Command & Control Rules for Combat Mission Games

These rules were originally drafted with the Canadian Cat (IanL in the Battlefront forums) and expanded since then by myself.  Ian and I conducted a play test with an early version of these rules and you can follow along with that AAR in this blog post.

The goal is to try to instill the importance of Command & Control (C2) on players in the Combat Mission (CM) games.  They should work equally well for the World War 2 games and for the Modern games.  They will force you to maintain C2 in your formations and might force you to make some hard choices, i.e. is it more important to maintain control over a platoon of infantry dismounts, or is it more important to maintain control over their support half-tracks?  Most times you can't do both, a Platoon Leader can't be two places at once.

They are designed for ease of use, and the basic rules fit on one standard page (as do the Advanced/Optional Rules), so they can easily be printed out and referred to during play.

The latest version of these rules (version 2I) follow.  You can access the version 2I Rules PDF at this link. (Updated 01JUN22)

If you try them out, please either add a comment to this post or contact me directly with any feedback.  These rules are not fully tested (play testing is just starting) so edits might be necessary.  If I do apply any edits I will ensure this post is kept up to date. 

Following are the Basic Rules, they were designed to force basic Command & Control over a formation in CM.

Click the image to see it full size.  

The Advanced or Optional Rules provide rules for a more detailed representation of Command in the CM games.    

Click the image to see it full size.  

IN ACTION:

Following is an example from the AAR game referenced above and demonstrates the Area Fire rules providing an example of one of them (specifically Rule 3.d).

Refer to the Area Fire Rules as shown in the Basic Rules for details.

This is an example of Area Fire Type 3, note that the Platoon HQ unit has moved back to within C2 range of the Mortar team, it also has a UI contact on Objective Red, so it satisfies the rule constraints for Area Fire Type 3 (refer to the quote at the top of this post).  Over the next few turns the mortar will drop some rounds on Objective Red and hopefully force Ian to re-position those assets, if I'm lucky it might even cause some damage.  Note that on map mortars are not considered artillery so do not have to abide by the artillery rules, unless they are being used in an indirect call for fire type mission... this will be direct fire as targeted.

The Mortar Squad had completed setting up prior to the Platoon HQ moving back into C2:

• The Mortar HAD a Fog of War (FOW) contact on Objective Red for several turns
• It could NOT Area Fire on that contact because:
  • AF-Type 1 is used for firing into empty terrain (i.e Recon by Fire) (no enemy contacts by any friendly unit) - this obviously did not apply
  • For AF-Type 2 to go into effect, this Mortar would have had to have been the only unit on the map with the contact, but this was not the case - many friendly units had that same contact 
  • AF-Type 3 - It did not meet any of the criteria for this type of Area Fire until the Platoon Leader came back into C2 range (AF-Type 3 as shown)