I have played COMMAND DECISION and modern version, COMBINED ARMS, many times, and I have always enjoyed its fast paced portrayal of Twentieth Century operational combat. This Miniature Game's best attribute is its ability to portray a variety of situations and let the commanders react to them. You can choose to make frontal assaults, or flanking attacks, to probe or attack, to defend forward or in depth. And you can always change your plans, regroup, and then attack again in the course of a single game. However one situation that I have some misgiving about is the air attack, admittedly from a personal perspective. In one game for example, I was commanding an early war Soviet Infantry/Tank force defending a river line against the German onslaught. The Luftwaffe flew in and destroyed our tanks - not nice, but things usually aren't when you command Russians in 1941. The tanks were in the woods sitting in reserve, not engaged with German troops. In real life, there would have been a very good chance that the pilots would not have seen the tanks, and could not have attacked them. My belief is supported by commentaries made by combat pilots who discuss the dangerous time spent finding their targets during close air support and battlefield air interdiction missions. Therefore I propose the following as optional rules for interested players to try out. This situation doesn't occur often; there usually are not that many fixed wing aircraft engaging targets directly on the battlefield. Rather, they are usually attacking just behind the enemy lines where the reinforcing troops are bunched up and not hiding like those in the thick of the fight. During the first spotting phase, after movement and before Opportunity Fire occurs, the attacking Air Craft make a 12" spotting run. The Aircraft may attempt to spot up to five enemy units. This spotting is independent of all spotting by ground units; what the ground units have seen is not automatically seen by the aircraft, and what the aircraft see is not seen by the ground units. The rolls needed to spot are: Vehicle/Gun in Open 9 Vehicle/Gun in Woods/City 5 Personnel in Open 7 Personnel in Woods or City 3 Patrol in Open 5 Patrol in Woods/City 1 If no enemy units are spotted by the aircraft, roll a die. If a 1 is rolled, then a randomly determined friendly unit has been misidentified and must be attacked during the attack run. These numbers are not set in stone, so that they can be altered as needed by the gamemaster for different situations. The bombing run is carried out as normal during the opportunity fire phase. Additional spotting runs, as well as bombing/strafing runs may be made in the following spotting and fire phases respectively. The Air Defense fire is modified as follows: First Run of an Aircraft -1 Second Run of an Aircraft 0 Third/Fourth Runs +1 Fifth and Sixth Runs +2 This is designed to reflect the surprise and shock of the aircrafts first arrival and the danger to the pilot who spends too much time in the air defense gunners sights. To really discourage multiple passes on the modern battlefield, for COMBINED ARMS, add +1 to all units which are part of a coordinated air defense network. For example, the SA 7/14 of a Soviet Infantry Company would not usually be considered to be in a AD Network, but the SA-7/14 stand of a SAM Regiment is in the network. This rule allows for the modern Air Defense Command and Control; as there is someone on the net warning the gunners where and when to expect the aircraft. This rule would also allow a use for such modern aircraft as the EC-130. In there is a Forward Air Controller (FAC) on the board, then the aircraft need not have to make a spotting run to spot a target already seen by the FAC. This makes the rare FAC a potentforce on the battle field as he puts bombs on target with less chance that the aircraft will be upset by air defense's. This would supersede the existing COMBINED ARMS rule about FAC's; the time of arrival is not altered by the calling in air strikes with FACs. I think these rules can show the benefits and difficulties of using aircraft in battle, They can deliver devastating firepower, but sometimes they drop their load on the wrong people. If they have to stick around, they'll die, but if someone can coordinate their strikes from the ground, they often get away clean. Back to Table of Contents -- Command Post Newsletter #1 To Command Post Quarterly List of Issues To MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1990 by Greg Novak. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com