Skirmish Rules Testing: Part 4 - Chain Reaction

Presentation

Chain Reaction is the master ruleset from Two Hour Wargames. I also picked up NUTS (WW2) and FNG (Vietnam), all in PDF, but the differences were minimal. Rules seemed reasonably laid out.

Set-Up

No major variations, most weapons covered in generic terms in CR.

How It Played

Cpl Hore moved down to his favourite corner, and for once there wasn't an RPG waiting for him - just a PKM instead!

Cpl Hore issuing commands

Hore and Jones survived the first PKM volley, kept their cool and took the insurgents out. For some reason the next group of insurgents left the comfort of their cover and started to move down the street so Hore and boys took them out. But then a lone gunman opened up from the building that Hore was sheltering behind and started creating carnage amongst the media team and LCpl Walls team.

Carnage form the lone gunman

With three guys down and 9 insurgents down it came down to the loan gunman. Grenade after grenade missed its mark. Wall and McDowell tried to storm the building, but McDowell bought it. Then Wall and Gallagher tried and were forced back. Finally Jones managed to get a grenade up onto the roof and the lone gunman was killed.

The lone gunman!

Rules Impression

The first night playing this was a real struggle as lots of rules seemed unclear. After watching a couple of painfully slow YouTube tutorials the second night was easier, but I can't say I liked the rules. The "chain reaction" bit of having one action causing some consequence that caused another action and another consequence  and so on was nice in theory but never flowed for too long and did give some odd situations. The "AI" for the "potential enemy forces (PEF)" was dreadful with them leaving cover to get closer to the advancing Brits, the NPC AI once a PEF was revealed was far better. Kills generally seemed very easy - apart from the lone gunman! The inverse activation was odd - you win the activation roll, but because you had to roll high you cant activate anyone, so the enemy gets to activate instead! But at least it was at group level.

Overall

Some nice ideas I might borrow around the AI, but otherwise it really didn't gel for me. 6/10 maybe.