This week Marc “Ilor” Renouf takes a look at the much-anticipated second edition of the popular Chain of Command rules for platoon-scale action in the Second World War!
All That Is Old Is New Again
Pretty much since before Goonhamer Historicals was a thing (back when we were still writing under the Turn Order umbrella here at GH), the original Chain of Command, published by small indie British gaming company Too Fat Lardies, had already established itself as one of our favorite games. It’s the game that finally snagged me hook, line, and sinker into the wild world of historical miniatures gaming and has been my go-to game since I started playing it in 2016. I am still continually blown away by how well it handles campaign play and wrote a series of articles about that here.
And so it was with much eagerness that many of us have awaited the release of an updated second edition since it was announced late last year. Well the wait is over – and even better, my physical copy found its way to me early (Rich and Nick, the titular two Fat Lardies having outdone themselves stuffing envelopes and mailing out product)!
A number of things motivated this new edition – Nick and Rich openly admit that when the first edition published in 2010 they had very little experience doing the layout, document design, and copy-editing that one takes for granted in rule sets coming from bigger production companies. The resulting rules – while very clever and engaging – had a bit of a steeper learning curve than the TFL writers would have liked. Some of this was softened by a very open and active community on the TFL forums, but a catastrophic computer crash by their web-hosting service in 2024 wiped out over a decade of content, FAQs, discussions, and semi-official rule changes. In addition, the release of the Blitzkrieg 1940 and Far East handbooks highlighted new rules mechanisms that the authors were keen to roll back into the main rules themselves.
As such, the plan was an update to revise, clarify, and improve the core rules. And boy-howdy, they knocked it out of the park!
What’s the Same and What’s New
The bones of the new rules are very much still the Chain of Command that we all know and love, but with a level of clarity and polish that really speak to the level of experience the TFL team have gained over the last 25 years of publishing games. Even from a purely structural standpoint, the table of contents, section headers, and comprehensive index make navigating the rules so much easier than the original edition. All of the sections of the rulebook are helpfully numbered, and most times a rule or concept is mentioned outside of its own section there’s a helpful reference.
The core mechanisms of the game are still the same – friction in command-and-control, the Patrol Phase, the Command Dice, building up Chain of Command points, Force Morale, variable movement, historically-based forces, etc. But in each of these sections there are little tweaks and clarifications that just make everything easier to follow. Then there are the bigger changes, which come down to a couple of major elements. In no particular order, these are:
Chain of Command Pip Expenditure
Under the original version of the rules, special abilities like springing an ambush, interrupting your opponent’s turn, or triggering a Turn End that had a number of important game effects were gated behind building up points towards a “Chain of Command Die.” But critically, you had to accumulate six pips (i.e. a “full die”) before you could use any of these abilities. And of course the accumulation of pips was based on what you rolled on your Command Dice at the beginning of each phase, so you never knew how quickly this might happen. That uncertainty made for great tension in games, but if the dice don’t go your way it can feel like it takes forever to build up enough points to be useful.
Fast forward to the Far East Handbook (which we previously reviewed here), which introduced the radical idea of spending one or more pips instead of whole dice to power certain capabilities. This idea has solidly taken root and has been back-ported into the base game itself. Further, these “partial spend” abilities let you do things you simply couldn’t before, like move troops who have become pinned down by enemy fire. Sure, it takes three pips to do it and they only move a short distance, but if you can get your critical engineering team out of harm’s way before they get wiped out (or worse, break and rout off the table), it may be worth it. Many of these abilities encourage further interaction between the players. You spend enough points to launch an Ambush, maybe I decide to spend some points to have my unit Hit the Dirt (and at least get a little cover before you blast them to smithereens). We both have limited resources at our disposal and too many good things on which to spend them, which forces difficult and interesting decisions during the game.
This is of course helped by another rule change in that any time a player’s roll of the Command Dice gives them consecutive phases, their opponent receives a pip towards their Chain of Command total. So yes, there’s more stuff to spend it on, but chances are good you’ll be netting more pips along the way.
An Emphasis on Scouting and Movement
One of the aspects of the original game that got a lot of love in the new edition is the humble scout team. In the first edition you could form ad hoc scout teams of two or three men from any of your off-table squads. These were most commonly used to threaten your opponent’s Jump Off Points, the locations on the table from which their forces would deploy. But as a single Team, the only way to typically activate scouts once they got out of command radius of a nearby leader (and absent a special scenario rule or national characteristic) was to expend a Command Die roll of 1. Command Dice can be combined to a higher number but never split, meaning the ability to activate single teams could be frustratingly rare. Further, with only a few men, scout teams were quite fragile and if they got into trouble it was virtually impossible to remove Shock from them. As such, you would regularly see them break or get wiped out and have your Force Morale take a hit as a result. It was still sometimes worth it, but scouts were definitely a bit of a risky proposition.
The Far East Handbook first introduced the idea of activating a scout team using a single Chain of Command pip, and that system has been expanded and formalized further in the “Recce Action” partial point spend. In the new edition, a player may spend a single pip from their Chain of Command points to activate a scout team to move, fire, enter the “tactical” stance (i.e. make the most of any available cover), or rally off a point of Shock. And unlike other infantry units, scouts whose level of Shock drops to or below the number of men in the team immediately lose their Pinned status without needing to wait for a Turn End.
Combined, this means that scouts are much easier to activate and much more resilient than they were previously. The Soviets and Americans (both of which placed a heavy emphasis on scouting) also get special national characteristic rules that allow their scouts to automatically assume the tactical stance after moving, and serve as a Jump Off Point for the rest of their squad (though this too requires the expenditure of Chain of Command pips to activate).
And even if you do leave a scout team hanging in the open and get them all killed, the loss of a scout team (as opposed to any other team) is drastically less likely to cause a drop in Force Morale thanks to the re-worked “Bad Things Happen” table. Yay, scouts!
Similarly, the “Assault Deployment” partial pip spend rule lets troops pile out of transports and immediately act (even after having moved the transport flat out!). This is great for those mechanized units which in the previous edition lost some of their zip, the idea being that they had de-bussed from their transports just off table. Now things like half-tracks and even Universal Carrier sections are a lot scarier, and Soviet tank riders in particular are kind of terrifying!
All of this is designed to make it easier or less risky to move your troops around the table, which is important given the…
Renewed Focus on Objectives
A number of the missions in the original edition had objectives-based scenarios. The simplest of these was the Probe, where you had to get a unit off the table from your opponent’s board edge. But in many cases, the easiest way to accomplish your objective was to take up a static firing position and blast your enemy until their Force Morale cratered and dropped to 0. This could occasionally produce games that lacked excitement.
In the new edition, there is a much bigger focus on securing objectives, and all but the initial mission scenario (the Patrol) have procedures for establishing objective locations on the table. Further, there are a couple of new rules mechanisms to help light a fire under people, encouraging aggressiveness and fire-and-maneuver. These are the “Ticking Clock” and the “Final Countdown.”
The Ticking Clock is simply a way for the scenario’s defender to spend a full Chain of Command die to directly and irrevocably reduce the attacker’s Force Morale by a point. It’s expensive, but especially later in the game – where losses of Force Morale can include reductions in the number of available Command Dice – this has the potential to be critical. In campaign play (where casualties are offset by the difference in the ending Force Morale of the two sides) this can also have an important effect, as passive attackers may find their opponents able to recover most or all of their losses between games.
The Final Countdown, on the other hand, is a way to add a “sudden death” condition to the scenario. Each mission type has rules for who can initiate the Final Countdown and the conditions under which it can be triggered, but most allow both players to activate it (usually when an objective changes hands).
Both of these rules serve to light a fire under the players, as simply sitting back and shooting is unlikely to hand you the big win. And of course dropping your opponent’s Force Morale to 0 will still net you a scenario win, but in a campaign setting that’s a minor victory (1 VP) as opposed to a major victory (3 VP), which can only be secured by actually accomplishing the mission objectives. The end result is going to be games that are more dynamic and focused on combined arms and fire-and-maneuver.
Reworks of the Basic Missions
Hand in hand with the focus on objectives, all of the basic missions have been re-worked to include when and how things like the Final Countdown come into play. These new rules also clean up some ambiguities in the first edition, such as across which direction of the table the game is to be played and how many Patrol Markers each side can use. Everything is very clear and explicit in this new edition, which is great!
Additionally, more thought is given to clarifying not only how much support each force gets (in terms of additional units) but also what types of units are appropriate for each mission. Support options in the arsenal tables for each nation are now color-coded, and each mission indicates which options are available in that mission. For instance, for the initial Patrol mission, only infantry units (those in white background) are allowed. So no more patrolling with a Tiger tank or probing with flamethrowers. As the missions ramp up to the “Attack on an Objective” (the 6th and final mission type), it’s pretty much no holds barred.
Better Mortar Barrages
Having realistic limits on support options dovetails with another important change to the rules, which is a complete re-work of how mortar barrages are handled. In the prior edition, mortar barrages had the distinct possibility of making the game “No Fun (TM)” for one or even both players. This is because they blocked line-of-sight, pinned everything under them, could be moved with precision, and could last almost indefinitely under certain circumstances. This meant you could call in a barrage, spend many phases walking right up to the edge of it (and loading up your opponent with Shock) then cancel it and almost immediately charge in and mop up with little risk to your own troops. It was…frankly not great.
But this system has been completely redone. Mortars now have a fixed duration of 3 Phases (though you can extend this up to 2 more Phases by spending further Support options) and cannot be renewed or called in again. Further, the barrage imposes a “compulsory activation” on the player, meaning they will need to either spend Command Dice or Chain of Command pips to keep the barrage going (and if they can’t it ends prematurely). Finally, the actual barrage itself is more likely to inflict some real Shock and damage, which is useful. Combined with the new “Reposition” pip-spend (which lets you move Pinned units), mortars are no longer the brutal killer of fun they were previously.
Another new option for mortars is “SOS Fire,” which is a short, sharp barrage on (or near) a pre-registered target. It only lasts a single phase but packs more of a whallop. This too is a Support option (which can be taken up to twice) and is often available in missions even where the full mortar bombardment isn’t. This is the kind of “calling in fire on your own position” deal that is the stuff of heroic legend, and it’s great that there’s now a real option for it.
Close Combat Changes
In the original game, close combat (once you got there) was utterly brutal. It generally involved rolling a big fistful of dice, with rolls of 5+ netting a kill and dice showing a 6 also adding Shock. Given the way hits to unit leaders worked, in all but the most lopsided of cases this ran the very real risk of being mutually assured destruction – you might wipe out your opponent and claim their position, but completely hamstring yourself in the process.
In the new rules, close combat is a much less fraught affair. Yes, you’re still rolling scads of dice, but now each roll of 5 adds a point of Shock and only rolls of 6 inflict a kill. Right there your casualties are halved. Close combat is still decisive (as losing and being forced back is going to pile on additional Shock), but it’s not nearly as destructive as it was previously. I think this is a good change and reflects the idea that when pressed by the enemy in close combat, ultimately people end up running away rather than stoically dying on the tips of each others’ bayonets. Getting a unit which has been routed from close combat back into the fray is going to be a tough ask – those dudes have just come through a harrowing experience and are scared shitless at the moment – but it’s far less likely to crater both sides’ Force Morale. This feels realistic to me and hangs together with what we read from many of the period accounts.
Another new addition to close combat is the concept of “supporting fire,” by which a unit that is near (within 4″) a unit that is charged can contribute to the close combat by blasting the attackers as they come to grips with their intended target. Units which only contribute supporting fire can’t sustain casualties, but risk suffering the same retreat and morale effects as the fighting unit they are supporting if it breaks. It’s a risk/reward proposition, and makes for another interesting decision players may have to make under duress.
Simplification of the Vehicle Rules
Vehicles have always been a big part of Chain of Command, but they do have some oddities. Shooting at them, for instance, uses an entirely different mechanism than shooting at infantry. This was fine (more or less), but when you got into vehicle damage things could get a little hairy. It could involve a lot of states that could be a pain to track (e.g. “driver killed, two phases to replace”) and left some open questions – did I need to activate the tank during those two phases? Or NOT activate the tank during those two phases? Or activate the driver but not actually go anywhere? It could be a little confusing. And don’t get me started on how much Shock it took to get a tank crew to bail out, which varied by the tank’s “command level” which was different than the number of Command Initiatives its leader had.
Now the vehicle damage tables are much more clear. The effects are self contained and well explained. Overall the effects are the same (0 net penetrating hits is going to be a minor effect, 3 net penetrating hits is going to knock a vehicle out), but importantly all vehicles now see their crew bail out when they accumulate 4 points of Shock. And any Shock you suffer while immobilized is doubled, same as the previous edition.
Further, the effects of Shock on vehicle movement and firing are well defined. But Shock also has another important new role in that the more Shock a vehicle is carrying, the less likely it is to even have its positions activate in the first place. All of this is going to make Shock management much more important for vehicles.
One of the rare examples of a rule that is not well referenced in the new edition is the concept of vehicles checking for immobilization on each Turn End (note: not Phase end). This is first mentioned (but not explained) in Section 6.3 which defines what happens whenever a Turn ends, and there is no pointer to the section where it actually is explained (Section 11.3.1.1), where it is the last paragraph hiding all on its own.
This, then, is where the kinds of effects you’d see previously (e.g. driver killed) end up working in a similar fashion; in the new edition your vehicle might suffer 2 net hits and simply be “immobilized” (with no fixed explanation as to how or why), then potentially be able to overcome this condition later (i.e. after some other poor crew member hauls the driver’s lifeless corpse out of the seat and climbs in). I can’t help but feel that a little bit of the narrative power of the old tables has been lost here – like in the Totensonntag campaign, where poor Leutnant Krauss seemingly had a penchant for getting his drivers killed – but the clarity and playbility gained in the process are probably well worth it.
Another important change to vehicles in general is the Force Morale effect of having one explode. In the first edition, this caused two rolls on the “Bad Things Happen” table – one for the loss of the vehicle itself and another for the loss of its commander (generally either a Junior of Senior Leader). This can and often did see the loss of a single tank causing a catastrophic 4 point drop in Force Morale. In certain circumstances, this could be a game-ender. Now, only a single roll is made when a vehicle explodes, although it does suffer a +1 penalty. But this caps the effect at -2 Force Morale, which makes vehicles a little less of a liability.
Finally, and I can’t stress this enough, having all of the special rules that pertain to vehicles (e.g. small, low profile, heavy armor, etcetera) all in one place right up front in the book is great. In particular, the independent crew position portion of the “One-Man Turret” rule (which allowed other vehicle positions to be activated on Command Dice rolls of 1) has been extended to all vehicles. Given how important using your tank commanders’ Command Initiatives to manage Shock is going to be in these rules, this is a welcome addition.
Enhanced Sanity
For better or for worse, any rule set is going to have those circumstances that produce “gamey” results. One of the most egregious of these in the original game is the concept of “sharing hits” between units that are close together (within 4″). This often resulted in units (sometimes multiple units) being placed next valuable support weapon teams like anti-tank or mortar crews to effectively help shield them from fire by spreading casualties out among the multiple units. But realistically, spreading out is the key to surviving fire.
Now, the new “Bunched Targets” rule addresses this, as if three or more Teams are targeted by fire, that fire has a +1 bonus to hit. I suspect that once the 3-team US Marine Corps squad organization(s) come out in the forthcoming Pacific Handbook we’ll see an errata to this one (likely 3 or more teams from 2 or more different units), but overall I think it’s a good change that will achieve the desired effect.
Similarly, flamethrowers (which were extremely potent in the original rules) have been toned down quite a bit, especially as regards their effect on tanks. No more can a single 3-man team run amok and be the bane of both armor and infantry alike. Now flamethrowers are much more effective when the firer is standing still, and maneuvering them into position for maximum effect is going to be trickier than it was previously.
There are also a bunch of clarifications to things that were not previously well addressed in the first edition; what happens to a broken unit that sustains further casualties? What happens when a leader sustains multiple hits? What happens to a knocked-out leader if his unit routs? How do sections mounted in multiple Universal Carriers activate? All of these questions and more have clear, definitive answers that make actually playing the game much easier.
Takeaways
As expected this game is still very much Chain of Command, but even better. The improvements in layout, clarity, playability, and focus of this new edition make for a much more easily absorbed rule set. For existing Chain of Command players I highly recommend it, with the only caveat being that you should read it carefully – there are a lot of subtle changes to otherwise-familiar rules mechanisms that might be easy to miss if you are simply skimming over the book.
If you are looking to get into WW2 gaming – or are a Bolt Action player who wants to try a different game that still lets you use the same figures but offers a more immersive experience – I definitely encourage you to give Chain of Command a try!
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