Combat Patrol! My Go at WWII Squad Level Wargaming Rules

Combat! was a 1960’s TV show set in Normandy in 1944.

It ran for 5 Seasons and had 150+ Episodes mostly in Black and White.

It’s all available for free on YouTube and I’d highly recommend it.

It focused on either Sgt. Saunders or Lt. Henley and almost always had them leading a Squad sized group or smaller trying to either hold a position, blow something up, scout for the enemy, get a wounded man to safety or any other 60’s ear TV Show concept you can imagine.

Because I was very bored and I couldn’t find anything out there that really recreated what I liked.

I’m picky with very small skirmish games, I don’t like a lot of tokens, I don’t like a lot of book keeping and I don’t want it to take forever to play.

So I made my own game that can be played with around 5-10 men in a reasonable amount of time that could work for multiple scenarios.

Soldiers are given a name or Number and Activated by a Token. The NCO can swap tokens with any of his squad members. The game uses a D10.

When a soldiers token is drawn they can take an action like running, making a “Combat Move” or firing, if an enemy gives you the opportunity you can forgo an action that turn to take a “Snap Shot” that is far less effective than actually shooting but gives you more tactical flexibility.

When a soldier is hit shot at he has to take a “Cover Check” and if hit something bad will almost always happen, these are bullets after all.

Wounded Men aren’t just removed but play a part in the game. Men with Flesh wounds just can’t run, lightly wounded men can still shoot with a reduced effect but can’t move unless dragged, Seriously Wounded men can’t do anything but the enemy can capture or kill them so protecting a wounded man can become as important as the main objective. Very Seriously Wounded men can die unless helped and even if helped become Seriously wounded.

The game is meant to evolve as you play it, sure your objective is to search that house and return to base but two members of your squad can’t walk so you try to get permission to hold the position and wait for reinforcements which is represented by a die roll that gets modified depending on what shape your force is in.

The original was a Mess. It was 18 Pages long and had more charts than you can imagine.

The version I’ll be posting here is a much more streamlined version that I hope is a much better game.