Cold War Commander

As readers may know I've been on the hunt for a decent set of mechanised rules for a while. My own evolving set, Contact: Wait Out played OK in the last test game, but still wasn't hitting the spot. I'd heard a fair amount about Cold War Commander (CWC) so I thought I'd give them a try and have started playing through a simple encounter scenario of about a battle group a side.

CWC uses 1 element = 1 platoon/troop as a standard scale - although even the rule book keeps thinking of them as vehicles quite a lot.  The ground scale isn't explicitly stated, but seems to be about 10cm = 200m, which a) isn't far off what I was using (10cm = 250m) with hexon.

On the face of it there are a few things which I expected not to like about CWC:

• Bucket of dice
• IGO-UGO
• Hits reset at end of turn.

In fact, I'm really enjoying the game - its the closest I've played yet to what I want, and with a bit of tweaking to it I may abandon CWO for now. It would also be great (using Blitzkrieg Commander) for the WW2 desert gaming I was planning later in the year.

In terms of those bugbears:

• Bucket of dice - throwing 18 dice when you fire a squadron of Chieftain does seem a bit much, but the standard approach of select those that hit, rerole them as saves, rerole again for suppression is reasonably quick. Guess I can live with it.
• IGO-UGO - there is some interrupt ability, but I do like the multiple but decreasing chance of orders model. Could combine with card driven activation for the HQs to mix it up a bit.
• Hits reset at end of turn. - real sticking point. Also the fact that hits don't effect firepower (since you're dead or full strength). Reading on-line seems a lot of people ignore the rule and do carry hits across in some way. Already fermenting plans for a house rule and may try it out in the rest of the game.

Also I do think that that the army list is a bit shaky, Carl Gustav's seem way too powerful, not clear whether a unit is 2, 3 or 4 tanks, and no account of armour vs penetration (another bug bear) - but guess I can tweak those too!

In terms of the test game (6m on hexon):

British score first blood with Chieftains against T72s on the road. Both sides are raising for the ridges on either side.

The 432s get to the main ridge first, Charlie G's lined up on the ridge line ready for the advancing BMPs.

Carnage! BMP Sagger's fail to take out Chieftains on the ridge. Chieftains take one BMP Pl out, and another T72 Platoon. The Carl Gustav's  take out 2 (!) platoons worth of BMPs - way too powerful I think.

3 turns down out of 8. More to follow.