Combat Commander: Europe
February 1st, 2008I went over to Steve’s house last night and played Combat Commander: Europe. Steve has been really keen to play this with me. We played Squad Leader a few weeks ago and this reignited his enthusiasm for Combat Commander. Combat Commander: Europe is pretty good, but I am not sure it is entirely successful. It shares a lot of the mechanics of Memoir ‘44, while attempting to cover the same ground as Squad Leader. Sounds a bit like Up Front?
There is a lot of randomness and chaos that I found jarring. For instance, victory conditions can change randomly during the game and snipers, who might as well be magic fire storms, invisibly shoot at random map hexes and disappear. Randomness is not essentially a bad thing, after all WW2 combat involved plenty of luck, but I wish the luck was more thematic. At least you do not feel like an omnipotent god controlling your men, but more like a real combat commander with imperfect knowledge and control over events on the ground.
On the plus side, the components are way better than Squad Leader, although the maps are slightly drab and the rules are not particularly challenging for a wargame.
I did not find it significantly longer or shorter than Squad Leader. We played the first scenario in two hours including rules explanations.
If you have not read it already, check out Mikko’s concise and thorough review.
I need to try Lock and Load and Tide of Iron, to see if I can finally settle on a tactical WW2 wargame.
So far 6/10, but I am keen to play it more.
February 1st, 2008 at 11:27
I was recently drawn into a discussion about Tide of Iron because one chap summised that the way in which units deployed was unrealistic; I believe he was talking about low-level organisation (squads, sections and gun-groups) rather than overall.
That realism is sacrificed is probably a given for most games; the trouble was his benchmark was Combat Commander: Europe, which while it is a fun game to play (often with a good back-story) is hardly the epitome of realism in a wargame! He also went on to describe ToI as unrealistic as M:44 on the basis that there was no specific detail on what each figure represents (unlike CC:E). I always thought one figure is equivalent to as many soldiers as said figure represents; but he’s right that there isn’t anything definite on this.
I could take any wargame and break it down into what’s “gamey” and what isn’t; but my main point is that where these games do get it right (the chaos of battle in CC:E for example; the fluidity of the combat situation in ToI) they do it well.
February 1st, 2008 at 11:40
Realism is in the eye of the beholder…