A Buncha Games

Crossfires and Pop-Ups

by Wally Simon

We set up Arty Conliffe's CROSS FIRE game, with one company per side, using 15mm figures.

Three small 15mm figure stands defined a squad, and moved as an entity. There were 3 squads in a platoon, hence for the company of 3 platoons, we needed only 9 squads per side.

We used 3 stands for each squad to show the status of each unit as required by the rules. Otherwise we'd have had to use some sort of casualty markers:

    3 stands Squad functions normally
    2 stands Squad is pinned, can fire but cannot move
    1 stand Squad is suppressed, can neither move nor fire.

In my opinion, CROSS FIRE is a superb game, incorporating many clever innovations. There are no stated weapon ranges - everything fires line of sight - there are no time scales - there are no specified movement distances your units move until someone shouts: "I see them!", and takes a shot.

We also set up two one-sided 15mm pop-up WW II games. The first was a simple commando raid in which 12 commando squads had to advance across the field at 10 inches per turn, and blow up a series of ammo dumps. The German units were pre-placed, represented by cards on which was annotated the type of pop-up unit. There were only two types of weapons employed... rifles and HMG's.

Bob Hurst was the big ammo dump blower-upper. His four squads made short work of four dumps. On the movement phase, a squad moved to the dump, set its charge, and moved off. There was 80 percent chance that the package exploded and destroyed the dump.

While Bob's demolitions seemed to explode when needed all the time, Fred Haub's squads had been provided with inferior explosives... I think that of three demolition charges, two failed to explode, and the commando squad, on the next turn, had to move back to the ammo dump and reset the charge.

Using the commando rules as the basis for a larger game, we then set up an island scenario, one for an amphibious landing, using tanks, etc. In this game, instead of pre-placing the pop-up Japanese, we diced each time our units entered a defined area to see what type of unit - if any - was there. The island itself was about four feet long and two feet wide, and it was divided into areas each about 4-inches by 4-inches.

In these games, there were three possible status levels for each squad: it could be fully functioning as represented by 2 stands, it could be suppressed as represented by 1 stand, or it was destroyed and removed from the table. Note that the CROSS FIRE rules employ four levels... good, pinned, suppressed and destroyed. We decided to omit the 'pinned' level to make the game go faster.

The sequence was simplicity itself:

    a. The landing troops move.
    b. They dice to see which defending units pop up when they enter a new area.
    c. If a new unit appears, it has a 70 percent chance to fire first.
    d. General fire phase, in which all firing is simultaneous
    e. Recovery phase; all suppressed units have 40 percent chance to recover

I led the 1st Marine Division... it consisted of 2 tanks, 2 landing craft, and 6 units (don't ask what scale). Two of my units landed on an outlying island which was divided into four areas. In the first area, the pop-up chart decreed that my boys faced a HMG bunker. It had a 70 percent chance to fire first, successfully made its toss, and fired... it missed. Now on my return fire, each of my units (call each one a regiment) had 40 percent chance to suppress the men in the bunker. One regiment succeeded.

At the end of the turn, the bunker diced to see if it recovered (40 percent) from the suppressed state... it didn't, hence wasn't allowed to fire on the next turn's fire phase. On the fire phase, therefore, my 2 regiments fired unopposed, and suppressed the bunker a second time, and since 2 'suppressions' are a kill, the bunker was destroyed.

As my men explored the rest of the island, the remainder of the areas on the island proved to be barren, i.e., to contain no enemy troops, and so I had succeeded in carrying out my initial orders. Now I turned my attention to the main island, where my fellow commanders were fighting their way inland.

The men of my 1st Marine Division landed, and explored about 6 areas. Except for one area, the areas were all barren... no enemy troops! It was obvious that when the entrenched defenders heard that the fierce 1st Marines were about to land, they just packed up and took off. In contrast, the units of the other players were running up against entrenched A/T guns, machine gun nests, etc.

One of my fellow commanders tried to belittle the achievements of the 1st Marine Division: "How can you win any glory if you have no contact with the enemy?" He was unhappy because of the stiff resistance with which his own troops was meeting.

More Buncha Games

Back to PW Review May 1998 Table of Contents
Back to PW Review List of Issues
Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List
© Copyright 1998 Wally Simon
This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web.
Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com