Crossfire Musing

I’ve collected together some interesting Crossfireideas from other people. I’ve reproduced them here mainly so I don’t have to go hunting for them again. Most rule variations are untried. Some items – Base Sizes for example – are there because people ask about them a lot, so in some ways this section is a FAQ, but not quite. See also my real FAQ.
In particular I’ve musings on: Command Control, Troop Types, Vehicles, Shooting, Terrain, Converting from other Game Systems, v2 wish list. Plus a whole bunch of other stuff.

Converting from I Ain’t Been Shot Mum (IABSM) to Crossfire

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I Ain’t Been Shot Mum (IABSM) by Richard Clarke and Nick Skinner, like Crossfire, is a company level set of rules for WW2. I’m not interested in moving from Crossfire but the Two Fat Lardies, the publisher of IABSM, put out some nicely presented scenarios and campaign supplements that I’d like to use. One such supplement is B’Maso! The winds of change wars in Africa and I’m keen to try out some of the ideas. You’ll need those books to make sense of this.

I thought I’d look at how to convert these and by implication how to map IABSM onto Crossfire. Obviously I can ignore all the movement, combat, and initiative rules of IABSM and just use the Crossfire ones instead. But there are a few things that need translation. I also mention Troops, Weapons & Tactics (TW&T) a few times.

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Converting from Advanced Squad Leader (ASL) to Crossfire

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Some musing on Converting from Squad Leader (SL) or Advanced Squad Leader (ASL) to Crossfire. I don’t claim to be an expert on these SL or ASL, in fact I admit to virtual ignorance, but I have found some ASL scenarios I wanted to convert to Crossfire, so wanted some guidelines. Steve Burt made some suggestions on the Yahoo Discussion Forum and his site which seemed a good starting point, I’ve just fleshed them out.

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Ghosts as Blinds / Hidden Movement Markers for Wargaming

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Some rule sets use a system of hidden movement markers to allow hidden movement without the aid of an umpire. These markers can represent both real and dummy troops – thus achieving some kind of fog of war. Different games have different names for these markers but examples are “Dummies”, “Blinds” and “PEF”.

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Cinematic Time in Crossfire

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Gregory ‘Pappy’ Boyington, a WWII US Marine Pilot, said combat “is hours and hours of boredom sprinkled with a few seconds of sheer terror”. He specifically meant combat flying but the principal applies to any combat. Crossfire concentrates on the terror and, being a game, glosses over the boredom. That means time in Crossfire is definitely not like in other games in which turns represent the passage of a specific number of minutes or hours. Most other games have turns where units take time to move into combat range but no combat. Crossfire gets to the meat of the combat issue quickly.

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Measuring Ranges in Crossfire using Terrain Features

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Crossfire Range Example

“The action [in Crossfire] takes place within the effective range of small arms” (p.1). Having said that there are some weapons that had very short ranges, e.g. Infantry Anti-tank weapons) so people have speculated on how to specify ranges in Crossfire. Some people have suggested introducing rulers, but this seems at odds with Crossfire’s intent, so I explored an alternative way of measuring ranges.

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