Resisting Combat Commander

After a long period of time when we were playing long games that weren't really conducive to blogging, we've decided to get back to shorter stuff and resuscitating the blog. There's been a lot of OCS played this year, in fact we've played pretty much nothing else for most of this year, most recently play testing a new, smaller OCS game on Operation Exporter. That's been an interesting experience, one I'm prepared to take on again, and I hope that our input was useful.

With a plethora of choices available, Eric wanted to try the latest release in the long (and getting longer) list of titles in the Combat Commander franchise, CC: Resistance (BGG entry), from GMT. Previous readers of this blog will already know that this is a game that I have a love/hate relationship with. I kinda love it, I think it comes closest of all the tactical games I've played in portraying the chaos of combat, but it just hates me back. Outrageous things happen in a lot of the games, and I'm (mostly) on the receiving end. In fact Chuck has now referred to it as 'Mike's ugly girlfriend' game (in homage to 'Chuck's ugly girlfriend', a reference to Twilight Struggle), and he refuses to play it with me any more, on the grounds that just too much outrageous wackiness happens, and it's no fun to play. And yet I keep coming back to it.

So, what's new in this incarnation?

• Partians have their own deck, which has only 36 cards, rather than 72, so time triggers happen quickly
• When discarding, the Partisan player has to discard his entire hand
• Partisan leaders don't have a leadership range, but can command all units within LoS
• Partisan units can grow a step in size with Muster orders - from a 2-man Crew to a 6-man Gang; however, the Fire strength + Movement Points always total 7, so as it gets larger, with more Fire strength, it gets less mobile
• Reinforcements appear by use of the Infiltrate order, which costs 0-3 VPs to play, and are placed on the Time Track rather than directly on the map; so the partisan player doesn't know when they will appear
• Reinforcements are decided by a draw from the Force Deck, which gives two options on the reinforcements; so the partisan player doesn't know what will appear
• Reinforcements appear at a Sighting marker, and each time a Random Hex draw is made, a Sighting marker must be moved to, or adjacent to, the random hex; so the partisan player doesn't know where they will appear
• When a Partisan unit is eliminated by a second break, a card is drawn from the Force Deck; if the unit symbol at the bottom of the card is a smaller force than unit on the map, the unit on the map is replaced, still broken, by the smaller unit, and no VP is lost; if not, it is removed to the VP track, for the loss of 1VP, regardless of the unit

As might be expected from GMT, production is good. Maps, counters, rule book, all look very professionally done, and up to the expected standard. The one omission, that I found to be annoying, is that there is no summary card included for the new Partisan deck, so you have to memorize the distribution of the cards - Orders, Actions.

What must also be mentioned is that CC:R continues the CC tradition of having the tightest set of rules of any game I have played. I have yet to encounter any game situation or question that isn't clearly covered in the ruleset. Given some of the rules abominations we've had the privilege to encounter (yes, Prussia's Defiant Stand, I'm looking at you), this is little short of remarkable.

In our game Eric had chosen scenario #72, and I was randomly assigned the Resistance. I'd only had the chance to briefly flick over the rules, and that bit me in the first card draw, as I discarded my hand of 2 Recover cards, a Command Confusion, and an Infiltrate-0. I drew an Infiltrate-2 card, then decided to check on the rule retail, to find that the card I'd just discarded would have given me reinforcements for a 0VP cost. Oops.

There were a lot of pot shots in the early game, to no effect, and it took half way through my deck before I found a Move order, having previously found a single Advance order, so I was very slow to get moving towards the VP objectives. In the meantime, Eric had been moving forward, and had occupied 2 of the 3 objectives. With his lead units.

I eventually managed to grind him down, timed a couple of reinforcements (playing an Infiltrate order with only a few cards left in my draw pile, so I knew when/where they would appear), and at the high point I had control of all 5 objectives on the map, due to Infiltrating into his back field, with 11VPs in my favor. Then, as might be expected, it all went south.

I missed the draw for ending the game in turn 7 (requiring a 6 or less, I didn't think it was worth the Initiative card), and then we traded rolls at the end of turn 8 as the Initiative card went back and forth several times before Eric drew two cards higher than 7 in a row. Drat. From there he used his big group to take back one objective, killed a few units in Melee, and then managed to rout a unit off the map. (It had missed 4-5 Recover attempts, needing 6-7, and drew 9, 9, and 11 in his Rout attempts. Pfft.

With hands full of Command confusion, Artillery Denied, and Infiltrate cards, I couldn't find a way to get the single VP required, and the game ended at the end of turn 9 on the first draw.

Other points of note: I managed to get 3 '10' strength Fire attacks in the game, and rolled 4, 4, and 5; I used both Molotovs, 12 strength attacks, and they both failed; Eric got a reinforcement, choosing the IG, which then fired at range 4, drawing snake-eys to miss, jam, and then was removed on a subsequent Random Hex roll.

That's probably the closest CC game I've had, I think. Whilst it's easy to view the failure to Recover that unit, and the Rout draws, as the game loser, failing to recognize that the Partisan units don't want to go toe-to-toe with the German units was the real game-losing mistake. I should have been pulling back away from him, in order to not give him the Melee attempt. Ho hum, lesson learned.

We missed the rule that the Partisans only spend 1 MP per hex, which would have helped me a fair bit, and that eliminated Partisan units are removed from the game, not that it had any impact. And I didn't grok the Partisan Leader LoS command rule for some reason. It's pretty clear in the rulebook, I just couldn't get it into my thick head. So I wasn't making the best possible use of my Move/Advance cards.

Overall, an excellent expansion. With the Force Deck and Infiltrate mechanism, the Partisan player doesn't know what he's going to have to play with, and that seems realistic.

So, if you like CC, you'll totally groove on this latest addition to the family.

Two Sides, Take Two

I'm going to dispense with the cliches and “tap tap is this thing on?” crap.

The blog died, the blog is coming back.

Mike and I haven't been idle, by any means, but we haven't been doing things that are very blog-friendly. That, and I was going through a soul-sucking period at work where I writing enough that I wanted to do anything BUT write blog posts in my spare time. I really had the feeling that period was going to kill every desire I had to ever write again, but that thankfully turned out to not be the case. Playing games and writing about those sessions is something I want to be doing again.

So, you might ask, what HAVE Mike and I been doing over all this time?

Pretty much all of 2010 was devoted to an ongoing OCS Korea campaign. We got through all of 1950 before calling it a wrap. We will finish it some day, but it's going to be rough slogging the rest of the way. I was playing the US, while Mike took the Chinese – by the end of 1950, we devolved into a sort of WWI-style slogging match where I'm slowly wearing him down. I have to be cautious, but there are very limited opportunities for him to attack.

We took pictures as we went along, and someday maybe we'll write the thing up, but don't count on it. Maybe just a photo-log.

The second half of 2011 has been devoted to playtesting another OCS game that should be submitted for preordering very shortly. I don't want to go into details, as I'm not sure how public the information is, but it's a small (by OCS standards, it's a miniature) game on Operation Exporter (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Exporter).

Those of you wanting to get into OCS, but have been turned off by the size of the typical OCS game, pick this one up. You won't be disappointed. Once it's available for preorder, Mike and I will tell you all about it.

There have been other things we've done – Mike may be able to supply some details as he keeps better records of what he plays when – but there have been a few shorter games that have hit the table in the mean time. I know C&C Napoleonics and Stalin's War were among them. We had our annual WBC-West gaming retreat in mid-May, so the bulk of early 2011 was centered around that.

We'll be getting things back under way with a playing of Combat Commander: Resistance. FAB: Sicily will be hitting the table right after we receive it (GMT claims it's shipping mid-late December), and there's plenty more where that came from.

For those of you new to what we do here, let me refresh you on the idea:

Mike and I play games. We then independently write about what happened. Sometimes we agree, sometimes we don't. Mike prefers his games with a minimum amount of luck (With good reason – we've named the effect the Deansian Statistical Distortion Factor (DSDF)), while I'm fine with a fair amount of chaos. We're both wargamers at heart, and that'll be the large majority of the games we play, but you really could see anything covered here.

I've learned over time that I'm really not good at writing reviews. What I do write are reactions. Other people around the net are much better at reviewing games, so if you want that, head over to BGG or some other site to get your review fix in. What you'll get from me, at least, is how I reacted to that particular playing of a game. Sometimes I'll get into why I did what I did as well, but that depends on how many beers I had that night.

Unless life presses too hard, we'll be playing every week, and posting just about as frequently as well. Sit back, and enjoy the posts. Thanks for reading!

The sound of giants clashing

Our latest game has been GMT's Clash of Giants II (BGG entry), the Galicia scenario in particular. On reading through the rules for this one I was concerned that it was simple. Bordering on simplistic. 2 unit stacking; ZoC stop movement; regular terrain effects; combat has retreats and step losses; supply lines. Nothing that the average gamer hasn't seen before. Meh.

The only thing that is at all different is combat resolution. Odds are calculated as normal, but that's where normality stops. Instead of a Combat Results Table, the odds give modifiers. Each unit has a performance rating, and has to roll that or less to not suffer a step loss and, for the defender, a retreat. This roll is modified from the combat odds, a 2-1 giving the attacker a +1 and the defender a -1, 3-1 makes it +2/-2, etc. The modified die roll is compared to the unit's rating, and if it's lower then the unit suffers no effects from the combat. If it's higher, the unit suffers a step loss, and the difference between is how far the unit (if defending) has to retreat.

So, as the ratio goes up, it's more likely that the defender will suffer losses, and vice versa for the attacker. There is also a limit on the number of attacking units that need to roll at the larger odds. However, the effect is that one side could roll badly and lose steps from all units in the combat, and the other side nothing. A regular CRT would probably limit those losses. Still, interesting.

The only other tweak is that where there are multiple hexes of attackers, then all enemy stacks adjacent have to be attacked. A single attacking stack can ignore other adjacent enemy stacks.

Like I said, simple, bordering on simplistic. So what makes the game? There are 3 components that make this worth playing.

The first is that it uses chits to determine the order that the armies play in. This introduces an element of uncertainty on how your plans are going to pan out. I'm generally a fan of chit pull games, so this is a good thing. Also, as the chit is drawn you roll to see how many movement points the army gets, from 2-6.

Next is when you do combat. You get one combat phase per turn, but you can take it after any of your chit draws. Do you do combat now, or wait for the other army to get into position? If the opposing army moves, it could move away from contact and you'll have no combat to perform.

The third aspect is that each player has two offensives, which gives a 1-column combat ratio improvement for each combat. These happen at various times for the players, and each can be taken in one of a range of turns, generally earlier in the game for the Austria-Hungary player, and later for the Russian.

And those 3 factors make the game. The order of the chit draws provides for a lot of angst on how to move and when to perform combat. Throw in the offensives and it gets even more factors to think about.

In our play the first evening saw Eric withdraw quickly on his northern front, but my opposing army kept rolling low for MPs, and couldn't keep contact. I pressed hard in the middle, and Eric did the same in the south.

The second evening saw the decisive action as the combat rolls went my way in pretty much every combat in turns 6 and 7. My concerns about the combat results came home to roost, and they bit Eric hard. I pretty much had no losses, while he lost steps from pretty much every unit fighting.

By the end I'd maxed out my allowed VPs and Eric had barely made any headway on getting to his main VP areas, for a major A-H win.

Ultimately this is like most games that use lots of dice. If the distribution stays reasonable then it's an interesting game. But those dice can have a very wide bell curve, and if it heads to an extreme then it's not much fun for the player on the receiving end, and there is little you can do to prevent it. Even if you stack up the combat odds, your opponent could roll snakes and you roll boxcars, unlike a normal CRT where you can often guarantee that you don't lose.

Now this would be an issue in a longer game, but CoGII doesn't outstay its welcome. We played over two evenings, probably for about 5.5 hours. Part of that time was looking up a couple of rules, and part kibitzing, so I'd reckon that 4 hours might be achievable with experienced players. So, overall, I enjoyed CoGII, and I'd be happy to play it again. It's a good length, and there are enough interesting decisions to make. But watch out for those dice.

Giants clashed

As previously hinted, Mike and I recently got GMT's Clash of Giants II onto the table. This is their (now OOP) game on the battles of Galicia and First Ypres from World War One.

The game was designed by Ted Raicer, one of the top (if not THE top) WWI game designers out there.

For the most part, this is a standard hex-and-counter game, and on the simple side. There are some interesting quirks about movement and combat that I'll get to in a bit.

COG II is a follow on to the original Clash of Giants which included the battles of Tannenberg and Marne 1914. The game system provides a basic set of common rules, then specific rules for each battle. While this can be seen as the same model many games provide (rules and scenario-specific tweaks) in this case, the balance is almost 50/50 between basic rules and scenario-specific rules. The sequence of play and supply rules, in particular, are different in every battle. It's an easy comparison to The Gamer's SCS line for this design structure.

And, coincidentally, the CoG games are about the same level of complexity as SCS. Maybe a bit simpler.

We played the Galicia scenario. This was an early clash between the Austro-Hungarian and Russian armies near the Russian border. The historical clash saw the northern Russian flank pushed back before recovering, and the southern flank steadily push back the A-H forces until they broke. The battle significantly, and permanently, damaged Austria-Hungary's military capabilities. They were only a minor force for the rest of their existance.

The sequence of play in a turn consists of:

1. Mutual supply determination phase
2. Mutual reinforcements/replacements
3. Operational phases (these are random chit draws)
4. Mutual recovery phase
5. End phase/victory check

Each force is split into four armies, and each army has a chit that goes into a cup. As the doctrine of the time dictated commands by location on the map, not by units, when a chit is drawn, you activate the forces currently within borders drawn on the map, not the units that started in that army.

Mike was worried before we started playing that the game was so simple as to almost be simplistic. I shared the same concern before we started playing, but not quite to the same level as Mike. As it turns out, the game plays much deeper than it reads, because of these rules:

1. Movement rates are random
2. You get to declare one combat phase per turn
3. The wild swings possible in combat resolution

Let's look at these in order.

Random Movement Rates

When you activate an army, the first thing you do is roll on a table to see how far (in MPs) it gets to move. The number range between 2 and 6, with most results being 2, 3, or 4. The tables you roll on change during the game as well, making some forces faster later in the game, while a couple slow down. This means you might not get to pull off the attack you planned. In our game, Mike's most northerly force (his 1st army, I believe) consistently rolled low movement. As this was the command at the far end of the wheel he was trying to execute, it meant the 1st army was out of action for most of the contest. It simply couldn't move far enough to come into contact with my retreating forces.

Alternatively, it might mean you can pull off a maneuver your opponent wasn't expecting, as you suddenly get to move a lot further than you thought.

In any event, it does make tactical maneuvering and planning a bit tougher as you simply don't know how quickly you can pull of a particular move. Once you're in the thick of it, it doesn't matter as much, but that only turned out to be in our center – the wings needed lots of movement.

One Combat Phase

This rule didn't have an impact all the time, at times the choice was obvious, but a couple times during the game we really had to think about it. While you've got four armies to activate, you can only declare one combat phase per turn. You get to choose which activation includes the combat phase. Between this and the random activation order, there were times you wanted to come to grips with your enemy, but he was able to run away first. Particularly if you wanted to get two commands into position before attacking. You might intend to declare combat after commands A and B have moved, but if your opposition A is supposed to fight runs away after A moves, your combat isn't as effective.

There is room for a lot of finesse and lessons learned through experience from this rule alone.

Combat Resolution

CoG has a combat resolution mechanism I haven't seen before. There aren't really combat strengths, per se. You count up the number of steps fighting on each side, turn that into a ratio, then adjust for terrain. This produces a DRM for both the attacker and defender. (The DRMs mirror themselves. -1/+1, for example.)

You then roll a die for each unit, modified by the DRM. If you roll equal or under the units quality rating (usually 3, but sometimes 2 or 4), it emerges unscathed. If you roll higher, the unit loses a step. A 1 always succeeds, a 6 always fails. It's entirely possible for a single, one-step unit to be grossly outnumbered and survive while it inflicts loads of casualties on the attacker. This is mitigated a bit by more attacker-friendly ratios limiting the number of units that have to check for casualties. (e.g. a 4:1 fight limits the attacker to 2 possible losses.) But a lucky unit can be very stubborn. And as you only get one step worth of replacements per turn, step losses add up over time.

It felt like this combat resolution mechanism led to a much wider range of results than you'd typically get from a d6, ratio-based system. It was certainly unpredictable.

Conclusions

Our battle ended in an Austria-Hungary victory, as I couldn't get my Russians to exploit a gap I created in the center, and some bad combat results wore down any attacking oomph I had left. I felt that the game, while definitely among the least complex wargames we've played, does not feel simplistic. There are tough decisions to be made, and it satisfied on both the tactical and strategic level. Given the random chit draw and random movement, the game seems well suited to solitaire play. (And, in fact, the box says 1-2 players.) Expect a 5-6 hour play time per scenario. If you're looking for something on the easier side that covers WWI, I'd definitely recommend it.

Fury at the fury

In the past few sessions Eric and I have been playing Fury in the East (BGG entry), a one-map WWII East Front game from MMP that covers the first 9 months of the Barbarossa Campaign. This game was part of Operations Magazine Special Edition #3, their yearly special that features a complete game, sometimes more than just one, as well as lots of updates, corrections, and variants for existing games.

FitE is a reprinting of the Japanese game G-Barbarossa (BGG entry), with updated graphics. It's a fairly strait-forward, corps level, move-fight-panzer move, locking ZoCs, odds combat, column shifts for terrain/supply type of game. However, there are a few wrinkles:

• Only German panzer units move in the second movement phase
  
• German panzers may move out of a ZoC
  
• Units performing Rail or Strategic movement may move out of a ZoC, as long as at least one unit is left behind
  
• For Axis combat is optional; for Soviets it is mandatory; all enemy units exerting a ZoC must be attacked; all units in an enemy ZoC must perform an attack
  
• Soviet Leaders have hidden strengths, and must be revealed to provide leadership to Soviet units; some leaders have no capability, and are removed immediately to the pool; Leaders destroyed in combat are out of the game
  
• Soviet combat units have to be in range of a Leader, otherwise movement rates halved, negative column shift applies; panzers may ignore infantry ZoCs with no Leader
  
• Terrain effects only apply to the Soviets, in terms of plus/minus column shifts
  
• Axis units not only have to trace supply to a supply source, but also have to trace to one of three supply heads
  
• There are different CRTs for each side; the Soviets taking losses; the Axis having retreats, with option to take a step loss instead
  
• Weather is a single condition affecting the whole map; also controls how many Luftwaffe units are available
  
• Axis player gains VPs for controlling Soviet cities; capturing Moscow is an automatic Axis victory
  
• Axis player has Hitler mandated objectives in turns 2-7; not achieving these are -5VPs per objective
  

The major problem is the rules just totally SUCK. Without doubt, this is the worst set of rules I think I've seen for any game I've played. (I believe that the S&T game Frigate had worse rules, but I never played that one.) Terminology issues, major omissions all over the place. Now this is a magazine game, and perhaps there should be some allowance made, but the game is effectively unplayable with the rules that came with it. Did no-one even attempt to blind playtest this from the proposed rules? Even worse is that as a reprint from a previous game there are so many glaring omissions. Did no-one make a comparison to the original game rules?

On the plus side, the developer, Adam Starkweather, has been very active in supporting the game over on ConSimWorld, responding to questions very quickly. However, he does have a habit of shooting from the hip and making pronouncements without going back and looking carefully at the rules. Several times he's made rulings, and then had to reverse them in later posts. That gives no confidence in any of his responses. He's also said 'If not mentioned in the rules, that’s fine.' Trouble is, the rules miss out so many critical items that you can't take that attitude.

And all this is a damn shame, because FitE is a very decent game, and does a very good job of modeling, at a high level, the differences in the forces, and the nature of the Barbarossa offensive. The game flows easily, with options for both sides and plenty to think about. The initial Axis successes slowly grind to a halt in the face of mounting Soviet forces, and the switch in the player turn order nicely reflects the change in balance caused by the winter. I've been playing it quite a bit recently (solo, as well as with Eric) and I've had a blast doing so.

So, track down this gem, get all the errata and rulings from the ConSim World forum, which has been nicely collated into a single document here, get the beer and pretzels out and have a blast.

Next up is Galicia from GMT's Clash of Giants II (BGG entry). Due to a gaming weekend and scheduling issues, we've had to have a couple weeks off, but are due to get back to it next week.

Disappointment in the East

Mike and I gave Fury in the East another go. After the first aborted affair, we got our questions (mostly) answered, and gave the game a second shot. We fully expected our play to last at least a couple nights as reported play times had been in the 1 hour per turn range. 10 turns means likely three nights unless Moscow falls earlier.

The first night saw Mike with slightly less progress as our first game, but with slightly more kills. We got through three turns that first night (as opposed to two the first time we played) and things were feeling smoother. We still had a few niggling issues, but nothing major.

During the middle of turn five, we suddenly realized we'd completely forgotten about the Russian militia. (Did I mention they're completely missing from the rulebook?) It was impossible to backtrack at that point, and so we bagged it. It's likely Mike would have won, but it's impossible to say at that point, as the bad weather was just arriving.

Thoughts on gameplay, from the Russian perspective:

You have one job in the first three turns or so. Run. Make sure you know when you can leave negated EZOCs, and get out of dodge. Leave sacrificial lambs as speed bumps to slow the Germans down, and get as much out of there as you can. Particularly the leaders. It violates every instinct you have to do this, as you have this feeling you need to keep units around in force as much as you can to slow the Germans down, but you can't. You need those units much, much further East.

And herein lies the problem. You're very much at the whim of the random Leader draw during setup. In our second play, I didn't draw a single *-rated leader on the map. This meant every leader Mike was able to kill on the first turn (and it's a lot, there's no way around this) hurt. If you're lucky and get two or three *-rated leaders in that initial setup, you'll fare much better later on. The only way you can try to mitigate this is to plan your deployment with two things in mind: a ZOC net with weak troops to slow the German advance, and everything else placed with retreat in mind.

I haven't played enough to really give good advice on how to do this. Here, of course, lies the problem.

I likely won't play this game again until they can revise the rules. They're basically unusable as printed. Major rules are left out (+3 movement cost for overruns and any mention of Militia units come first to mind) and they're horribly organized.

And, really, it's a shame. This is a good little game destroyed by horribly written rules. I lower my quality expectations a tad when looking at magazine games, but this falls well below even these lowered standards. Hopefully, MMP sees fit to published revised rules. Errata won't do it – they need a new edition. There are enough niggling things slightly incorrect that it makes you question everything else you read, no matter how clearly written. It's just too frustrating.

After Mike and I stopped playing, we had a little discussion about the state of rules writing these days. Sadly, I feel it's declining. I can think of only three designers where I can count on a solid set of rules with a minimum of fuss: Dean Essig, Ed Beach, and Chad Jensen. Other designers may have occasional good or great sets of rules, but aren't consistent enough to hang with those three. Wargames these days have almost fallen to the level of software: never use the very first version of anything; wait for the update. And, the inevitable result of that is that publishers seem to be counting on that update to fix problems they've missed the first time around. It's a nasty spiral. But at least, most companies are savvy enough to understand that keeping those rules updated and electronically available is a good thing, and makes customers (eventually) happy.

Which is what I hope MMP does here, because I think you guys would enjoy this game after they fix the rules.