I want to start by( slightly belatedly) mentioning Command’s “fifth birthday”. It’s amazing both how far it’s come and how good it was even back then. As I’ve mentioned before, what made me fall in love with Command was its ability to simulate the most obscure and unlikely conflicts. Simulating the American or Russian Air Force is one thing, but a small, weaker force is quite another.
When I did my first of countless editor experiments, I did not do a GIUK Gap or South China Sea. I did a “Francoist Spain vs. Nigeria” over Equatorial Guinea. This eventually got made into a formal scenario called The Old Regime and the New Nation. Another community author has made the Spanish Guinea set, in the same area.
It got to me that there might be a general trend for this kind of scenario, that which I call “Falklandsesque”. Like every other classification, it’s not hard and fast. But what the Falklandsesque trend involves is…
- Territory generally internationally recognized as belonging to Country A, but far closer to Country B.
- Country A is wealthier than Country B, who is not generally considered a world military power, and would likely crush them if the two were next to each other.
- However, they’re not next to each other. Country B has a credible military force for the region, and Country A has to stretch its very limited power projection abilities to the absolute maximum.
Other Falklandsesque scenarios I’ve seen in Command are the Canary’s Cage and Green Tide standalones (also starring Spain, and over the Canary Islands), and the many Netherlands vs. Venezuela over the ABC Islands scenarios in the community pack. It’s not hard to see the appeal of these scenarios, for they offer something distinctive, high-tech, and evenhanded.