Peter, Jared, and I decided we'd take a crack at Blitzkrieg Commander II, as an alternative to Flames of War. I refereed, since I have the most (two games) experience with the system, and set up a North African table for Jared's Red Army tanks to assault Peter's 101st Airborne. (I dunno, Alien Space Bats must have done something...)
This was quite a small game, actually, but it still took almost three hours before we called it - all that fumbling with new rules.
The US defended a hill with a half-company of Airborne backed up by a 57mm anti-tank gun, a pair of MGs, some off-board artillery, and a single 81mm mortar. The Russians came in through a village just north of the hill with five T-34/85s, an ISU-122, and some tank riders; unfortunately, they'd placed their single mortar too far away to effectively receive orders...
At first we thought the Americans would simply be steamrolled by the Russian tanks, but they proved to be surprisingly durable. BKC II's command system provided significantly more randomness than we're used to with FoW, especially since the Americans only had one commander; when he failed his command roll, that was it for the turn!
 |
| Second-to-last turn |
One question we had was the command penalty for multiple orders to a unit. We're not sure if it applies to the entire formation that contains the unit, or only to that unit itself. Still, overall it was a good game. Next time we'll have to bump it up to around 3,000 points to a side...
