We had our club Chain of Command game day this past weekend, with a classic round of people dropping for totally lame and inexcusable reasons. Layoffs at work forcing you to work weekends? Quit your job! HVAC exploded an hour before game time? Let your house flood! There’s dice to roll! Sick? Come get us all infected so we can take time off work and paint additional platoons!

So anyway I was odd man out and we decided to experiment with a 2v1 match.

It nearly worked! I was pretty experimental there. My opponents followed the old Big Chain of Command rules, where they rolled and played simultaneously, with only one of them counting as the ‘leader’ for any random events or game ending rolls. I played a single platoon but gave myself a free Red Dice, which operates as a sixth command dice that cannot generate COC Points or earn you double phases. In hindsight, this mostly worked–but I should have probably just made it a full dice along with an additional section for free so I could better cover the board.

We played the Attack and Defend mission, which was a great choice as it allowed me to take a strong defensive position. The game opened with a smoke barrage that cut off one of the objectives. I took the bait and placed men right on top of it, which caused my opponents to opt for the opposing objective on the other side of the board.

This was fatal for me. I thought it was in the open enough, but the reality was I didn’t quite have enough firepower to repulse two enemies. I think this would have worked if I had had just one more section as a support by default. More on that later. My opponents grabbed the objective early on and started the final countdown while my morale was still high–so we had 9 phases of countdown. During this period, if anyone rolls 3 sixes on their command dice, the match ends with whoever possesses the objective securing victory.

I tried to lay on the fire hot and fast, hoping to break the Soviets holding the objective. My intent was to then run up with my own squad, go tactical, and hold ground until time ran out. I nearly pulled it off, but the proxy Americans (Chinese figures) managed to back him up just in time. If I had had just an ounce more firepower I may have been able to secure victory. I got a lot closer than I expected.

Back to the core idea of how to execute this: I think if I had had six normal command dice and one extra section for free (or perhaps a full value of support points instead of a cut value due to being defender) we could have made this work. It’s very important that I was defending as the lone player–the terrain worked to my advantage and allowed my lesser force to stand a chance. On balance, I think this could work quite well next time around with a reasonably fair chance of the defender winning.

My impression of Chain of Command V2 remains unchanged: it’s great. The new options are useful and the core gameplay loop is still excellent. Few and far between are the games that I respect as much as this system. I walk away from every match wanting to do more for it. I have some buildings ready to paint and some time off coming up, so I may just knock those out. I also have my final infantry for my American platoon on my bench, so hopefully I get to put them down in my next match.

Their theme?

Geronimo!