Rallynow, you have actually played CD4 (also called Test of Battle – which is confusing because that is also the moniker of the company that produces other games as well, such as Volley & Bayonet)). Years ago, I ran a couple of CD 4 games at your house – scenarios from Benghazi Handicap. They were "Derna Airfield" and "Hafid Ridge".
The one-figure-per stand game is Men Under Fire, a tactical game that is a totally different animal. I like it and I use it (most recently at Fall-In! 2018 for WW1 East Africa) but it ain't the same thing at all. Nothing to do with CD.
WARNING: Below is a lengthy explanation of CD4 and its differences from previous iterations.
I think the changes in step reductions and the randomizing of results in CD4-TOB were steps forward. Having ALL Veteran stands able to take several hits before going away and ALL green stands taking one hit and going away made the game too predictable. I like randomized results, as long as they are based on probability. Veteran stands are likely to absorb more punishment without adverse results and Green stands are less likely.
With TOB, I have had Green stands hang on grimly for several turns because the hits on them were followed by low results rolls. And occasionally a Veteran stand will be eliminated on the first hit. These things happen on real battlefields -- not often, but enough that there should be SOME chance that they will occur on the table as well. A successful commander will be one who plans on the basis of contingencies, not certainties.
One of the many things I really like about CD4 is the artillery rules. As others have said on this forum, the indirect artillery rules are brilliant. They achieve what real WW2 artillery did -- mostly suppress but occasionally destroy. Yet sometimes the artillery doesn't show up at all when called. Just as in real life. Artillery does what it historically did in WW2 -- a lot of suppression of units without damaging them, but enough of a chance to do serious damage, too. And suppression has definite effects that reward the player who uses artillery as it was intended.
The original CD1 artillery IDF rules were so complex, I made a flow-chart that ran in convoluted patterns all over the page. So I really like the CD4 artillery rules -- and the fact that a command stand doesn't have to spend its whole turn just calling artillery but can actually do something else as well.
Instead of simultaneous movement, each side rolls a die, and the high roll moves first. Note that the high roll does not allow that side to decide who moves first; priority is mandated by the roll itself.
The infantry rules for firing are no longer a separate system. Infantry, MG, etc. all fire on charts similar to the CD1 direct fire artillery/anti-tank charts. The range bands have been reduced to 4 for all weapons: Close, Medium, Long and Extreme. However, infantry and certain others that can conduct close assault have range bands of Contact, Medium, and Long, with no Extreme. There is no separate Close Fire Phase or Close Assault phase; these are now a part of the Opportunity Fire Phase and/or General Fire Phase
The CD4 artillery rules are much simplified from CD1. There is no "Call Fire" order chit; rather, in a given turn an eligible pure or mixed command stand can call fire while also doing something else such as moving, firing, rallying subordinate stands, etc.
Most importantly, the CD4 rules permit artillery to do what it mostly did in WW2, which is to suppress enemy units. It can cause damage, but the suppression role is much more important to the combined-arms play. There is even a Harassment and Interdiction option, which can suppress -- but not damage -- anything within the blast template. H&I is map fire and does not require a stand to spot the target and call in the fire, though a success die must still be rolled (1-3 for it to come in).
There are still several Fire Phases; however, a given stand can only fire in one of them. This speeds up play considerably. There are also two additional Fire Phases in CD4. First thing each turn is the Artillery Phase (including aircraft ground attack). Then, before movement, there is an option for HE weapons to do direct Prep Fire, which suppresses an enemy target stand (and may hit it as well). Again, it's an important feature for combined arms.
Instead of four levels of troop quality as in CD1, there are six in CD4 (instituted in CD2): Green, Trained, Regular, Experienced, Veteran, and Elite. Each has a different level of vulnerability and reaction to being hit.
A stand that is hit may (1) suffer No Effect, (2) be Forced Back, or (3) be Eliminated. (Armor stands, by the way, no longer have results of Damaged, Disabled, and Destroyed; they have the same results as any other stand, but taking into account the armor rating versus the penetration of the gun firing at them.)
Instead of accumulating a certain number of hits until a stand automatically goes away, each stand that has been hit is rolled for: of course, Green units are the most likely to be forced back or eliminated, and Elite units are the least likely. But there's a CHANCE (however small) that a Green unit will be unaffected or an Elite unit will be eliminated by one hit. I've had a Trained Italian stand shrug off three successive hits from an Elite Australian stand. It can happen in real life, and now it can happen in a game.
A Force-Back from a hit no longer automatically pins the stand that was forced back. In CD4, a Pin is strictly a morale result, caused by failing a morale check by 1 or 2. A higher level of morale failure results in either Forced Back Shaken or Forced Back Demoralized or Elimination. These results also pin the stand. Shaken or Demoralized markers can only be removed by a Rally order from a higher-ranking command stand that is within six inches. There is no permanent morale reduction in CD4. If a unit is rallied, it has the same morale as before.
All in all, I consider the rules to have become less complex but more complicated -- that is, the mechanics aren't as convoluted as they were before, but the combined-arms possibilities and subtleties are there to be exploited -- or not -- by the players.
