Chain of Command is coming!

I haven't updated in a little while since I have been busy. I do have lots of material for further blog posts, including terrain from Renedra, Dwarves and Chaos Warriors from Avatars of War to review. The reason I haven't written anything is partly because I have been doing some house painting in 1:1 scale, but mostly because I have been proof-reading the final draft of Chain of Command. That's right, it's nearing completion -- or rather, it is finished but the problem is to translate the rules from Rich-speak into something resembling English. Anyhow, the project is steaming along with the 21st of August as the planned release date. Read more after the break.

A playtest game of CoC under way in the TooFatLardies studio.
You can read the full report here.

So what exactly is Chain of Command I hear you ask? Well, simply put it's a genious set of rules to recreate combat at platoon level in World War 2. This means each side has an infantry platoon on table, plus various support such as machine guns, light mortars and the odd tank or armoured car. The focus is the infantry but that doesn't mean you can't have any other toys involved. It presents the players with some interesting tactical choices and rewards historical small unit tactics. It has forgone the usual Lardie way of using a card deck to handle the turn sequence, instead each turn is broken down into a sequence of phases, in which you dice to see what units or leaders you can activate. Phases are usually alternating but depending on what you roll on your dice you can steal a phase -- or several -- from your opponent. Game effects like pins, overwatch, smoke etc. all carry over from phase to phase until the turn ends. It also has the most innovative setup procedure I have ever seen, which simulates the probing and feinting of scouting parties as they seek to establish secure areas for their parent platoon to deploy to.

I can't really describe it all, but Rich has put up a series of playthrough videos on Youtube. While they are using an earlier draft of the rules the gameplay is essentially the same.

Finished watching all of them? Looks spiffing right? In the videos the Lardies use 28mm figures, but the game will work equally well, if not better, with 20mm or even 15mm figures. The ground scale is actually quite spot on for 15mm figures, but they are probably a bit too fiddly since in the game you can divide your squads into fire teams, divert men from one team to another, or even send a couple off to scout out a flank if you want to.

Big Badaboom!

On another note my father in law furbished me with another present -- since I am no on holiday I have nothing to do he reasoned -- a big stonking german artillery piece. The kit is daunting, 200 very small and fiddly pieces. I'm thinking of building it as a diorama, which then can be used as terrain, perhaps being the objective in a Chain of Command game?

Happy gaming, and remember the 21st of August. It will be awesome!