Overview
The Tactical Assault: Combat Cards™ are a fun and innovative way to fight combined arms battles on the tabletop battlefield. The Combat Cards are designed to bring all of the detailed elements of land warfare – including the fog of war – to the tabletop in a narrative card-driven format that is easy to play yet full of challenges. To be successful you must be creative in your strategies, flexible in your tactics and attentive to the ever changing battlefield.
The key to the Combat Cards is the way in which they simulate every commander’s struggle with maximizing the use of their available assets in the face of the multitude of hazards, delays and other challenges on the battlefield. The Combat Cards integrate all of this in a fast and easy to use system that challenges players to balance the need for careful planning with a willingness to take risks and seize upon sudden opportunities.
The Combat Cards can be utilized for just about any modern historical period, starting with the 20th century, as well as any science fiction setting. They can be used with any scale of miniatures, any sized battlefield and for any size of battle – ranging from the smallest skirmish action all the way up to massive operational level maneuvers.
Archive of all ‘How Do I…’ Articles
How Do I… Historical Units
Thursday, May 12th, 2011One question about the Combat Cards that comes up a lot from history buffs, is how to match historical units with the specific Unit Types when playing a historical battle or scenario. Sometimes it just doesn’t feel right to assign Armored Unit status to what was essentially a light tank, just because it was called a “tank”. Often in reality, units performed so poorly in the roles they were designed for – either due to design flaws or obsolescence – that they were not employed in the originally intended fashion. So how is this worked into the Combat Cards? (more…)
How Do I… Use Urban Terrain
Wednesday, March 23rd, 2011When laying out terrain on the tabletop battlefield, most forms of terrain are pretty easy and obvious to fit within the context of the Combat Cards. Woods are typically a Template of Covering Terrain, swamps are Templates of Hindering Terrain, hedges are Linear Obstructing Terrain and so on. The one form of terrain that often gives players fits is the dreaded ‘built up’ or ‘urban’ areas (e.g. cities, towns, villages and buildings).
Should urban areas be Templates of Impassable terrain? Or should each wall of a building be Linear Covering Terrain? Should roads be Clear Open Terrain, or should the walls and hedges that often run along them force them to be Obstructing Terrain? As players will play a host of different scales, genres and battlefield sizes there really isn’t a single authoritative answer to the question. What follows are some ideas which have proven effective in different types of games. Hopefully one them, or some combination of them, will help you lay out a better battlefield for your games. (more…)
How Do I… Use Hex Maps
Thursday, March 10th, 2011To play either the Combat Cards or the Fantasy Cards on a hex based map is very simple. In the either game, you take the shortest side and use that distance as your Very Long distance for the game. Half of that distance is the Long range, and so on. Well, instead of measuring that distance in inches or centimeters, you will simply measure it in terms of hexes.
Now some things do need a little tweaking to work, but they are very minor. When doing the math to determine distances, keep all the fractions as you half each distance. Then, when everything has been calculated, round any fractions to the nearest whole hex (up or down as appropriate). (more…)
