mount and blade until the recent Fire & Sword expansion is that you can order your men to hold fire and then give orders for volley fire. Your men will load their muskets and then aim at the enemy, front rank kneeling. It looks great and when a long line opens fire at the same time... whoah. The smoke linger is better than ever and it can really obscure your vision now. At times I found myself firing into the white smoke without any idea on whether I was pointing anywhere near an enemy.

The weapons are nice and inaccurate, I found I can't hit pretty much anything at a distance. Infantry, cavalry and artillery are all modeled within the game, and I was suprised to see limbers pulling artillery pieces in the field, as artillery in the previous Napoleonic mods for M&B had been static. Artillery pieces take several stages and a while to load, but a grapeshot at close range is absolutely devastating to tightly packed infantry. There are rocket troops too, although I hope these don't become a common sight alongside artillery. Cavalry seems quite powerful, but then again, when they try and charge a prepared infantry unit to the front.. I ordered my line to fire at the last moment against a charging unit of cuirassiers and they fell down like flies.

The commander mode doesn't have respawning, and is played until one side loses their last soldier. This took about 10-15 minutes per match in my session. When the player inevitably loses the sergeant they start out with, they take control over one of the AI soldiers in his group, retaining control until the last man in the group dies. After that, he spectates the game until a new match begins. 

The commander mode enforces composition on the opposing sides so that you cannot take more than one unit of cavalry until your side has so and so many units of infantry. I don't know what the exact arithmetic behind this is, but it's a wise move from the developers.

What I've seen so far is very promising. I did see some glitches during the game, but I'm confident we won't be seeing cavalrymen riding high up in the air for long. I'm sure there will also be some balancing/realism issues to tackle until the end of the world, but playing the commander mode was just excellent. A friend of mine was playing in a 200 player game on a siege map without bots and said he enjoyed it a lot.

The obvious question many M&B veterans will ask is that is this just another mod you have to pay for like was in the case of Fire & Sword? After all, there are several free Napoleonic mods for Warband. I'll have to say I'm not qualified to answer that as I haven't played the free mods online, only as bot matches. The vets on the servers last night seemed to approve of it though, and I think there's a lot of polish in the game (including the nationality, heheh) which might be lacking in the mods. I'll have to play a couple more nights and try out the other gamemodes, but at the moment, I highly recommend this.

For those of you who don't know, you need Mount & Blade Warband to play this expansion. Warband is an excellent game in it's own right, focusing on medieval combat in a fictional no-fantasy world. It has a single player mode too.

Stay tuned, this was a "first impressions", not a review, and I need a couple more sessions under my best to see if there's something fatally flawed with the game. I The pictures in this post are taken here and there from the net, I claim no ownership. Look out for some holiday snapshots from me in the near future!

EDIT: Here's a couple of shots from today:

The frenchmen fire a volley

A view over the field

This commander match had about 60 players with 12 bots each. This one started to lag badly, which is unsuprising.