Chris Harrod, Jamie Wish, Adam Landa and I played Day 1 of the 2019 World Wide Stalingrad Campaign based on Steve Phenow’s Briefing. Crossfire of course.
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Category: World War IIWorld War II (WWII, WW2, or Second World War) was fought between opposing military alliances – the Allies and the Axis – from 1939 to 1945. The war spanned large chunks of the globe and was both the the largest and deadliest conflict in history. Over 30 different countries fought during the war including all the great powers. More than 100 million people served in military units. Between 50-75 million people died – largely civilians. I’ve material on the national contributions from Spain, New Zealand, and France. I also cover the battles of Moscow, Stalingrad, Kharkov, Kursk, and Tarnopol. 
This is, more or less, the Crossfire material that Stephen Phenow sent the Finchley Wargaming Club for Day 1 of the 2019 World Wide Stalingrad Campaign for Crossfire. I have changed the format and put it into my normal template. And I’ve added a few bits that seemed missing. Where possible I’ve used Steve P’s words. 
I’ve already posted on How many figures will I need to start playing Crossfire?. The answer is about 40 figures per side, about 80 total. But following a comment by Andrés F., after my Play Test of Mac’s Crossfire Missions v3, I thought it would be interesting to calculate how many figures are necessary to play Macs Missions on the Eastern Front. We’re talking pick up games for Crossfire here. If you want to be able to play all main force options and all the reinforcements, the answer is, quite a lot of figures. 
Andrew Fisher and a couple of friends played my Crossfire at Position Four: The Village P Scenario. In the absence of Russian figures they had to substitute Polish and moved the date back to 1939. And that meant replacing the StuGs with Panzer Is and IIs – totally appropriate for the Polish Campaign. Andrew kindly sent through an account of the battle. Judging from the battle report it seemed to be a good game. All words are Andrew’s. 
Decades ago I purchased some lead headstones from Military Miniatures in New Zealand (now defunct). I figured I should do something with them. So here you go … a home made cemetery in 15mm. 
Adam is keen on the 14th Army in the Burma Campaign. Accounts of the campaign feature pagodas (i.e. temples) in the villages. Luckily you can buy roughly 1/100th scale pagodas from pet stores (or Amazon or eBay). Unfortunately, these are all Chinese or Japanese. And it doesn’t take long on google to discover Burmese pagodas are unique. They feature a golden umbrella in a variety of patterns but basically a spire with wider and narrower bands around the spire. Gold of course. And the base is a white dome. Hmm. I can’t buy one, so I’ll make one. 
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. 
Given the upcoming year long campaign for Stalingrad, I thought I should do a stocktake of Crossfire forces for the Eastern Front. It turns out my collection is insane. Your average gamer doesn’t need this. If you are new to Crossfire then you can get by with a lot less figures; check out How many figures will I need to start playing Crossfire? For the first 10 years of my Crossfire gaming, I only had a reinforced battalion for each of Germans and Russians, backed up by a couple of Pz III Gs and three T-34s. That was more than 
Continuing my Megalomaniac tendencies, this is my reflection on 2018 and how I did against my world conquering goals. Check out my 2018 Confessions of a Megalomaniac Wargamer and Amateur Historian for my overly ambitious aspirations. 
In the spirit of Steven’s Rules 1971 – Wargaming Rules for a Seven Year Old, Brett Simpson has shared his experience of introducing his six year old daughter to wargaming. Apparently Brett took a beating. 
Stephen Phenow has volunteered to run a world wide campaign for Crossfire set in Stalingrad. Steve announced it on the Crossfire-WWII Yahoo Group but the action will take place on Stalingrad A World Wide Web Miniatures Campaign Facebook Group. 
I seem to be collecting potential objectives for Crossfire in the form of wrecked vehicles. Last time it was a wrecked Portuguese staff car. Before that was a crashed Fieseler Fi 156 Storch (stork). This time the objective is a destroyed T-34/76. 
Tim swears and says “Where is my PC?” He had just tried to do a crossfire at an enemy stand and needed the PC to have line of sight of both the squads in the platoon and the target. His opponent had pointed out that the piece Tim thought was a PC was actually an FO. Tim had got the playing pieces confused. In fact, he’d probably done that about 20 minutes earlier, as his PC was back where the platoon had been at that point. An easy mistake to make as both a PC and an FO is a 
Sometimes I feel that I post my stuff into a silent void. So it is great when people respond and particularly to discover that people actually play my scenarios. I’m always keen to get feedback about my scenarios, whether good or bad, so I can tweak them. In this case Chuck Noland emailed and ended up sending me some great photos of his Crossfire games. I particularly like the black and white ones. 
A long time ago I got some 15mm Jarvis city barricades. Perfect for WW2, perhaps Stalingrad, or Spanish Civil War. I finally got around to painting them. There are a lot of different bits on these features but it was pretty straight forward. I’ve paint almost everything on here before … except the corrugated iron. That was new. |
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