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Category: Crossfire Scenario DesignDesign pointers on designing scenarios for Crossfire 
I’m looking for more small Crossfire Scenarios so I wondered how the “Scenarios for all Ages” of Charles Grant and Stuart Asquith would transfer to Crossfire. The scenarios were “intended to provide a mixture of fun, excitement and challenge.” Sounds good to me and I could say the same for Crossfire, so it seems like a good match. However it does take a certain amount of tweaking to get the scenarios to work for Crossfire. And make them “small”. This post is about those tweaks. 
Dick Bryant got in contact this week and said “I just spent an unproductive 1/2 hour looking for your write ups on using points to balance a scenario. Where did you put it?” It isn’t there. Sorry about that Dick. My points system was missing because it is based on the points at the back of the rules. However, on reflection, I think there are sufficient differences between what I do now and what the rules say, that I should share. 
Immediately following our successful experiment on Ambush scenarios for the Portuguese Colonial War, Jamie Wish and I tried another type of scenario. The goal of our second game was to defend a water party, which is an idea from FNG of Two Hour Wargames. Of course, our version of the scenario was for Crossfire and my Fogo Cruzado variant. As a scenario design experiment, this one failed in a pretty spectacular fashion. But maybe I’m biased because Jamie won, and very quickly. 😉 Anyway, the good news is that we learnt a few things. 
I’m in the process of writing a solo campaign for Portuguese Colonial War called “African Tour”. This process has been dragging on for years. Instead of sitting with my computer imagining what might make a good game, I decided to experiment with some of my ideas. So I invited Jamie Wish over, we got out my (previously unused) figures and tried an ambush scenario for Crossfire and my Fogo Cruzado variant. Despite the scenario design misgivings I had before we started, it was actually a pretty good game. Exciting and novel. 
I recently blogged about Mac’s Missions – Pick up games for Crossfire. I’ve made a few tweaks to the system and come up with a version 2. And there is a PDF to download.
Mac wanted to play pick up games of Crossfire so created a simple method of doing that with a cool graphic. I’ve added a few supporting assets, played a game and made a few recommendations for a version 2. 
Last week I posted Eye of the Tiger – A Crossfire Scenario. My mate Chris had suggested I convert this scenario from ASL to Crossfire and, although I had written up some notes on Converting Advanced Squad Leader to Crossfire, I’d never actually done it. So off I went. I found it wasn’t a straightforward conversion and I suspect any move from ASL to Crossfire will have similar challenges. To help those going down the same route I thought I’d share of the thinking that went into the process for this scenario – scenario design notes if you will. 
Many of my Crossfire posts come from email discussions with Dick Byrant. Recently he asked “do you generate scenario maps for your players to plan from in your games”. I do. Drawing a Map is a key part of my Scenario Design for Crossfire. 
I play wargames. Emphasis on “games”. So when I design a new scenario I look for three things. The scenario must result in a game that is fun, fair and has flavour. The 3Fs of scenario design. For this post I’ll use Crossfire examples but the same principles apply to any game system. Recent focus on my Russian Scouts Crossfire Scenario has prompted me to look again at Reconnaissance Objectives. Generally play testing of this and other recon scenarios is that they encourage the attacker can go all out to kill the opposition rather than scout. I thought I’d revisit the goals of a reconnaissance, show how my ideas on recon scenarios have evolved with play testing, and share other things to try in the future. 
Okay, we’ve decided our map scale, got our table grids and our Crossfire Symbol Catalogue, now what? Time to actually draw a map for a Crossfire Scenario. In this post I explain how I go about drawing a map for Crossfire. All that preparation from earlier posts makes drawing such a map really easy. Rather than talk in general terms I thought I’d take you through the process I used to draw the map for Papa Eicke – A Crossfire Scenario. 
I was talking to Dick Bryant about my SU-76i in 1902nd SAP – A Crossfire Scenario. He’d noticed that is was quite hard to defend this terrain because the fields of fire were limited by the in-season fields. Dick suggested making the fields out-of-season. The question is, would Soviet fields actually be in-season or out-of-season in Aug-Sep? 
I’m always happy to invest a bit of time to make my life easier later. So now that I’m seriously looking at using MS PowerPoint for drawing my wargaming maps I thought I’d invest a bit of time in getting the basics right. For map making the key is a Symbol Catalogue containing all the elements I need before I actual draw anything. This post describes how I put together a Symbol Catalogue for Crossfire. 
Being hidden helps a lot in Crossfire. But if the attacker knows the defender’s order of battle they also know how many enemy stands are still hidden on table. With few remaining hidden defenders the attacker can be more aggressive. With lots the attacker will be more cautious. But real attackers could never be certain of the size of the defending force so couldn’t number crunch their way to victory. The question is, how to introduce that uncertainty into a game without an umpire? 
If you want start drawing maps, including maps using MS PowerPoint, the first thing you have to decide is what is the map scale. |
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