About the games: Combat! is a series of board games representing the key combat zones of famous battles of the 20th Century. Each game comes complete with everything you need to experience a bit of the hell of modern warfare. Once you've learned the basics of the system, ALL of these battles open up to you, to see the inside of the fighting in places like Iwo Jima, Kursk, Bastogne, Arnhem, Normandy, Pork Chop Hill, El Alamein.

The Combat! Game System has a mission - making tactical level gaming more accurate, less difficult AND less expensive. 

1. Easy and inexpensive to get started - everything you need to play is in the box!
2. Low intensity, plain language rules - there is only one rulebook.
3. The right blend of interesting detail, or chrome - Lt. Wallace lives to fight another day...
4. Fascinating battles - what if the Red Devils had held out for one more day in Arnhem?

This is the system you can actually carry out to your shiny new convertible in one hand... no loading dock required! 

Module 1: Combat! Normandy - The paratroopers of the 82nd Airborne vs. local German units in Normandy meets that requirement. Not incidentally, this is the same focus (and the same battle) taken by the renowned film 'Saving Private Ryan'.

Combat! Diary - learn more about the battle and the game system in our magazine dedicated to Combat! Articles on how to, descriptions of weapons, historical pieces on the units that fought the same battles you're engaged in. Issue 1 - Normandy; Issue 2 - Stalingrad + upgrade chatter and letters to the editor + Pointe du Hoc. April 2001.

Module 2: Combat! Stalingrad sends you into the firestorm of factory fighting in Russia in 1942. The battlefield is a grim but fascinating reproduction of the Dzerhezinsky Tractor Works, a massive factory complex featuring massive building torn to shreds by incessant bombardment and fierce fighting. 

Module 3: Combat! Pointe du Hoc pits the 2nd Ranger Battalion against nazi troops in the Bocage. No beach landing here, we take the action from the push for the laterel road, to the German counterattacks and the final Ranger relief. INCLUDES COMPLETE COMBAT! NORMANDY UPGRADE. April 2001.

Module 3: Combat! Kursk I takes you to the Psel River for the Waffen SS vs. Soviet Guards action in the form of tank warfare in open, hilly terrain north of the village of Krasny-Oktabyr. This is Tigers vs. T-34's and SU 152's in playable time. Realistic Soviet tank tactics portrayed. Shturmoviks overhead. Wow! May 2001.

Module 3: Combat! Arnhem will take you back to the exciting days of September, 1944, when it seemed a final dramatic airborne operation could help swiftly end the war. Now the British 'Red Devil' parachute troops have captured the Arnhem bridge over the Rhine and must hold until relieved. The most accurate Arnhem map ever produced with the help of Dutch experts. May 2001. 

Battlefield horizon? We have 'marching orders' to move forward on the double with the following battles:

France 1940 -Char B1 bis vs. Grossdeutschland troopers	Bastogne - The Red Devils hold out at the famous Arnhem Bridge
Dog Green - Can you say 'Bloody Omaha'?	Jerusalem - 1948 Israeli War of Independence
Wake Island  - U.S.M.C. and the famous battle	Kursk - Ponyri anyone?
Anzio - Beach landing behind German lines	Iwo Jima - the Marines in the Meatgrinder - name your piece
Okinawa - The US Army in a cataclysmic 1945 battle	Guadalcanal - 1942, the pivotal jungle battle

What's next for Combat?

It's all coming together and you've been a HUGE part of it with your feedback. Please cast your vote here to let us know which of the battles listed above you'd like to see on your gaming table next. If you don't see your favorite listed above, send us your idea! Drop us a line and make your influence count.

Read a response by designer Ray Tapio on the issue of Combat! and tank warfare in pdf format.

The Maps: Combat! includes detailed, well-researched maps that customers have used on their own tours of the battlefields. We seek to transport the gamer back to battlefields that are quite literal representations of their former selves, right down to the last farmhouse and church steeple. This has been no small effort. Combat! battlefields in Normandy, Arnhem and other points of interest have been toured extensively on foot by researchers, veterans have been consulted, and locals from mayors to homeowners have been brought in to the 'game'. We're after the elusive 'feel' of the tactical level battlefield. 

The Key Decisions: By presenting a limited combined arms order of battle for both sides its easier to meet the goal of teaching newcomers to play Combat! quickly and well. The basics of "Tanks-Men-Guns", the crux of World War II-style warfare, can be taught using these limited forces. Larger, more varied orders of battle present larger command and control challenges. But all success will come from a mastery of the basic concepts of commanding the Tanks-Men-Guns.

Your Command: Picture if you will yourself in the role of platoon leader, striving to get your men or tanks onto their objective. Enemy action and random events are intervening. You, the platoon leader, are reacting. The challenge is to provide functionality to simulate this process without a burdensome set of rules. Command control is an intrinsic part of the play of Combat! Units in Combat! support each other, as in reality, through proximity and various leaders, such as NCOs. 

The Turns: Combat! is played in a streamlined set of three phases. The game does not qualify as an EYE-GO-YOU-GO game as the two phases in each turn; Command Phase and Fire & Movement Phase. All involve both players. Initiative is determined every turn, and may shift from one side to the next during the course of play. Players switch back and forth taking one or a few 'impulses' each to move and fire. The result is a chess-like give and take that pits players against each other both squad-to-squad and force-to-force. You have to win the little battles, impulse by impulse, to win the complete firefight.

Solitaire: Solitaire play is also an important assumption in the Combat! rules. The rules-set was designed with a nod to the reality that many gamers spend at least part of their time enjoying a game by pushing the counters around on their own. One needs not gather up another player, or take the time to travel to a gaming event to enjoy Combat!

Your troops: You are not overwhelmed with too many different game pieces to learn. Still, the full array of WWII weapons are represented. The units are individual squads, weapons crews, leaders, support weapons, Jeeps and tanks. In Combat! Normandy, the American player can wield a force including .30 caliber machine-guns, Bazookas, 57mm anti-tank guns and M4A1 Sherman tanks. The German player receives game pieces for squads, 7.62mm machine-guns, 75mm infantry guns, 50mm anti-tank guns, PSW 222 armored cars, and captured French tanks pressed into German service. Both combatants also receive artillery and mortar support. For Stalingrad we add a full Russian order of battle, plus German Stukas, assault guns and flamethrowers, to name a few.

Dice & Odds: Combat! uses two ten-sided dice to generate results from 1-10 and from 1-100. Rolling a 1 or 100 always means something special is happening! Percentages and "how many chances in 10" rolls make it easy to understand the odds of the certain things happening. Advising the infantry 'commander' that laying fire from his 30 cal. machine-gun has a fifteen percent chance of getting the other guy out from his positions in the woods makes it crystal clear. During play, your units have a simple percentage chance to perform the various combat tasks at hand...

Scale: The scale of Combat! is 50 yards per hex. The time frame represented by an average Combat! turn is just a few minutes, depending on how much activity takes place in a given turn. The game's firefights range from just a few of these turns, representing very short, intense actions, to much longer, larger firefights representing set-piece assaults, resolved down to the last room of close combat.

Fire Data: The data on the Firepower Tables came from years of detailed ballistic analysis, including unpublished government sources and others such as the analysis of US Army Firepower Scores. Using these many sources of data, we prepared our Firepower Table, noting the relative lethality of indirect fire, airstrikes, and mines of the AP and AT variety. From the raw data we crunched the numbers down to be relative to the average squad/AFV/gun.