Some musing on unlimited actions for vehicles in Crossfire. Standard Crossfire doesn’t allow this.
My one time gaming partner Paul Ward advocates unlimited actions for tanks in the same way as infantry get unlimited actions / initiative. I’ve tried:
- Unlimited movement and shooting. Worked okay, but I have a worry that infantry equipped with only ATR will get slaughtered.
- Limited movement and unlimited shooting. Makes the tanks much more powerful, but they take their time to travel around.
Tim Marshall is advocating CCC roll to allow tanks an action after the first. It is basically a type of reaction to vehicle actions, and just represents the possibility of vehicle being operated efficiently/inefficiently.
Anyway, this looks interesting. Needs more play testing.
Tim Marshall’s running-around-the-back-to-shoot-at-the-rear-arm tactic
Tim highlights a potential gamey tactic that can develop if vehicles have unlimited movement …
Apparently, there was a hill, at the bottom of which there was a German tank directly behind a Soviet tank. The Soviets had initiative. The Soviet tank drives around the base of the hill (being missed by the German reactive fire on its first shot), taking several actions to do so, of course, but now is behind the German tank. The Soviet tank fires at the german rear, misses, it’s now the german initiative. The German tank drives around the hill (again being missed)…. The above sounds incredibly silly. The reason it occurred was because, of course, of the different armour values of the tanks with respect to front and rear. It’s unlikely the same would happen with infantry as there is no front/rear defense values to take advantage of.
Steve ? “Quick Draws” in response
What we discovered in history is if a tank is fired at, it usually shoots back. So we have “quick draws.” If a AFV is facing an AFV in LOS (These guys were usually blind) both roll a reaction die, with the phasing player receives a +1. If the defender out scores he shoots first. If the target is KO initiative shifts to the shooter/defender and there is no shot back.. If the firer misses, the phasing tank shoots back. No hit means initiative shifts to the defender.If the phasing tank is shooting at the target behind its flank lines, this rule does not apply.
Chuck Parrott link unlimited moves with other rule changes
Unlimited movement AND unlimited fire actions per initiative. We introduced a few rules changes to see how they would play and if it whacked out the game. First impression was, we liked the changes a lot but they need some tweaking. It still played like CF and infantry still dominated the game.
For the game we tried, 2 T-34/76 and 2 MkIVH were used along with 1 company of infantry per side on a small table. First rule change was we altered the AT fire to be one dice roll. Tanks rolled 3 dice against other tanks, 4 dice against infantry. Drop a die for protective cover. Flank shots vs tanks gained 1 die, tanks which remain stationary during your entire initiative could fire 4 dice vs other tanks. Reacting tanks got the regular 3 dice. Any infantry squads (not hmg’s) could fire 2 dice against tanks, +1 die for flank shots, +1 die if tank within one stand width of infantry.1 hit pinned, 2 hits suppressed, 3+ hits killed. An additional suppression killed as well. Just like with infantry. Pinned vehicles halted and could fire but not move. We allowed the turret to rotate to engage targets. Suppressed vehicles could neither move or fire. We treated the crews as regular for removing morale markers, but could not use any leader bonuses.