"Five core company commander rules mods" Topic

I've got the main Five Core Company Commander rules and like what in seen. Has any one tried any rules modifications that they especially like? Anything that would work especially well for one era? The core rules seem full of possibilities. Thanks.

I did an official scifi thing and I know our own "Just Jack" bumped it up to ridiculously large battles :-)

The Battle Pack zines have a few variants too, but I'd need to go look up what went where.

I've read Jack's Fulda Gap posts on his blog. (An unbelievable blog if you haven't looked at it.) By the end of it, you get the idea that there must have been a rule that any important NATO shot always misses, but I think that was just wildly bad dice. A couple of rules modifications that I saw in his posts (at least I haven't seen them in the main rules):

(1) Any time a wire-guided missile fires, the firing unit has to spend a turn reloading. As a practical matter, it meant that a unit fired, hurried to a covered position to avoid more return fire, and then reloaded. The rule made sense in that it allowed various guns to put out much more fire than the ATGM crews, and it put a premium (and a lot of suspense) on the ATGM shots.

(2) There was a rule that a vehicle hit could result in a catastrophic explosion. I am not sure of the exact mechanic, but a vehicle could explode in such a manner as to damage nearby vehicles and troops. It didn't happen often, but you could imagine a BMP crew bailing after the t-72 in front blew up and the tank turret landed on the BMP.

Hey, sorry guys, just saw this. Don't wanna miss when you guys are talking about my favorite rules ;)

Regarding mods:

-to play larger games, I split each side up into a number of different units or commands and used a deck of cards for activation. Each side had one card per unit, and when one of your side's cards is drawn you decide which unit/command to activate. Each unit/command could activate only once (I tried allowing the NATO troops to activate twice per turn, it was too powerful).

-For higher quality troops, I allow them to fire then move into close combat. 'Regulars' and lower quality can still shoot and move, but can't move into close combat (as per the rules).

-I was using a spotting mechanism: 'good spot' needs a 2-5 for success, 'bad spot' needs a 1 or 6 for success. I leave it to you to decide what is a good or bad spot.

-I've been using a 'return fire' mechanism for tank/anti-tank. If a tank/AT fires at tank/AT and totally misses (no kill, man down, fall back/hunker/ or pin) the target, the target gets to fire back for 'free' (i.e., doesn't count as having activated, can still do if even if he's already activated that turn). So, when you're firing at tank/AT, don't miss ;)

-I let friendly units touch to rally pinned/hunkered vehicles (not just leaders).

-I regularly use more than one leader in a game (even smaller ones, it really helps to show differences in troop quality, or to recognize heroes in campaigns).

-I roll for vehicles being damaged when. Obviously a 6 on the kill dice is a kill, and so a 1 is damage. I only go with two options, immobilized or main armament/turret disabled, so I roll to see what happened, then I roll to see if the crew bails out or stays. If the crew bails out I consider (for game purposed, not campaign purposes) the vehicle destroyed (I don't mess with trying to get crews back into their vehicles, though, strangely, I do with gun crews in WWII games. Go figure…).

-Sometimes I let high quality troops snap fire with 1K 1S, if it's a particularly good shot.

-As mentioned above, I messed around with ATGMs. They can fire and move or move and fire, but before they can fire again they need to spend an activation reloading. This does affect the 'return fire' rule: if a tank shoots at an ATGM team that is not loaded, and totally misses, obviously the team cannot fire back (there's no missile in the tube). So I let the ATGM team a free move instead.

-Regarding the 'catastrophic explosions,' well, that's a bit of a misnomer. Or, more appropriately, me taking a little journalistic license in my batrep write-ups. This is really nothing more than using the normal rules about applying additional kill/shock results to nearby units. So, if I've got a TOW firing on a group of T-72s with 3K 2S, and the TOW rolls 2 kills, it doesn't make a lot of sense to say he killed two tanks with one missile, and there's no way he fired two missiles (to hit two tanks).

But I want to apply the two kill results, so I write it up as "the ATGM truck the lead T-72 and disabled the one behind it, causing the crew to bail out." If the same thing happened with an Abrams firing on a group of T-72s, it makes sense that the Abrams simply got two different shots off, and both found their mark. It all simply revolves around what kill and shock dice the weapons system is rolling.

That's all I can think of off the top of my head, there are probably more, but these are the big ones. I also did up stats for all the Cold War gear you saw in Team Whiskey.

Ivan – do you want to do anything with the data/mods?

V/R,
Jack

Jack:

I don't know how you find the time for all of this writing, but I really appreciate the effort, here and in your blog write-ups. (I'm working my way though some of the older blog entries, but they are long! I mean that in a really good way.)

Mike,

Thanks man, you're too kind. I'm glad you like the blog, it's really done a lot in terms of getting me wargaming and it's a lot of fun due to the interaction with other folks with similar tastes.

Regarding time, I don't know where I find the time either. My wife is probably having homicidal thoughts…

V/R,
Jack

What does an infantry stand and arty gun stand and tank stand represent in these rules?

One squad of infantry, one heavy weapon with crew or one vehicle (in Company COmmander).
Squads can have specialists attached which represent 1-3 guys.

If you want to go bigger, there's also Brigade Commander, which uses Company stands with Platoon sized attachments.

Jack, I accidentally invented spotting rules exactly like yours… I am Wallace to your Darwin.