"Combat Patrol, our first try out." Topic

Today, we had a try at Combat Patrol, a new game of WW2 skirmish. To see how it went, and my observations, please go to my blog at link

I hope you find it interesting?

Sorry, the title is wrong, the game is called Combat Patrol!

My bad!

Love the AAR Herkybird. Very nice terrain and minis- especially like those trees! Your narrative made the action very easy to follow. Very enjoyable

I've bought the rules but haven't had an opportunity to try them out yet. I found your analysis very interesting and insightful. I think for me at least the rules could dominate the game to such an extent that the battle itself could become secondary.

I do want to try them out some day

Thanks for posting

Thanks for a good read and very helpful conclusions.

I am a bit adverse to card driven systems, as I do quite a bit of solitaire gaming and I find that many card systems are either not solitaire friendly, or that it becomes too onerous for one player to manage the cards for both sidEs.

herkybird:

Thanks for posting the battle report. I think there are some things you missed in the rules that might affect your conclusions. I will try to address those below. Don't take my comments as being defensive or antagonistic. I just want to address your concerns.

First, I really enjoyed the report. As I was reading it, I kept thinking how much your "fight" sounded like memoirs I have read or reports of actual skirmishes.

(1) The system is quite innovative, and the Action cards, which replace charts and die rolls – is quite clever, and easy to pick up and use. I am sure this is why it has a good number of fans.
(2) The game is quite easy to understand, after a few activations, we were quite happy to do fire-fights, morale checks and other basic rule things.

This is good to hear. I think you will be hard pressed to find a system that resolves fire so quickly and accurately. A measure of the intuitive nature of a game is whether players understand the rules by the second turn.

(3) I found the system rather frustrating to use, I felt that I was constantly fighting to do things against the Activation system, rather than fighting a battle.
(4) It seems strange that units do not react or activate when, I think, a real unit would do so; for example;
a) units advancing behind others hanging back for no good reason.
b) units getting stuck in front of the enemy, and unable to do anything, even run away!
c) Units not reacting to being outflanked, or friends getting wiped out, retreating, or losing a fire-fight, or having had casualties in the team.

This is a matter of personal preference. The card-based activation (as used in many of the Too Fat Lardies games, The Sword and the Flame, Muskets and Tomahawks, and other fine rules) is an example of randomized activation. There are others, such as drawing chits from a bag, drawing dice from a bag (Bolt Action), etc. Contrast this with simultaneous activation mechanics or IGO-UGO systems.

Some players like randomized activation, and others do not. Such a system enables situations for a unit to get caught in the open, creates friction, etc. Having maneuvered a platoon before and having spent eight years in the infantry, I think that randomized activation does a pretty good job of representing friction. Can this sometimes be frustrating? Yes.

Having said that, Combat Patrol(TM) has some mechanics that enable players to have a little more control than standard randomized activation schemes.
- Swapping dice: Under many circumstances, leaders are allowed to swap dice with units under their control. This gives you some control over the sequencing of actions, and might have enabled you to move your scouts. Squad (section) leaders can swap with a team within their squad. Platoon leaders can swap with their squads, etc. This is part of the basic rules.
- Pulling a card forward: Because there is a reshuffle card in the activation deck, there is the chance of the turn ending before a unit gets to activate at all. There is an optional rules that (under specific circumstances) enables a side to pull a card forward of the reshuffle card if that number never came up during the turn. This can avoid the circumstance in which a unit doesn't activate for several turns. Although, it is realistic for some units to get "stuck," recognizing that this can be frustrating in a game, the rules provide this mechanism.
- Removing the reshuffle card: There is an optional rule to pull out the reshuffle card. This means that you still cannot control the exact activation sequence, but that every unit will activate each turn.
- The Double Random Activation(TM) mechanic often has several players activating simultaneously, which avoids the phenomenon of one player doing stuff while everyone else watches.

(5) A lot of things in the game seem a bit long winded, I feel many things could be done with a lot less effort.
Examples are- drawing a card per blood symbol for morale checks, Observation, where dice are thrown (could this not be done better using the track used for shooting? – with a couple of modifiers as in the shooting system)- Allocating casualties in a circular system, so people way back get hit rather than those at the front!

Your point regarding spotting is well taken. There just wasn't room on the card for another set of icons. Also, in testing, I found that players can be confused when a set of icons is used in different ways for different actions or activities.

Regarding circular casualty counting, bullets don't stop at the range to the intended target and fall to the ground like in a cartoon. :) The counting does a couple of things. First, you cannot snipe for key figures. Second, it means that a squad leader a few feet behind the front line (where he should be to see and control his squad) may be a casualty. Third, if you always started counting from the same place, a player trying to game the system could place the key figures to one side or the other of the team so that he cannot be hit.

Did this really take long? Draw a card. Guy number three is wounded. Count one, two, three. Mark him as wounded. Take the next shot. Hit. Guy number two is incapacitated. Start counting from where you left off, one, two. Take the next shot. This is illustrated in the how-to video at the rules' Web site: link

(6) The game seems to take a long time to play, admittedly, it was our first game, but its still quite involved.

I suspect this is because it was your first game. I find that I don't really understand a set of rules until the third playing. Combat Patrol(TM) has a number of unique mechanics, that you have to wrap your head around. I have found in convention participation games that a table of new players becomes largely self sufficient after a couple of turns, and I am relegated to answering questions and drawing Activation cards.

Hopefully your second time out will go better for you. There is a Yahoo Group for the rules where you can ask questions. I will also be posting a FAQ soon.

Buck

I am a bit adverse to card driven systems, as I do quite a bit of solitaire gaming and I find that many card systems are either not solitaire friendly, or that it becomes too onerous for one player to manage the cards for both sidEs.

I don't play solitaire, so I cannot answer this directly. There are a number of folks who use Combat Patrol(TM) for solitaire play. I suspect that they have overlaid a different activation mechanism to the game. The activation mechanism and the rest of the mechanics are severable, so you can certainly use a different activation scheme and still use the other streamlined mechanics of the game to resolve combat. See the how-to videos here: link

Those videos will demonstrate how the combat resolution and morale systems work.

Buck

My first go at CP – I was running the mobile-but-fragile US would-be flanking force!

LOVED what I regard as the 'core mechanic' of this system – the sliding-scale 'tracker' used for shooting.

You start your calculation from a different point depending on your troop quality, then any modifiers take you up or down the track. Look at your stopping point on the track: it's either a hit or a miss. Inspired!

When the game uses a different mechanism, however – those other mechanisms suffer by comparison.
Spotting? Seriously, get a row of eyeballs on that card. The tracker bar mechanism seems tailor-made for resolving spotting.
Way better than the spotting dice, which seem clunky by comparison and a bit 'tacked on'.

And I didn't like the morale card system – I had a five-man fire team get seven hits. That results in seven simultaneous differing opinions from five guys – that doesn't sit right with me.
Again, I wondered – why not a morale tracker bar?
Sure, you'd only get one result for the group, but to my mind that's way better:
You stand and fight because your mates stand and fight, BUT: panic is infectious.
A single group reaction result sums that up well enough, I reckon.

Overall, CP got a – qualified – seal of approval from us – everyone agreed they'd like to play again. (And frankly, when it comes to rulesets, we're a fussy bunch!)

Thanks for the input Buck! Lawrence, who was running the game admitted he might have missed a couple of things in the rules, and he did mention the changes you mentioned as a possibility to the Activation difficulties we had. Incidentally, Lawrence had previously, played this before at the Shields club in Newcastle, and 2 combat veterans (N.Ireland and Afghanistan) also felt the game gave a good representation of real combat, apparently.
As Phil said, we are a fussy bunch!!!! Guilty as charged!

Your point about spotting is well taken. As the cards were crowded, and spotting is an optional rule that most players tend not to use, I made the call to not try to cram it in. I also tried to not overload the use of icons on the card, because that becomes confusing. So the fact that it feels tacked on is fair.

Regarding morale, my concept is that morale failure is an individual effect that may "roll up" to a unit effect. I didn't want teams to just break and run. In my mind this is more about units losing cohesion, which is reflected in the rules by figures doing things other than what the squad leader wants. The current system with several morale checks accrued reflects the cumulative effect of effective fire. Trying to reflect situation, %casualties (where units are not of uniform size), morale value, and amount of received effective fire received in a single card draw became intractable. I think the current system works pretty well, and you may warm up to it with time.