Crossfire on an ASL board with a SL scenario...

I began playing Pub Battles by Command Post Games recently and really fell in love with the light and fast playing rules, to the extent that I resurrected the module I created in Vassal a year or so ago to enable me to play it and generally experiment. I loved playing it, but there was always that nagging downside to it all, that being that I have absolutely zero interest in the American civil war, which is really what the module and the rules are geared towards. There are some Napoleonic era battles played out with the system but it really does have the look and feel of the ACW era, and I just couldn't get past that feeling in the end. 

So, fast-forward a little. I wanted to play some English civil war battles with a similar, light rules system and began to create another little Vassal module to experiment with various rules. I remembered playing a little of Arty Conliffe's Crossfire for a while and being quite enamoured with them. But they were very much geared towards ww2. Nevertheless, I found myself diving into a few battles in this era using my new module and the Crossfire ruleset to see how it played and if it was going to work well, or even at all. Who knows, maybe I could use a version of them to create and play some ECW battles too sometime in the near future.

I began with a few little experimental battles and skirmishes to test things out and found the Crossfire rules were actually working extremely well with Vassal and the ASL maps. Next thing I did was to take a more or less random scenario from SL and set it up in my own little Vassal module ready to begin a full battle. The scenario is called The Hedgehog of piepsk and is numbered scenario 4.

In my enthusiasm to get started I completely forgot to screenshot the starting positions, but here's a shot of the battle shortly after it began. The Soviets have the first Initiative(in Crossfire speak), and must enter from the eastern edge of the board. The scenario uses boards 2,3 and 4 and they must take all of the stone buildings on board 3 to satisfy the VCs. The Germans win by stopping them from doing this.

Here's the first screenshot shortly after the Soviets move in from the east.

Both sides lose a few units as the battle begins

I have a few house rules, one of which is that Veteran squads get 4d6 rather than the standard 3d6. I had thought the Germans looked to be at quite a large disadvantage when I first looked at this scenario and so I increased the dice they roll. I actually like this idea anyway and will continue to use it. They would roll the same dice as Regulars normally, and although I can sort of understand this, I think it makes more sense to make Veterans something special rather than just Veterans in name only. I like it. 

So when the battle really commenced, I was quite surprised to see that the Soviets were having a really hard time of it. One of the issues may be that modifiers are quite simplistic. What I mean is, in ASL and SL for example, stone buildings give a higher modifier than wooden buildings, but here in Crossfire they're identical. This makes for much less choice and so there's less option to really pick and choose targets since the terrain is almost inconsequential when it comes to deciding who to hit and who to leave well alone. They're all the same modifier.  In a bid to rectify this I tried making the modifiers deduct -1, -2 etc from the actual dice rolls rather than deducting -1d6, -2d6 etc but in the one instance I tried it I seem to remember thinking it was a little too harsh given that a hit is only on a 5 or 6. I'll need to work on these modifiers soon. I'm certain the more nuanced system above would work very well here if given half a chance.

So the battle begins to heat up.

The Soviets first major assault costs them dear

At this stage the inexperience of the Soviets Green troops begins to tell. They only have 2d6 to attack with in the first place and are extremely difficult to rally from Suppression. Even in close combat they take a -1 modifier into the fight so it's not even as though you can hold them back for when you need to just throw them into close combat, they're not good at that either. At the start I was looking at the great swathe of red in the east and wondered just how the Germans were going to survive this one, but my god those Green Infantry are very squishy.

And just in case you thought the loses above were bad, just take a quick look at the current state of affairs.

The Soviets struggle to make inroads

In case your wondering why that big stack of Soviet corpses there are mostly Regular Infantry and not the squishy Green Infantry, it's because I quickly realised the Green Infantry were pretty much useless and so decided to attempt a major assault over the hill into town with those Regulars in the hope of taking some ground. Suffice to say, it didn't go well.

I nearly had the Soviets surrender at this point, but I think I'd like to attempt a close assault with the squishy Greens in the north before I finally admit defeat. It's interesting though that I've been thinking of starting a campaign soon, and would definitely have had them make an organised retreat under these circumstances to at least enable them to replenish their troops and make ready for the next battle. 

Next time: The Green Infantry launches a last, desperate assault in the north.