Crossfire Rule Review
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 31 ต.ค. 2022
- Did you watch our Band of Brothers Foy wargame last week and want to hear more about how the rules "Crossfire" play? This week, the guys at Little Wars TV review "Crossfire," a 1996 classic written by Arty Conliffe, designed for company-level World War II tabletop battles.
Visit us at www.LittleWarsTV.com for many more rule reviews. We'll return in a future video to also review "Fireball Forward" as a direct comparison. In the meantime we encourage anyone who has played "Crossfire" over the years to leave your own review here in the comments.
Whenever I introduce someone to the world of war gaming, I show them Crossfire. It's so easy to learn and play while still giving a new player a rewarding and surprisingly immersive experience--the perfect gateway war game. You technically don't even need minis if you use cardboard stands with all the info written on them. And I think the lack of historical flavor is a strength because it allows a group to use the rules with any setting, historical or otherwise. My group played a whole campaign set in the Star Wars universe with these rules (with a bit of tweaking), and had a blast.
I just discovered this channel, you lot have made me fall in love with classic wargaming despite being 17 years old, awesome stuff as always
Re: Close Combat. In the rules as written you get +1 for EACH ADDITIONAL SQUAD, not +1 for having more squads. So if your opponent has 1 squad and you have 3 squads, then you have 2 additional squads so you would get +2 to your dice roll. The fact that you only roll 1 dice in close combat, means that randomness is minimized. You stack your chances of success with modifiers.
Initiative is the core element of actual military combat. It gives a very ‘real’ reflection of field combat. A truly great insight and wonderful concept and different from anything out there. Big fan of Crossfire. Concur w/ vehicles & close combat use house rules or your option. Big thanks on review.
Concerning the terrain issue - someone can simply use felt/cloth to represent forest and fields and rough areas
Good review chaps. Crossfire is a classic, although I've only ever played my friend's moderns version of it, I really like the ideas behind it with retaining initiative and no measuring. Cracking stuff.
An excellent balanced review. I've been playing Crossfire since 1998 and I use the rules for WWII, modern and even sci-fi (with minor modifications for each period) What Crossfire does well, initiative, fire and movement and the players' decision-making is still to be bettered. Armour and close combat were house-ruled long ago on my table.
I played Crossfire years ago. I always thought it would make a good WW1 ruleset. I also liked Greg's assault modification.
Great review. One point I’d add to the mechanics section: the LOS rules in Crossfire are some of the best anywhere. Really functional, take all the measuring and potential for arguments out of the process. I think you’ve got the Close Combat rules slightly wrong. You get a plus per squad larger, so mass does work. But it’s more important to use suppression and leadership.
My favourite WW2 game at this level, as it always challenges decision making and makes for tense, yet fun gaming. Thank you for this excellent review!
One final comment and I'll stop spamming (you can tell I love this game): both Crossfire and Hit the Dirt are currently back in print, but more importantly, Arty finally caved in and allowed the PDF versions of both books to be sold. So this game will never be out of print now ;)
Weird to me that having more terrain rather than less would somehow be a negative, especially with a rule set that lets you play on such a small table. I've played far too many lousy rule sets where you not only aren't encouraged to do a dense table layout, you're almost unable to do so because their game mechanics can't handle it. Battles fought on golf courses and parade fields are not only boring, they're ugly as hell. Having a game that actively pushes you into putting more terrain out is nothing but a plus to me.
Another set of rules that I just got and will be trying out
Played this classic many a time using 20mm 1/72 kits and plastic airfix miniatures. Great game and think it would play excellently in 10mm, found the rule presentation OK for me.
Really pleased to see this excellent ruleset getting a review.
initiative doesn't pass when the opposing side fires and gets a Pinned result. Only when they score a Suppression or better
Excellent episode. Looks like a great set of rules. The .pdf version of the rules and scenarios are both available on the website you mentioned. I just ordered the .pdf version of the rules. Thanks guys.
Nice review. You have convinced me these rules are not for me, despite being positive about them. Proof that you're doing informative and useful work.
That you guys are good friends who enjoy a great pasttime is awesome enough.
Thanks guys, great review. I used to play crossfire in the early 2000s with 28mm and 54mm as the game lends itself to small built up area games really nicely. I love the idea of lots of terrain and that is what I like with a tabletop Wargame.