Bad Kompany

Ok, so my mind is always turning and spinning with ideas.  I have purchased several hex and counter wargames and love them.  I also have gotten a few miniatures and a couple rule sets that are very fun as well, but there is one problem with miniatures.  They can be very expensive to acquire your miniatures.  Now, this is not to debate the cost of minis or how to obtain them.  This is to talk about how you can use what you have to play the miniatures games you've always wanted without the minis.  Well, for me I think I can do this. So here is the plan, I'm going to use the counters from my favorite games and use them in place of the miniatures on the gaming table.  In truth, I have many more counters from my hex and counter games than I have miniatures.  The counters represent troops and equipment from many nations and time periods giving me great flexibility for my gaming choices.  I know, that sounds absurd, but I'm hoping to convince you ...

My wife and I are starting up a video blog where we discuss our gaming misadventures of the week.  I just thought this would be a great way to just talk about the gaming we do in a relaxed and casual way.  Hopefully, this will give us a chance to share our thoughts on the things we encounter when playing and open it up for others to come and chat with us.  I'm hoping we can get a chat up every week.  So if your interested in chatting with us and sharing your thoughts, drop us a line and we'll let you know when the next broadcast is. Watch episode one here: Bad Kompany Chit Chat #1

One of the very first things I did when I cracked open the pages of Chain of Command, rather, jumped to the appropriate section in the tablet edition, was notice there are no points values listed for things like squads and the various support items.  How can I build a platoon?  How can I customize it to be a finely honed machination of death without points?  Instead, there is a listing of what you get when you pick your nation.  Maybe 2 or 3 choices for your platoon and off you go.  So what do you get in your pre-determined list, and where did the points go for tourney play?  Nowhere, they are cleverly built into the lists. Just so we're clear, my experience with points systems is built upon the premise that each unit in the game, from soldier to tank has a point value.  This allows the players to set a limit on points with which to purchase their army, or platoon on a smaller scale.  The points are a way to make the meeting armies balanced. ...

I recently added tanks to my Chain of Command experience and it was quite different than what I expected.  Most games I play have lots of tanks, Battlegroup Kursk, and Panzer for example.  Well, in those games, you bring lots of tanks to the table.  In Chain of Command, it would not be odd to bring one tank to the party.  So for trying out the rules, I brought a T-34/85 and a Panzer III/M.  The two tanks on paper are not really classed in the same league with advantage going to the T-34.  Perhaps in a later article, we'll talk about activation's and the crews that drive these tanks.  Here is how our experience went. At the start of the game, the Russians kept control of the phases very well.  With confidence, they brought on the T-34 first.  What I didn't realize is that in practice, they don't move very fast.  They can do a full speed move of 3D6 inches over open ground, which seems great, but if you roll terribly will leave you not m...

Recently I played a quick game and the scenario was A Delaying Action.  This was a great way to show how only three patrol markers and really set the patrol phase in your favor.  Most games I've seen played or played in had each player using four deployment markers.  The rules state that some scenarios will let you pick between three and four and there has been discussion about the benefit of only three.  Well today I found out when playing a delaying action as a the defender, you only get three patrol markers, and it was awesome. So normally, you and your opponent take turns moving the patrol markers on the board until one side has all of their markers locked down.  However, with 4 markers each side I've seen this usually leads to static lines near the center of the board and sometimes doesn't really showcase creative deployments.  But, what is really cool I have noticed is that if you play with three markers and your opponent has four, you can force th...

One of the first things I noticed in Chain of Command is that your movement is random and not a set amount.  Depending on your movement choice, tactical, normal or all out, you roll dice to see how far you can move.  This is modified for special terrain and buildings.  I didn't know what to think of that until I played out a couple games and I really like the mechanic. Most games I have played allow for infantry, vehicles, cavalry, etc. to have a fixed movement rate which is modified by terrain.  That works just fine.  So why do i like the random roll?  In a narrative element, it takes into account things like your teams willingness to move forward, how cautious they are moving based on perceived threat or even just how much more unsteady the environment is.  Let's take a look at terrain and how it can affect movement. In most war games, movement for tanks is a fixed value based on tank.  As you cross terrain, you subtract from the movement al...