| Reviewed On | Publisher | Designer | Published In | Rating |
| April 23, 2007 | GMT Games | Chad Jensen | 2006 | 8 |
| Buy It Now | More Info |
As I said, I’m not a heavy wargamer, but I certainly can give a viewpoint of the game from an ordinary person's perspective. I suppose that many gamers would look askance at me when I say that the rules were about the toughest I’m willing to deal with, yet I still wasn’t overwhelmed. The system caused me to refer to the rulebook scores of times, yet the player aids and helps became my best friends, and the whole system plays out rather beautifully. The cards were fascinating with their multiple uses; and while the game was a tough one for me, I could feel the simulation aspect as we played. I don’t think it will become a regular to my table, but I will play it occasionally when in the mood for a deeper, fulfilling experience.
Comments on the game…
1.) Components: I don’t think I’ll ever be a big fan of chits, and there are a LOT in this game, which are slightly difficult to separate and store. What I finally ended up doing was simply punching out the counters that I was going to use in each scenario and leaving the rest unpunched. The little cardboard counters could get overwhelmed by the map boards, but there are few enough counters in each scenario that it never was a problem.
2.) Maps: I was really pleased with the map boards – thin as they were. The twelve different maps show a great variety of terrain, and each appear to have a completely different feel. They are certainly the best component of the game, and I enjoy how the actual picture is used for terrain line of site, rather than the entire hex.
3.) Scenarios: One of the strongest points to Combat Commander is the scenario booklet, all twenty-three pages of it. There are twelve scenarios included, each a different battle from the course of the European theatre. It’s rather interesting how the numbers of the Russians, the superiority of German firepower, and the tenacity of the Americans all come through each scenario – the designer did a tremendous job putting them together. But what I find absolutely amazing is that the game has a rather nifty random scenario generator. I’m always one for hunting down scenarios online to play with my games, but this helps quite a bit when you just want to play a pick up game – or even one that allows you to customize your forces a bit. When I first went through the scenario book, I was a bit overwhelmed; but after going through one step by step, the rest added only a little each time.
4.) Rules: As I said at the beginning, the rules were initially rather intimidating to me. A few factors worked in my favor – one was that I had seen several of the ideas in other games (most of them by GMT). Another was that the rulebook was very nicely organized, with detailed descriptions of all terrain, cards, and rules. You don’t need to know everything for each scenario – I just learned a little at a time. Finally, the thing that was the most useful was a play-by-play sample game of the first scenario, with sixteen turns detailed enough to help me understand. There are a lot of cards, charts, and pieces on the table, and it can be easy to take one look and be overwhelmed. However, the scenarios take you step by step through the rules; and when done, I realized that it wasn’t nearly as hard as I thought it was. At the same time, on a personal note, this is where I stop – I don’t want to get involved in a game that has more detailed rules. But I’m satisfied with where I am at this point, and think that if you didn’t mind Commands and Colors, you might be willing to make the jump up as I did.
5.) Game Ending and Timing: The game can end in a variety of ways – by the marker on a time track, by one side taking too many objectives, etc. At no time, however, was I bored. As a player can only take a few actions on their turn, it is imperative to stay alert at all times. The one thing I did not enjoy was when I had a hand of cards that simply allowed me to do nothing. That didn’t happen often, mind you, but sometimes it seemed to happen at the worst times for myself. I do realize that this occasionally reflects the ineptitude of certain commanders, and the game has a discard/draw type of play that allows one to recover.
6.) Cards: Lest you think that I disliked the cards, I will reiterate that I am a huge fan of card-driven systems, and this one is very enjoyable. One thing that I highly enjoy is how the decks are used both for randomness. Some may not enjoy the lack of die rolls, but having the cards act as a “deck of dice” is something that makes the game smoother and less luck prone. The cards also have a fascinating random event system in place, which occasionally has odd things happen around the battlefield, to represent real world events. Much of the time, these events have little or no effect on the play of each scenario, but they add a bit of uncertainty to the game and give it flavor. Cards are mostly used for “orders” - which allow players to take basic actions in the game, and “actions” – special abilities for each player that allow them to make special attacks or give them bonuses to different abilities. I’ve seen some players talk about knowing the composition of each of the three decks (German, American, and Russian), and how you can actually determine if an event or scenario is unlikely to occur. I, however, (and I suspect most people are like me) do not have these amazing memorization skills and simply enjoy how the decks of cards are amazingly put together to form a strong game-driving device.
7.) Charts: I enjoy game charts, although many wargames simply have me to where I sit and look blankly at many charts that seriously cause my head to spin, Combat Commander was not nearly as difficult. I won’t lie and say that I wasn’t glued to these things for half the game, but I found most of them fairly easy to follow. A couple of the charts are only used when building a random scenario; although I found them to be interesting, I won’t use them much. Most of the charts are centered on a large “track display”, which fits a victory track, casualty track, time track, and quite a bit of other information on it. This keeps the information central and easy to find. I will admit that I found it a bit fiddly at times, but it wasn’t that difficult to work with.
8.) Objective Chits: This was something that was extremely interesting, and that I haven’t seen in other games. Different objective chits are revealed each scenario that make specific points on the map worth points. This actually causes the same scenario to have a high level of replayability, since players will often fight over different parts of the map each time. There are also secret objectives, something that sounds good; but I’m not sure I like it when one player gets a secret objective while the other draws a general objective – it seems a little unfair to the second player. Still, these objectives alone keep me interested in trying out the next scenario to see how it works.
9.) Attacks: Most of the game doesn’t have too high of a level of complexity, but I will say that the actual attacks are a little more complicated than I would like. I know that actual wargamers would look at me and scoff; but we had to check several things, and there are seven steps when attacking someone else. I’m the type of player who just wants to check a couple of things, and then see if the attack succeeds or not. Even near the end of my first playing, I was still checking how it worked; and I’m still not entirely comfortable with it. Some of it is strange – like multiplying the die rolls for range, but it does seem to work out well. Defensive modifiers are quite good in this game, and you have to shoot at people for a while (or in a group) to have a good chance of harming them. I can live with that, since there are so few folks on the map. This does mean that when one player falls behind in troops, it’s near impossible to recover – you might as well surrender when soundly outnumbered. A few games the winner was painfully obvious far before the end of the game.
10.) Fun Factor: I will admit that I’m not good (re: horrifying beyond belief) at tactical games such as this, but I didn’t mind so much because the battles unfolded in such interesting and dramatic ways. I might have gotten some more enjoyment out of the game if I wasn’t constantly working my way through specific mechanics (weapons in particular often confused me), but I still felt like an actual battle was occurring, as opposed to a typical dice fest. Students of military history will most likely enjoy the game, and it certainly is an enjoyable game once you get everything down to a smooth play.
My overall impressions of Combat Commander: Europe are quite good. I can appreciate the game and the history it portrays. It’s much heavier than most wargames I play (again, noting that I’m not a typical wargamer), but I wasn’t overwhelmed – seeing that I’ve sort of “built up” to a game of this level. It’s fun, has a ton of variety, and seems well balanced and designed. If you are seeking to get into wargames that offer more options and complexity, this seems to be a wonderful entry point – it has me thinking twice about playing more involved wargames. And that’s the point!
Tom Vasel
“Real men play board games”
