Combat Commander After Action Report – Scenario 80 – Bitter Isthmus

Sometimes when you’re playing Combat Commander, you’re locked into a 3-hour epic battle where both players are totally overcome with fatigue, but you’ve reached a satisfying conclusion so it was all worth it.

And sometimes things progress so fast that you’d think the game had theater tickets and it was running late.

Last night was one of the latter nights.

Welcome to another tale from the Combat Commander ladder, that monthly tournament of playing one of the best games out there (and I can now say that without spoilers!).

The ladder is run by the fabled Patrick Pence, he of Patrick’s Tactics & Tutorials fame.

And it is fame!

I’ve seen him on Youtube channels that aren’t his.

February’s scenario is from the Fall of the West battle pack and has a pitched back and forth battle between a small German force and an even smaller French force.

My opponent this month was the infamous Tony R! After months of him asking if people are available for a game, and me not being available at that time, I finally got to play him.

So two new opponents in two months.

(You can click on all pictures in this post to blow them up).

The Germans (grey – me) set up first within five hexes of the right side of the board.

The French (blue – Tony) set up within five hexes of the left side of the board.

Both sides start in Recon posture.

This is a weird scenario, but it only has a couple of special rules.

First, at every Time advancement, both sides draw a card. Whoever has the highest dice roll (though it is not a roll, so doesn’t trigger anything) changes to Attack posture, while the lowest changes to Defend.

If you change to Defend, you have to discard down to 4 cards if you have more than that.

If it’s a tie, they go back to Recon (and if you were Attacking and had 6 cards, you’d have to discard down to 5).

Secondly, if the French play an action, they get to discard a Command Confusion order as well.

I don’t think Tony ever did that, but it can help a bit with the 1-discard limit the French have.

Let’s see how this all worked out, and how it went so fast (this might be a short post).

We drew our secret objectives before setting up and Tony drew the “Exit Points Are Doubled” one, which made exiting even more lucrative!

Tony started out by moving Sgt Fache and his squad up into the woods and forward.

Which made me realize I had set up slightly badly. If I didn’t move to interdict him, he could run right by me without me being able to fire at him in more than one hex.

Since I had drawn a Move card, it was time for me to stop that. I moved Lauerbach and his men up into the woods.

Which caused Fache to reconsider and instead go down to the road!

Leaving Lauerbach out of position to do much of anything.

Fache did then jump into Objective 4, taking a huge firepower attack and breaking, but taking the objective.

Of course, Tony had a Recover card ready for that.

I advanced my HMG group with Sgt. Grein into the woods but didn’t advance the German squad into Fache’s hex, since I only had one Ambush card and thought it might be futile (or way too risky, at least).

I did manage to fire and break him, though, as he made a mad dash for the exit point.

Now was the time for me to Advance…except I had used my Ambush card as the Opportunity Fire card!

I had no Ambushes, but I had a 5-3 advantage and I thought I had to take them out before they could exit.

(I also advanced the HMG group further into the woods to attack the rest of the French forces).

After four passes of the Initiative back and forth, sadly the German squad died and Fache had an almost clear line to the exit.

Tony had a Recover ready and rallied them. But sadly, he appeared not to have a Move card.

So his HMG opened up on Grein.

My first morale check…drew a Time trigger!

I gave Grein and his men some foxholes and it was time for the first Posture Draw(tm) of the game.

Now I was Defender, which meant I could use those juicy Defender-Only cards.

I passed the rest of my morale checks and more French fire towards Grein…and another Time trigger!

That did give me a VP as Defender, but the dice rolls made us both Recon again.

That was short-lived.

More French fire poured onto Grein.

One funny incident was that he drew a Jammed trigger on the HMG firing, so he gave me the Initiative…and promptly drew another Jammed.

But, my next random hex actually fixed his gun so it wasn’t out of the action long

It did cause the German Hero Deitel to come out, though, rallying the squad that had been broken by a French sniper.

Sadly, Grein and his squad (though thankfully not the HMG team) broke.

Here’s the situation at that point.

Tony hadn’t drawn another Move card (or he was reluctant to move Fache without a Recover card, one of the two).

I had finally drawn a Fire card but now my best leader was broken!

More French fire ended up killing the broken squad, breaking the HMG team, and sparing Grein.

The only Recover card I had seen this game so far, I had used for a Crossfire action when firing on Fache.

Lauerbach fired on Fache and Tony drew a Time trigger, bringing us closer to Sudden Death.

Equal die rolls once again left us in Recon posture.

After the fire, I actually drew a Recover card!

Long-time readers of this blog know what that means.

Yep, French fire killed the HMG and Grein right before I could rally them.

Fache took off for the exit, and Lauerbach let loose on them.

It was a 17-firepower attack and I also drew an Event, which ended being “Battle Shock,” breaking a unit closest to a random hex.

Which turned out to be Fache’s hex.

Fache broke, but he survived the fire attack even though his squad also broke.

He moved one more hex to get out of Lauerbach’s line of fire.

But I had another Fire card for my turn, so used it for the new Heroes of the Fatherland.

My squad with an LMG did a 6 attack on the broken French, and killed them both.

Time passed, some more French fire broke Dietel’s squad, but I had the Recover card so everybody rallied.

The French squad in the south moved and drew a Time trigger on its morale check.

The Posture Draw(tm) resulted in me being the Attacker and Tony the Defender.

But on the squad’s second movement, my deck ran out for another Time trigger.

Once again, we were both Recon!

Not much changed over time, but I did Move and Advance in order to take Objective 4 & 5.

Here’s the situation after all that, on Time 5.

More French fire killed Dietel’s squad, leaving him all alone on the south edge.

During one of the many attacks on Dietel, I managed to draw a Command & Control event, giving me 3 VP for holding 3 objectives.

Which was the only reason I had done those two moves, in case this came up.

This put the VP total back at 2 for the French (where we had started!)

Sgt Rochefort and his squad made a run for the German foxholes, and managed to draw another Time trigger.

Things weren’t looking that great for the Germans, but hope was still with us due to the Heroes of the Fatherland (Lauerbach certainly wasn’t doing much).

The Posture Draw(tm) made me Defender now!

I was sitting pretty good with a Recover card, a Move card (eh) and two Ambush Fire cards.

Maybe Rochefort was going to try and take out the Heroes of the Fatherland?

I’d better save those.

Rochefort advanced right next to them, into the other foxholes.

I moved Lauerbach down and into position to support, and sure enough, Rochefort did Advance!

Two Ambush cards later, the French squad was dead and I had a 5-2 advantage.

I drew a 10, effectively ending the melee.

I now had a 3 VP lead, potentially going into Sudden Death.

Now Lauerbach’s guys moved forward and fired at the broken French squad at the bottom of the board, eliminating it.

I had a 5-point lead.

I wasn’t going to advance into range of his HMG anymore, but I had two Fire cards, a Recover, and a Move, so both of began just discarding one card (that’s all the French can do).

Then, seeing a French possibility, I moved my lone squad and LMG up to block the northern woods path again.

Tony moved Serrault and his entire stack up there anyway, and then ensued a game of cat & mouse as he moved adjacent to me and I retreated.

I also realized that everybody else was really out of position to stop him.

Serrault’s stack moving off the board would give him 12 VP and, since they would be his last remaining units, the game would end and he would have the VP lead on me.

And I had nothing to stop him except Sudden Death happening (I only had 4 cards left).

Serrault had moved further and weathered some fire, including my now-jammed LMG.

But I was lucky enough on the next fire, without the LMG, to actually manage to break Serrault.

He fired back at me, but my deck ran out and a draw of 6 on my part ended the game.

My secret objective was that number 2 is worth 1 point, so Tony got an extra point.

I ended with a 4-point lead.

If the game hadn’t ended and Serrault had managed to rally and run his troops off, I would have been dead.

I had horrible visions of that happening!

I had horrible luck with Grein and his men, breaking and dying before I could even use my ultra-powerful HMG with a 2-command leader (though they did break Fache once).

But other times I got lucky, with Fache breaking due to a random event just as he was getting ready to run off the board.

The constant posture switch was interesting, but other than me being able to play a Hidden Unit event during the constant discarding in Time 6, it didn’t really affect things.

The times that we switched to Defender, we were already below 4 cards in our hand so we didn’t even have to discard!

The game took a total of 65 minutes to play, which is lightning fast for Combat Commander.

Tony’s a fun opponent and I hope I’m able to hook up with him in a non-ladder game at some point.

I wish we’d had a bit more play time, because he was great!

This win puts me at 30-27 in my ladder career, not as close to break-even!

Next month’s scenario is from Sea Lion battle pack, which are hypothetical scenarios from the hypothetical German invasion of Great Britain, where I might hypothetically win.

As you can see, it’s very hypothetical.

If you enjoyed this write-up, why not join us on the ladder, where you too can play a monthly game and also probably a bunch of other games if your timing matches with Tony’s often?

Anyway, my advice to you is that sometimes fast is good.

Combat Commander Ladder – After Action Reports

To see all of my Ladder After Action Reports since May 2021, go here!