Adam and Chris had a go at my draft Foy scenario for Crossfire. This was a simulation of Easy Company’s attack on Foy (13 January 1945).
Summary: Tense game, but the scenario needs some work. German victory when Dike’s nerve breaks.
Spanish and Portuguese Military History,
Wargaming, and other stuff
I’ve been playing Crossfire, Arty Conliffe’s company level WW2 game, for over 10 years. And I love it. Sub-categories: House Rules, Scenarios, Musings, Orders of Battle, Fogo Cruzado (Portuguese Colonial War), Fuego Cruzado (for Spain’s Wars), and Arab-Israeli Crossfire.
I have a growing junk yard comprising nicely painted, but wrecked, vehicles. Nominally these are potential objectives for Crossfire, but I’ve only ever used one wreck. That was the Fieseler Fi 156 Storch for Papa Eicke. The rest of my junk yard are, well, waiting for inspiration for a Crossfire Scenario. These are all 15mm scale.
One of the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) for Crossfire is Are real terrain features represented 1:1 on the table? The answer is “no”. A single real-world terrain feature can be presented by more than one Crossfire terrain feature (e.g. woods) or several real-world features can be grouped together as one on the table (e.g. buildings). In this post I explore that answer a bit more at least for woods, fields, hills and rough ground.
Sometimes people ask, how big should my Crossfire terrain be? It is really up to you. For myself, I started Crossfire using whatever terrain I had, but over the years I have standardised on the sizes. This is to make it easier to Draw Maps for Crossfire Scenarios. Check out the various Crossfire terrain type if you don’t recognise some of those I mention.
In my previous post on Ground Scale in Crossfire I concluded that anything 1:300 to 1:1700 is defensible, but my own preference is 1:1000. I’ve taken that further and compared my preference with the extremes. What do 1:300, 1:1000, and 1:1700 look like on table.
With my Japanese battalion ready for duty in Burma, my next project was the Gurkhas to face them. This is a battalion nominally from 17th Indian Light Division, the guys who fought at Bishenpur, Potsangbam and Ningthoukhong on the Imphal Plain 1944. You might recall from my A Case Study in Balagan Thinking – How I justify collecting Japanese, my justification for collecting Japanese was that I’m (kind of, sort of) Welsh, and so are the 2nd Battalion, 4th Prince of Wales’s Own Gurkha Rifles (kind of, sort of). Anyway, I’ve now got a battalion of Gurkhas for Crossfire. Yay! Can’t wait to get that bag piper on table.
The Burma Campaign includes the Japanese invasion of India in 1944. So the setting flips from Buddhist Burma to Hindu India. Our Experiment in Ningthoukhong made me realise that to refight Bishenpur, Potsangbam and Ningthoukhong, I really needed to supplement my Home made Burmese Pagoda with a Hindu Temple from Manipuri state. Here it is. I designed it and Warbases laser cut it from MDF.
I designed a version of “The Mill” from Stalingrad’s to use with Crossfiregrad. Warbases cut it out for me and then I assembled and painted it. This is part of my project to see use Cool Ruins for Crossfiregrad and Ponyri Station.
My WW2 Japanese are ready for duty in Crossfire. I went for a high priority Type ‘A’ Battalion. Then I added in all the support elements. So I’ve got a massively reinforced Leg Infantry Battalion. Weaker formations, i.e. battalions from a Type ‘B’ Division, Type ‘C’ Division, Mixed Infantry Brigade, or Independent Mixed Brigade, would have less than this.
My research on Japanese Roadblocks in Burma. Roadblock Battles on the Retreat from Burma and Bishenpur, Potsangbam and Ningthoukhong – Gurkhas on the Imphal Plain 1944 convinced me I needed some raised road features for Burma. I designed the raised roads, S&A Scenics made them for me. and now I’ve painted and flocked them.
Crossfire and Hit The Dirt have several mechanisms for being stationary. I thought I’d list them to see if I get any insight for my revised anti-tank rules
My recent musing on the anti-tank rules in Crossfire got me thinking about my current rules on vehicle actions. CF11.1 Vehicular Actions is massively restrictive as it only gives vehicles the option to move or shoot. So I for 20 years I’ve been giving vehicles multiple move actions (1-3 depending on speed) and unlimited shooting. Both of these rules are contrary to the unlimited actions of infantry in standard Crossfire. It would be great to give vehicles unlimited actions, like the infantry. So I look at the rules that have come before then look at options for unlimited vehicle movement.
At 16.30 hours my raised roads for Burma arrived. Unpainted of course. By 20.00 hours they were painted and ready to play. My Japanese have been ready for a while and I recently based my new Gurkha battalion. It was three years ago when I got all keen and wrote up some notes and drew some maps for Bishenpur, Potsangbam and Ningthoukhong – Gurkhas on the Imphal Plain 1944. Finally we could play some Crossfire at Ningthoukhong.
Summary: In a tense game the Adam’s Japanese held the south of Ningthoukhong against a fierce attack by Chris’s Gurkhas.
Inspired by Brett Simpson I put together some Japanese barricades for use in Japanese Roadblocks in the Burma Campaign, so I can recreate some of the Roadblock Battles on the Retreat from Burma. I made some. I improvised some.
Following on the previous success of my custom crests version 2 and the high rice paddy bunds for Burma, I’m now thinking of a set of raised roads. Raised roads were a common feature of Burma. They’ll be the same height as the previous features (1/4″ / 6mm). Otherwise they’d be, well, just roads. I’m hoping to convince Simon from S&A Scenics to make the base features then I’ll do the work to make them look like roads. This post is about my design for the roads, which was a project in itself.