After a long period of planning, I have finally kicked off a Crossfire campaign, set in Normandy 1944, consisting of rounds of connected Crossfire battles, each representing one day. The battles will be fought by five pairs of players, one British and one German, all at separate locations during each real world month. The results will be used to determine the progress of the campaign and what happens in the next round.
Crossfire is a WW2 game played at up to battalion level, usually at 15 or 20mm. It uses a flexible turn system, where one player keeps making moves until something goes wrong – a failed rally roll, incoming reactive fire etc, and then the initiative passes to the other player. This results in a very tactical game which avoids being a head-to-head grind like many rule sets.
The map being used is a 1:50,000 from the period. There’s an excellent scan available at this site Caen – Normandy War Guide. The location is about twelve miles west of Caen. It’s 18 June – 12 days after D-day and although the Allies have pushed in twenty miles from the coast, they’ve been unable to break the German defences in Caen itself, in spite of it being an early objective. The German coastal defenses were held by low quality infantry divisions which have been pushed back rapidly by overwhelming allied forces. In the last few days, some better quality panzer divisions, held in reserve, are beginning to stabilise the line. This map shows the two front lines on day 1 of the campaign.
Below is an example showing how orders will be marked on the campaign map. To give an idea of scale, each map square will correspond to 4’x4′ on the table and each of the blobs an infantry battalion. The inner circle represents it being in relatively close order – the outer circle the maximum size of a typical frontage when attacking.
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