{"id":794,"date":"2013-10-22T07:24:13","date_gmt":"2013-10-22T07:24:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tabletop.magigames.org\/?p=794"},"modified":"2013-10-22T07:28:45","modified_gmt":"2013-10-22T07:28:45","slug":"chain-of-command-will-make-you-re-think-skirmish-games","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/tabletop.magigames.org\/?p=794","title":{"rendered":"Chain Of Command Will Make You Re-think Skirmish Games"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Dear Readers:<\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t want to overstep, or come off as a shill (I have no connection to Too Fat Lardies), but I have to tell you about these new WWII skirmish rules, <a href=\"http:\/\/toofatlardies.co.uk\/index.php?main_page=index&amp;cPath=25\" target=\"_blank\">Chain Of Command<\/a>, from Too Fat Lardies.<\/p>\n<p>These are the best skirmish rules I have ever read. They are revolutionary in the way that SAGA was when it came out. Like SAGA&#8217;s battleboards, the &#8220;blinds&#8221; phase, along with the dice activation and &#8220;Chain Of Command&#8221; dice will totally change the way you look at WWII gaming.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s a &#8220;platoon plus&#8221; game &#8211; you&#8217;ll have an infantry platoon plus support &#8211; maybe an additional squad, or off table artillery, or a tank, mortar, etc.<\/p>\n<p>Before the game proper starts, there is a &#8220;blinds&#8221; phase. This is a short mini-game that establishes where each player can place their &#8220;jump off points&#8221;. The jump off points are where you can deploy your troops. So &#8211; you start the game proper with no troops on the table, and you deploy them at your jump off points when you wish.<\/p>\n<p>This solves the &#8220;all my troops are known and within 12 inches of my table edge&#8221; boring deployment issue. Your opponent doesn&#8217;t know exactly what you have until you deploy it on the table. By deploying from a jump off point, you start a lot closer to the enemy than the table edge. Jump off points also enable ambushes and resupply, and are vulnerable to being overrun by the enemy.<\/p>\n<p>This blinds mechanic, all by itself, is revolutionary. All modern games should use this.<\/p>\n<p>Next is the dice activation. You roll several D6 (usually 5) and the result tells you what you can activate &#8211; a team, a squad, a leader (who can activate his squad, or give other commands) etc. A roll of 5 on a die also increments your Chain Of Command die. When this gets to 6, you can take special actions that have a greater impact on the battle.<\/p>\n<p>Chain Of Command from Too Fat Lardies. My 15mm Germans are about 1\/3 done. You can use your Flames Of War figures as based, or your 28mm Bolt Action figures (but I&#8217;m a big 15mm fan, so&#8230;)<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/tabletop.magigames.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/4_stands_done_7_to_go.jpg\" rel=\"lightbox\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-793\" alt=\"4_stands_done_7_to_go\" src=\"http:\/\/tabletop.magigames.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/4_stands_done_7_to_go.jpg\" width=\"900\" height=\"325\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Too Fat Lardies made a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=XiT70m6CJO8\" target=\"_blank\">series of videos<\/a> explaining the game. \u00a0They are excellent, and I love their terrain!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dear Readers: I don&#8217;t want to overstep, or come off as a shill (I have no connection to Too Fat Lardies), but I have to tell you about these new WWII skirmish rules, Chain Of Command, from Too Fat Lardies. These are the best skirmish rules I have ever read. They are revolutionary in the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[44,39,59,55,24,49,62],"class_list":["post-794","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-historics","tag-15mm","tag-28mm","tag-bolt-action","tag-chain-of-command","tag-flames-of-war","tag-saga","tag-wwii"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/tabletop.magigames.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/794","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/tabletop.magigames.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/tabletop.magigames.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tabletop.magigames.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tabletop.magigames.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=794"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/tabletop.magigames.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/794\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":800,"href":"http:\/\/tabletop.magigames.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/794\/revisions\/800"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/tabletop.magigames.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tabletop.magigames.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tabletop.magigames.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}