Archive for the ‘Rules’ Category
October 9th, 2011 | 
Author: Thanks to Bill Witthans, I am at last set up to post on this site. Thanks, Bill, and everyone who makes this website possible!
I want to tell everyone about the game I created, Command Combat: Civil War. Since this, and the next few years are the 150th anniversary of the war, I wanted to commemorate it with the war game I’ve always wanted to do. It’s based primarily on three principles:
General Tyler leads his men to battle, crossing Bull Run Creek.
Principle #1: Personalities of the generals. What got me interested in the American Civil War, and history in general, for that matter, was the personalities of the people involved, and how that affected their choices and leadership. I also find it interesting to watch war gamers and see how their own personalities are revealed in their game play. I wanted to find a way to meld those together; to give players their own choices on how they played the game, but at the same time to encourage them to make choices similar to what the real generals would do, or at least reward them for doing it. What I came up with was a system where not only do the generals get statistics based on their skills and limitations, but also special rules that reflect their style of battle and talents. So, for instance, “Stonewall” Jackson has a special ability where all units under his command get better morale. This special skill changes, however, throughout the expansions, so in the 1862 expansion, his special ability will be “foot cavalry,” giving all units under his command extra speed.
Principle #2: Limited command control. I’ve always found it odd that in war gaming, players can control any of their units anywhere on the board in any way they like. Though this makes sense when they have radios, it doesn’t make a lot of sense when generals are relying on messengers. Though many other rules have been developed for realism, this has always seemed to elude rules systems. So I created a system by which a corps general sends one of three colors to their division generals, red, white, or blue. Red is for attack, white is for maneuver, and blue is for defense. Each color has its own benefits and drawbacks. These orders travel at 15” per turn from the corps general, and when they reach the division generals, their entire divisions are subject to the drawbacks and advantages of the color coded orders. For instance, defense allows units to hold their ground a little better, but limits how close they can come to the enemy.
Principle #3: Simplicity and speed. Let’s face it, none of us have a lot of time anymore. There are so many games out there that we all say we’re going to play “some day” but we never do because we don’t have time. And even when we do finally get around to it, no one wants to put down their video games to come join us. So probably the most important aspect to a game is simplicity and speed. Some war gamers resist these qualities because historical accuracy and realism are often lost because of them. However, there are ways to streamline rules so they don’t take too long to play without losing realism and accuracy, or at least to give a flavor of those qualities. Command Combat allows players to play entire battles in just an average of four hours. Quick battles can be as fast as two hours, and full day battles played out to the last man take about six hours. The scale also allows players to pit corps against corps on an average sized 4’ by 6’ table.
The game premiered on the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Bull Run, and has played at Strategicon, Smackdown, Fort MacArthur Days, and the Model Kit Expo. We will be having regular games at Game Empire in Pasadena every second Saturday beginning November 12th. We will begin with historical scenarios, such as Wilson’s Creek and both Bull Runs, but will soon move to tournaments where players will build their own armies from the core rulebook and the expansion pack.
Everyone can download a sample PDF copy of the game by going to:
On the left side are two free scenarios to download. I’d be really interested to see players try it out and place up battle reports. If you have any questions about how the game plays, you can contact me at:
Command Combat: Civil War - 1861 (The Core Rulebook)
Posted in 
Tags: 
Steve leads his troops wearing his helmet from his first command!
My main Wargaming buddy Steve Gausche and I after a long absence finally got out our 20mm WWII stuff to have a battle! For many years we have used rules that were written by myself and others based off of Steve Lorenz’s Panzer War. They were/are quite good, fun, and give good historically believable results. They are fairly detailed and large games can lead to 5+ hour games….. Something we are not as comfortable with now as when we were younger and had more time to spare. Also not playing WWII as frequently as we used to leads to us having to spend a lot of time looking stuff up (yes writing the rules does not mean you know them by heart) and that was not much fun. So this coupled with the fact that I had for a long time wanted to find a simpler rule set that would allow me to game WWII at conventions and at our local club (the Bengal Club) like I used to, faster with less fuss. Convention games NEED to be simple and fast to be fun for participants!
My M-36 moves into position
I have many sets of WWII rules sitting on my shelf, some read, some played, and others just there! One of the rule sets is Crossfire a small (by WWII rules standards) set of rules that I had played over 10 years ago at a convention and hated! Of course I did not understand the concept, and the guy running it did not help much outside of letting me know I was being wiped out. So the rules sat on the shelf…. Most rules have about a 2 year life where they are “the in thing” and then replaced unless they are really good and then 5 years or so. Well it had been over 10 years and I was still hearing about them and in searching the web I found lots of really devoted players and the same basic rules were still in effect! This made me decide to give them a try on my own table.
Steve and I set up a small battle, a company of German regulars with support from a mortar, 2 HMG’s and a PZ IV-H defending a small French town of 6 buildings, some larger light industrial builds among them. We laid down plenty of terrain per the rules and Steve set up his defense. My forces consisted of a reinforced platoon of American regulars, 4 squads, HMG, mortar, and M-36 tank destroyer. Not a lot in my opinion for the attack.
I deployed out of sight of Steve’s forces and having the initiative moved out using cover. I pushed two squads forward and one of them came into his troops line of sight (LOS) and he used reactive fire to suppress them losing me the initiative. The initiative passing to Steve he proceeded to use group firing to nearly wipe out my platoon in the woods. Quite a wake up for me but when you think about it, it worked. I was silly enough to move the entire unit up into the area where he could bring several units to bear on me and he rolled well, my troops were pinned, suppressed, could not return effective fire and then killed. Now killed is a subjective term, many would argue that the results of two whole squads killed that quick (how quick??? There is no time scale so the fire fight might have been 2 minutes or 22 minutes) but “killed” in the game as I see it means really reduced in combat effectiveness to a point they no longer play a part in the action due to wounds, morale, exhaustion, and actual KIA’s. Works for me and it was fast in game time!
Steve's Germans take up a position on my flank
Steve then used the rest of his initiative to move a squad into a flank position to my left and then passed initiative to me. I pulled my troops back and swung my M-36 around the edge of the field where it could engage some of his firing troops that had just caused so much damage. My tank suppressed his one squad allowing my two other platoons to move up into position with out taking reactive fire. So far these rules were allowing the same type of maneuver and producing believable results like our own rules but with much less work and much faster! Steve then advanced his Mark IV onto the road hoping to engage my platoon now starting to engage his most forward squads, and my M-36 called reactive fire, scratch one German tank.
Germans suffer the first setback, loss of their Armor support!
I used two of my mortar 3 fire missions to lay smoke into a gap in my cover thus allowing my right flank platoons and M-36 to move around his flank and form up behind some woods. My M-36 then poked his head out around the factory building to support my 2 squads move into the factory. Bad move! A Panzer Faust from one of the nearby buildings stopped the M-36 dead, a heap of flaming wreckage.
Panzerfaust the bane of allied tankers in Europe takes out the M-36
Steve then pulled back his platoon that had taken up the blocking position on my left flank in order to counter the threat I was massing on his other flank. This was somewhat of a mistake as it allowed me to move into his position and engage another squad at near even odds. The dice went in my favor there and I moved up again so that now I had 3 platoons attacking his last bunker building containing his CC, 1st Platoon and HMG. While my one Platoon on the left with my CC, and my HMG, held and threatened his center I launched my attack with the other two platoons in the Factory complex. Slightly better die roles on my part and the fact that I could switch my firing from one platoon to the other undamaged platoon was telling on Steve’s defenders. His Heavy Machine gun was positioned to cover his front where my 2nd platoon, CC, and HMG were waiting behind a building for the right moment and could not move with out provoking relative fire from me. Several good shots from me suppressed 2 out of his three squads and after rallying off my “pinned” squads moved my 1st squad into close combat! assaulting the building. This was too much for Steve’s Suppressed squads although his Company Commander went down fighting causing a “kill” on of my assaulting squads. This ended the battle as his last platoon pulled back out of his position in the woods and the town belonged to the GI’s.
Two American platoons regroup behind the factory complex
We played this battle in about four plus hours, but that was using rules and concepts that were in the beginning totally alien to us! Since the game requires 1 1/4 inch bases some time was also spent cutting test bases from roofers tin (really steel) and dropping our indavidualy based 20mm figures onto them in the correct numbers. I don’t really want to rebase and I think that these metal bases could be flocked in such a way as to leave openings to drop any nationalities troops based like ours onto them, saving the need to have bases for all my already based troops. The basic rules were learned in just a short time and we spent the rest of the bulk of the time digging around through the rest of the vehicle, building, close combat, indirect rules, and other stuff. We have a good handle on the rules after just one game and I think another replay of the same scenario could be done in 2 hours. We both liked the rules, simple, elegant, and get you to the same conclusions without all the work. This leaves a lot more time to concentrate on maneuver and fighting the battle! I can’t wait to try these again!
Bill W.
Last night, the Bengal Club held two very entertaining games using “The Natives Are Restless“, a simple yet sophisticated set of rules previously only used for Boxer Rebellion games (See below for information about the convention games played in the fall). Zulus versus Brits, and although the Zulus lost twice, it was still an exciting game — both of which were played in the span of three hours.
Unfortunately, we don’t have any pictures of the games, but we’re starting to think that these rules may be a handy replacement for The Sword and the Flame, a game system not currently in favor at the club.
Loading ...
