Combat Command: Tactical Armored Warfare, France 1944 (1972)

Overview

Strategy & Tactics magazine #30.

Time Scale: ? day per turn

Map Scale: .75 km per hex

Unit Scale: Platoon/Company

After SPI sold their groundbreaking Eastern Front wargame, PanzerBlitz, to Avalon Hill, designer James F. Dunnigan turned his eye to the Western Front. Combat Command was described as "Platoon-Company Level Combat, France 1944".

From the Design Notes:

"PanzerBlitz (published by Avalon Hill) proved to be a very popular game. It was complex, but most people were enthusiastic about its apparent realism and authenticity. In point of fact, PanzerBlitz was not all that realistic or authentic. The game did have its good points. That it moved at all was a credit to its play-mechanics. What was lacking was an awareness, and implementation, of some of the more critical aspects of small unit operations. Chief among these aspects is the "confusion factor", which becomes nearly decisive at the platoon level. Other aspects left untreated in PanzerBlitz were the near simultaneity of action and reaction at that scale, as well as a more realistic handling of combined arms coordination.

Not all of these problems (nor others unmentioned) have been solved in Combat Command. By merely changing the cale and some of the combat and movement mechanics, we have introduced more change in the game than these innovations themselves suggest. One rather obvious result is that the game is simpler, easier to play. This is essential for any game. Too much time spent on the mechanics makes the simulation more of an exercise than a game. The game-system for platoon level simulation as it now stands in Combat Command is not yet perfect. But we do feel it's superior to the system we first introduced in Tactical Game 3 and PanzerBlitz. We are working on still better game-systems for this scale of operations. When we finish them, we'll publish them!"

The Combat Command game system was quickly discarded as the seventies saw SPI release a string of "new and improved" tactical wargame systems.