First Taste of CoC...

[Norman D. Landings]

Bit of a curate’s egg, I thought.

The ‘patrol’ phase of the game involves both players moving patrol markers until they ‘bump’ the enemy by coming into 12” proximity to an enemy marker.
Your own markers have to stay within set distance of one another, so you can’t sprint round the table willy-nilly.
Once a patrol marker does contact the enemy, it’s position becomes fixed.
Your force deploys behind this marker - at least six inches back, and behind cover.
(So if you made contact with the enemy halfway across a bare field, you’re not stuck there flat-footed when the shooting starts).
The patrol phase is an enjoyable little sub-game: it’s as much about ‘fixing’ your enemy’s markers in disadvantageous positions as it is about getting your own into the positions you want.
Once one player’s markers are all fixed in position, everybody’s markers come to a halt.

Once the patrol phase ends, the attacking player throws five D6.
Each of the results enables a different action: 1’s are used to deploy (or, if already deployed, to activate) a fire team of your choice.
2’s activate a section, 3’s activate a junior leader (who can order a fire team or section to act), 4’s activate a more senior leader (as above but more so).
5’s are used to move your ‘Chain of Command’ dice one pip upwards. When the CoC dice reaches 6, you can ‘spend’ it to perform special actions.
6’s are wasted - unless you roll a double six, which enables you to perform dramatic special actions )like taking another turn out of sequence.)

We thought it was absolutely brutal.
The swings of the pendulum can extremely unforgiving.
Example:
Senior officer activates: he can activate a whole load of units.
Then double six: have another turn immediately, throw a four - senior officer activates a whole bunch of units.

This can take a-g-e-s.
All that time you’re either under the cosh - not fun - or hammering your opponent - fun at first, but it can go on so long it actually gets a bit uncomfortable.

We plan to give it another go, but we weren’t blown away.

[grizzlymc]

Well, if having tried CoC you are unimpressed, perhaps a little TW&T will be more to your liking.

I rather like the brutal nature of TFL's activations. There is a knack to exploiting your own luck whilst neutering the enemy's.

[Jeremy]

It does take some getting used to and isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. Generally I find multiple sixes are not thrown that often though, and well, it all evens out. It’s all a fine line in that the more 6’s you throw, the less other dice you’re throwing for activations. And a Senior Leader only has a command range of 12 inches. Not a lot on a full sized table.

And well, WW2 was uncomfortable if you were caught out. It teaches you to play in a way that if your opppnent throws lots of 6’s, it shouldn’t devastate your game

[Purple]

You don’t read many of the threads do you Norm lol
Many of us enjoy CoC on a semi-frequently-ish basis!

[Jeremy]

Speak for yourself! I like CoC as often as I can get it!

[levied troop]

I love me a bit of CoC, I just don’t get enough.

I like it for the fact that you do lose control (I like doing that as well) and get decisions to make on a frequent basis (safe word or not safe word?).

Sounds like you were unlucky with the double 6s but when you do get a go, overwatch is your friend. You can also ignore the patrol phase and just have units come on from the table edge as normal (whatever that is).

CoC has joined Fire and Fury and DBA as my favourite rulesets. Looking forward to the 1940 pint sized campaign book due soon.

[Jeremy]

I find that when your opponent rolls more 5’s than you, it’s more dangerous than 6’s. And yes, quite correct, overwatch is a must. However, that does mean remaining stationery whilst fire and movement is your friend

[Norman D. Landings]

You don’t read many of the threads do you Norm lol
Many of us enjoy CoC on a semi-frequently-ish basis!

I know... I meant it was MY first taste of CoC. I’m aware that others here are seasoned CoC-jockeys.

LT, we liked the patrol phase. If anything, we might nick it for other rulesets.
And - in the interests of full disclosure - it was me rolling the double sixes.
Made for some l-o-n-g rounds.
My opponent managed to get a full CoC dice, then couldn’t decide what to do with it.

Tell you what would be fun - a game of Bolt Action starting with a CoC patrol phase.

[Jeremy]

I’ve played a lot of CoC and BA, and excluding the Patrol phase, they are quite similar in a lot of aspects. The guys I played with in SA didn’t like CoC, so we played BA with a lot of Lardy tweaks. Like a tea break dice in the bag and random events.

[grizzlymc]

I use a similar patrol phase to start napol.eonic games.