How to Track Fire Missions (FM) in Crossfire

Crossfire artillery and mortars use Fire Missions (FM) and you have to keep track of how many you’ve still got left. This is pretty much the only book keeping in the game. Here are a few things I’ve tried for tracking the FM used/remaining.


Tally FM used

My starting point is keeping a tally of the FM used on a bit of paper. This is dead simple. But I hate book keeping not least because it means I have to scrabble around to find a pen and paper every time I play.

Crossfire FM Tally
Crossfire FM Tally

Cross off the box

For my recent Participation Game at SELWG I produced brochures with a more formal roster for FM. The page describing the each scenario had the full order of battle for both sides. Where the order of battle included an FO or on-table mortar I included some boxes for the FM. In this case Dick Bryant had included a special rule that 1/3 of the FM were smoke (S). If I ever do PDF versions of my scenarios I’d be tempted to do something like this again.

2x2 Scenario brochure page 2 The Woods
2×2 Scenario brochure page 2 The Woods

Rip off Shells

A novel idea I’ve seen was to print out silhouettes of shells onto paper. One shell per FM. And during the game just rip off the shells as the FM were used. Nice idea with aesthetic appeal. But a faff to print them out each time and, indeed, to rip off each shell.

Crossfire FM Rip off Shells
Crossfire FM Rip off Shells

Plastic Counters

I have tried plastic counters for FM. Initially I thought I’d use different sizes for different calibres of weapon. And different colours for the different weapons. For example the first 50mm mortar (ID = 50-1) might be the green 12mm diameter counter. The second 81mm mortar might be the blue 16mm diameter counter.

However I found the small counters were too fiddly. In fact the concept of different sizes combined with different colours was altogether too fiddly – at least when setting up a game. So I abandoned it and gave the counters to my daughter to play tiddlywinks with.

None-the-less if you think you can make this work then you can pick up 22mm diameter plastic counters from Amazon USA, UK, and Canada. Don’t go smaller than 22mm.

22mm Plastic Counters
22mm Plastic Counters

Fun Buttons

Martin Groat’s group uses Fun Buttons for Fire Missions. Fun Buttons are part of a kit to encourage small children to tie shoe laces. You also get a nice black lace for threading which is useful for dealing with LOS issues. Fun Buttons come in a pack of 60 with five colours. I prefer the Fun Buttons to the Plastic Counters as the buttons are chunkier and harder to lose. I’ve ordered three packs to try out.

Fun Buttons are available from Amazon USA, UK, and Canada.

Galt Fun Buttons
Galt Fun Buttons

Please drop me a line if you’ve got another way of recording FM used in Crossfire.

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3 thoughts on “How to Track Fire Missions (FM) in Crossfire”

  1. I think surrenderable tokens of one sort or another are the way to go. I simply use homemade cards showing the battery and round type. IMO something tactile is much less likely to be overlooked.

    Reply
    • I also tend to have a preference for tactile and 3 of the five suggestions above are like this. The trouble with tactile is that it involves sorting out which tokens you need for a particular game and forcing players to remember which token goes with which FO. Of course you can help the memory problem by putting the ID on the token, e.g. 81-1 is one of my stand labels meaning first FO for 81mm mortar. But that makes the “sorting out” bit of the problem is worse.

      Reply
  2. I use a method similar to yours ripping off shells as they are fired. They have to pass the ripped off shell to the game umpire. I find that it keeps gamers “honest” and that way they don’t “forget” to mark off the shell fire!

    Dick Bryant
    Charge! There are no lead widows.

    Reply

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