Tuesday 4 April 2017

Covering fire in Chain of Command

I like the simple mechanic that is covering fire in Chain of Command, I think it's another elegant design feature of a great rule set.  There are often times when some suppressing fire is far more useful than an attempt to inflict casualties. I've seen games bog down into drawn out fire fights when some judicious covering fire and movement would be more effective.

So that preamble was just a way of showing some covering fire 'markers' that I've created to indicate where that fire is, but also add some colour to the table.  A single team can lay covering fire 4" in width, a section can cover 9" so there are markers in both lengths.  The bursts of gun fire are over dramatised and would be more at home in a war comic or Hollywood movie. Nonetheless they do look a lot better than plastic beads or other markers.  As covering fire lasts for the phase it was placed and the following phase these will sit on the table for a while so I wanted something that would blend in well.

Simple construction - flocked strips of MDF with a few pieces of wire hot glued into holes.  The wire is painted black and then livened up with some red and yellow (I know, I know, bullets don't explode like this, but hey, it looks good).  The smoke is white polyester soft toy stuffing painted with acrylic paint.

4" and 9" covering fire markers

The 4" marker
And here they are in a game setting:




7 comments:

  1. Looks fantastic - one minor point I am not sure if you are aware but covering fire can only be placed on an area of terrain? So the first two photos are good......... :)

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    1. Thanks. While the pictures here were only for illustrative purposes, I didn't actually know that. I don't think I've ever used it in open ground, it is normally targeted at a building or similar, so hopefully there's been no illegal usage on my part, but thanks for pointing that out.

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    2. According to Rich, your placement of covering fire on the unit rather than terrain is correct. He actually recommends it as a gaming tactic.

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  3. Really creative way to show define boundaries of covering fire.
    cheers JOhn

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  4. nice, as you said much better than beads or whatever

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  5. Surely a piece of open ground is still an area of terrain? Obviously covering can be applied to troops in the open.

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