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Close Combat 5: Invasion Normandy
by Nelson "Admiral" HernandezTactical Battles
The heart of the Close Combat system is the tactical battle engine, which has received minor tweaks over the years but still remains true to its ancestor.
Storming the beaches
When the original CC was marketed much was made of the fact that no game had such a realistic model of how soldiers behave in war. In Close Combat, your men flinch, hide, panic, rout and perform the occasional act of heroism. They won’t follow suicidal orders. When they see the enemy defeated they are inspired; when they see their comrades falling they are shaken.
The experience and starting morale of your troops is the primary determinant of their brittleness in battle. The disillusioned Russian conscripts fighting for the Germans are very fragile, while crack U.S. paratroopers can take a beating and still keep their heads about them. This is still one of the best and most impressive things about the game: how a squad can freeze in terror when it comes under fire or shatter when its leader is killed, or how a single brave soldier can turn the tide by going ahead when the rest of his mates stay back. The one evolution in this system has been the addition of leader squads, which steady the morale of nearby units.
While the fortunes of war are well modeled, good tactics will win the day almost every time. And there is a lot to think about: terrain offers cover and concealment; your troops and vehicles have varying weapons and capabilities; perhaps the individual action fits into an overall scheme for the campaign.
Choosing units
There are a great variety of infantry units in CC5 and all the small arms are tracked. If the fellow manning the heavy machine gun is hit, chances are his buddy will take over the weapon. Submachineguns are deadly at close range, and snipers can pick off enemy leaders at a distance. German squads carrying Panzerfausts are a mortal threat to tanks; the aforementioned Russian conscripts carry their native PPSh41 SMGs and Mosin-Nagant rifles (I don’t know if that’s realistic, but it was kind of cool).
There is less variety among the tanks, because very few were used in the Utah Beach campaign. The Germans seem to have most of them, but you won’t find any Panthers or Tigers in the historical scenarios, just a few assault guns and light French tanks. The Allies have a few variants of the rugged Sherman. Generally they rarely appear on the battlefield, and they are somewhat easy to ambush in the terrain.
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