Combat Commander: Europe
Combat Commander: Europe is a card-driven board game covering tactical infantry combat in the European Theater of World War II. One player takes the role of the Axis (Germany) while another player commands the Allies (America or Russia). These two players will take turns playing one or more “Fate” cards from their hands in order to activate his units on the mapboard for various military functions.
Players attempt to achieve victory by moving their combat units across the game map to attack their opponent’s combat units and occupy as many objectives as possible. The degree to which a player succeeds or fails is measured by a scenario’s specific “Objective” chits, the destruction of enemy units, and the exiting of friendly units off the opponent’s board edge.
A game of Combat Commander is divided into several measures of Game Time. There is no sequence of play to follow, however: each Time segment is divided into a variable number of Player Turns, each of which may consist of one or more Fate Card "Orders" conducted by the active player. Fate Card "Actions" may generally be conducted by either player at any time. "Events" — both good and bad — will occur at random intervals to add a bit of chaos and uncertainty to each player’s perfect plan.
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Combat Commander is a wargame for the modern boardgaming age. Traditional hex and counter wargames have often been seen as the domain of only the hardened gamer who loves poring over dice roll modifier charts and calculating the optimum strategy for success.
Combat Commander gets away from the dry, traditional method of doing things and uses a novel card management approach to playing the game which makes it fast, fluid, frantic and fun.
Gameplay is very simple, on your turn, play a card, that card will be one of several orders such as assault, move, fire etc. Then activate some units to carry out that order. Then carry out that action. Repeat this process for the number of actions you are allowed (varies by side and by scenario) and then pass play to the other player. Alternatively, you can forgo your entire turn and discard cards up to your command limit (this varies by side and represents the better command structures the various participants had). At the end of your turn you draw up again.
Then it’s the opponents go, who does the same. The real novelty here is baked into the cards themselves. Every card has multiple uses, you use it on your turn for an order, or you could use it during your opponents turn for a reactionary order (like, say, opportunity fire). Knowing when to play cards for their orders and when to hold them to interrupt your opponents plans is a vital part of the tactics in playing a game of Combat Commander.
Additional to the two uses by the players, every card also has a pair of dice printed on the bottom. Whenever you need to resolve something by dice throw, you flip a card from the top of your deck and check the dice results there. Lastly, some dice results have what are called trigger boxes around them, which will cause events such as incoming sniper fire or other random chaos which so often happens in a heated engagement.
Combat Commander is chaotic, yes, but that’s one of it’s charms. The game is very much about having a strategy and trying to manage your deck of cards appropriately to make sure your desired result comes out, whilst denying your opponent the opportunity to reach the result he wants.
Combat Commander is a card driven WWII boardgame. The cards are used to perform Orders and Actions as well as die rolls.
There are many expansions out for this game and each scenario can be played more than once with different outcomes due to the randomness of the cards and certain random events that will occur during a game. So in my opinion, the game does have a high replay factor.
Each scenario has an objective and sometimes each player has either an open objective (visible to all players) or a secret objective (only revealed at the end of the game and not visible to all players).
The time it takes to finish a game of Combat Commander varies because the turn marker is not directly controlled by the players. Just because a scenario has less turns than another scenario does not necessarily mean the game will end sooner. The turn marker advances when a “Time Trigger” card is drawn as a random event or a player’s draw deck is empty.
The quality of the game components are very good although the map is not mounted, but is a paper map. I would suggest to have the map laminated or perhaps place a piece of glass over it to prevent it from wearing out while playing the game.
There are no dice in this game because the cards are used for die rolls.
Is this game fun? Well this depends on the individual. To some extent your planes during this game are somewhat restricted by the cards you have available to you. There will be times where you will not be able to move or shoot and only skip your turn in order to discard and draw new cards, while your opponent smiles at you and drops artillery shells on your poor hapless soldiers turn after turn. Oh the horrors of war!
Although there are no vehicles in the game, I would not let that deter me from trying the game. What it lacks in vehicles it makes up for in other ways.
As for myself I love playing this game. This is probably because I love playing most games, but mainly because it’s fun! I’ve forgotten how many times while playing this game that I was playing a lost cause and suddenly when I least expected it, Bam!!! I was in the lead. The game can change at a moment’s whim and, that’s fun for me.
So give this game a fair try and decide for yourself if this game is for you. You will either be saying “Please Please Please, can we play Combat Commander?” or not.