My first ever game of Chain of Command (or how I lost my Big CoC cherry)
There maybe elements of Carry On humour in this piece which I am obviously mortified if you are offended by 😆
I posted some pictures of the wonderful France 1940 table by Joe Bilton which I had the honour to play on at Ebor Lard recently. I posted some pictures of the game last week, this post is about the rules we used and my thoughts and feelings on them. It's not a review of the rules (or an excuse for everyone to tell me what I did wrong 😆).
Regular listeners and followers will know that I generally stick to sets of rules because I don't game that often and when I do it tends to be on the large side so I don't have the time or the inclination to try new sets of rules all the time. I stick with rules I know or as folk in Yarkshire say "I knows what I bloody well likes". Change lives in your trouser pockets.
But when someone else is doing the hard work, I don't mind joining in. Before hand I was a bit worried I'd spoil the game for everyone else who were experienced in the ways of the CoC but I shouldn't have been worried. I had a rough idea how the Chain of Command Dice worked and watched a video by Alex Storm of Steel Wargaming on movement, so I was good to go, so long as I didn't have to fire at anything !
The game had six players, 3 French and 3 German and the game was simulating a French attack on the railway station at Montcornet. The French had two companies of infantry plus supports and a third Command of mixed armour. I didn't see the German forces other than those that came on the table. I took one of the French Infantry companies to minimise the damage I could do.
The objective was two fold, we were playing Big Coc (no I don't know the difference !) The French had to capture a "phase line" at which point the game reset and the French had to capture the railway station.
Now having never played the game this probably wasn't the best way to learn. I was on the same side as Alex and Neil, both really experienced players, both were great guiding me through the rules, even when it got confusing with conflicting advice 😆
The game starts with a Patrol phase where each side manoeuvres counters on the table to gain ground and determine their jump off points. It's something I'm vaguely familiar with as it's a mechanic used in the later O Group rules. It's a game within the game and can be very important as it determines where you deploy your troops. Its abstract for sure but it does give a good representation of small groups of recon probing the enemy with their Big CoC.
With that done it was time to bring the troops on and roll some dice. The activation of troops is done using a set of dice (5 in our case) each one allows you to activate a team, section or leader. 5s build towards a Command Dice (which gives you additional actions) and a 6 which in multiples allows further actions.
I love a bit of friction in my games and I found the Command Dice mechanism really good. I didn't get to fully understand the Chain of Command dice but the basic activation system was really good. It made you make choices with the options you have and sometimes that's not very much ! I have played games where the friction is so restrictive that you can't do anything, this isn't one of those games. In the morning I played I found myself choosing between options rather than doing everything I wanted but I was always able to do something and the joy was in choosing which actions were most important of the ones I had available.
The best test for me was the times when I knew what I wanted to do (having commanded people in real life) but rather than my usual method of shouting, pointing and swearing, I needed a tabletop solution 😎 Alex and Neil where both great at helping me choose how to use that turns Command Dice to get my objectives completed.
After an hour or so I was pretty much commanding my own stuff and just checking on how many dice I threw or the numbers I needed. I managed to push my infantry forward and get into the houses that formed the 1st phase line and after the reset we only had a short time to go before the game ended, but we managed a glorious charge into the train station initiated by Alex and enthusiastically supported by me.
So, thoughts on the rules. I'm no expert, I played for 3 hours in a game which was probably a bit big to start with (like I've never done that before 😆) but I honestly enjoyed it, great company and a great table definitely helped but this is a post about the rules. I have ditched rule sets after one game but these wanted me to play more and I hope to have another go in the near future.
Negatives, not many. The main criticism I see of CoC is that it just degenerates into a firefight. I can see how that can happen and I think it did a but in our game, but that wasn't the fault of the rules, it was the decisions of the players and to be honest that happens in any set of rules.
The patrol phase is an abstract concept and its a quick way of getting a game started and getting into the action early doors, I quite like it and can see it's benefits. The jump off points are a harder concept to get my head around as reinforcements and supports can appear at any of them but I can see how it eliminates a lot of fairly pointless suffling of figures around the base line and the wargamers magic eye seeing reinforcements moving on and obliterating them before they come on when in reality they wouldn't have been seen.
I think it's also a rule set that would benefit from more and more play time and playing regularly as well to get the best of it. I tend to not game that way and move from one unfeasibly large project to another every year or so. I'd definitely like to try it again and who knows this maybe the blue pill that starts Mega Big CoC 😉
Regards Ken
