Bill Alderman breaks out his card holders for a better view.	James Terry and John Wetherell trade shots.

The Combat Commander 2010 tournament had several new features. It used a new format (Swiss-Elim) to give people more opportunities to play, a different scenario mix and was even held on a different day. So of course, the question was how would all this "newness" play? 40 gamers, an event low, without the lure and luxury of a second "mulligan" start appeared on Wednesday to find out.

The first four rounds featured Swiss play with a scenario batch that was a mixture of custom designed and "stock" scenarios from the base games. Play proceeded well, and as is the norm for this game, rules questions were few and readily answered. As intended with the Swiss format, the more casual gamers were able to drop in and out at their leisure -- albeit at the cost of being much less likely to advance. Witness our two-time champion who missed the first two rounds. From this Swiss phase four intrepid small unit commanders - Jeff Spaner, J.R. Tracy, Chris Byrd and Michael Johnson - moved on to Single Elimination.

In the semi-finals. J.R Tracy edged Jeff Spaner by killing a unit to force surrender at the last possible chance. In the other contest Michael Johnson squeaked out a similarly close decision versus Chris Byrd.

The Final used the Scenario Generator (known as RSG) built into the game. In this case, Michael and J.R. rolled up quite a scenario. J.R was attacking with a large, elite German force versus Michael's mob of Soviet militia backed by several bomb wielding elite Assault squads. Although J.R had the troop numbers and quality, Michael played the defense expertly and fully exploited his advantages of time and space. His troops suffered heavy losses to JR's elite units, but ultimately the Germans ran out of time.

Michael selected the Band of Brothers DVD set as his additional prize, while J.R received the DVD of Cross of Iron for his second place finish. Combat Commander will be seeing more change in 2011. Bryan Collars will be taking over as the Senior GM with me as his Assistant. Bryan is a class act, as many who play Combat Commander know well. As always, you the player have the ability to shape how this event will work each year by discussing it in the Combat Commander topic on ConsimWorld.

Bryan Collars trades shots with Jamie Tang.	That Bryan fellow sure attracts the ladies.