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Category: Crossfire Musing
Standard Crossfire doesn’t restrict the stands on the side initiating the close combat. So more than one platoon can be involved. Somehow this always upsets me. I squirm every time new players ask “can I add in stands from other platoons to this close combat?” 
I am toying with a house rule that a stand can, in a single initiative, either conduct Retreat Moves or initiate offensive actions (Direct Fire, Close Combat) but not both. All part of fighting the 1000 Foot General. 
Last week I posted Eye of the Tiger – A Crossfire Scenario. My mate Chris had suggested I convert this scenario from ASL to Crossfire and, although I had written up some notes on Converting Advanced Squad Leader to Crossfire, I’d never actually done it. So off I went. I found it wasn’t a straightforward conversion and I suspect any move from ASL to Crossfire will have similar challenges. To help those going down the same route I thought I’d share of the thinking that went into the process for this scenario – scenario design notes if you will. 
Many games of Crossfire end with a close combat rampage as the (almost) winner cleans up enough of the enemy to take the game. I’m okay with this but some people object to it. So I thought I’d share some musing on ways to slow or prevent these rampages. “This is a cracking scenario”. Mark Bretherton played my SU-152s Up Close and Personal scenario for Crossfire. The words below are Mark’s unless indicated otherwise. Aside from the after action report itself, Mark explains the house rules he used for this scenario and muses on potential house rules for attacking buildings and bunkers. 
I was talking to Dick Bryant about my SU-76i in 1902nd SAP – A Crossfire Scenario. He’d noticed that is was quite hard to defend this terrain because the fields of fire were limited by the in-season fields. Dick suggested making the fields out-of-season. The question is, would Soviet fields actually be in-season or out-of-season in Aug-Sep? 
Being hidden helps a lot in Crossfire. But if the attacker knows the defender’s order of battle they also know how many enemy stands are still hidden on table. With few remaining hidden defenders the attacker can be more aggressive. With lots the attacker will be more cautious. But real attackers could never be certain of the size of the defending force so couldn’t number crunch their way to victory. The question is, how to introduce that uncertainty into a game without an umpire? 
Stephen Phenow sent through a picture of his Anti-Tank Ditch. I think it is fiendishly clever in it’s simplicity. 
One of the common Terrain Types in Crossfire are “Depressions”. But my table top is flat so how do I simulate a depression on a flat table? 
I have only played the HTD scenario “The Island” once, a fair few years ago with Rich Wilcox. The game revealed a flaw in Breakthrough objectives. The attacker just makes a hole and pours through. More recently Dick Bryant play tested my SU-76i in 1902nd SAP – A Crossfire Scenario, which was based on “The Island”. Dick found the same problem. So it seems time to revisit Breakthrough objectives for Crossfire scenarios. 
It is rather embarrassing but I’ve had my Saitek Competition Pro Game Clock for nearly two years, have tried to use it for a Crossfire game twice and failed both times. Most recently for Operation Crossfire. The trouble is that this is a complicated clock because it is for competitions, we hardly ever use it, and we leave it to the last minute to figure out how to use it. Disaster. This time I thought I’d write a few notes to remind myself for next time. 
It is Operation Crossfire today and as part of the briefing Nikolas Lloyd has mandated some standardised statistics for the vehicles on both sides. I thought I’d post them to get them into a printable format. 
One winter’s evening in London I was loading my car with Crossfire kit to take to a club game. It was getting dark and just starting to rain. That was, of course, just the moment I dropped my box of 15mm tanks on the pavement. Over the next 30 minutes I was on hands and knees in the rain and dark trying to find the precious panzers. Luckily I managed to recover all of the vehicles but some received irreparable damage. I never want to repeat that experience so, at the next show I went to, I picked up Crossfire allows troops to start the game hidden in features. Troops are not allowed to start the game hiding outside a feature, i.e. in the open. If we expand the concept of “hidden” from “hiding behind a tree” to “hidden from enemy sight” then hiding in the open should be allowed. What to do? 
Vince Lody sent through some photos of his 6mm Crossfire. His games look amazing but they happen on tiny tables. |
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