Sometime ago, I visited Bob Hurst, and he and I tried my attempt to apply Arty Conliffe's CROSS FIRE techniques to a larger scale battle. CROSS FIRE focuses at the squad level... I was looking at a game for the company, perhaps battalion, level. My version proved to fall short of perfection, and Bob and I worked out a version employing initiative techniques. Some weeks later, Bob (a different Bob) and Cleo Liebl arrived at my house, and we set up a battle using the rules. This was a division-versus-division game. The advancing force had 6 battalions. Two battalions comprised a brigade, hence there were 2 attacking brigades, in effect, a small division. Each battalion was composed of 3 companies, and each company was composed of 3 platoons... wherein a platoon was a single stand. Looking at the diagrammed breakdown for a battalion, you'd see a total of 9 stands per battalion. A reinforced infantry battalion, for example, consisted of 2 infantry companies and one armor company, as shown below. Reinforced Infantry Battalion 1st Company 2nd Company (Infantry) 3rd Company 1st Platoon (1 inf stand) 1st Platoon (1 inf stand) 1st Platoon (1 tank stand) 2nd Platoon (1 inf stand) 2nd Platoon (1 inf stand) 2nd Platoon (1 tank stand) 3rd Platoon (1 inf stand) 3rd Platoon (1 inf stand) 3rd Platoon (1 tank stand) There were 4 types of companies, each with its own probability of hit (POH Infantry POH = 50% Infantry, Heavy Weapons POH = 60% Anti-tank POH = 70% Tank POH = 70% The 3 stands in a company all fired at the same target, and the above percentages applied when all 3 stands in a company fired. For every missing stand, a deduction of -10% to the POH was taken. Against the Liebl's 6 battalions, I had 5 defending battalions, but one of these was understrength... it had only 2 companies. In effect, I was 12 stands understrength. My objective was to hold on to two towns located near my baseline, one, Glitz, on my left flank, the other, Gritz, on my right. As I said before, this game was based on the 'initiative' principle. There were no bounds, or turns, as such, and each side moved and fired until it did something to lose the initiative, at which point, the other side became active. When the active side gained the initiative, it could first move and then fire, but if its firing was unsuccessful, the initiative would pass to the opponent, and, in turn, the new active side would move and fire until a non-success occurred, whereupon the initiative transferred again. The sequence fell into 4 basic phases: (a) The first thing the active side did was to move its forces. Even if it immediately lost the initiative thereafter, it, at least, got some movement during the phase. Most of my games use a 10-inch movement increment, and it was so here. (b) Any contacts by the active side, i.e., close assault, were resolved immediately. (c) The second phase was the firing phase, and it was here that the initiative could be instantaneously lost. (1) The active side diced to see how many units it must fire successfully, i.e., score, on the enemy. Note use of the term "must"... if there were too few targets, the initiative immediately passed to the opposition and Phase (a) began anew. In this manner, movement continued until units sighted one another and a firing phase could begin. The required number of units, N, that must fire was: 01 to 33 N = 2 battalions 34 to 66 N = 3 battalions 67 to 100 N = 4 battalions (2) The active side selected its first battalion to fire. The probability of hit (POH) was rather high as listed on the first page... ranging from a low of 50 percent for infantry to 70 percent for an anti-tank battalion. If this first firing battalion failed to hit its target, the initiative immediately passed to the opposition. (3) If the active side successfully struck at an opposing unit, the target unit was permitted to fire back. If the target's return fire failed, the active side received 1 Victory Point (VP). VP were tracked and were important in determining the victor of the battle. If the target's return fire was successful, it canceled the active side's VP. Recording the VP totals was not an onerous chore... remember that battalions fired in groups of 3 stands each, and not every token on the board fired separately. (4) Now the second of the active side's battalions fired, and, here, too, if the strike was unsuccessful, the initiative passed immediately. If successful, the target fired back, and VP could be won. (5) The active side's battalions keep firing, and the opposition returns fire... if all N battalions of the active side fire successfully, it may keep on firing with additional units, until it misses... but because the required N units struck their targets, it retains the initiative and goes back to Phase (a). (d) Damage assessment. Every time a battalion was hit during the preceding phases it received a marker, but stands were not removed. It's on this Phase (d) that the effect of the markers were determined. For each marker, there's a 70 percent chance that the battalion loses a stand. All lost stands go off-board to the rally zone. In our battle, what was most interesting was that as the advancing forces moved up the field, and selected their first target as noted in Phase (c)(2), above, they missed! The battalions with the highest PoH's were selected (70 percent), yet there was a continual string of misses! In a sense, this benefited the Liebls since, as initiative passed back and forth, it permitted them to advance without losses. And so, for around 5 cycles of initiative-switching, no one hit anyone! No damage, no casualties as the troops approached each other. No one could toss less than 70 percent! But finally, the statistics came through... lots of damage markers blossomed forth, and lots of stands were wafted to the rally zone. My defending units were simply overwhelmed... Bob and Cleo were much more successful in their dice tossing than was I. The first key town to fall was Glitz. My smaller force was spread out quite thin in order to defend the front line. I placed a battalion here, a battalion there, etc., but because I was trying to form a coherent line across some 8 feet of frontage, I had very few units that could support one another. This was what I termed a 'buddy' game, for when a battalion engaged in close assault, it could try to bring in a 'buddy', i.e., a fellow unit within 10 inches, to assist. The first unit, the lead unit, made contact, and then dice were thrown (70 percent) to see if a support within the required 10-inch distance, would assist. Only one attempt at bringing in a support was permitted, and if it failed, the lead unit fought alone. This was also true for the defending unit... and because my battalions were so spread out, it was rare for me to have a supporting unit present. Digression I don't like sequences or games that permit 'gotchas', in which the active side, on its movement phase, can shout "I gotcha!", and gang up on the non-moving side and assault with two or more units, obtaining an advantage of 2-to-1, or 3-to-1, or more. This has never seemed quite logical to me... that a unit would stand immobile and let a slew of enemy units swarm around it while other friendly units stood nearby and merely watched the slaughter. I invariably use the 'Simon support unit' concept. Here, for both offense and defense, there's always one unit leading the way into contact, the lead unit. And if there's a friendly unit within a reasonable distance away, it can be called upon to assist the units in contact. Sometimes I use the commanding officer's capability as the deciding parameter... for example, if the officer's capability is 60 percent, there's a 60 percent chance that he successfully gets the support to run over and assist. And, of course, there also should be some sort of limitation to the distance the potential supporting unit can dash over to help. I remember that in one of my earlier games, one player was stupefied when from, the other end of the field, a supporting unit apparently dashed from out of nowhere to assist in melee. I don't do that no mo'. In this system, the guiding rules were (a), that the supporting battalion had to be within 10 inches of the melee, and (b) there was a simple 70 percent chance it assisted. End of digression. Victory Points were accumulated in three ways: (a) First, if the active side fired successfully , and the return fire from its target was not successful, the active side gained 1 VP. (b) Second, when a side won a melee, it gained 2 VP (c) Third, when a side tried to rally a stand in the rally zone and bring it back to the field, the opposing side gained a VP if the rally attempt failed. The chance to rally successfully was 70 percent. I chose the rather high rally percentage of 70 percent since I assumed that most of the rally attempts would be successful, and I wanted units continually brought up to full strength. As the casualty markers accumulated, and more and more stands were lost, I wanted to prevent the prevalence of those pipsqueaky 1-stand units running around the field. Even though units didn't 'die' and could be continually brought back on the field, it was the victory point tally that would truly determine the margin of victory. By battle's end, the attacking force had accumulated a total of 17 VP; my own total was 9. It would seem that after a number of initiative cycles, and a lot of firing phases using high POH percentages, the sides should have many more VP, but remember that when the active side fired, and the target unit fired back, a VP would be collected only if the return fire was unsuccessful. Successful return fire canceled the active side's VP. Bob then suggested that, as a second go-round, we try a 'breakthrough' scenario. Here, my breakthrough force of 15 battalions attempted to advance past the Liebl's defending force and make its way across a river placed some 5 feet up the field. Initially, the defenders were understrength... as the initiative cycles progressed, reinforcements would arrive, until the defender would equal in size my breakthrough force. The defending battalions were secretly placed on the field, with both Bob and Cleo noting where their units were hidden. These hidden battalions would be revealed only if they opened fire, or if one of my own battalions came within 5 inches. I noted, as the battle progressed, that both Bob and Cleo had provided plenty of 'buddy' units as potential support units for melee. At first, I had the advantage, but instead of pressing forward for a true breakthrough, I chose to trade fire with the defenders. A bad decision. In this battle, unlike the first encounter, hits were scored from the very first initiative cycle. Both the active side's fire and the return fire from the non-active side were successful. This meant that there were relatively few VP gained by the active side from its firing phase, since a successful return fire canceled its VP. This engagement ended when the VP totals were 24 for the defenders and 14 for the attacking breakthrough force. Needless to say, my breakthrough attempt failed miserably. Back to PW Review January 1999 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