Welcome to the inaugural InsideGMT article for Firefight Tactical (FFT), and the beginning of Firefight Fridays. I am going to start putting out a small article every week to give more insight into my design process for FFT, along with some previews of scenarios, units, and mechanics. I wanted to put these together to drive interest in the game (of course), but also shed some light on the more unfamiliar aspects of Firefight Tactical. For this first article I want to focus on the heart and soul of Firefight Tactical: the dice draft.

Dice Drafting on the Battlefield

Firefight Tactical is run by drafting impulse dice. Each impulse turn, a player is drafting one of these dice and then assigning them to one of their available units. They are then able to take an action with that unit that corresponds to that assigned die. These dice give the player a multitude of options on their turn, while keeping the decision space easy to understand. What the dice represent is far from simple, however. The impulse dice in FFT represent an amalgamation of your strength of command, momentum on the battlefield, and the chaos of battle. The most important thing to note when looking at this formula is that only 1/3 of what it represents is supposed to be outside of the player’s control. My intent in designing the impulse dice pools was that they serve both as an external limitation on your options, representing imperfections in your ability to have your orders followed, but also as an abstract representation of how your actions impact the flow of battle.

Let’s get into some specifics. The most obvious way your chosen dice impact the game is in which action you chose to resolve with them. When we take a step beyond that though, we see that the dice that you draft are not just an action you can take, but an action your opponent now cannot take. This can be quite clear when you take the last yellow die, or the last 3, but the truth is that every time you take a die you are limiting your opponent’s options. Perhaps now instead of being able to conduct opportunity fire 3 times this Game Turn they can only conduct opportunity fire twice, and that ends up making all the difference. Players more experienced in the system will spend at least as much time thinking about their opponent’s options and limitations as they do about their own.

There is another layer on top of this dynamic, however. When we look at the action menus on the unit counters, we can see that the Axis and Allied action menus are the inverse of one another. Dice that are associated with aggression on one side are associated with mobility on the other side, and vice versa. This is done to represent that the more aggression you inflict on your opponent, the harder it is for them to get their units into motion. Conversely, the more mobile your forces are, the harder it is for your opponent to meaningfully consolidate firepower. As a result, even when you are not intentionally curbing your opponent’s capabilities you are still limiting them.

The Momentum of Combat

This is all to say, strategy and tactics when playing FFT are not limited to moving your units around and laying down fire. Games can be won or lost by the management of momentum in the field represented by the dice pool. When I have introduced FFT to new players, frequently at conventions, I will opt to play the defender in whatever scenario we are demoing. This is because players who are well initiated into tactical gaming tend to fixate on the movement of units on the battlefield. This is generally more appropriate for the attacker in a scenario than the defender. The attacker cares about the dice pool as well of course, but their bias is towards action and changing the status quo of the scenario. As the defender I am more interested in waiting for my opponent to make a mistake or fail at a certain gambit, so I can then exploit it. To those unfamiliar with the system this looks like I am digging into a good position and taking the occasional pot shot until I find a chance to strike. On the contrary – I am playing a very different game, and my attention is fixed on the dice pool.

If a player would prefer to pass their impulse, they always have the option to simply burn and discard any one die from the common pool. This seems like a simple passing action, but this is a tremendously powerful option. Again, my less experienced attacking opponent thinks I am digging in and waiting, but each time I pass I am crushing their options. The dice that enabled their ability to tactically advance without taking fire are now gone. The dice that improved their likelihood of discovering good covering terrain are now gone. The dice that they could have used to pop smoke so they could run up the road are gone. That didn’t happen randomly. I controlled the flow of dice in the pool, so now their only option is to make the much riskier play in order that I might exploit it.

Private Reserve Dice

There are some other aspects of the dice draft that I would like to cover in this article. Firstly, is the private reserve. Each player also has access to their own private reserve of dice. These dice are rolled at the same time as the common pool and can be drafted from instead of from the common pool for the player that owns that reserve. The private reserve is especially powerful because, A) it can dictate who has initiative (stay tuned for a future article), and B) after drafting from the private reserve you can burn a die of your choice from the common pool. This means that not only are you able to count on access to the dice in your private reserve, but also when you use them you can eliminate a particularly worrisome option of your opponent’s. Knowing when to use your private reserve and how to plan around your opponent’s reserve will be key to optimal play in Firefight Tactical.

Game Timer Dice

The next thing I want to cover is the Game Timer. Each Game Turn of Firefight Tactical is punctuated by taking the next time die in the track called the “Game Timer” and adding it to the common pool. If there is no die left in the Game Timer to add to the common pool, the scenario ends. This has the very cool effect of making Game Turns grow steadily longer. The action hits a nice crescendo, where your early Game Turns are quick and pithy, and by the time victory in the scenario is being decided, there will be lots of options in the dice pool and more room for counter play.

Painting History with Dice

I cover all of this to point out that the dice in the common pool, the private reserves, and the Game Timer for a scenario are all specific to that scenario. Dice in the private reserve indicate the relative focus or command disposition of a side in that battle. The common pool represents the general momentum and chaos of the battle. The Game Timer adds specific dice one at time into the pool to try and inject some of the story of that battle. Perhaps neither side was anticipating the level of resistance they encountered, so there are a lot of white dice. White dice are generic, with limited options, so this represents everyone being caught a bit flat footed. Then they get their act together and try to outmaneuver the enemy, so more yellow dice get introduced. Then the battle turns into a slog and morale decides the victor, so we start pumping in blue dice. The injection of certain colors at certain times can have a large impact on the number of options and the story that is organically forming on the gaming table.

Expect the Unexpected

The last piece I wanted to cover was the nature of 6s. If you look at the unit counters in Firefight Tactical you will see that there are no 6s. That is because, when you roll the dice pool at the beginning of the Game Turn, all the 6s are discarded before the draft even begins. I included this in the game because the size of the dice pool is in effect the duration of the Game Turn. Not only that, but the colors of the dice are associated with certain families of actions and the number of available dice of each color give a good idea of what capabilities units will have that turn. By removing the 6s, you never know how many dice, and how many dice of each color will be available.

This uncertainty in the pacing of the battle is mirrored thematically in the event table for that scenario. After the dice are rolled at the beginning of the Game Turn, the 6s removed from the common pool are consulted, and the event corresponding to the number of dice removed is resolved. In essence, the disruption in the pacing is explained by the event itself. A small disruption in the number of dice could be due to the unexpected rallying of a heavily pinned squad, while a much larger disruption could be due to naval bombardment or unexpected reinforcements.

Leave (Almost) Nothing up to Chance

That is about all I wanted to cover with this first article. I am always a bit concerned that people see the number of dice in Firefight Tactical and assume it is a massive luck fest where you are rolling twenty dice per attack a la some miniatures wargames out there. Dice are certainly rolled to resolve your actions in FFT, but only two at a time, I promise! And the fact that checks in the game are rolled with two dice means you’re dealing with an odds curve. The large number of small dice in the game are there to organically model the story of the battle and the limitations of your command under fire. Now that we have discussed what the dice represent, next week we will talk about what they do – looking at the action menus on units, and how they are organized. Thanks a lot for reading!

TLDR: Game good, please preorder.

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