A game of Combat Commander has no strict sequence of play. Each turn is divided into a variable number of Player Turns, each of which may consist of either: the active player expending one or more Fate cards from their hand for their Actions; or passing, which allows the discarding of one or more Fate cards. Players redraw up to their maximum hand size at the end of each of their own Player Turns. Additionally, Reactions may be played by either player at any time, so long as the prerequisite listed is met.
FATE CARDS: Players will take turns playing one or more “Fate” cards from their hands in order to activate their units on the mapboard for various military functions. Each nationality has its own 72-card Fate deck highlighting its historical strengths and weaknesses (lots of Smoke for the US; marksmanship bonuses for Britain; commissar events for the Soviets; broken Italian units will surrender more often; etc.). Each Fate card contains one Action and one Reaction: only one of which may be declared when the card is played. The bottom portion of each Fate card contains an Event, a random hex symbol, and a 2d6 die roll – these can never be ‘played’ from the hand, only ‘revealed’ from the top of the draw pile when a game situation instructs a player to do so.
ACTIONS include: Fire, Move, Advance, Rally, Rout, Artillery Request and Artillery Denied. Each nationality also has a varying number of Command Confusion Actions which act as duds while in hand – these cards are useless except for any possible Reaction on the card. Actions, when played, generally activate a single unit to perform that Action, unless a Leader is activated: in which case it can further activate any or all non-leaders within its Command Radius to perform the same Action. There are 15 different REACTIONS. For example:
# Sustained Fire – Add +2 when firing a Mortar or Machine Gun. If the fire roll is “doubles”, break it.
# Smoke – If a unit with boxed Movement is activated to Move or Advance, place Smoke in or adjacent to its hex.
# Grenades – Add +2 when firing at an adjacent hex.
# Dig In – Place foxholes in a friendly hex.
Hmmm if that isn't Upfront on a Squad Leader board, I am unsure what else it could be
Looks like they got bored of waiting for Upfront to be put back into circulation and decided to just go a bit further.