Today’s game is Blitzkrieg Commander (2005) from Specialist Military Publishing. It adapts Games Workshop’s Warmaster rules to World War 2. #CuratedQuarantine

Now it may seem a little strange to take a game designed for elves, orcs, and dragons and apply it to tanks, artillery, and airplanes, but it actually works pretty well. #CuratedQuarantine

The command & control system at the heart of Warmaster provides that same uncertainty and fog of war in modern battles. Depending on how you roll, you may be able to activate a unit several times in a row or blow it and have them paralyzed by command confusion. #CuratedQuarantine

Since these are descended from GW rules, there is of course a commander blunder chart and it’s not a game if I don’t end up rolling on it at least a couple of times. #CuratedQuarantine

One great feature of Blitzkrieg Commander is how complete it is. It’s a game designed around combined-arms operations, so its army lists are quite thorough. Many WW2 games stick to the major powers but not so Blitzkrieg Commander. #CuratedQuarantine

There are army lists for Belgium, Greece, Norway and Yugoslavia, for example, and two for the Spanish Civil War as well.
There are a couple of rules peculiarities. #CuratedQuarantine

Since your commanders take a penalty when they try to order troops that are too distant, and they don’t move until the end of the command phase, they end up leapfrogging their own troops to set themselves up for the following turn. #CuratedQuarantine

The other issue is that at the end of the turn all hits are taken off damaged units. This means if a tank had taken four of its five hits, it’s suddenly fine. #CuratedQuarantine

Now it may have been suppressed or driven back by those hits so it’s not like there’s no effect, but this does lead to dogpiling wounded units to knock them out and this isn’t great as far as simulation goes. Granted, it does make bookkeeping easier. #CuratedQuarantine

The game’s second edition (2009) added an optional rule for static hits if you want to track them from turn to turn. This also makes games go quicker because it’s easier to knock units out. #CuratedQuarantine

Specialist Military Publishing expanded the rules with two follow-up games: Cold War Commander (2006) and Future War Commander (2008). The former picks up in 1946 and runs to the present day. The latter is straight up scifi. #CuratedQuarantine

The cool thing SMP did for FWC was to reach out to many producers of small scale scifi minis and support them with army lists in the book. If you already had minis for Ground Zero Games Dirtside/Stargrunt or Steve Jackson Games Ogre, you could jump right in. #CuratedQuarantine

In 2015 Pendraken Miniatures, who produce a vast range of 10mm minis, acquired all three of these games. They published a fourth edition of Blitzkrieg Commander in 2019. #CuratedQuarantine cc @pendraken