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As the title says, I'm really interested in these rules, but am looking for the overall impression from non-Lardies opinions. Truth is, I love their games, but am hesitant to buy into another game at the moment so am fishing for a reason to break down and buy the rules.

Skipper

I don't really have a "review" of it, but I did not like the game after about five games. The game just seemed....boring. By far the most exciting part was rolling to see if you got double sixes for activation dice...after that the turn just went downhill quick.

After playing a few games, i got fed up of the Blandness of the rules, The fact that officers were 'Big men' or whatever they called them really annoyed me, when playing a historical game I want to feel i'm playing the period and not the game. Admitedly i think it was I ain't been shot mum and not chain of command. Plus i cannot stand the use of cards in a wargame, If I want to use cards, i'll play a card game.

If it's you bag, good for you, but I prefer using other rulesets myself.

It depends on what you are looking for and what kind of game you want to play. Which is a pretty obvious statement, but it needs to be said... especially in light of the way you phrased the question.

Not being a Lardie, the first thing I would advise is to avoid the Lardie forums like the plague. Unless of course you like 40K players trying to make CoC a tournament tight rules system and ;fanboys; fawning over the utterances of Rich.

As to the rules themselves they are a very solid rules set, that have a number of innovative mechanics - deployment, initiative and ambush being particularly good. The rest of the mechanics are pretty straight forward, easy to learn and allow the game to progress without constant reference to the rule book after relatively few games.

The principle advantage of the rules is that you can't 'break the game', in the sense of min maxing on points - or having the NCO act as the MG assistant etc. And because of the initiative system you get a good narrative, which at times is brutally unfair to one side or the other. Also I notice they are working on a campaign system which includes a mechanic for PTSD, which tells you all you need to know about where the rules are coming from and the types who don't like them.

The main draw back of the rules is that they are thirty years too late and therefore have fallen into the trap of the full-colour, over priced rule book which appear to be the vogue these days. But on the plus side they haven't gone down the path of army special rules - well they sort of have with the list updates, but these at least have the advantage of being based on actual tactical manuals from the period.

At the end of the day, it is your money and your hobby - but my advice would be that you could do a lot worse than pick up a copy, and use it as the basis for the sort of game you want to play - personally I am using it with alterations to play very low level WWI actions, like wire cutting, trench raiding, bringing up supplies - the common place operations that are not covered by any rules.

Thanks for the replies....

Marielle, I appreciate the candor and have just about decided that once taxes arrive I'll go ahead and pick it up. I've long ago lost interest in the min-maxing of tournament games and am looking for games that give me less control overall. It nice not really knowing if your troops will respond as desired.....that's exactly how it was in the service. I kind of like to mimic that feel, without overdoing it.

I really enjoy running double blind games with the players in complete fog of war and having to make decisions based on what their troops actually see.

COC seems to at least lean in this direction. I'll post my observations after I actually get the rules and run a few games.

Thanks again,

Skipper

I'm glad I was of use, after a little Costieres de Nimes.