Last week before the big Bolt Action event I played a game of Chain of Command with a couple guys that I meet up with occasionally. The last half of 2016 was a little rough and I hadn’t played anything for awhile so I was eager to get in a game when Dan suggested Chain of Command. I already had to pack up the car for the weekend so I just brought everything along and threw the table together while waiting. We did a simple attack/defend scenario with two regular German platoons defending against one American attacker.
Dan used his Americans, with a .30 cal and a mortar for support, plus an extra squad if I remember correctly. Howard and I had only a tripod mounted MG42 to back us up. The German counter attack came quick as I had a couple of good rolls and took three activation’s, locking down a side of the board with one squad and started throwing some pins around and kept the Americans behind a hedgerow with two squads taking cover behind a stone wall. Howard’s platoon took the long way around the board and eventually did some real damage to the American platoon by rushing a hedgerow and creating a crossfire, decimating a squad with a hail of grenades. The Americans eventually took the flank that I was holding down with a lone squad and threatened a jump off point, but had suffered some morale loss during the turn.
We had to call the game due to time, but the outcome was clear: The Germans were threatening two jump off points and the Americans had two broken squads (or what was left of them). I had a full Chain of Command die and could almost certainly end the game with a good round of fire and then use the die to end the turn, routing the broken units and cause a complete loss of morale. The Americans were at 5 morale and even good rolling on their part would have brought them to 1 or 2 morale, severely limiting their activation dice and just prolonging the end.
I’ve played several 3v2 games and the suggested balancing of adding a full CoC die to the side with fewer players worked well enough. I think Dan was simply out activated, an extra chain of command die wasn’t nearly useful enough to balance the game. I think next time we do a 2v1 game we will make the lone player elite, with six activation dice. I originally thought that an extra die of support would do, but without the dice to activate that’s not much of a help.
