Custom Fire Mission (FM) Markers for Crossfire

I’ve been experimenting with How to Track Fire Missions (FM) in Crossfire for years. In my latest experiment I’ve made some custom FM markers.

Each marker is a piece of laser cut MDF (2mm deep). I spray painted them for the nationality. Grey = German and Red = Soviet. [Falschirmjaeger might be blue. Russian Naval Infantry might be black.]

Custom Crossfire Fire Missions
Custom Crossfire Fire Missions

Then I glued on a label corresponding to the ID of the FO and/or indirect fire weapon.

Most of the markers are 20mm diameter circles (from Wargames Tournaments). Some are 30mm x 20mm ovals (from Warbases). I used the oval markers for artillery (ID = A for Artillery) and the circles for infantry (ID = R for Russian Rifle; ID = G for German Grenadier). This only really relevant because I have two sets of 75mm guns for the Germans: field guns and infantry guns respectively. The field guns have ID A-75 on oval FM markers. The infantry guns are ID G-75 on circular FM markers. Similarly for Russian 76mm guns; A-76 field guns on oval and R-76 infantry guns on circular. I figure that players will find it easier to distinguish the FM for their infantry guns and field guns if the shape of the marker is different, and they don’t just have to rely on the ID.

2/3 of the labels are black and 1/3 are grey. This is so I have to option to award different ammunition types e.g. the German 8.1cm mortar gets 8 Barrage FM (black) and 4 Smoke FM (grey). I admit I’ve never done this but you never know.

This system needs a lot of FM markers. 6 per heavy artillery FO and 12 for all others. In my case that came to 216 German markers and another 216 Soviet. And that is just for my regular armies. If I do some for Fallschirmjaeger and Soviet Naval Infantry the numbers will grow.

Bags of Custom Crossfire Fire Missions
Bags of Custom Crossfire Fire Missions

With all those markers, but only a small number being used in a normal game (say 24 FM a side) I had to keep them organised. So each FO or weapon get a little plastic bag for its own FM. Them I put all the markers for the Soviets in a bigger bag and ditto for the Germans.

I imagine that during a game we will just throw a used FM marker into a bowl.

3 thoughts on “Custom Fire Mission (FM) Markers for Crossfire”

    • These custom FM markers are very much optional. But Crossfire does demand a way to track fire missions for each off table battery. I’ve outlined some common ways before – the most common being a simple paper tally. The markers above are my latest scheme in the eternal search for faster/easier/more-fool-proof mechanisms.

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  1. Ah, now I see. I have always stack one or two dice on top of the off table card I use to represent the gun/ mortar battery. But your system looks very professional. Well done.

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