The ruleset is aimed at small-scale infantry actions from any conflict after WW2, so I set up a small Cold War Gone Hot scenario to get things going.
It is around 0930 in the morning after the Cold War has turned hot. Soviet elements are moving rapidly forward. A couple of Motor Rifle units moving forward have noted a small building astride a road on their battalion boundary - each have sent forward a reconnaissance patrol to discover whether it is occupied or not.
Soviet Forces:
1st Section (Initiative 3)
NCO w/AKM (Leadership 7)
1 NCO w/AKM (Leadership 3)
2 Ptes w/AKM
1 Pte w/RPG and Makarov
1 Pte w/RPK
1 Pte w/AKM & BG17
2nd Section (Initiative 2)
NCO w/AKM (Leadership 7)
1 NCO w/AKM (Leadership 3)
2 Ptes w/AKM
1 Pte w/RPG and Makarov
1 Pte w/RPK
1 Pte w/AKM & BG17
American Forces:
Squad (Initiative 4)
NCO w/M16 (Leadership 9)
1 NCO w/M16 (Leadership 5)
2 Ptes w/M16 & MAW
1 Pte w/M60
2 Ptes w/M16 & M203
3 Ptes w/M16
1 Humvee with .50Cal mounted
The US squad has put out a couple of pairs on watch, plus a sentry around the buildings watching the road.
The Set-Up:
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| A farm astride the road in the middle of some German woodland, between a few small hills |
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| One of the OPs, surveying down from the hill |
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| Most of the American squad is clustered around the Humvee; there is a sentry at the corner of the building (top-right); there is another two-man OP off-camera to the right. |
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| One of the Soviet squads is entering from the top-right |
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| And the other squad enters through the woods by the road |
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| The first Soviet squad fails to spot the sentry or the pair on the hill (off-camera to the left); the sentry opens fire and kills the lead Soviet soldier |
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| Try as he might, the Soviet sergeant cannot identify the source of the fire. |
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| Other Soviet troops come up in support of their squad leader (in treeline) |
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| Meanwhile, the second Soviet squad, hearing the fire, advances forward gingerly in the direction of the firing. |
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| The sentry drops another Soviet! The Soviets still cannot locate the sources of fire. I didn't get an acceptable image of the next bit but the two-man team off to the left joined in, wounded the Soviet squad leader and that was it... |
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| The remainder of the Soviet squad start running for safety |
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| The second squad gets a bit closer - helped by the soldier bottom right trying to open fire...and getting a jam! |
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| The M203 gunner (bottom) fires, places his grenade perfectly...and does precisely no damage; luckily for him, the return fire is equally ineffective |
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| However, a combination of fire from four US soldiers drops the first two Soviet soldiers |
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| The second Soviet squad feeling equally overmatched, runs back... |
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| ...and makes their escape |
Reasonably short and sweet game, but quite interesting nonetheless. The Soviets were very unlucky, they just kept on failing their observation rolls! The American shooting was reasonably accurate too, so a pretty hard day at the office for the Sovs.
Whenever I have read these rules, I expected a total horror of a game, but they did work quite well in practice. I am not going to definitively say that they work in a certain way, because there is a reasonably high chance I have misunderstood some key concepts, but as far as I know...
The main mechanic in the game is a chit pull for initiative. Each squad gets a number of chits equal to its initiative and then they get pulled out of a cup one by one. Then, leaders in the relevant squad can activate themselves and others to do stuff. Each activated soldier gets 4 action points to "do stuff", including move, observe, fire etc. Better leaders get to activate more soldiers in one go, although they do have to be quite close to the leader (within 25m or so, or lower if out of sight or being under effective fire). There are some reasonably detailed observation rules (which is good), and they make visibility very important (better), but the rules feel a bit under-written and under-tested in some areas, particularly in how they interact with soldiers who are out-of-command. The firing rules seem complicated, but that is because key information is spread out through the book - once you have worked out what is going on, it is pretty intuitive even if it is d20 based. It has different levels of damage and ineffectiveness, with different game effects for wounded, suppressed and neutralized (other gamers might think of suppressed as what is often called 'pinned' and neutralized what is often called 'suppression'). It seems to have its genesis in WRG Infantry Action 1925-1975, but house-ruled, modified and chromed to produce a new set. It still shares that rulesets assumption that players are really going to put stance markers by each figure to denote standing, crawling, neutralized and so on, which I find hard to believe that anyone has ever done, and still enjoyed the game. Anyway, I don't want to get into proper review territory, so I will leave it there for the moment.
Figures and models are by Battlefront.
A nice little action and I find it interesting to see these old rules given a runout now and then.
ReplyDeleteThanks Steve. I think I will try a couple more skirmishes with these when I get the chance, to make sure I give it a fair chance before doing a proper review of it.
DeleteThanks for the detailed writeup with the rules. I do love to see older rules in use.
ReplyDeleteAs an aside, your post reminded me that I always wanted to play Combined Arms by Ian Shaw that was also put out by Tabletop games (WW2 rules aimed as a same scope of battles as the WRG rules). After I left the gaming group in the late 80s they were still playing Tractics but they moved onto Combined Arms for many years. I came back after about 15 years and they had moved onto Take Cover (which I do really like). I had never played Combined Arms but wanted to, just to see what they were like. So I dug them out, along with 3-4 other rules I had not read for awhile. I read through them all. And then put them away again. Combined Arms was the best of the ones I had dug out but so many mechanisms, so many modifiers and big tables (e.g. spotting based on 10 categories of target with a dozen modifiers and using d20 (well, 5% increments), so much lookup for a result. Made Tractics look fast in comparison. I do remember the guys saying they modified the rules a lot - likely to reduce the modifiers. Never say never, but Combined Arms is not high on my list to give a go! If I had plenty of time, I would play a game with them - they are not bad rules, just would take a long time to play.
Thanks Shaun. There is every chance that these will get another write-up soon. If I feel up to it, I might even do a comparison of them with Bodycount...
DeleteI don't think I have ever played Combined Arms, and I am pretty sure I have ever even heard of Take Cover. My club at that time played a lot of Tactical Commander...I could do a review, but my heart quails at the thought of messing about with modes again...(although to be fair, I literally never remember hearing about them once when I was actually playing with them, so perhaps my group chinned them off!)
The most fun I ever had was playing Bodycount by myself with ESCI WW2 US paratroopers, Germans and some railway buildings. I think I was 16 or so . Anyway, now I'm 44 and have been through every modern ruleset there is to play late Cold War tactical stuff. Then I discovered Fire Fight and I came full circle. Another TTG production and it seems to cover all the bases. I plan to play my first game tomorrow. Only thing is I can't understand the wording in one important part. Could you help me? On page 6 4.2 it says ""eg* if side X has three sections of initiative rating 4,5 and 6, six counters should be put in the cup". Shouldn't it be 15 counters? In 4.1 it says "Each initiative factor gives the section an initiative counter.." I'm really confused.
ReplyDeleteHi Forper: Imagine that you have a platoon of 3 sections, each with an initiative of 4. You put 4 counters in for that platoon, and each time you pull a counter out *each section gets 1 activation*; As 4.2 mentions, if the sections have different initiative ratings, you have to mark or record which of the sections don't activate if that counter is drawn. So imagine that after some losses your three sections now have initiatives of 4,3 & 2: two counters will activate all three sections, one counter will active only the first two sections and the last counter will only activate the first section. You will never need more counters than the section with the highest initiative in your force. That clear it up?
DeleteOTOH, your way with lots of counters would work fine, it just means that one counter activates one section once, and it means that numerically superior forces are at a significant advantage other things being equal.
Hope that helps.
Hmm, I certainly need to have a rummage around and see if I still have a copy of Bodycount around here somewhere...
DeleteAh thank you SO much for your thoughtful and fast reply. I really appreciate it. That does make things a lot clearer. Each counter activates every section with that initiative number or less! I have everything set up and I plan to play in just a few hours from now.
DeleteI have a US Marine squad technically with 4 NCOs (1 squad leader and 3 fire team leaders). I then have 3 attached weapons teams also with NCOs. I then have an AAV-7 crew as well. They all have the same initiative of 4. I have to think about my counter mix for this but I think I should be able to handle it. Perhaps 4 counters for the squad and 4 counters for the combined weapons teams and vehicle crew? If you have any suggestions I would appreciate it very much.
Could I please ask one more question?
With your US Army squad did you break it into 2 sections with each NCO leading one? I assume you put in 4 counters for the squad and each time you drew American then both NCOs received one activation?
Sorry for the long post, I lost my copy of Bodycount somewhere along the line. I think I need to replace it. Even though Vietnam is not my thing (I originally used BC for WW2) I'd like to read it again for nostalgia and closer comparison with Fire Fight.
Great write up by the way. I hope my game plays out as cool as yours.
ReplyDeleteVery many thanks. I need to get it back to the table too.
DeleteSorry JWH, I have thought about my force more now and please ignore my last post.
ReplyDeleteOkay so I have a US Marine Squad of 13 men with 4 NCOs (1 squad leader and 3 fire team leaders) , the 3 support teams each with their own team leaders and the AAV crew. I can consider the whole force a "platoon" and just have four chits in the cup. All men have the same initiative so all NCOs can motivate the number of me up to their leadership rating on each US chit drawn. Makes sense now.
Thanks again, I'm going to kick it off now. Really looking forward to this.
So the way that should work is that every time you pick an initiative counter out for your USMC, you can activate 1 leader/NCO from your main squad, and the team leaders from each of the support teams, and the AA7 (so 5 activations per initiative counter).
DeleteGood luck with your game.
Oh man I'm having a blast with this ruleset. Thank you so much for your contributions and clarifications. This really feels like wargaming to me, more than with any other ruleset since my teen years. I stuck with FNG2 by THW for a long time but in the end it felt like a mess when getting into the nitty gritty details. Firefight really has a common sense rule for every possible situation. A lot of rulesets today I feel focus on "clever" mechanisms while leaving a lot of detail out. What if a fire starts in your track? Does it spread? Does it burn itself out? Fire Fight tells you. So, so good.
ReplyDeleteRight now my squad of Marines from Echo Company 2/6 Marines are having a bad day> tasked with taking the beach and approach to the Via Blanca on the extreme Eastern flank of their force they ran into heavy enemy presence. Although the good ol' USS Missouri blew the crap out of some enemy positions the remaining Platoon Forward blinds revealed a hull down T-54 that made a mess out of my AAV-7 (King Cobra II), luckily after all combat Marines exited, a zeroed-in 82mm M37 relic, an SPG-9, An effective RPD team, and later a flanking force of 2 Cuban infantry squads packed into a BTR-60. Right now I'm at the end of Turn 3 and about to test for initiative on Turn 4, the Marines took a beating early on but started dealing out payback on the last turn. Will be interesting to see how morale holds up for both sides...Thanks again JWH. You helped me get to this point of wargaming satisfaction after many years of frustration.
No worries Forper, pleased I could help. I am *not* an expert on Firefight but know enough about it to have a game, that's all. I am not sure it was ever that popular IIRC. It definitely does have a different feel to THW or the quite similar Nordic Weasel type games: lots more detail. You are quite right that the emphasis on these rules isn't so much on 'elegant mechanisms' but more straightforward 'here is a thing which happens, here is a rule for it' presentation.
DeleteI don't know if you have every played it, but you might want to check out the boardgame Firepower, you might enjoy that too: it shares a somewhat similar design philosophy https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/3692/firepower
Ah thanks again JWH. Yes that style really appeals to me. I guess I was always searching for that original feeling I had when I first got into wargames and looking at modern rulesets for that. Which was a mistake. If I wanted that original feeling I had to go back to rulesets from that period when I was first into this stuff. I think the '80s was the greatest time for so many things, that hasn't changed. The rules aren't perfectly written but they are deep and beautiful. Yep provided me great satisfcation I never got from Force on Force, No End in Sight, NUTS!/FNG, FUBAR, etc etc. If you copy out all the weapon stats you need onto the provided section sheets then cross referencing isn't as time consuming. I got quite fast at calculating effects by the end of 6 turn game I have just finished. eg: I started rolling 2 different coloured D20s simultaneously, 1 for sighting and one to hit. If either of the numbers were obviously failures then I moved on without looking up anything further. Obviously successes then I could move straight to effects on personel, structures or vehicles. Effects feel so right. I was actually able to satisfiyingly work out the effects of a hit on a metre thick log reinforced bunker wall with SMAW HEDP round. The RPD team I wanted to take out was actually firing from a second wall behind that and in the end it blew their heads off after detonating between the walls. Fragments (penetration value 1) even hit and penetrated a box of SPG-9 ammo (defence value 1, requiring a 9 or 10 to punch through) that was in the bunker and blew that sky high in a secondary explosion! So much fun. I ordered Firepower from Noble Knight about a month ago and no sign of it so far. I had heard that Bruce took some inspiration from it, I am however mainly getting it for the counters. I feel like I've come home and found my ruleset for life now. These can even be adapted to other eras and even fantasy settings. The initiative and morale system is beautiful too!
ReplyDeleteGreat that it is working out so well for you and doing what you are asking of it - makes me really want to break it out myself.
DeleteYeah I'm really having a good time. Already planning my next scenario, it will probably involve the Marines running down the Vera Blanca highway to Havana to relieve their two companies brought in by helo the night before. I started a blog for my campaign if anyone's interested: https://cscspooky.wordpress.com/tag/fire-fight-msr/
ReplyDeleteI will check it out.
DeleteCool and I hope you do break it out again. It's really worthy and deep. To me beauty isn't just glossy pages and pretty miniatures, it's the spirit of the rules and this spirit matches my personal aims for wargaming. I know you are very accomplished wargamer from your blog and much more diverse in your knowledge but if you get the time Fire Fight is worth a second or third play for anyone, even to just test out the vehicle rules, which are great imo.
ReplyDeleteThanks Forper.
DeleteI remember playing this at USMA in the early 90s. Now I need to dig out my rules and the 20mms I have. It was a fun and quick rule set.
ReplyDeleteGlad you remembered it fondly
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