Its On!
Hornsfan and I are squaring off in an epic struggle for island domination via GMT's Combat Commander: Pacific (via Vassal). Above you can see the initial set up of our randomly generated, 1945 scenario set in Okinawa (since Chris selected the super powered Okinawa Company). I'm the attacker, with a good portion of the USMC at my back. Chris is the defender, with lots mines, wire, trenches, and bunkers. As an added bonus, we both have lots of flamethrower equipped troops, so things should get very crazy at some point.
We're now about two turns in, with some long range sniping taking place on both sides as I crawl up through jungle in the south. I ended up with artillery denied, and Chris now has a 150mm division battery at his disposal. I really need to break that radio....
I'll keep you posted as we proceed. Happy holidays!
Labels: mini session report
posted by Ben @ 8:54 AM
4 comments
4 Comments:
The Combat Commander series does not include armor and artillery. What's the review from you guys on this squad-level, infantry-centric rule set?
I've heard others say that once the Fight's on...they didn't miss the absence of Panzers and Shermans.
Artillery, both on and off board, is present in the Combat Commander series, as is close air support. Anti-tank guns aren't and neither are portable anti-tank weapons like bazookas or panzerfausts, which arguably might have some good anti-personnel applications.
Yes, Combat Commander would be more entertaining with tanks, but even without them I'd have to give it a 9 out of 10 rating for fun. I think CC:P is significantly superior to CC:E, but both are extremely good if you enjoy this sort of thing. Without the tanks, the game gets to a very close level of detail with the infantry with an extremely modest level of complexity, making it high bang for the mental investment.
If you like tanks, then Conflict of Heroes is the big dog in town at the moment. I own both this and Lock 'n Load, the other contender and, sadly, haven't had either on the table yet. The new CoH: Storm of Steel covering the Eastern Front Battle of Kursk is just bursting at the seams with tank battles. The scale of the game is appropriately pulled back a bit from that of Combat Commander, with larger map areas, abstracted squads and leaders, but with some scenarios featuring a dozen or more tanks, ATGs, close air support, etc.
Does Vassal actually resolve anything or just give you the mechanism to resolve results yourselves?
Vassal does a good bit of the number crunching. I actually prefer to do it myself, and we did find it making a few apparent mistakes, so beware...
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