Apparently, the FLGS has decided to switch over to Chain Reaction and it's variations for all skirmish gaming in the future.  Partly that was due to my enthusiasm for the system, and partly on recommendations from the College Station guys, who are similarly enthusiastic about the rules.

Since I'm apparently one of the only people in Houston that knows how to play CR, I've been unofficially tapped as the "CR Guy".  That's ok with me - the more people playinc CR the better, because I really do think that it's a fantastic skirmish game.

Sometime, probably next week, we're going to do some CR during the "Wednesday Night Fights" timeslot.  I think we should play a few games during the "off hours" to get the club's CR legs under them.  That won't take long, since the game is pretty simple once you understand it.  It's like DBA - a little tough to learn by just reading the rules, but very logical and easy to play once you know what it's all about.  The biggest obstacle is that in CR, you really don't get as much control over your figures as other games give you.  Those little guys are forever being driven back into cover, refusing to charge, etc.  Only your "mini me" figure (the group's leader) can act exactly as you wish.

That's one of the odd things about all THW games.  They don't feel at all as stilted or abstract as most games.  For example, I played an old west "gunfighter" game in whch everyone but the moving figure was "Frozen" in place.  This lead to some strange situations with people running across the street and shooting guys just standing around.  In CR, those guys would have been driven back into cover, probably taken a few return shots, etc.  There is a lot more "Action" in a CR game than in most other skirmish games I've seen.  (BTW, I'm not knocking that old west game - it was fun, but apparently you can never go back. ^_^)

You know what?  I think I figured out what the defining characteristic of Chain Reaction is, relative to other skirmish games.  It's not abstract.  Other games have these abstract concepts of "overwatch" or "Suppression fire", which aren't in CR at all.  Yet you get the effect of overwatch and suppression from the game mechanisms.  As wargamers, we're so used to thinking in terms of academic "combat theory" that not having, for example, "suppression fire" throws a lot of people off.  It's one of the first things that new CR players ask about, and sometimes get all "Oh, well then this game sucks and isn't realistic" about it.  Ed (the author) says "just play the game!", and he's right.  Your figures will get suppressed all right, CR just doesn't have a special case for it.  Because CR doesn't attempt to abstract out "combat theory" specific rules, it winds up being even more "true" than games that do, because suddently, real world tactics work, figures behave more like real combatants, and the game is simple and fast.

Ok, maybe I'm overzealous.  Could be that's why they want me to be the "CR Guy". :-)