I wrote about Combat Commander a lot on my blog – in the end, this is among my most played titles of all times. In recent years we tackled with Dave whole Base Game for C&C Europe and progressed most of the C&C Pacific. However, when I got a chance to play this position live recently, I realized that last time I had such occasion – to bring it to the table face to face – was only before pandemic!

And it was – surprise, surprise – exactly with Konrad, who encouraged me now to come back to this fantastic position. I can tell you, playing live, with all this opportunity fire, artillery pounding, etc. is a fantastic experience.

Scenario

We have not played with Konrad for a long time, so we planned to choose one of the Base Game scenarios – preferably, not played before. As it happened, one of the more interesting options was available!

Set-up of our scenario – #2 Hedgroves and Hand Grenades

Hedgroves and Hand Grenades definitely brings up the complexity level in comparison to Fat Lipki (the first battle in the game). We have here defender (Germans, Konrad) and attacker (US, me). That means different number of cards – 4 for Konrad, 6 for me – and many more actions for Wehrmacht (defender type ones). On top of this, American start with radio – which means a lot of artillery attacks during the game! The hedges – famous Normandy bocage – have their defense and move characteristics increased – so seems like a lot of close quarter combat. Let us see how it went!

Session Report

Picture being worth one thousand words, please enjoy picture-rich after action report. Feel free to click on images to enlarge them for more details.

My plan was simple – with the first group, put as much smoke as possible on the heavily fortified, central Wehrmacht position. Then, using the second group, flank the German positions and take victory points.
The plan started to work marvelously. The Heavy German MG42 was bling and my troops were able to slowly but steadily progress in the North.
Of course, it did not hurt when the luck was with me and two consecutive snipers killed one of German conscripts.
The game definitely spiced up when Konrad’s event brought new open objective – suddenly, the lightly defended central Objective 5 was worth additional 10 points.Let me try to get to it!
Above my forces taking down in melee one of German leaders and being just two hexes from Objective 5 – source of many points for the owner. This was probably the best moment for US troops in the battle, almost draw in VPs, superb prospects for the second part of the game and high morale.
And then German High Command decided to redeploy one of the largest caliber artillery to that front.
It was a calamity and disaster for my troops. They were being mercilessly pounded in the woods and open terrain. What is worse, all the smoke dissipated!
The luck was now with Konrad; example above – walking wounded brought my Sgt. Smith to the map, only to be immediately killed by the nearby Germans.
We had also due of heroes – in which I did not only lost my guys but also control of objective 1!
Finally I accumulated enough Artillery Denied cards to destroy that machine of my undoing! still it was too late.
The Sudden Death roll finished the game with Germans leading by 40 VPs!
Losses were very high on both sides and it would not be surprising if the game would end by the surrender.

Wow, this was not the first time when I was approaching this scenario but I do not believe any of previous plays was so wild. Everything was aligning nicely for Americans – even German leader was eliminated – until that terrible artillery arrived. I destroyed it in the end, but not before irreparable damage was done. Well, that is the beauty of Combat Commander – each scenario plays completely differently!

Summary

Playing Combat Commander face to face was enormously enjoyable and to some extent – refreshing. I really forgot how the tempo of this game changes when you do it in that mode compared to asynchronous play. Even live play via Vassal does not reflect what you can see only when your opponent sits in front of you. More such plays will come for sure – stay tuned!