Official Crossfire Supplements – I want to write a couple

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I’ve been talking to Arty Conliffe about potential Official Supplements for Crossfire. Official because they have Arty’s blessing and input. I’m thinking about both a commercial scenario book and some freebie booklets. My megalomaniac aspirations for 2022 mean I want to write one of each. There are lots of possibilities and I thought I’m share my thinking.

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Dung Farm – A Crossfire Battle Report

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I’ve been gearing up to pay Dung Farm from Hit the Dirt for a couple of years now. I posted my Balagan version of the Dung Farm a few weeks back and, as you might recall, the table has lots of Ravines, thorn fields and thorn thickets. It took me a while to collect this additional kit. Plus the Kiwis in Italy. But finally it all came together – scenario, terrain, and figures. And Chris, Jamie, and Adam turned up to play. This is, of course, Crossfire for the Italian Campaign.

Summary: Really good game. Interesting challenges from ravines and thorns. The British need to use the terrain to their advantage. Chris and I, as the Germans, won.

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Making ravines and depressions for Crossfire

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I’ve had a go at gullies and depressions before. But they look too much like hills. So I decided to have another go modelling just the edge of the depression. Then I took this concept further and modelled a modular ravine system. I featured both of these when I asked, How does my Burmese battlefield look? In this post I share a bit more about how I make these features.

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Breakout at the Hinge – A Crossfire Battle Report

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I use the Crossfire special rules from Hit the Dirt (HTD) a lot, but I’m conscious I haven’t played many of the scenarios. Recently I decided to rectify that, so when Chris and Adam came over last week I suggested they play Breakout at the Hinge, one of the HTD scenarios. This scenario is very unusual because it features a German breakout in 1941, at the height of Operational Barbarossa, when the perception is that it was the Soviets who were always the ones encircled.

Summary: Good game. Lots of terrain. Very asymmetric making it a serious challenge for both sides. Sparked lots of Observations.

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Making boulder and rock fields for Crossfire

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The Crossfire supplement Hit-the-Dirt introduces Boulder Fields and Rock Fields as Crossfire Terrain for scenarios in the Italian Campaign. My post Types of Terrain Features in Crossfire explains how they are used in the game. In this post I explain how I made mine. Simple but excessive is the summary. Simple because I start with actual rocks. Excessive because I base, paint, and flock.

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Ponyri Station – A Hit the Dirt Blast from the Past

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I was filing old papers tonight when I found a few photos of a very early game of Crossfire. Real photos, you know, the ones on photographic paper, from a shop. It took a while but I figure the game was Ponyri Station. I thought I’d share because, aside from the fact these are the only photos I have of a game of my favourite scenario from Hit the Dirt, they also show how I started out in Crossfire – using anything I had.

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PowerPoint Maps: Drawing Maps for Crossfire

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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.

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Hit the Dirt – Scenarios for Crossfire

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Hit the Dirt is the only supplement to Arty Conliffe’s Crossfire rules. It contains 20 or so WW2 scenarios. I’ve played a few and like them all so far. Even if you never play any of the games the book is useful for the examples of how to make scenarios. And the optional rules at the start and specific scenario rules are good for ideas as well.

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Reconnaissance Before Pontecorvo – A Crossfire Battle Report

John McLennan turned up, with his almost finished British, and wanted a bash. I didn’t have a prepared Crossfire scenario so we decided upon the Hit the Dirt scenario “Reconnaissance Before Pontecorvo” (p. 19). The gist of the scenario is a Canadian company must try to identify the positions of a reduced company of entrenched Germans, without taking undue losses themselves.

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Political Commissar Rule for Crossfire

The Political Commissar Special Rule for Crossfire. Standard Crossfire doesn’t cover this but it is described in Hit the Dirt (p. 8). The rule is optional but is applicable to Soviets in WWII – in particular between July 1941 and November 1942 – and communists in any number of civil wars and insurgencies, e.g. the Spanish Civil War and the Portuguese Colonial War.

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