Saturday, September 11, 2021

Field Training Exercise: CROSSFIRE Practice!

 When I was in the Army, I hated field exercises.  Well - the lead up to them, anyways.  I always dreaded changing my routine (and the 36 hour days without sleep, discomfort, and MREs).    When we were out in the field, however, I usually had fun.  The old adage of "we do more things before 9am than most people do all day" certainly held true.  

So this morning around 530am, I found myself in the gaming bunker with a cup of strong black "Army" coffee and figured I could put some very basic forces on the table and practice some basic scenarios over and over again.  Basically these were "field problems" with a platoon attacking and a platoon defending.  These were "meeting engagements" with a force designated as the attacker and one as the defender.

The mission for today's training exercise?  Eliminate the enemy platoon!

Americans moving to contact.

Germans picking their way through towards their objective

And what were those objectives, anyways?  Well there is a basic setup for our field maneuvers today.  A farmstead with a ruined farmhouse, small cornfields, crops, and 2 hills.  The American and German platoons will take turns beating the hell out of each other and I played no less than 4 engagements in a short amount of time.

Both sides have 3 x squads, a +1 Platoon Leader, and a Medium Machine Gun section.  Textbook CROSSFIRE forces!  Note there are 6 terrain features on the map.  I diced for first movement.


The Americans move first and move up the MMG and a rifle squad into the cornfield.  The Germans have positioned a squad as "flank guard" and it opens fire on them.  Lucky shooting suppresses the US MMG and the initiative switches to the German force, who immediately move their force up the hill for overwatch of the position.

Good shooting!  US MMG section is suppressed across the field.

US Forces on the left, Germans on the right.  Note the German "flank guard" squad in lower right of pic.  The US squads are stacked up on the left to bound around the farmhouse and move through the northern cornfield and onto the hill.

Since the MMG is a centerpiece of the US plan, they have to attempt to rally the suppressed MMG in the cornfield.  THe US player moves the platoon leader south towards them, but they are pinned down by fire from the hill!  THe platoon command group, radio telephone operator and all hunker down in whatever cover they can find, trying to crawl up into their helmets, pinned.  Another German squad attempts to react and goes NO FIRE.

Out of ammo?  reloading?  This squad is NO FIRE and cannot shoot until their next initiative.


Platoon COmmand Group, facing left, gets pinned, rallies, gets pinned again, etc.  They're clawing their way towards safety but will they make it?

The German MMG opens up on them and eventually KO's the Platoon Leader and command group.

The Germans on the hilltop have a commanding view up to the cornfield and farmhouse.


German "firegroup" KO's the US MMG!  Nice shooting!
                              

The German "flank guard" squad, suppressed in the field, is KO'd by accurate rifle fire.

US Player rushes the farmhouse and seizes it.  The "newly appointed" platoon leader, per the replace PC/CC rules is behind them.

The US Player is pinned.  The Germans gather combat power on the hilltop to assault the farmhouse.

The German player and the remaining US units trade fire.  At one point, the Germans dash into the cornfield in an effort to get the US player to shoot - he does and misses - going NO FIRE.  This is it!  THe Germans rush the farmhouse!

This is how you take an objective!  The Germans and their PL (+1 for the PL, +1 for an additional squad) win the combat by 1.

Good job, men!  It's hefeweizen time!

I played the same scenario again, same forces and the US player wiped the Germans out due to bad German luck and a very bold US plan.  I eventually played this same scenario another 2 times (4 total) and the results were even 2-2.  Most of the results of the games came down to launching a timely assault against a NO FIRE enemy squad, or excellent shooting from a CROSSFIRE, and blasting a suppressed squad either off the hill or out of the farmhouse.  I had great fun "walking through" and exercising CROSSFIRE today.  I may introduce another platoon on each side, a bit more terrain, and possible some mortar fire missions for each side.  

I was thinking it would be fun to battle for this farm again with multiple rules sets, including Iron Cross, Norm's Tigers at Minsk, and the Neil Thomas "Wargaming: An Introduction" rules.  The Crossfire rules, once staples of mine, came back to me quickly and with no fussiness.  They really are a splendid set of rules that really work - and even more surprisingly - are decent for solo play with a manageable amount of forces.

Anyways thank you for joining me today on this little "Field Exercise".  More to come!

21 comments:

  1. 5.30 AM, strong coffee and a stalwart set of rules ... perfect :-)

    Nice to see Crossfire on the table, which have probably been in everyone's collection at some point, together with a range of his other rules, those rulebooks were ahead of their time.

    I do enjoy the 'field exercise' and they make great bench marking opportunities for comparing rules.

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    1. Norm it was about a perfect situation as one could find around my house. Family still asleep while the battle rages.

      I dont know if it was the nostalgia or the simplicity of the affair, but the games were all fun and incredibly satisfying.

      Much to be said about setting up small, manageable "training" scenarios to put rules through their paces.

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  2. Impressive pictures, such a fantastic looking game!

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  3. Big fan of Crossfire. I'm impressed that you managed to get a good game(s) out of an equal force meeting engagement. Well done!

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    1. I think it all boiled down to the decisions I had to make, Martin. Do you rush the position now? Particularly if the "bad guys" aren't suppressed? Do you risk losing the initiative with another bout of fire? What is the plan? Can you adapt the plan on the move?

      The game was very much ahead of its time for integrating the gambling and risk experienced in military operations onto the tabletop.

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  4. They are indeed a great and fun set of rules - once again I lament their lack of 'staple' forces to support the infantry combat. The integration of vehicles and artillery rules to the same level would, I think, make these one of the best platoon+ level rules around.

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    1. Paul if I remember correctly, one of the biggest complaints about CF are about the armor rules, and armor is handicapped a great deal. There are some slick home brewed rules out there that integrate armor in better but the game is very much centered on the actions of the infantry.

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    2. PS I plan on slowly integrating armor and fire support into my "field exercises" in the coming weeks to see how they play.

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    3. I will watch with great interest! Would be great to see an urban style battle with stacks of cover to see how how that plays out with lots of 'safe' movement options

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  5. Great to see this - thanks.
    I've only ever played CF once, but it keeps calling to me. So much potential in those mechanisms.
    So much has been hacked too - for Vietnam and Moderns, and I can see the immediate appeal and excitement of how these work. I must get into them again.
    Great pics and action.

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    1. Cheers, Darren! Yes it was amazing how quickly these rules came back to me. They are great fun in their own right and I love the tension of owning the initiative and the fear of losing it. The smaller games are perfect for re learning the rules and I'm going to slowly add more gear and units into the games. I'm like you - while I had moved on from them - I always come back to reading them as I love the back and forth nature of the game, and the narrative it produces.

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  6. I enjoyed seeing your tabletop field exercises, Steve!

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    1. Glad you enjoyed this quick game, Jonathan! More to come!

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  7. Now that’s a fun way to kick-off the day! Did you finish all 4 run throughs before the family emerged?

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    1. No - only half! The remaining being here and there during the day.

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  8. Thanks for the post (and the reminder - must dig Crossfire out again one of these days myself!).

    Cheers,
    Aaron

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    1. Glad you liked the post, Aaron. This was a totally spontaneous thing to pick up CF and just start playing with small forces. Stay tuned! More to come.

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  9. Great thoughts on how to learn/re-learn rules. I've played CF twice, and it really seems to model modern infantry combat. Even though my group knows Conliff, we don't play CF much because it works best with one player v. one player.

    What made you move away from it?

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    1. I really enjoyed and still enjoy crossfire. Not sure if I just wasnt playing it correctly or got burned out on it in favor of some newer, "more trendy" rules sets, but Crossfire has always hit a sweet spot for me as a game. The smaller games can easily be managed solo when you're trying to tackle a single problem ie platoon attack or eliminating a strong point or HMG position. Playing bigger games is probably not a good solo choice.

      I like it for the narrative it produces, and that no one Crossfire game is the same.

      I think I'm getting back to it. Looking to add artillery and then some armor to future games.

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    2. I'd really like to see how you handle arty and armor. If you come up with a good solution, I might play start playing the rules regularly.

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