"Maschinegewehr rule in Chain of Command" Topic

As I understand it, this rule is to reflect German doctrine in using the Squad machine gun. It adds two dice to the LMG team's fire when the Junior Leader uses both his Activations, to the exclusion of other alternatives.

Of course its a rules device but what is the point?

If you take a Rifle Squad altogether (pre Assault Rifles) firing outside machine-pistol range, you get 8 dice for the LMG + 7 for the Rifles, for a total of 15.

If you use the National Characteristic you get 8 for the LMG + 2 bonus dice + 1 rifle for a total of 11.

A loss of 4 dice.

In a Panzer Grenadier Squad with its two LMGs your loss doubles to 8 dice.

The question then becomes, why bother?

I also note that the British have similar constraints on their National Characteristics too. That is to say a Section Leader has to use both Activations to invoke them.

I'm just a little puzzled as to why the apparent positives come at a price like this. Particularly where it means the other Team in the Squad does nothing in that Phase as a result.

OK directing the LMG fire (for example) takes a part of the Junior Leaders attention but why should the Rifle Team not fire at the same time? It hard to reconcile, particularly if they were firing in the previous Phase.

I understand that another Command Dice of 1 or 2, if rolled at the same time, can overcome this and if you happen to have an Active Senior Leader around he can help too but this just feels like a complication added to the game so you have to find distracting answers to it!

National Characteristics like "Maschinengewehr" and "Five Rounds Rapid" make far more sense in the context of limited exposure/LOS and the presence of Senior Leaders.

In a lot of cases (most notably when firing from a building with limited apertures), the LMG will be the only weapon you bring to bear on an enemy. When the Rifle Team can't draw LOS to the enemy, the use of Maschinengewehr makes a lot more sense.

It also makes sense as Shock increases or once a team becomes Pinned, as those additional two dice are added in after the halving modifier for Pinning.

Finally, in the presence of a Senior Leader, activating a squad as a whole is a single CI, which leaves the Junior Leader free to direct the team's LMG fire. In that case, it's two free dice on top of the entirety of the squad's fire.

National Characteristics in CoC are subtle changes based on doctrine, not complete game-changers. An extra couple of dice here or there when circumstances allow is about right.

I'm just a little puzzled as to why the apparent positives come at a price like this. Particularly where it means the other Team in the Squad does nothing in that Phase as a result.

Not necessarily so. They could activate on a 1 or with a command from a senior leader as you point out.

It's about the junior leader giving his undivided attention to one team for a brief moment of action to get the most from the team IF time and the tactical situation allows. The phase is a variable amount of time, sometimes a lot happens, sometimes it's short and not much happens at all. I find it helps to see it all within a broader narrative flow which I think is the key to making sense of the phases in CoC. Don't expect organised and paced turns for each player, rather see it as brief snatches of time amidst the mayhem of combat.

T,

I agree with Munin I.

If you are only firing with the LMG Team, then it makes sense to use the national characteristic.

DB

Good points guys.

I can certainly see the firing from a building argument, or if the LMG Team are the main point of action somewhere.

I guess I'm just sceptical that in a house defence, if the whole Squad were present, that the JL attention for however many seconds you chose to call it would cause paralysis to fall at every other manned aperture. There has to be some allowance for individuals responding, surely?

I totally get the fact that CoC time frames are incredibly short but there's short and then there is non existent, which is my moan here.

So tell me this, what do you see as the basis of Overwatch? Is it an order to initiate individual fire within the rules perimeters, or not?

If so, can you add Maschinengewehr to it? The Squad is primed to fire as a whole, why can't the JL direct the LMG during this action, while everyone else is cutting lose too?

There is a mechanism for the other individuals in the squad responding – you roll a 1 on one of your Command Dice. This represents the men in that team taking uncommanded initiative to do a thing.

It's important to understand that while they often get described that way, the Command Dice don't represent a "pool of orders." Rather, they represent initiative and action being taken at various levels of the platoon's organization. A 1 means that a handful of guys in a team are on the ball, active and participating at that moment in time.

Without spending a 1 to activate them, it means they are not on the ball for whatever reason – they're distracted, they're reloading, they're ferrying ammo for the LMG, they're dealing with a comrade who is wounded but as it turns out not as seriously as it looked initially, or whatever. For whatever reason, they're not doing what they would ordinarily do (e.g. shoot bad guys), and to get them back to shooting bad guys takes some investment on the part of the platoon's command staff (in the form of a leader CI used to activate them). And while that squad or platoon NCO is yelling at these idiots that head wounds bleed like crazy and that Granger is actually fine and that they should really be shooting at something, he's not telling someone else to do their jobs.

So think of the Command Dice less as a resource pool (though that's absolutely what it is mechanically speaking) and more as some indication of how well the various component units are overcoming the friction of combat and doing what they've been trained to do in the chaos of combat.

Does that make sense?

I don't think it helps to think of them as ‘command' dice at all.

Instead consider those dice as defining the conditions under which you are currently operating. They cover a whole range of factors that could influence what is happening with your unit during one, small window of time.

This is the command challenge presented by Chain of Command, how to make the most of the prevailing circumstances. It's not so much about the ability or inability to issue orders. It's a reflection of multiple factors that make it difficult to make everything happen in the sort of orderly, coordinated fashion it would in an ideal world.

And it's not all bad. Sometimes the stars align and for a few brief moments everything works like a well oiled machine on a training exercise.

Thanks, I do get the principal. In essence its no different than some card driven games I play in other periods. You are essentially waiting for chances to present themselves and applying them to your plan.

So what's the opinion on that last point I made in my previous posting?

So tell me this, what do you see as the basis of Overwatch? Is it an order to initiate individual fire within the rules perimeters, or not?

If so, can you add Maschinengewehr to it? The Squad is primed to fire as a whole, why can't the JL direct the LMG during this action, while everyone else is cutting lose too?

I think Overwatch assumes a more general instruction for the teams to be alert to any activity across a fairly broad front. While the squad is ‘primed' they don't have a specific target. The benefit is that they have already received an order to fire and will do so during an enemy phase. While this may occur when the MG doesn't have the undivided attention of the leader it does mean that once the leader is able to identify a very specific target he can then direct the fire more deliberately onto It in the following friendly phase. Overwatch normally allows two rounds of fire, the first a snap shot reaction to the sudden appearance of the enemy, the second the deliberate selection of a now visible enemy unit under the direction of the leader.

Hi TP,

Nice blog BTW.

I would agree regarding Overwatch, although I'm not sure the rules explicitly say you get two rounds of fire. I'd certainly be open to not have spend additional activation to bring fire down in my turn, if the enemy is still a valid target (assuming that's what you mean)

However, as I have only just realised that Overwatch is yet another of those items that needs two activations to start with, who knows! In this instance I don't find that too much of an issue, if its to activate twice, if you can indeed shoot twice in the way you mentioned.

Overwatch and Tactical are a couple of things we have altered as House Rules, in that while we follow the general requirements to remove the markers for these during "open play", as it were, we don't remove them as part of the End of Turn procedure.

It just felt like some kind of collective lapse of memory had been enforced for the sake of soaking off dice at the commencement of the new Turn.

Once again, given the accepted brevity of time passing in CoC, we feel that "follow the last orders received" should apply and these stances not arbitrarily change on a game device but rather through player reaction to change in circumstance.

Sorry, I think I've confused matters. Overwatch gives just one round of fire, however as that is during the enemy phase you are most likely to get to fire again immediately after when it's your phase.

So if the enemy deploys and fires you then return fire immediately with the Overwatch unit. Your phase then follows and you activate the same unit to fire again. In effect the enemy has fired once but you have returned fire twice. That's what I meant by two rounds of fire.

Ah, right! That's what I thought.

Mind you, after two years of play without spotting the activation costs of the things mentioned above I'm double checking everything!

I know you're familiar with my blog, but if you haven't read this article about the command dice, you might find it useful The command dice in Chain of Command

TP,

Thanks for that. Good illustration of the way things work.

We learnt CoC with a very sharp club member who could see tactical possibilities in every set of rules and loved to win. Not in a bad way but he was just one of those enthusiastic individuals who would steam into a new rule set and end up playing for you as well as him before you knew it, while you were still getting to grips with what could be done.

As a result we are still relearning bits we thought we knew and questioning the basis of things in the rules. I think I said earlier I do get the Command Dice idea, it's the application that throws up questions.

The joy of a good set of rules is that it gives you lots to think about. Enjoy the journey, I think it's what keeps us engaged as gamers.