2 Companies a Side – A Crossfire Battle Report

Gunnery Sargent Rock (Bruce Stewart) played my 2 Companies a Side – A Generic Crossfire Scenario with his mate Steve Holroyd and kindly sent through an after action report. Most of the words are Bruce’s with some comments from me. Crossfire of course.

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Introduction

Today I caught up with Steve Holroyd a wargaming buddy of 40 years for the first time in years. We managed to get a Crossfire game in and layed your 2 Companies a Side – A Generic Crossfire Scenario.

It was only infantry combat. I had the defending Germans and Steve got the attacking Kiwis.

We played the scenario with a couple of exceptions:

1. I forgot to deploy my barbed wire and sniper but I elected to not use the bunker.
2. We used the Little Wars TV suggestion for close combats, for example the using one dice per element present and choosing the highest score
3. 50% loss rule , if you lose over half your combat elements we declare a over all game loss.
4. I take a “aerial” photo of the battlefield and mark the defenders on that ( I’m not keen on unnecessary poker chips on the table).

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Game

A couple of high lights in the pictures …

Kiwi opening positions – Steves initial deployment. Steve anchored his left flank with a third of his forces and pushed his right flank with the remainder. My defence was far too static, and really could have done with the sniper bunker and wire.

Sgt Steiner’s squad – held up Steves right flank push with a amazing round of reactive fire

Close combat by little Wars TV – we rolled one dice per section and Steve chose the highest score

Flushing out the MMG’s, with Steves left flank on the move I thought I better let them rip on something

Very effective mortar fire, the instant kill on the pinned unit in the picture tided up people that had already been brassed up by the twin MMG’s

Final picture of captured objectives

Down periscope – 😊

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Post game stats and thoughts

The game took 3.5 hours and we had a decisive result.
Kiwi’s in charge of all three objectives and my Germans at 50% plus casualties
The moving clock went from 0800 to 1300.
There were 16 German turns.

I am analysing games, looking at how many turns I’m getting in and then if it’s a decisive result.

The 50% rule is working quite well, saves games ending with two squads chasing each other around the table.

I’m trying to recruit local players and get a small group going, there was some playing of crossfire a few years ago but folks weren’t using objectives, or the moving clock so they games they describe from that time sound like they weren’t working so well.

The Little Wars close combat solution worked well and I will be using it in future.

Comments from Steven

Some interesting things in there and I thought I’d comment on three.

Casualty objectives: The scenario uses Terrain objectives. I wrote it back in 2009 and since then I have drifted towards using a combination of Terrain objectives with Casualty (AD) objectives. Usually I apply the casualty objectives to the attacker (A). Bruce’s 50% rule are Casualty objectives applies to both sides (AD). Seems fair.

Aerial photo: I have tried several ways of doing Hidden Deployment in Crossfire, but lately we use a printed map. When I don’t have a map prepared, I do exactly what Bruce suggested and take an aerial photo then print that. Weirdly, marking hidden deployment was not mentioned when I outlined the Pros and Cons of using Maps for Crossfire Scenarios. Always a chance to learn.

Little Wars TV Close Combat: As Bruce explains, the Little Wars TV crew suggest using a die for each stand in the close combat and choosing the highest score to resolve the close combat. That replaces the +1 for extra squads. I like rolling per stands. But I’m hesitant of introducing a new rule i.e. “pick the highest”. Mind you the standard Crossfire close rules are a special case already, so probably no harm done.

Kind Regards

Bruce