Cold War Commander and Modern Gaming past and present.

Downloaded a copy of Cold War Commander whilst my Hard backed (or Soft backed as it will turn out to be) arrives. Basically I purchased the PDF version before I found I could get a printed version for a little bit more ... DOH!

My Modern gaming - The Past

I had first started moderns around 1990 when Challenger 2 ruled the tables. I had entered several competitions at the Derby Worlds back when Moderns was cool, Then Bruce died :(

The then owner of Table Top games who sponsored the competitions and owned the publishing rights to the Challenger series decided to make some money out all of us Modern players as he was not selling enough as it was.

HE took all of Bruce's hand written notes on a new version of challenger and with out proof reading it or play testing correctly, he released it too the world.
So one year at Derby we were told the following year would be played with the new Challenger 2000 rules. Well we all flocked to the Table top trade stand and we all purchased as set. We were told the army lists would stay the same, but the following year the new competition packs arrived and all the lists were for more modern armies and not the 1980's ones we had used and the engineering assets had been increased. Now we all had to buy either new armies or a large quantity of engineering assets.

Table top games made ££'s out all of us. The playoff's went quite well, then the main event arrived, well it was argument city for every one, the umpire was rushed of his feet, we even approached the owner of Table top games and asked what did he mean by a rule?? his reply I still remember to day, was "I don not know, I only wrote them!" ??????.

I believe almost every one at that competition went home and burned their copy of Challenger 2000.
The Following year, Moderns was dropped from the Derby Worlds.

Well the then Table Top games owner defiantly saw the ££'s disappear as in one foul swoop, and one badly written set of rules destroyed the 1/300 modern scene for many.

It was too late to go back to your old rules and for me Moderns died. My armies sat mothballed for years. We tried to use WRG, Command Decision, spearhead and Battlegroup Modern Rules (BGMR). The latter set of rules even made a small come back as a competition game for Derby but has now sadly been discontinued as a competition event.

Army list come and Army lists go, but my armies still sat there idle. None had the feel of Challenger or Challenger 2, and try as I may, I just can no longer absorb these rules, My mind rejects them at every turn.

My Modern Gaming - The Present

Cold War Commander has been mentioned by a lot of players as being very good and enjoyable, and I even saw a set of rules a few years back at my friends house. So I searched the internet and read a few reviews and purchased a PDF version. I have tried reading them on my computer screen but my mind won't let me read too much. So now I await my hard copy.

In the mean time we tried to have a game, just using the basic rules. I struggled to read the rules off the screen and without the hard copy I just couldn't find the rules I needed fast enough. Although we had an enjoyable evening playing them. We will hold off until the rule book arrives so I can better read the rules.

So over the next few months we will give CWC a good go and hope to rekindle our interest in moderns...

If not I suppose ebay will await for them.