10th October 2018
How we came to be playing ‘Big Chain of Command’
After moving to Somerset a couple of years ago I wanted to see if it was feasible to setup a war-games club Locally. One incentive was the availability of a semi-converted, 19th century barn with power, heating and space enough to get started.
Williton Gamers as the club is known is not the largest of war-games club, in fact with just four regular members it’s probably one of the smallest!
Starting back in July last year with just two members, myself and Rory, we started dabbling in 28mm World War Two games, firstly with Warlord Games’ ‘ Bolt Action’ and then settling on ‘Chain of Command’ From Too Fat Lardies at the beginning of this year. (Rory also writes and publishes his own rules which we play occasionally giving us a nice variation, but predominately we play Chain of Command).
Through the use of social media and in no small part from the efforts of my good lady wife, we have expanded recently with two more members, Colin and Dave. We’re not likely to become the largest of clubs any time soon but this increase does come with it’s challenges! More on that latter.
Earlier this year I set about constructing a purpose built gaming table. The idea at the time was to build a table with plenty of space for gaming but also space enough for putting rule books, dice and tape measures etc.
The end product was an 8′ x 4′ table with a 6′ x 4′ playing area and removable ‘trays’ either side for dice and figure storage. This design was inspired, at least in part, by the table used by Travis and co on their YouTube channel Tabletop CP.
Games Table with 6′ x 4′ gaming area in the centre with two dice & figure trays
Now back to the challenge of having more new members. Up until Colin and Dave joined there was never an issue with people not being able to play and even with three of us we could usually sort something out. One would ‘help out’ another player or someone would be an umpire. But now with four of us on a regular basis, it seemed to be the case that someone was always just watching.
This is where Big Chain of Command comes in. Back at the beginning of the year when I purchased the rules for Chain of Command, I became aware of the the supplement for ‘Big Chain of Command’ and thought this would be something to explore as and when we expanded.
Big Chain of Command as the name suggest is bigger than your normal game of Chain of Command with usually two or three platoons per side. And having an extra foot of table per extra platoon is a good starting point. I couldn’t expand the table width-wise but had space length-ways if I removed both of the trays, this would give us space enough for games with up to three platoons per side, plenty to keep us going for a while. It also meant that all four of us could join in in a game of Chain of Command and also a couple more new members to join in as well whenever the club expands again.
Now we had the chance to make use of all of the table and last night was our first foray into Big Chain of Command!
Pregame table setup
We kept things simple for this game, there aren’t a lot of additional rules for playing Big Chain of Command but there are a few changes you need to get your head around. Nothing too daunting, just subtle changes to make the game more suitable for what is basically company sized battles.
We kept to two platoons a side, as there was four us playing, this made sense. On the German side played by Colin and Rory, was a German Heer platoon and a Fallschirmjager platoon. Opposing them was a British Infantry Infantry and a Para platoon, controlled by myself and Dave. Colin opted to defend so I rolled up the support points for the Brits (unfortunately Dave couldn’t make it so I was now looking after both platoons). The infantry platoon scored 9 and the Para’s 11 +2 for being Elite giving them a total of 13. For some reason I thought the maximum Support points you could have was 11 so I rounded these and those for the Fallschirmjagers down to 11. I must have got this mixed up with Force Morale of something similar!!!
We then diced up for Force Morale. The Brits got 9 and 11 and the Germans got 8 and 11. Rory and I Diced off for the Fallschirmjagers and the Paras, The Para’s won and started the game. We played out the turn sequence based on the Force morale for each platoon giving us a sequence of:
British Para’s
German Fallschirmjagers
British Infantry
German Heer Platoon
We used this sequence throughout the game – if we’re doing this wrong, let us know. We’re still learning the rules!
The Patrol Phase was interesting with the extra Patrol Marker and Jump off Points, good communications between players pays dividends here. As does a well conceived plan for where to deploy your JoP’s. It’s easy to forget about this when your positioning your Patrol Markers. It’s the JoP’s position that counts!
Images from ‘Big Chain of Command’ game
We had the usual tank versus tank action during the game, this time with a Churchill against a Panzer IIIJ but with a different result. Up until now we had only seen tanks getting knocked out, usually after one or two hits. But after three or four hits on the Panzer IIIJ it still hadn’t been knocked out! However the crew did finally bail due to excessive shock (by this time their Gunner had been killed and the hull MG out of action).
Deserted Panzer IIIJ after crew bailed (Panzer IV Proxy).
We have found from previous games that having plenty of roads on the table lead to a more balanced game for tanks. It gives them more options for where to deploy and also gives them a better chance of survival during the first few turns. In a previous game Colin had lost two tanks fairly quickly, hes was unlucky with dice rolls but also being restricted to where he could deploy his tanks played a large part in their demise.
Plenty of roads on table give Armour more options when deploying.
Unfortunately we didn’t get as much time in for the game as we had hoped due to a late start and an early finish (early start in the morning for Rory). However we did get in a few turns and the promise of having more troops and more support on table makes for an interesting game. As we build up our collection of models we hope to be able to field Armoured platoons in the near future. But for now two platoons of infantry plus supports a side will keep us going for now. We look forward to playing many more games in the future!
Williton Gamers 