Rookie Mistakes for a Chain of Command Game

Even with over 40 years of gaming a new set of rules can make you a rookie all over again.  Over the years I have watched games of Chain of Command and enjoyed how the game played.  Jim Owczarski and his merry band over at Panache Wargaming play CoC on a regular basis and Table Top CP have run countless games also and so I decided to learn to play the game.  

Wow, I made every rookie mistake a first time gamer would do.  Chain of Command has a lot of subtleties to it and that is what makes it a great game but it will take some time to learn how to play well.

My first mistake was simple but now with hindsight so obvious.  The very nature of the attacker and defender have rolls that can not be ignored and you will learn that lesson fast in this game.  As the defender it was up to me to make the attacker find me, fix me and then develop an assault to beat me.  I did not listen to the GM and pay attention to the type of force that was coming at me and I then exposed my entire force so that the attacker knew my location and force disposition.  In short I was a big shining light saying come get me and so they did.

One of the things I now understand that I watched in so many games of CoC but did not really grasp was the deploying of your forces.  How you put troops on the table matters in this game and those first decisions can decide the game very quickly.  Most of us gamers want to get our toys on the table and play with them and in this game that can be and issue.  This game is not about the troops but about how you use them and that is reflected in the fact that at the start of the game there are no troops on the table.  Not getting this concept led to my next mistake.

Instead of thinking about what I needed to do with the forces I had and listening to the GM and what he told me about the opponent I was facing I just wanted to get my troops on the table.  Rushing to get all my troops on the table and ignoring anything else about the game was such a error but I was thinking about things like other rules sets and this is not other sets of rules.

It is now clear why people would spend several turns with nothing on the board and were then slow to put forces out.  When your units are on the table your enemy then knows where you are and has some idea of what you are doing.  Holding units back, especially as a defender, is often a much better plan.  I did not do this.  Instead I put out my units as fast as I could and all they did in this game was make me a target.

Now that I have learned what should I have done.  Basically I had one Jump off Point(known as a JoP) and I was facing a armored assault with very little anti-tank abilities.  Putting one unit in a very defensive position out to protect my JoP would have done all I needed and I could have probably gotten away with not even doing that.  The only anti-tank that was available was a PIAT team and it seems there were two basic ways to use it.  Either hold it and deploy it in a defensive position when the enemy tanks got close enough or wait until I built up a command die and used the command die to ambush one of the tanks.  Most of my forces should have never made it to the table.

What did happen?  Like I said I rushed to get all my troops on the table and that just made me a target and boy did I get targeted like I deserved.  Heavy mortars rained down on me and tanks came racing forward to blast me.  The end result was not pretty but as the game continues I will make the best of my bad choices and have fun learning a new set of rules.