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Here is Dan Cyr's Crossfire Notes Page that disappeared sometime after July in 2005 and we salvaged from the Google Cache:

Hi, Dan

Jeez, it took a long time to get back to you. Sorry !

Mult-barrelled Weapons SU-24/4, SU-37/2, M16 (M3 with quad .50s), etc. used for ground weapons

Hmmm, it's easy to get carried away ie. a .50 is 4 dice, so a quad fifty must be sixteen !!! Not !!!!! I would be
very careful about going past four dice with a direct fire unlimited use weapon. Five dice is Brutal ! If you feel a weapon warrants the same effect as Heavy Artillery or mortars, then go for it.

Wire Guided Weapons might only need to put a "strike" value to them for anti-vehicle purposes. Or you can have them 'pin' the firer on the following turn.

Helicopters treat as "fast" vehicles with no protection (what can damage/kill one?)  movement?  spotting ability?

My general rule of thumb for highly mobile but easily damaged targets is the 'no pin/suppression is a kill' rule. I am using
this as my basic guideline in all special rules of this type.  For example, I have rules for ski troops and cavalry that work
off of this concept. Spotting ... hmmmmm.... I'm no expert on insertion techniques, and how effective they are. Do you
have a reference I can check ??

Terrain what is a rice field?  a triple canopy forest?

A rice field I would rule as providing cover from indirect fire, no smoke allowed, cover v. direct fire only from units outside the
field. Dense forests can be ruled as either blocking line of sight, or given a bonus/limitation as regards indirect fire and/or placing
smoke. Also note that placing many small forest features in a group simulates very dense terrain (harder to move and shoot throught) than a few large pieces.

Aircraft for strike purposes nampalm?  bombs?  rockets?  accuracy?  misses?

Area effect weapons, perhaps using a variant of the penetration/accuracy system depending on defensive terrain. Also, limited
number of 'fire missions'.

Vehicles that can fire while moving (unlike WWII where they had  to stop to fire)

This will require some thought, as our vehicles rules reflect what we believe to be true in infantry support roles in heavier terrain.
They are not meant to represent open terrain large formation actions.  In Vietnam, I don't see a problem with small modifications to the current rules, but in the more modern, desert combats they will require some major restructuring.

Since FOs are so important to US/SVN forces, are they played different?  still seperate stand, or all stands have ability to FO?

Judgement call.

Game balance?  victory conditions balance (casualties ratio)?

Always lotsa fun !! I'll send a later message with work I have done on scenario VC design in Crossfire.

Vehicles terrain (can a M48, M113, etc., move into a flooded rice field)?  Helicopters can land where?

Judgement call, can be scenario specific
 
Reflect VC tunnel complexs

The hidden movement, setup, and ambush rules should work well for this scenario. VC are important, though.

National command differences Australians, S. Koreans, Americans (Army, Marines, SF), S. Viet Nam, VC, N. Viet Nam

Not an expert !! I would think the 'German' system would be the norm with modern comm gear, and exceptions would be like
US.

Supplies thinking mostly of ammo due to higher rate of "firing" it off in modern combat with auto weapons.  Extra dice for limited # of shots ??

Weapons:  Auto-grenade launcher, are all infantry armed with SMGs, Machine guns, or rifles with SMG traits?

Short range weapons I would stick with the CC bonuses.

Comments ??

Rob Wolsky

Rob Wolsky wrote:

First scenarios are going to be centered around the attacks on, and the destruction of the US 2nd Infantry in Nov and Dec of 1950.

Dan

Dan's going for it ! Let me know how the Korea mods work out on the table top.

Hardest problem so far is deciding how to handle the heavy amounts of prep-artillery fire they did (due to the huge trench and  bunker complexes both sides used.

We did a scenario during playtesting that involved bombardment pre-game by the HMS Rodney. We created  "Rodney Templates" (4) from clear acetate and had the defenders record the features in which they were deployed, but not actually put anything on-table. The attackers placed the templates wherever they chose, and rolled vs. the features. The defenders secretly recorded the casualties, and play commenced. Best use was one player who stacked up all four templates on one feature with a bunker !! Rolled well, blew the crap out of a 2HMG and CC group =8^0 !!! If you are using hidden deployment, this works very well, and could be adapted easily to a scenario without it.

Rob

RE:       Chef de Battalion
Date:     Mon, 16 Feb 1998 00:21:55 -0500
From:    Rob Wolsky  
To:        Dan D. Cyr'" <dancyr@execpc.com>

Hi Dan

Promptness is a character flaw of mine. I'm early for everything ...
Thanks for the prompt reply.

The question on the grenades related to the use of "smoke" grenades.  Several players who have be destroyed in attempting to move from cover to cover, wanted to use smoke grenades to aid their movement across exposed terrain.  The rules do not cover such.

Smoke grenades are a long, bloody, savage argument that I lost .....Use it as a scenario specific rule, and all is well ;->

The question on rifle grenades and bazookas (or any anti-tank/bunker) weapon, relates to the size of the firing stand (i.e., a squad of 6-11 men).  The argument has been made that having each infantry squad the use of AT weapons is meaningless if the squad has to do a either or fire (i.e., the vast majority of the men fire their rifles, and the guy with the bazooka, PIAT or Panzerfaust sits, or the majority of them sit while the the guy with the AT weapon fires).  Now, I have broken out the bazooka teams and just have them as a secondary stand to a rifle squad (but now every American squad consists of two stands).  Does this explain where we are going?

The squad-portable anti tank weapons are an intentional kluge, insofar as we have avoided any 'single man' rules like the bubonic plague. As it stands, if a squad takes an anti tank shot and misses, that loses you the initiative.  You can play it your way ie. make separate stands, or simply make the anti-tank try 'free', like indirect fire, and not cause loss of initiative. In the original rules discussions, that was seen as a scenario specific solution if armor was a big factor in a particular scenario.

Rob

Subject:     RE: Cross Fire
Date:         Mon, 2 Mar 1998 17:32:06 -0500
From:        Rob Wolsky
To:            dancyr@execpc.com

Hi, Dan

My replies follow your questions ...
 
1st-    We were trying to do a Pacific scenario, but could not use flamethrowers as they are not covered in the rules.  Any ideas?

[Rob Wolsky]
The "Assault Engineers" mod in CC (+1) can be seen to include all the neat toys engineers get. Or, you can treat a squad with a flamethrower as SMG armed for CC (+1 also). If you feel that it should be more effective, modify at will. CC is already very deadly in the game, and the +1 modifire for Assault engineers, and the likelihood that an engineer formation will have an elite (+2) PC is enough for me! I haven't touched on anti-AFV fire or ranged combat because I don't think it should be used as ranged fire.

2nd-    This might be dumb, but can you give me an example of Firegroup and Crossfire usages?  Single stand:   Sees enemy in LOS and rolls dice

[Rob Wolsky]
Yup. Remember NO FIRE rule.

Firegroup:      2 or more stands (grouped), do they roll each stand against it's target seperately, or do they put their dice together against a single target?  (2 rifle squads:  shot at same target seperately, or add dice together in one roll?)

[Rob Wolsky]
They each roll separately against EVERY available target. No cumulative  dice effect, note the NO FIRE rule, a key concept in controlling reactive fire.

Crossfire:      ?

[Rob Wolsky]
Same as for firegroup, except of course the requirements for a crossfire are different.

This came up, and we all realized that after nearly a dozen games, we have not idea of what they mean.  We seem to be using single stands vs single stands, or ganging up on a single stand.

[Rob Wolsky]
All firers shoot at all moving targets, subject to NO FIRE and using only their own dice, not cumulative.

OK??

Rob
                                                                                            .

Subject:                Re: Crossfire Questions
Date:                    Wed, 04 Mar 1998 13:50:25 -0500
From:                   "Steve H." <stevej_hicks@uk.*ibm*.com>
Organization:         Unspecified Organisation
 Newsgroups:        rec.games.miniatures.historicalWig & Judy Graves wrote:

1) I want to move a squad and indicate it. Opponent shoots and pins it.  I rally then try to move again. Opponent shoots and pins it. I rally and the cycle continues... During all this activity, does the squad ever move (would make sense that it might at least move one stand (or something) each time)? BTW, this actually happened...till my opponent finally missed on about the 5th shot...

... to answer this one, my understanding is no - they don't move if your opponent indicates that he is firing as soon as they "start" to move...for what it's worth it happened to me as well - I was 8 moves trying to get a squad across a river!!  :o(

Steve H.

Subject:                Re: Crossfire
Date:                    26 Mar 1998 20:02:01 GMT
From:                   philipd@cs.KULeuven.ac.be (Philip Dutre)
Organization:        BELNET (DWTC/SSTC)
Newsgroups:        rec.games.miniatures.historical
References:          1 , 2
 
 

In article, Andy O'Neill <Andy@l-25x.demon.co.uk writes:

Nope, there's no way you can move a big bunch of figures forwards at once, hence an attacker is unreasonably disadvantaged by the mechanics.

But the defender will have a 'No Fire' for his squads if he doesn't succeed in pinning attacking units. If that happens, the attacker
can move freely forwards with any units he desires ...

Let's say the defender has 1 squad and the attacker has 3. If the attacker moves his 1st squad forwards, and the defender does not score a suppression result, it is likely that 1 or 2 of his squads have a no fire. That reduces significantly his chances for obtaining any further suppressions. By the time the 3rd squad moves, the defender has no reactive fire left.

Of course, all in the assumption that the initiative hasn't changed.

Phil

Look forward to seeing them Dan - I really like the mechanics of these rules, but hate the AFV content - it just looks like a badly thought up "extra" done at the last moment. I don't have a problem with Arty's idea of not  making them too powerful but I think he may have gone too far the other way - to the point where there are inconsistencies. One example is the difference between an infantry weapon, and the very same weapon when mounted in an AFV..

Steve

Philip Dutre wrote:

Hi,

Recently we tried out Crossfire for our WW2 platoon/company-sized games.  The attitude towards the game seem to be mixed. Some regard it as the ultimate in tactics, others say it's just dice-rolling without any real tactics at all. Anyway, as usual, that kind of discussion tends to boil down in a yes/no argument over particular examples of the just played game.
 
Anyway, I wanted to know what other people think about this game.
 
My personal opinion is that is captures infantry tactics better than e.g. RapidFire, but that you seriously run into problems
if you want to include some vehicles.  I also think the crossfire and groupfire rules really are the core concept of this game, which really encourages you to use units as they were designed to be used.

Phil

Phil - you've banged the nail fairly on the head with your view of the game, it's my view to...

I think the central concepts - which to my mind are the crossfire/groupfire rule you mention, and perhaps more importantly the
idea of retaining advantage through successful actions, are absolutely cracking - I'd like to play the game a lot. It encourages correct use of cover, and the use of support weapons. I say "I'd like to play the game a lot", the problem I have is that the treatment of AFV's is far from perfect - in fact it's downright annoying - and given that I'm just a tanky at heart (that's why I play WWII!) it's a bit of a stumbling block!

As a couple of examples...

1/ Why would you treat the same weapon differently if it was being carried by infantry, than if it was mounted in an AFV..

2/ Target priorities are biased towards infantry as firers - why else would an AFV have to fire at a vehicle just behind an unlimbered A/T gun, before it could fire at the A/T gun that was the greater threat??

Got a note from Dan Cyr this morning - he's got some good stuff on his page, especially in the section to do with comments on various aspects of the game...

http://www.execpc.com/~dancyr/dancyr.html

One of these was to do with how you classify a quad barrelled AA gun - the advice given (to me) bears out the inconsistencies I mentioned in 1/. ie. you can't treat the gun as being four identical barrels as this generates 16 dice, and this would be too "heavy" for the game - my view is why not give it 16 dice?? Damn sure I wouldn't want to be on the receiving end of blast from one of them beasts - but if I was stupid enough to get caught in the open then I deserve everything I get!

So... long and short?? Love the basics, not too happy with some of the specifics - I'm only waiting for some time to re-work the bits I don't like and in the meanwhile, I'm picking brains on this NG....!  ;0)

Steve H.

We just finished playing our largest game to date, with nearly a battalion on each side.  We put in armor vehicles for the first time, and did not find any problems with the rules and their use.  We only used one StuG III, but treated it as a "platoon", and it moved and fired just like any infantry unit.  We threated the hull top machine-gun as a seperate weapon than the main gun, and allowed both to fire in the same "phase".  The only real question to come up, involved the fact that the vehicle was "open", and the rules do not allow infantry, HMGs or mortars to fire at such.  Since I intend to get a M18 next for my Americans, this is a real problem.

I am building some 251/1 for my SS Panzergrenadiers, and intend to have one (1) vehicle per squad (the company will have ten vehicles).  I will try out the suggested rules for "individual" vehicles, namely, using two (2) dice per machine-gun, instead of four (4).  Will let you know.

Subject: Crossfire mods.{long}
Date:    Sat, 22 Aug 1998 11:15:29
From:   Greg Huffa <grhuffa@txc.net.au>
To:       dancyr@execpc.com

G'day Dan,

Just read your post on r.g.m.h. and thought you may be interested in these.  They are a compilation of ideas [some good, some not so good] that were posted to the modmil list by various people.

1     Split squad into 2 fire groups:
      •       Rifles/SMG Group;
      •       LMG Group; and
      •       possibly a Squad Leader.

2    Fire Teams = to Crossfire Squads
      LMG = to Crossfire MG
      Squad Leaders = Crossfire PC                       I prefer to leave the PC as the PC
      Crossfire PC = Crossfire CHQ etc                and delete the Squad Leader.

3     LMG stands 4 dice or possibly 3 dice thus reproducing admirably the fire power inherent in certain platoons, i.e., German PzGren Platoons could have up to 6 LMG stands.

4     Proximate stands suffer 1 effect worse than target stand.

5     Fire lanes, eg the target stand is attacked with 4 dice / 3 sq and another stand outside the kill radius but along the same path of the MG’s fire is attacked with 2 dice / 1 sq (provided there is no blocking terrain or AFV’s intervening). LMG could be 4 or 3 dice / 2 sq to start and attenuated to 2 dice / (no kill).

6a    Decrease heavy weapon mobility by requiring MMG/HMG to assemble/disassemble for fire/movement.  Doing either would be considered a move and thereby susceptible to reactive fire.  Note pivoting does not count as movement.

6b    Possibly extend this idea to LMG and ATR.  I don’t think that would be necessary.

6c    Certainly extend the idea to light mortars.

7     ATR - Accuracy of ‘0’.  (ATR = Anti-Tank Rifle)

8     PIATS and RIATS.  Allow a hit on 5,6 at any range and 4-6 within 2 stands distance.  These improved chances are in reaction to the tank mods.  (PIAT = Platoon Infantry Anti-Tank.  A British spring fired weapon.  Left no "blast" signature, and could be fired from enclosed spaces and from above its target, something that bazookas could not do). Molotovs are best dealt with as close assault mods.

9     Assault Rifles - 4 d6 within 2 bases, 3 d6 further away.

10    Fast-play beach landing rules - Landing craft land on a 1, delay on 2-5, and are killed on a 6.  Tanks are lost on a 5,6.

11    Entrenchments.  Fire against them is as usual.  For cover (-1 die, but hits on 5,6) but the worst they can suffer from fire is suppression.

12   When firing at concrete pillboxes, make a one column shift to the right on the direct fire table, that means 1 hit means 1 hit no effect, 2 hits a pin, and 3 hits a suppression.  Only way to kill a squad with direct/indirect fire is by suppression, hit twice as per rule 6.5.2.

13    Alternative rule re bunkers.  Firers fire at a -1 die (cover), only counting as hits and the maximum effect of fire is to suppress.  A kill can only be achieved by close combat.

14a   Flamethrower and satchel charge stands count +2 in close combat against bunkers or AFV’s.

14b   Flamethrowers:  maximum range 2 stands.  4 d6 for AFV, 3 d6 for man-pack.  Ignore bunker penalties. Satchel charges as per 14a.

15    Naval Gunfire.  Roll a pair of Games Workshop artillery dice and (with a ruler) determine where the naval shells hit.

16    AFV Mods

16a   Movement.
Tanks can move as far as they wish, including multiple pivots.  However, when they enter a terrain feature they must stop.  They still cannot move and fire.  Cornfields and hills do not count as terrain features for this rule.

16b   Fire.
Each tank has a number of MG’s equal to it’s historical counterpart - not just one.  The bow MG has a very limited arc of fire, about 45° total (not 45° each side of straight ahead). Tank MG’s may be fired in the same manner as MG stands, as long as they are NOT fired with the main gun.  If the main gun is fired, (with or without the MG’s) that is the last fire for that initiative.

16c   Close Assault.
Tanks may initiate close assaults but only against troops in the open; and possibly against troops entrenched, but not bunkers, houses, etc.

16d   These are given a short range of 2 base lengths (that’s 2.5”) within which range they are 5-6 to hit rather than the usual 6 (also use 2 stand lengths for close SMG fire).

16e   ATR’s.  (ATR = Anti-Tank Rifle)
These get a 50% chance of a hit.  (4, 5, 6 on 6 sided die)

Regards, Greg.

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The CROSSFIRE Website is edited and maintained by John Moher.  Additional contributions were made by John Kovalic, Luca Fazio, and William Scarvie III. CROSSFIRE is © 1996 Arty Conliffe. The contents of these pages are © 1996-2009 John Moher, Arty Conliffe, Rob Wolsky, Bill Rutherford, and/or the appropriate Authors and Contributors.