Rochester Gamers Community

Combat Commander: Europe is the first instalment in a series of card-driven tactical wargames, designed by Chad Jensen and published by GMT Games. Players re-create World War 2 infantry skirmishes between Germans and Soviets or USA. This extremely popular game has been compared favorably to other tactical WW2 titles such as Advanced Squad Leader, Up Front, and Conflict of Heroes.

Each nationality has a Fate Deck of 72 cards, with each card playable as an Order or an Action, and also serving to generate random dice rolls, random events or random hexes. On his turn, a player may play Orders (limit determined by the scenario) or discard unwanted cards (capacity determined by nationality). He then replenishes his hand to a number determined by his posture (i.e., attacking, defending, or other).

Orders, such as Move, Advance, Fire, are the means by which a player controls his troops. Other Orders include Artillery Request (to bombard enemy forces or lay down smoke), Artillery Denied (to prevent the opponent from calling on artillery), Recover (to rally broken troops) and Rout (to retreat broken troops, often played on the opponent). Actions, on the other hand, allow a player to enhance his own Orders, or respond to his opponent's Orders. Command Confusion Orders/Actions also exist: essentially useless cards that reduce a player's effective hand size until discarded. Because each player is limited to the cards in his hand, a desired Order or Action may not be available at the time it is most needed. This simulates the gap between a commander's intent and his troops' implementation. In terms of game mechanics, it emphasises and rewards judicious hand management.

The relative strengths of each nationality are reflected by their discard capacity and Fate Deck card mix, as well as the Firepower, Range, Movement and Morale statistics of their troops (naturally each nationality has several different types of troops) and leaders.

Like other card-driven games, CC:E uses a simple basic ruleset, on top of which the cards add variety without increasing complexity. In the process of "rolling dice" -- drawing cards to ascertain targeting accuracy, and attack and defense totals -- jammed weapons, sniper fire or other random events may occur. "Dice rolls" also determine how quickly the time marker advances along the time track, so that the pace of the game cannot be predicted in terms of number of turns. Some random events have the potential to alter the balance of play considerably, making the game slightly chaotic. For some purists, who may prefer games weighted towards skill, this chaos may be unacceptable; others (like me) would argue that the degree of chaos is tolerable, allowing the more skilled player to win most of the time, but allowing a less experienced player the occasional lucky win.

The game was designed around a Random Scenario Generator for so-called infinite replayability, but marketing considerations demanded that historical scenarios also be included (12 in CC:E). The "expansions" for this game include Combat Commander: Mediterranean (not so much an expansion as the "second half" of the game, including 3 more nationalities), and 2 Battle Packs of additional scenarios, Paratroopers and Stalingrad.

The map and counter artwork strikes a respectable balance between attractiveness and simplicity. The map hexes are much larger than the counters, so that multiple counters in the same hex need not be stacked, greatly improving playability (contrasting with Advanced Squad Leader, which is renowned for its gravity-defying counter stacks).

This game is not highly suitable for play-by-e-mail, because in a single turn there are many opportunities for the non-phasing player to interrupt. There is a very polished module for VASSAL (by Tim McCarron) that allows online live play, proceeding almost as quickly as face-to-face play, no mean achievement.

Overall, I recommend the Combat Commander series as an excellent entry-level wargame for those interested in WW2 tactical combat. 9/10