Chain of Command rules review

We played our first game of Chain of Command from Too Fat Lardies.


The first thing I noticed from the book is, that it has a lot of rules.
The current tendency seems to be to simplify rules and lower the bookkeeping (Bolt Action, SAGA, In her Majesty's name).
Don't get me wrong, I love each of the rules I mentioned, but I would like also to have a ruleset that plays in a bit more serious tone, while not being a simulation.
CoC rules are clearly written, there are lots of examples and illustrations and occasional picture of miniatures engaged in a mortal combat with other tin soldiers.

There are army lists for 4 major powers in the rulebook for the basic infantry platoons, Paratroopers and support weapons, pretty much like Bolt Action's basic rulebook.
The one thing that differs is that there is no exchanging weapon X to weapon Y with N point cost or buying additional teams. In fact, there are no points at all.
The lists are built based on their historical counterparts, and the balancing factor between them is a value called force rating. Force rating is is higher the better the platoon in question is.
So U.S Armored Rifle Platoon has +4, U.S early war paratroopers +1, Fallschirmjäger platoon +7 etc. Each player's support level is the difference of these two, so ARP against Fallschirmjäges gets 7-4=3 level of support to pick from.

Brave bazooka team lights up a nazi halftrack

 Every country has also their own national rules, like they have in every game, and they seem to be nicely balanced although bit toned down when compared to BA. As an example, U.S not suprisingly gets enhanced movement and fire, better scouting teams and little better rifle fire. Germans get enhanced assault (they throw grenades automatically), and enhanced MG fire.
The company has already produced supplemental lists for Finland, EW Russians and EW Germany, with more to come.


 
The unique aspect of the game is the pre deployment phase called patrol phase. It is a mini game with partol markers in which players try to get their patrols in most advantageous position whilst remaining in cohesion. The end result dictates their deployment points.

The main game itself is run in phases which are like turns in other games. The real turns in this game happen either when forced by other player, or by luck (3 or 4 sixes in command dice), they represent lulls in the battle, during which overwatches, smokes, pinns, stuns, etc. disappear, and new push begins.
In our game (about 5 hours) we got to the second turn, so a whole game might be over in just the first turn depending of how the players roll their command dice. 

Two MMG teams at the bottom keep krauts on the hill hugging the dirt

Within the turn players play phases after each other in igougo manner, although lucky command dice rolls of 2 or more 6's might get another player to play several phases back to back (4 turns of MMG fire did wonders to german morale:) ). 
The inactive player can have his troops in overwatch and interrupt movement in their firing arc as well as use special CoC points to interrupt the opponent.

The game relies on activations. the active player rolls command dice based on his force's allowance (5 in our case), and uses them to activate different leaders, teams or sections or increase CoC points. Although a section or a team can activate by themself, if activated by a leader, they function more dynamically, or have access to actions only a leader can invoke. 
Leaders have command iniative value representing the number of command actions they can carry out if they are activated. Those can be used for example to split a team from the main squad to advance and secure a position while other give covering fire, or to order soldiers to toss grenades, move cautiously etc.

Movement is random, 1-3 d6 depending on the speed and what you want to accomplish (ie. no shooting with 2d6 unless you are American). This played pretty well (even though I had some doubts about it).

Nazi shooting has taken its toll with 3 dead and 1 shock.

Infantry shooting to hit is calculated from weapon's effective range and target's rating (green, regular, elite). To wound is affected by the cover, successful hits cause morale penalties or kill the troops. Shooting and LOS is model by model based, and leaders can divide fire.
Tanks and antitank weapons behave differently, they roll to hit (with modifiers), then number of AT power dice versus the target's armor dice, then roll hit effect tables of the target's vehicle type and number of penetration successes. There are lot of hit effects (17 for tanks) varying from forcing the target to retreat, killing the driver or blowing the whole vehicle up.

Morale is tracked by each team with shock. It immediately starts impairing the movement and after that shooting. Having more shock than men in a team makes it pinned down. Having double the shock than the men makes the team to break with a possibility to rout. Leaders can rally the troops while in command.
The whole force has force morale that is randomly adjusted slightly before the game. It goes down due to breaking leaders, routing troops and getting whole teams killed. If it drops too low, the player starts losing command dice and eventyally losing the whole battle.

There are more to the rules like generating chain of command points, tactical movement, different command iniative actions etc, but those add to the base rules described here, so I don't cover them now.

Chain of Command is clearly not competing against Bolt Action, they exist to fill different places. Where Bolt Action is a fast to learn, tournamet friendly game, Chain of Command has slower learning curve, not as tournament friendly, but more suitable for historical scenarios and players who want a little more realism for that specific game (Brécourt Manor anyone?).