# 5150: Battalion Commander tags: #game/wargame/5150-battalion-commander ![[5150 - Battalion Commander (cover).jpg|600]] The view from the map table, where the squads you spent the last game fussing over are now just three-letter blocks with a cohesion score. **5150: Battalion Commander** (Ed Teixeira, 2013) is the **[[5150 - Wargames]]** line's command-scale game — and it's not a new set of rules so much as an even taller ladder of the same reaction engine, climbing from the squad to the platoon, company, and on up to the whole battalion, with the chain of command doing more of the work the closer you get to the top. ## Setting Your role is at headquarters. The same 5150 factions field their forces — **Free Company**, **Grath**, **Hishen**, **PDF**, **Rebels**, the **Star Army** (infantry, ISS, Rangers, Symons), **Zhuh-Zhuh** — but here each squad is a defined block with a **Reputation** and a **Fire Factor**, and the game is about how those blocks hold together and in what order when the pressure comes. ## Mechanics The **Group Cohesion** and **Chain of Command** layers are the real mechanics on top of the shared **THW Reaction System** — squad, platoon, company, and battalion each roll their own cohesion, and when the chain breaks the whole formation starts answering to itself instead of to you. ### Organization Infantry builds Squad → Platoon → Company → Battalion, with **Leaders** handing out benefits and taking risks in return, and a **Chain of Command** that decides who picks things up when a leader drops. ### Rules of war The standard **Turn Sequence**, **Actions**, **Movement** (voluntary and the involuntary kind — ducking back, taking a casualty), the **In Sight** reaction test, and the rest of the engine, now resolved one battalion at a time instead of one man at a time. ## Editions - **5150: Battalion Commander** (2013) — the battalion-scale command game, by **Ed Teixeira**. *In the library.* ## References - [5150 – Two Hour Wargames](https://www.twohourwargames.com/) - [5150 – Sci-Fi Games — Rebel Minis Press](https://rebelminispress.com/collections/sci-fi-games)