Commander series company level rules

 One of the joys of the Commander system is its maravelous flexibility. Recently, I've been playing at company level, where each unit represents 10-15 vehicles and 100-200 men. This is what I've discovered needs to be done to adapt the rules to that level:

1) Divide all measurements by ten: this is the new range, move etc. in inches. Each inch represents around 250 meters.

2) To make things easier, I base my vehicle stands at 1x1 inch and the infantry at 1x 1/2 inch.

3) The basic increment for command range is 4 inches.

4) FAO and FAA are presumed to be in the CO and HQ stands themselves. Add 1/2 the value of the FAO and/or FAA to the cost of these stands if they have them attached.

5) For Artillery and Air Strike purposes, spotting can be traced from any unit within one command increment (4 inches)of a FAO/FAA equipped HQ or CO.

6) Artillery and airstrike drift dice totals are divided by five and rounded up. This is the number of half-inches they drift.

7) Command can be measured to congruent groups (adjacent stands) by tracing it to the closest unit.

8) Artillery and air strike aim points are the center of their respective targets. A unit is only hit by an artillery or air strike if the template covers its center.

Here's some eye-candy from yesterday's game. Here, a Krasnynorad Tank division takes on a mixed Azurnerreich task force in an assault scenario. I let the game run 10 turns, due to the map being so big (a 2ft by 2ft map in company scale is the equivalent of a 2.4m x 2.4m map at regular scale), but by turn 8, it was obvious that Big Red wasn't going to take the prime terrain objective (i.e. the village), in spitee of shattering most of Great Blue's armor.

 

The game at start: Blue occupies the woods, the village and is poised to put most of its armor on the ridge. To the east, Red masses two tank and a motor infantry regiment.

I'm very proud of this terrain feature. It's a piece of cloth, glued to plastic with silicon caulking, then painted and flocked with more silicon caulking. Finally, bunches of flocked bases are placed on top (along with the water tower), to illustrate woods terrain.

Here's the village: Red needed to ocupy this by turn 10 for the win. Blue has placed the better part of an infantry battalion here, along with a close-support company of Centurions.

The situation at the end of Turn 5. Red has engaged all along the front of the ridgeline, bringing on a third tank regiment from the right flank. All of Blue's armor has rushed to meet the attack and is in danger, now, of being flanked.

Turn 7, the turning point. This airstrike saved the day for Great Blue. A squadron of F-100 Super Sabres bombs Red's flanking regiment, following a devastating artillery barrage. This attack killed half a battalion of armor and disrupted the only in-range HQ. The next turn, the Red CO rolled an "11" right off the bat, attempting to move the whole division in for the kill. A short range knife fight then developed to the right of the ridge, with Blue's Centurions taking out an entire regiment of T-54s while the rest of the division sorted out its command problems in the confusion following the airstrike.

 End game, beginning of Red Turn 8. Blues' armor is almost spent and another company will be destroyed this turn. However, Red has little chance of getting enough infantry into the village before Turn 10 to win the game. When the Red CO blew yet ANOTHER command roll on his first attempt to activate, Red threw in the towel.

Azurnerreich Task Force

As anyone who follows Consimworld's Blitzkrieg board knows, I am a big fan of Avalon Hill's Blitzkrieg. I don't know why - the game itself kinda sucks, actually. But for years now, I've done variants, scenarios and even entire new countersets for it.

Mostly, I think I'm attracted to Blitz because of its historical-yet-science-fiction nature. It's a fictional war in the universe next door between two fictional superpowers who have access to roughly 1950s technology. One can thus play a "historical" kind of war without historical constraints.

The reason I originally bought Cold War Commander and Oddizial Osmy 1/600 miniatures was to play Blitzkrieg. I decided I'd build three armies: Red, Blue and a Neutral Yellow. Red would have Soviet style technology and Blue would have NATO technology. Yellow would be made up of both, plus minor nation stuff. I set an arbitrary limit of 1960 for the equipment because I didn't want to deal with the wide-spread use of anti-tank missiles. Therefore, most equipment is ca. 1955.

Blue - or Azurnerreich - uses Centurions for their main battle tank and German SPW250s and 251s as infantry carriers. They also use Chaffees for recon and French AMX-13s for light tank killers. The Blue Air Force flies F-100 Super Sabres for air superiority and prop-driven Skyraiders for ground support.

Unlike my World War II games, I play CWC Blitzkrieg at the platoon level and half-scale (i.e. 10 cm in the rules are 2 inches on my table).

I've been having a lot of fun dreaming up OoBs for the principal armies and I've decided that Blue will have big, well trained battalions while Red will have smaller, less well trained battalions. This means a Blue battalion should be roughly the equivalent of a Red regiment.

My total Blue force, bought and based so far, amounts to two large battalions of tanks and mechanized infantry, two SPA battalions, a battalion of paratroops and an infantry (motorized) battalion. There are also supporting units: a company of mechanized engineers and two companies of AMX-13s. I'm also going to build a Armored Cavalry "regiment" for Blue (actually am over-sized big battalion).

The following pictures are of my first completed Azurnerreich combined arms task force. It is built around a tank battalion with one company of mech infantry swapped in. Here we have two Centurion companies and a mechanized infantry company (three SPW250-mounted infantry platoons, a mortar platoon and a self-propelled gun platoon). Also attached are a recon platoon and an armored engineer platoon (Centurions fitted with heavy support howitzers and bulldozer blades - I also presume that bridgelayers go with them). Another Centurion company needs to be painted up for this unit to be complete, but it's table-worthy as is.

Task Force Kreuzmann, in its entirety.

Mechanized Infantry company.

Tank Company. 

 

Task Force Headquarters    

   Chaffee Recon Platoon

Task Force Kreuzmann from another angle.

Following my normal doctrine for 1/600 miniatures, I painted one color and flocked another. Here, the base color of the tanks is blue-gray with tan camouflage stripes. The base is a terracota wash over tan, with flocking built up in three layers: fine yellow towards the middle, green flock towards the margins and spring green static grass in clumps to make it really stand out. I wanted the whole effect to look vaguely Brazilian or tropical and I think I've suceeded at that.

More Azurnerreich will be coming soon, as will the forces of their arch-enemies, Krasnynorad (Big Red).