"Chain of Command: One Platoon Only?" Topic

Is it possible to have more than a platoon per side (say a reinforced company or more)on the table when using these rules?

Greetings

One platoon per player. You can have a multi player games – there are guidelines for larger forces at the back of the book.

If you want reinforced company actions from Too Fat Lardies then I Ain't Been Shot Mum is the set you want, though these have different mechanics.

Regards

Edward

Before you move on I urge you to research the rules further,tho only platoon plus it really looks like a fun game…Mikey

I haven't actually played yet, but from reading the rules it seems like you would have to, at the very least, give each platoon its own set of command dice and run each one separately. With the way the activation dice work, if you rolled more than 5 or 6 the command system would break down very quickly (rolling more than one 6 can have a major impact on play, so if you just kept adding command dice as you increased the size of the force, you'd be rolling multiple 6s all the time and that would not be good for the game).

We've happily played with two platoons per side. Each platoon has its own player with their own set of command dice. You just need to think about how to deal with the consequences of rolling 6s. Worked fine and gave us good games. You can also simply play with a reinforced platoon, and just use the usual number of command dice. In this scenario, the commanders do work a bit more, as their extra actions are needed more.

One way discussed on the forum to get the sequencing and chain of command dice generation working plausibly was the following :
Each player uses a mix of two different coloured command dice : Divide the number of dice a single platoon would use as evenly as possible betweent the players of one colour and fill out the remainder of that platoon's dice with the other colour. Only the first colour counts for multiple phase and end of turn and is aggregated by both players. The second colour dice does not count for that and 6s are ignored. (you could say that there is increased command friction in trying to closely coordinate your actions with your fellow platoon commander, and your opponent has the same restrictions so it should balance.)

For example, if you were using 5 dice per platoon and two platoons, one player gets 3 type A dice and 2 type B dice and the other the reverse.

Chain of command dice accumulate normally but my opinion is you can only use them on your own force. End of turn may require expending a CoC die from each player on a side rather than just one. That would require playtesting.

If you like the CoC system, you might be better off trying taking it up a level and resolving command at a company rather than platoon level : 4s activate Company CO/2IC, 3s activate platoon leaders, 2s activate a platoon, 1s activate a section.

It can be done,…

Or, you could just go with a card activation system for each platoon in the game.

Haven't read, or played CoC, so that is my uneducated guess that it might work. Then, you could activate lower units, per the standard rules, or perhaps with a little more tweaking, as needed.

Mako11, the dice are sort of an integral part of the system. It's not just a pass-fail die roll. The number that comes up determines a lot of different things including when the turn ends, random events, etc. It would be hard to do that with a card system. Or so it seems to me.

You can still use the dice, and perhaps a card or two, to designate the end of the turns as well, when not determining which platoons/sides activate first/next.

Umm … why is this on the ACW board?

@Don: Consumer Affairs, Interwar, and ACW. An odd combination no?

@donlowery

Because I screwed up.