Operation Crossfire aftermath
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 2 ธ.ค. 2014
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A weapons playlist here: • Weapons and armour
Operation Crossfire may well have been a world first - a wargame played on many tables around the world simultaneously, with two overall commanders basing their decisions on the e-mails sent to them during the game.
This is follow-up video letting you know a bit about how it all went. Describing every detail of the events of the fourteen battles of a corps-level operation is wildly beyond the scope of this video. There were many events such as civilians mobbing the railway station in a desperate attempt to flee, battles to secure or destroy fuel dumps and AA batteries, spies getting arrested by the Gestapo, fierce fighting over strategic hills that overlooked other battlefields, surprise attacks from the air and water, artillery batteries moving up to get within range of specific targets, minefields, bridge-laying tanks, and all that sort of thing.
45 players took part. The German C-in-C was in Australia, others were in Canada, The Netherlands, the USA and of course Britain. At one point, I had more like 130 people saying that they'd be taking part, and I'd like to extend a heart-felt thank-you to all those who dropped out. You made my life so much easier.
World Crossfire Day link: www.lloydianaspects.co.uk/warg...
Yahoo Crossfire group: groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/C...
My web site: www.LloydianAspects.co.uk
Buy the rules in the USA: onmilitarymatters.com/pages/df... and do a search for 'Crossfire'.
Buy the rules in Britain: www.caliverbooks.com/bookview....
Getting the supplement 'Hit the Dirt' is not necessary but may be helpful..
Lindybeige: a channel of archaeology, ancient and medieval warfare, rants, swing dance, travelogues, evolution, and whatever else occurs to me to make.
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Operation Crossfire aftermath
/ user "Lindybeige"
Captain Hindsight's Notes for Next Time:
1) This whole thing would go a lot easier with an instant messaging program like AIM. That way there isn't half a dozen button clicks between sending or receiving a message, and everything is as instant as it can be.
2) CHAIN OF COMMAND.
Also, folks, Lindy obviously doesn't spend an obscene amount of time at his computer outside of editing and uploading videos. I'm sure whatever system he runs serves his needs perfectly well. No need to make fun of him for it.
Surprising LindyBeige didn't know a club- war games. Other enthusiasts would have been an awesome help.
its not so much the computer he uses, as I am sure its fine. Its that medieval monitor that will mess up his eyes.
Hey, I was actually one of the players, but I only stumbled on this now. This is great! I even saw the picture from our table! I absolutely love this!
This comment was a while ago but i will stil try. I am very curious to know if there is a way to get some kind of summary of the event or the log of events that happened on the mission. I am very curious about the exact logistical traps he used to prank his commanders.
@@beflyaudio I second this
@@Nico-ig1mr sadly this was so long ago it probably wont happen
@@beflyaudio definitely but one can hope
As a person who doesn't understand how this game works, to me it just looks like you and many people across the world went collectively insane for a day.
Jesus, that computer makes me all nostalgic for 1995.
We're all fans of history here, so it'd be great for you to do your next video on your Medieval computer.
Will we be getting a summation of the events, like a pseudo-history lesson? If possible, that would be neat for those of us who couldn't participate.
"He came good. All was well."
I laughed.
I'm frighteningly immature.
Haha me too.
Well you know what they say:
"You are only young once but you can be immature forever."
please do a video of you actually playing crossfire with someone
You know having this in a PC video game form would make organizing things like this SO much easier... one day after I graduate my game design course I will try to make something like this... probably fail horribly...
If you want this in a video game, play Heroes and Generals. The whole point is that it's a tabletop game.
Dylan Greene Hmm doesn't look like an RTS. More like some odd hybrid game.
***** Try matrixgames.com they specialize in producing wargames & other strategies. Slitherine one of their subs releases their games as boardgames and videogames.
***** You can -play it as an RTS or an FPS. It is a hybrid, but you aren't forced to play both parts, and because it is online, you do get a sense of "a bigger war" happening around you. Though lets be honest, if you just want a World War 2 RTS, there are hundreds to choose from.
I play both video games and tabletop RPG's they fill 2 difference niches for me, and the play style is different, don't write off tabletop because the models are static, and there are no HD explosions, imagination is not your enemy.
From what I've seen, Hearts of Iron III seems to be quite a good grand strategy game that takes place during the WWII (you can have the starting point be a few years before the war would begin). My friend is crazy in to it and as far as I know from him, it's super complex and realistic, and takes humongous amount of practice (hundreds, thousands of hours of play time) if you want to be any good at it.
I've been meaning to start playing it for a while now, but I'm discouraged to start because it takes (according to my friend) about 50 hours to even understand the fundamental basics in the game.
Lindy, you should totally do it again, but get some HQ Staff to help you out.
GET SOME MINIONS ALREADY.
Lindybeige, i just recently stumbled upon your channel, and i must say it is phenomenal. I grieve for you dealing with this war game. as a soldier i have participated and helped operate war games. the first time i helped operate a joint operation war game was two years ago and we had almost 30 soldiers responding to emails alone. so the long and short of it is Kudos to you
do you intend on doing this again?
Your vids from this era are an artifact and such a gift! Thank you pal!
Congratulations on pulling this off! I don't play table games myself, by I still find these videos fascinating, and I admire the effort you put into this to create something new, and world-wide. Now get some sleep!
This looks super cool, respect for putting this together.
I've never done wargaming but I loved all your Crossfire and model building videos. Please continue!
Wow Lindy! You revived a game genre from the nineties, nice work.
Also I would rather have Lindy's keyboard than the crappy little thing I have now.
A very enjoyable experience. Thank you and well done Lloyd for organising it =).
You are hilarious. I've always loved history and you know your stuff. To the point and with comedic relief, it may even keep a teenager engaged. Keep it up mate.
I would love to play in such a game but you really should have your own HQ team :D
You should try and get a game shop to host one, their staff could be a big HQ
I'm really confused as to why he was doing so much himself. Seems like he should had set up the game to be between the company commanders and the generals. and he would had been mostly hands off during gameplay.
Perhaps if you do this again Lindy, it would be worth recruiting some volunteers, ones you trust to take the staff seats, and then a few more to relay and respond to messages. I hope you do "do" it again, as it seems like something rather promising.
I hoppe you had fun doing it. I enjoy your videos.
Imagine if those battles were streamed on a real time, would have been pretty epic to watch (hoping that no one would cheat via watching it)
That looks so damn cool. It's also hilarious how stressed you looked in those videos. xD
I am positively vibrating with curiosity.
What was the most... "cinematic" moment you received word of, or favourite part of the op, even with the stress you were under? Any moments where you practically jumped for joy due to the actions of any one group, or awesome correspondence role-playing experiences where a group really got into the spirit of things?
ARGH SO MANY QUESTIONS. Sorry about the splurging, I've been waiting to hear the results of this since you announced the project...
I can hardly wait to hear more about the operation, it's just so interesting and awesome to hear the little you've been able to tell us in this video and the comments. And my god, there simply must be a 'sequel' at some point. Maybe one of the big expos like PAX would be accommodating of this idea after seeing just how awesome it is, despite the setbacks of not having enough high command personnel it sounds like it went really well.
I had no idea about Crossfire or wargaming before watching these videos, but this sounds like more fun than I ever had in the oast five years, easy. Hat's off for having the nerve and determination to pull this off!
Wow, sorry I missed this! Sounds amazing!
I'm sure those big tables and brightly-coloured markers WERE quite nice to look at--
Oh, you meant the women, didn't you?
Why not both?
*The city rejoices
Excellent idea and effort, Lloyd. Apologies for the late response, but I only just discovered your videos (and Crossfire). A project of this scale has been a fantasy of mine for many years. If you ever want to do a repeat with proper staffing and chain of command, I will be willing to help. As I said, I have not played Crossfire yet, but it looks intuitive so, as an ex TA officer, I should be able to pick it up quickly enough.
Speechless. Made me want to learn how to play just in case of Operation Crossfire 2.
I'm probably saying this because I'm a programmer but if you were to do this again I would suggest finding a way to automate part of the process if possible. There's no point on overwhelming yourself if a computer can do part of it for you. It's probably easier than you think and just a minor automation would save you a lot of frustration. If you need a programmer I can assure you that there are lots that would give some time to making a little tool and it shouldn't cost a thing. You're contacting people internationally anyway so chances are that in this modern age there would be at least one willing volunteer amongst them to work with you.
glad you had so much (hectic) fun!
On the subject of putting your reserves right next to an enemy DZ you don't know about, I have to wonder how many "military geniuses" in history won their greatest victories accidentally.
Like, a general who needs somewhere to park the extra tanks that he can't fit in his battle line and picks a spot basically at random, only to have the unit commander inform him that he has a direct path to the enemy HQ or something.
Bugger, the event slipped my mind i really wanted to take part. Hope there's another soon i would be so happy to be a part of it.
I know this video is from 2 years ago, but good lord, that computer looks like it is begging for death. Put the poor thing out of it's misery.
HOW DARE YOU DEAR SIR A COMPUTER FROM 2003 IS PERFECTLY USEFUL TODAY and ill tell you what iv got a computer from 2003 running windows xp and its liturally faster than my windows surface?! even though I recently rebooted it and the 2003 computer hasent even had any clean ups since it was made
While an instant messaging app might make things more convenient, I think email is a lovely analog for the process of sending messages up the chain of command and then getting orders back down.
This looked awesome. I think if you do this in the future you should have two people who just receive and reply to the emails. One for the Allies and one for the Axis. With you and maybe a few others keeping track of all the chaos of the grand battlefield.
Running this game may have been stressful but I hope you try something like this again. Giant gaming events like this are great and this helps bring more eyes and attention to Crossfire.
That seams to have been an awesome game... If you run one latter on, I will try to sign up... looked like a lot of fun!
You should create a video summarizing the whole thing.
I'd love to have joined in with this. only wish I had found Lindy's channel sooner.
I can see someone like AngryJoe loving this, should do a livestream.
This is cool and love to see more Crossfire.
But my big question, when we getting the Lindybeige PC rig video?
I remember hearing about a naval game version of this, Jutland I think, everyone was in the same building mind, but the administrators had some fun 'editing' messages that they passed on, or making sure they never got through at all. So even if you did get overwhelmed that could be part of the game!
A larger staff seems to be in order. Please do this event again, it looks like a lot of fun. You could always source some loyal subscribers to help run this :)
I'd be fascinated to see a Company by Company breakdown of the whole event.
On a practical basis, I'd be inclined to suggest splitting down to regimental commanders- filtering all the requests for support and kicking them up the line to Brigade or Corps. That should take a lot of the staff work out for you. And of course, add to the fog of war, as Regimental commanders fail to pass on to the Major General what they needed to know.
Wow this seems to be like a really nice strategic and tactic experience to have!
Is that a three button mouse there, bellow that CRT monitor? I knew you like old stuff, but I didn't think this extends to your computer accessories. :D
?? What is the more modern alternative? A five-button mouse? I don't run any programmes that require one of those. My mouse does not have a roller ball on its underside.
Lindybeige Yes, a five button mouse. It might seem silly, but having the back and forward buttons on your mouse is incredibly convenient for even simple things like browsing the web or windows explorer. You won't miss them when you don't have them, you can't live without them once you've had them.
Lindybeige I never remember that my mouse has the extra buttons, so you aren't missing much. As long as you have two buttons and a wheel you're fine in my book.
Lindybeige Most mice these days have two buttons and a wheel, last time I saw one of these was in the days, where the wheel was just a quirky new feature. :D I'm surprised to know, that they still make these with an optical sensor.
Lindybeige Maybe a mousewheel?
Wow that was awesome! You should expand the idea if you haven't done so already.
That was an awesome Idea, I can imagine something like this being done with more current technology like skype oh the epicness. Next time maybe a have a general staff :D
Goodness this is amazing.
Pretty cool, and yes it does sound like way more than one man can reasonably organize by himself :)
I had always assumed that was going to be a multi-man operation, and I'm a bit shocked you went in on this alone.
Good on you for keeping the war machine going! Think you'll be doing it again next year, with a few collaborators?
If you were to ever run something like this again, I'd recommend using Slack. It's a fairly powerful little chat application where you could set up different rooms for different teams etc.
Well done!
Wow. This is so insanely epic! Did you run anything like this since? The closest thing to a war game I've ever played is Memoir '44, but this has me intrigued to say the least!
Hello Loyd,
This has all been fascinating! I would love to be involved in a second go around (a world war III?) if you ever found the stamina to run another crossfire event. To that end, I have some suggestions that might make it easier for you do so.
First, get some staff officers like you said. Have your field commanders put what their emails are for in the subject line, and have each staff officer handle one type of email (support requests, progress reports, etc.). It might help if you had one or two generals underneath you that had the authority to command assets in situations where you are indisposed to answer one of your field commander's requests. It might also help to have a staff officer whose only responsibility is to keep track of unit movements. A white board with an overlay of the battle space would be much easier for this staff officer to use than your 3D model (I'd be willing to donate a projector for such a setup). You could erase and redraw units' movement paths with each update, but with some tweaking I think you could manage so that all movements were kept track of. Write the time of update on the line of movement and the ETA on lines indicating movements in progress, and you've got all the information you need neatly recorded.
The second set of suggestions I have pertain to the radio discipline you mentioned. Teach all of your field commanders to put their names, commands and original operational goal in their email signature. This way you always have that information. I would say issue a standing order that they put their current location at the top of their email as well, but that still leaves something to the reliability of your field commanders. If I were you, I would further insist on not answering emails that aren't formatted as you commanded. This includes the subject line filled out as suggested above: if you want an asset allocated to you, you have to state in the subject line what you're asking for; otherwise, it is impossible to delegate your email to the staff officer in charge of handling requests for the assets that you want. This would perhaps require too much discipline. It may lead to field commanders desperately typing for support, receiving no response because their formatting is wrong. I don't know, maybe have a staff officer in charge of subjectless messages.
Ha, this is all great fun. Imagine running a campaign via letter! Try running a faux-French war with only the information you receive every couple of weeks from beneath your vassals' wax seals (Oh--that castle's taken now? Sounds like I heard of it just in time! Parliament! Get a tax going. . . This won't bite my family in the ass, I'm sure of it.)
Anyway, thanks for documenting this event. As I said, that was itself enjoyable enough.
Bye,
Strangeling~
P.s. CraigNW suggested some similar things. However, I think AIM wouldn't be a proper simulation of WWII command and control. I wanted to suggest filters, but anything that automatically sorts information would be anachronistic. And I'm confused. Did you play as one of your commanders?
Very cool.
I'd love to help you run the next one. Unfortunately, I'm stateside. Can't very well justify flying out to Europe for a game, much as I'd love to have that flexibility in my budget. But you've got to have a few local Brits that would be happy to help you. Get an "HQ staff" of three or four people and I bet running the game would be significantly easier. Get one person to handle all the emails from a given side (so you're not busy writing individual replies), one person to help with real time map updates, and maybe a fourth person to sub in or fetch coffee or whatever.
This would by no means make your job easy, mind, but it ought to make it less panic-inducing.
You should run your own US game
That's so cool
Perhaps a voice chat channel, the next time?
Would simulate decently radio communication, but some people would obviously get annoying.
I guess that would be the point of also having a way to choose who you are lstening too, maybe having private channels between the commander in chief and each field commander with a notification when they want to tell you something.
you could also use slack, a upgraded irc program than can have different chat rooms allocated to different units, which can be managed by different people who translate the data for CinC
I use to play in a very large organized Planted side 2 outfit. (Planet side 2 is a syfi first person shooter video game with full infantry armor and air combat that supports 3000 players in a 10X10km map.
Our outfit had events where we had as many as 3 Platoons each divided into 4 squads of 12 players.
I had push to talk keys form several of the in game channels as well as team speak. In all, my channels filled 1-7 on my keyboard's numpad. It was a really awesome experience being part of coordinating roughly 130 players in a real time video game.
Although I managed to avoid ever having to do more than the occasional radio shift when not much was going on in a tactical operations centre (TOC), but having had to go in as well as communicate with them on a regular basis,' I feel confident saying yes, having more than one person would have been a good idea, as well as having a whole command staff for each commander. Also, yes, when people do not use radio procedure in something large, it can become very confusing as to who is who in the zoo. If you ever decide to stress yourself out again, and do something like this, assigning callsigns to everyone, and have them send all messages signed with the appropriate callsign may make things easier. Even my Guardsmen for WH 40k have unit callsigns, to make it easier to know who is what on containers etc. (as an example I19 being infantry first company commander, I11A being infantry first company one platoon one section, or squad for England I believe, and T11 being armoured first squadron one troop). Having things split to send e-mails to different people would likely make your life easier, so, say, have two guys, each representing the arty for each side, so that all artillery based e-mails would go to them, instead of you. Delegation and trust is key to operating something large.
I love the darlec on your wall! :)
I recommend rented out a social club or something to host a command center with volunteers for this. :D
Of course Lloyd is running a Windows 95 PC.
EDIT: BTW, you should look into Roll20.net
You can tell from the taskbar that it's actually XP. Nothin' wrong with sticking with a CRT and an old keyboard if they still work fine, right?
I was kidding, but yeah, I guess so.
Really? I still use 7, so I didn't notice those things.
I hope you decide to do something similar. Sounds like scads of fun.
Congrats on a successful game! As a more than rusty GM, you have my approval, what ever that's worth. ^_~ Cheers!
That was very interesting.
Lindybeige! Please repeat that event. Please repeat that event every year.
I think a mock chain of command would have helped. All messages would be conveyed to battalion commanders who would filter out the minor, bookkeeping message and give you the bigger picture. I don't know how things were organized but I what I'm saying is get some people to help you out next time.
Looks like it was rather fun though.
an amazing project maybe if you do one next your you could recruit a few gaming friends to be command staff help manage the inflow of emails ;)
I just rewatched this video and I have a suggestion if you happen to do this again. You could use google hangout to do a large video group call. It has video for everyone, it's for free and commands and such will go a bit smoother since it's instantaneous. It also has a chat feature so people can type if it gets too noisy, which it probably will.
Will there be another operation crossfire? :) a life stream of it would be awesome
Love the monitor
This is so cool.
There must have been a better way to coordinate this. Maybe google forms?
I'm very glad that the event went through okay and I hope that you'll give us a summation of the battle in a later video.
I'll also try to persuade my friends to try out Crossfire, and maybe we'll join you for your next campaign (if it happens).
Cheers
Despite having fought in one war and actively observing another, I'm saddened to have not taken part in this. Lindybeige, you are undoubtably one of the most interesting characters on TH-cam.
It seems to me that with a staff of perhaps 8 people with their own co0mputers and printers, you could run it better. Just divide the Staff in half for the sides and ahve them receive and print the emails and then email the responces.
We did a Batallion vs Batallion battle in BattleTech in 1988 with 12 or so players per side and that was absolutely horrendous to keep track of which mechs had moved and when they fired, even when we were all in the same room. The battleground was two king sized bedsheets with 1 inch hexes on them and some styrofoam terrain. It took about ages to play it out and I can't even remember which side won.
If you ever do this again, get a staff and delegate some of the autority.
That sounded cool. Thought, I wonder if a dedicated chat room may have been better than email?
Oh dear... Lyndy, I'm quite sure someone of your subscribers are quite handy programmers. For goodness' sake, just ask and someone is bound to be ready to come up with some kind of battlefield simulation table for you. I know this video is 2 years old but never underestimate the effectiveness of delegation.
Thanks,, it was a bit confusing.. but that is what it was.. It was cool!
Might be fun to be part of a General's Staff team. Looks like quite the game!
Sound awesome. I hope you had fun, even if it was only in a masochistic sort of way.
I think some others have said this but if you do run this or something similar again it might be worth recruiting some volunteer staff officers to help with logistics. I do hope you run It again, would love to take part next time.
Sounds pretty cool. Never thought of having someone set up something more automatic for you? You know, couple of scripts to help speed things a long. Most military reports are sent in in strict forms, something a script could easily read and printout on a display for you, for example.
you sir have done well.
I must try to do this with some other games, perhaps a massive continent spanning flames of war game.
Also did you Say RAF-ly at one point?
I wish i could have joined, but i don't have the real life gear for that, it sounded awesome. How cool would it be to do this, in a factory hall, and a bunch of tables, and maybe more people to help out at "hq"
that looks very fricking cool
That is a beautiful computer!
Sounds cool. As soon as you mentioned it I was thinking I'd organise a staff. No way I'm going to try and command a whole side by myself. Although I'm not very good at getting people to follow me so I'd organise a staff for someone else. I'm much better at getting people to follow someone else.
Lindy, your computer is the most ancient thing you've ever shown in one of your videos.
ho ho oh
hahah, I guess I wasn't surprised to see that Lloyd still uses CRTs and ye olde IBM style keyboard still.
Just as many have mentioned already, I too would love to assist in another attempt at this. Acting go-between the troops and the top general, my dream job!... ;P
I do not know what I was expecting from a history channel.
That computer is seasoned like fine wine.
Would a simple chatroom fix the mountains of emails problem? The beige man needs a tech connect.
Looking at Lloyd's computer it's easy to understand why he plays tabletop games and not video games.
I think this kind of large scale war game looks like fun. However I might go a little smaller with fewer battlefields on the go at one time, but I am going to see about getting some groups in Atlantic Canada going.
Can you think of any computerized tools that would help make running something like this smoother? I'm looking for some programming projects to take up, and writing something that you could use to host more of these might be interesting.
really feel this should be a world wide bi-annual tournament that's held by a large committee and giving out prizes to the winning sides and allies.
This was a really cool idea!....do it again and get the other players to video the games then create a high-light real!
Madness!
I'd help you. =D With a bit of help and a buy-in; this could be much more viable. And dare i say it fun. I can understand your trepidation after the first experience,though. Regardless, good stuff, Lloyd. Thank you.
Is there likely to be any followup for those of us interested in how it played out? Something like the world crossfire day page with a general overview rather than hours of video perhaps?