Welcome back to Firefight Fridays. Last week, in the sixth article, I wrote up an AAR based on our recorded playthrough of scenario 7, “To the Last Man, To the Last Cartridge”. This week we are shifting gears into the first in a multi-part series on the scenario design of Firefight Tactical. For this first article, since we will be covering the smaller first scenario, “Done with Sand”, I want to take a little bit of time to cover my scenario design philosophy for Firefight Tactical in general.
What Was it All For?
From the beginning I wanted to make Firefight Tactical a gaming system instead of just a game. Had I thought differently, I would have approached many aspects of its design much differently than I did. As such, for scenario design I am always trying to balance many competing priorities. These priorities are, in no particular order, historicity, system education, toolkit demonstration, and fun. As far as I am concerned, if I ignored any one of these priorities the game would not end up what I want it to be. Let’s take a moment to cover what I mean by each of these priorities.
Prioritizing historicity is a no brainer, at least to the extent that it can reasonably be achieved in this milieu. With only one exception, the first thought for every scenario I designed in Firefight Tactical was “what battle of the Normandy Campaign do I want to model next?” (Americans only, sorry Commonwealth and Poles. I haven’t forgotten you.) The great thing about writing scenarios for historical games is that the content is already there. There is a never-ending supply of heroism and tragedy to draw from. The bad part is that you frequently must ignore or downplay some realities in order to make the game playable and serve the other three priorities. I am glad to say that I am happy with the level of historicity in Firefight Tactical, in part because of the scenario design, but even more so because of the feel of playing the scenarios. Every scenario emphasizes the difficulties wrestling a tangle of knowns and unknowns on the battlefield within a specific historical context, and I personally love every minute of that.
System education is a common priority in scenario design, and it is important to me too. Essentially this means that the first scenario is easy to play, and by the last scenario you have seen all the things. This is especially important to me because of two of my major design goals for Firefight Tactical. First, I don’t want Firefight Tactical to be an intimidating tactical game to learn. Second, I want players to feel like they can take a break at any point in their system education and still feel like they are playing a complete game. Many games with the “scenarios are tutorials” approach can leave me with the feeling that I am not even playing the real game until the last scenario. In Firefight Tactical you are playing the core game rules from the first scenario, and then everything added thereafter offers more detail, chrome and flash for when you are ready for more.
Toolkit demonstration is a priority near and dear to my heart. I frequently emphasize that I designed Firefight Tactical to be a system for which it is trivial to develop custom scenarios (in fact you can do it live at the table). Since I am trying to emphasize the system’s flexibility and the creativity it can handle, it wouldn’t make much sense for me to make 12 scenarios that are all the same except for different units and terrain. For the most part, each scenario in Firefight Tactical contains a small (to quite large) unique scenario mechanic. These mechanics are not impactful enough to detract from the core gameplay, but are large enough (I hope) to spring to mind when players are trying to come up with their own designs and say “that was cool in scenario 10 when all the timer dice started in the draft pool and then were removed each turn instead. That is a cool way to model dwindling command support.”
Third, regarding fun. It’s why we play games in the first place, right? None of the above would matter if the game wasn’t fun. Fun encompasses a lot of important aspects of the scenario. Balance, pacing, play time, and replayability come to mind. There were moments when I had to make concessions to the other three priorities to make sure I never sacrificed fun, and I think the results validate those choices. Sure, there are times that what was historically a lopsided battle gets modeled as more of an even struggle. There are battles that lasted for a better part of a day that are instead resolved as smaller skirmishes (I just say you are looking at a zoomed in area and time of the larger battle). Perhaps the biggest concession benefits replayability. I won’t retread the ground I covered in Firefight Friday #3, but obviously having a random battlefield gets in the way of historicity. It does, however, radically improve gameplay and replayability. It is all a balancing act.
Getting Off the Beach
That’s enough philosophy, let’s talk about the first scenario. “Done with Sand” follows elements of the 16th Infantry Regiment of the 1st Infantry Division on D Day. It depicts beleaguered Americans who only just made it off Omaha Beach before encountering somewhat disorganized Germans in an ambush on the outskirts of Colleville-sur-Mer, France. For the first scenario I wanted a small unit engagement on a smaller scale which occurred early in the Normandy Campaign, and I found it here.
For the scenario itself I wanted to keep things elementally basic. It is the first scenario after all. To keep it quick and to the point, it has the smallest battle grid in the game at 4×4. The German objective is purely to stop the American attacker from overrunning the German position. I wanted to give the German defenders a strong position so they wouldn’t have to move very much in such small confines to mount a decent defense, so their starting position is quite good. Considering this is the outskirts of the town I simply threw two farmhouses on opposite sides of the road. For the Americans I wanted to give them a strong approach. The terrain was not nearly as inhospitable as some that would be encountered in the future, so the terrain deck is mostly open terrain, with the occasional stone wall or group of trees.
For the events I was largely highlighting how disorganized everything was for both sides. The Big Red One incurred so many casualties on Omaha Beach that their command structure was in shambles, while the Germans were still reeling from a surprise attack. As such, the events focus on inexperienced leaders being indecisive, and soldiers being confused about where they are supposed to be.
I kept the dice pool for this one intentionally generic. The pool is a lot of generic white dice and one die of each color. The Americans have an extra yellow mobility die in their reserve along with a blue command die while the Germans have an extra red aggression die and a blue command die. The timer slowly adds a balanced selection of dice and caps the scenario at 7 turns which comes out to a roughly 40-minute play time. All in all, it achieves my goals for a first scenario. It is fast, gets into the action quickly, demonstrates core mechanisms, and doesn’t overstay its welcome. Now let’s touch on strategy.
The Big Red One
At face value the Americans have the most to do in this scenario. They need to close the distance to the farmhouses and get bodies into them to force the Germans out. This can be achieved by concentrated fire, but in practice this usually comes down to pinning the house’s occupants and running into melee for a close assault. The greatest challenge for the Americans is crossing the distance. Winning play for this scenario tends to come down to a multi-prong approach. Taking 1 to 2 squads up either side of the road enables you to prod the German defender for weakness in the line and then to capitalize on it. The German has so few forces in this scenario that even pinning 2 units can be a huge deal. That is ultimately it: two pronged- approach, test the line for weakness, reinforce where you see opportunity, pin the enemy, then close. Also, don’t forget to scout the road. Finding decent terrain halfway up that road is a game changer and can help to cut the battle grid in two.
On the Back Foot
Germans are a paper tiger in this scenario. Sometimes that is enough though. Your initial setup will be crucial. It is important to create a balanced position on both sides of the road. It may seem like you don’t have much to do in this scenario because of your small unit count, but this is Firefight Tactical, and you have most of the power. Since you will be spending a lot of time passing so you can wait for openings for opportunity fire, you have the most impact on the dice pool. Focus on hate drafting lower numbers and yellow dice. This will significantly hamper the American’s mobility and force them to take riskier action that will set you up for devastating opportunity fire. My biggest tip for German players in Done with Sand is to not be afraid to advance. Due to your setup recon, you will secretly know what the terrain adjacent to your starting position is. If any of it is defensible, advance into it so that you have more ground to fall back to and deny that position to the enemy. Chances are some of that terrain will also be poor. Feign weakness by bluffing a decoy squad in such cases to convince them to push a perceived weakness just to enter a trap. Remember that the timer is your friend. You don’t need to kill them, you just need to stall them.
Pointing Forward
That’s it for this week. Next week we will be talking about the game’s second scenario “Between the Reich and a Hard Place” which covers American Rangers at Pont du Hoc. We will be covering scenarios for a while except for the occasional week where we will cover mechanisms required to understand future scenarios. Look forward to it!
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Author: Sam London
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