[1] The game utilizes lookup tables which resolve injuries to specific digits, organs, and bones, and simulates the physics of different attacks, such as bullets with different velocities.

Phoenix Command was designed by Barry Nakazono and David McKenzie, and was published by Leading Edge Games in 1986 as a boxed set containing a 56-page spiral bound rule book, 32 page modern military weapon data supplement, reference tables, blank character sheets and one ten-sided die.

Although Swan found the combat system quite complex, he noted that it "plays quite well and produces astonishingly realistic results."

He concluded by giving the game a solid rating of 3 out of 4, saying, "as a combat system, Phoenix Command is top of the line, rivaling the best tactical wargames in detail and sophistication.

"[1] In his 2023 book Monsters, Aliens, and Holes in the Ground, writer Stu Horvath found the combat system very complex, noting, "It is dismaying in its detail, chronicling the many possible ways to shoot guns (and be shot by them) with excruciating precision...