In the Emperor's name with Combat Cards.

Although my buddy and usual wargaming opponent thinks CCs are shit (literally), I decided to give them another opportunity. Mainly because I felt like playing my itEn campaign so long abandoned but whose combat rules I had forgotten and I did not feel like reading them again in that moment, lazy me.

So I would sacrife saucy details from itEn in favour of a more generic and easy to go system as it is CC.

Nonetheless, as I felt Space Marines are better than normal infantry but different to the next category which is Mechanized units, I made some new units to play itEn with CC:

Space Marines (New unit - Heavy Infantry)
Fire Power - Light
Range - Medium
Protection - Light
Close Combat - Very Heavy
Points Value - 2

Devastator (Anti-Armour)
Fire Power - Heavy
Range - Long
Protection - Light
Close Combat - Moderate
Points Value - 3

Librarian (Fire Support* + Trained)
Fire Power - Light
Range - Medium
Protection - Light
Close Combat - Moderate
Points Value - 4x2 = 8

* Every Situation of Fire Support would allow him to use his psiquic power Path of Shadows (teletransporting at Rapid Move distance).

I spent my earned victory point from the last mission to buy a Rhino: a Mechanized Unit with transport ability (infantry can enter and exit from it as if moving in cover area, and received cover area bonus while they are in it).

I rolled on the Breakthrought mission chart and scored four:
THE ENEMY OF MY ENEMY.
A traitor in the Enemy’s camp has signalled a willingness to betray them into your hands. The informant has had to flee, though, with the Enemy close at his heels. Find the informant before the Enemy does and escort him off the board.

SETUP: The encounter would take place in an abandoned and long time radioactivity poisoned city. Mark ten terrain features that are possible hiding spots of the informant, none of which is closer than 4” to another. The two deployment zones must be at least 15” apart.

OBJECTIVE: The player must search each marked terrain feature by moving a model into base contact with it and rolling 1d6. On a roll of 6, the player’s model has recovered the informant and must now move him off the table. The model carrying the informant cannot fire ranged weapons or run. On successfully moving the informant off-table, the player’s team will earn 5 Victory points.

Then I rolled for secondary force list and got Squats.

My Space Marines costed a total of 27 army points and the Squats 20 points. The Squat forces were composed of 1 Command, 1 Infiltrator, 1 Mechanized, 1 Heavy Weapon and 4 Infantry.

I played with Epic miniatures on a 60 X 60 cm. board. The game took me two hours but I played both sides and took pictures as well.

All pictures are clickable.

Space Marines in the left and Squats in the right. At the beginning there were a lot of Confusion Situations. The Rhino was the first target for Confusion and all the infantry inside would have to move out walking or wait until the driver recovered. In the end they all waited except the Librarian who teletransported himself to the building in front of him.

Black dice mark Confused

However, Marines quickly reached the first three buildings but they did not find the traitor there. Squats more slowly were exploring the nearest buildigns but they neither could not find anybody.

In the following turns the Marines explored the buildings in the middle of the board except the big one which was registered first by an Squad Infiltrator

-Hullo!

After exploring all the building except the last one in the bottom left of the board, it was clear where it was going to be hiding the traitor. As the Squats were next to that building they discovered him and tried to exit the board with him.

The traitor is the Squat with blue helmet

The Marines were about to lose the mission but then good cards arrived all together. In the following turn the Rhino made two Rapid Moves and disembarked some infantry who shot and forced to Fall Back the Mechanized Squat out of the board. Then the Librarian teleported in the target building and shot to the Squat escorting the traitor, forcing them to take shelter in the same building.
Squats discarded several times and scarcely moved. Their Command unit was supressed by the Devastator fire.

Green dice mark Shaken

When the Squat with the traitor tried to escape again, the Librarian made Opportunity Fire and left him Shaken. Then one Space Marine tried to Assault him by the back but was stopped by Opportunity fire from the Command Squat who had recovered the turn before.

The Squat between two wooden sticks is Dig in and Hidden

Then it came the Rhino and the Squat Command desperately Assaulted it, resulting Shaken and Out of Action after two consecutive melee rounds.
The other Space Marines who came in the Rhino shot the Squat with the traitor and killed him.

Red dice mark Out of Action

The Command Squad finally died and the Rhino picked up the traitor

The Squats were decimated and could not stop the Marines. The Rhino moved to its border at full speed while the rest gave it cover.

In the last turn of the game the Devastator was shot at the back and assasinated by the Squat Infiltrator, but the Rhino finally moved out of the board thus winning the mission and earning five Victory Points.

The last turns of the game were very tense as the Marines snatched victory from Squat's hands in the very last moment, and it was exciting to draw new cards from the deck every turn in the hope of getting the right one to give the decisive blow.
Combat Cards game changes positively when you add objectives and victory points to the games.

I'm seeing CC is not so bad after all but I still think that games like itEn, FUBAR, SBH and especially CR 3.0, which use dice and charts and no cards, and with similar scope, are faster and more fun to play than CC. Also, it was a bit cumbersome to play both sides at the same time as I had two hands to play with.

On the other hand, the game was set up very quickly and the cards gave a very welcome level of uncertainty to solo playing.

All in all I will probably finished my itEn campaign using CC system, but after that I will rarely use it again and rather play other types of rulesets instead.