Balagan Bunkers – New Crossfire house rule

Rule - Bunkers - Crossfire - Banner

I recently blogged about Assaulting Bunkers in Crossfire – Possible House Rules. But I don’t think I was sufficiently clear on my final recommendation. So I’m having another go at explaining it. Short story is I want to make bunkers (and hard points) much tougher to assault. I’m intending to add this to my Balagan House Rules for Crossfire.

Read more

Assaulting Bunkers in Crossfire – Possible House Rules

Musing - Assaulting Bunkers - Crossfire - Banner

I’m not happy with bunkers in Crossfire. In normal Crossfire you just have to wait for the garrison to No Fire and then close assault. I think they should be harder to assault. Historically flame throwers, demolition charges and big guns were used to deal with bunkers. I’m inclined to introduce house rules to encourage this. So here is a possibility for bunker busting.

Read more

Crossfire Probabilities: Percentage Success in each Die Roll Mechanism

Musing - Probabilities - Crossfire - Banner

My recent interest in Solo Crossfire got me thinking about the probabilities inherent in the Crossfire rules mechanisms. That means infantry direct fire / barrage / minefields, anti-tank direct fire, smoke, close combat, and rallying. Only read this post if you care about statistics of gaming mechanisms.

Read more

Horse and Musket Crossfire – Crossfire for the Horse and Musket Era

Rule - Horse and Musket - Crossfire - Banner

I wrote this about five years ago because a couple of my projects, i.e. Albuera in the Peninsular and Sipe Sipe in South America, had stalled because I didn’t like any of the available horse and musket rules. Inspired by Roland’s WW1 experiment I wondered if I could make a horse and musket variant for Crossfire. These rules have now remained raw and unplayed for some time. I stopped work on them because I decided I had bent the rules so far that it is no longer Crossfire. But rather than having it lurk on my hard drive any longer, and because Jamie asked about it, I thought I’d share. What do you think?

Read more

Musing on Solo Crossfire – Inspiration from Lloydian Aspects

Musing - Solo - Crossfire - Banner

I’m lucky to have some regular opponents (Chris, Jamie, Adam) but some folk are not so privileged. Inspired by a conversation with Brett Simpson I thought I’d write some rules for playing solo Crossfire. I want a game, played solo, that feels a bit like Mac’s Crossfire Missions. As it happens Nikolas Lloyd already has a Scenario for Solo Play and there is tons of good stuff in there. Lloyd wrote a specific scenario but my goal is slightly different, wider. That means I can’t use Lloyd’s scenario directly but I can pull out some lessons from his offering.

Read more

Crossfire Stocktake – My forces for the Eastern Front

Order of Battle - Crossfire - Banner

Given the upcoming year long campaign for Stalingrad, I thought I should do a stocktake of Crossfire forces for the Eastern Front. It turns out my collection is insane. Your average gamer doesn’t need this. If you are new to Crossfire then you can get by with a lot less figures; check out How many figures will I need to start playing Crossfire? For the first 10 years of my Crossfire gaming, I only had a reinforced battalion for each of Germans and Russians, backed up by a couple of Pz III Gs and three T-34s. That was more than enough. Then I got some more kit and played my Armour Fest with everything I had, but even that wasn’t really a lot. Much more than you need for a normal Crossfire game but not a lot in the grand scheme of things. Then, um, I guess I got greedy. It is kind of embarrassing.

Read more

Give FOs and PCs different base sizes in Crossfire

Musing - FO Base Sizes - Crossfire - Banner

Tim swears and says “Where is my PC?” He had just tried to do a crossfire at an enemy stand and needed the PC to have line of sight of both the squads in the platoon and the target. His opponent had pointed out that the piece Tim thought was a PC was actually an FO. Tim had got the playing pieces confused. In fact, he’d probably done that about 20 minutes earlier, as his PC was back where the platoon had been at that point. An easy mistake to make as both a PC and an FO is a single figure on a stand that is 16mm x 32mm (5/8″ x 1 1/4″).

Read more

Musing on Japanese Knee Mortars in Crossfire

Musing - Japanese Knee Mortars - Crossfire - Banner

In World War II the Japanese issued three 5cm Mortars to every Rifle Platoon. Standard Crossfire makes the Knee Mortar rather useless. John Moher reinstates them as an effective piece of combat kit. And I do the same, but in a much simpler fashion.

Read more

Crossfire in the Western Desert – Brett Simpson’s North African Terrain

BSWD00 Banner

Brett Simpson has been busy building up terrain and troops for North Africa using Crossfire. He is also experimenting with my ideas on Crossfire in the Western Desert. Brett has been sharing photos with me as he went along so I thought I’d share them more widely.

Read more

Balagan Point System for Crossfire

Rule - Balagan Points System - Crossfire - Banner

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.

Read more