Welcome back to Firefight Fridays. Last week, in the tenth article, I talked about the fourth scenario, “About Last Night”. We looked at exciting new mechanics introduced by that scenario, like mortars and snipers. This week we will be moving on to one of my favorite scenarios, “Purple Heart Lane.” Purple Heart Lane is our Carentan scenario, and it adds a couple more new mechanics: multi-deck scenarios and off board artillery.
Welcome back to Firefight Fridays. Last week in the ninth article I talked about the third scenario, “Shot in the Dark”. I covered a couple of new concepts like reinforcements and night combat, neither of which are too different from what we have seen before. Well, buckle up, because this week we are jumping into “About Last Night”. Scenario 4 adds a few interesting new experiences to the game: multi-front scenario entry, snipers, and mortars. Multi-front scenario entry is pretty simple to understand, but let’s talk about snipers and mortars a little bit first and after we will jump into the details of “About Last Night.”
Over the years, Fields of Fire has proved to be quite tricky to learn for a lot of people. As a solitaire wargame, the usual method of a finding an experienced opponent, or even a club of experienced players, to guide you through learning this new, complex system is a non-starter. This leaves you at the mercy of the Internet and its hidden pearls of wisdom amongst an awful lot of noise.
For Fields of Fire Deluxe, we address this in a few different ways:
We intend to offer up our design notes regarding our simulation of the 2nd Russo-Ukrainian War, Defiance, beginning with Volume 1: Miracle on Dnipro: Kyiv & Chernihiv Campaign, from time to time. Given that we are designing a simulation regarding an ongoing conflict, it’s a first draft of history. Consequently, at least you’ll get some insight into why we got some items wrong 🙂
In our fourth article in this series, our developer, Bob Heinzmann, pipes up. As always, feel free to break out a beverage of your choice. We always include a recipe for a cocktail, mocktail, or appetizer at the end of each of our Defiance Design Happy Hour articles. This time, we go with a mean RED RAZ Martini.
In the early days of 2020, as most of us were in confinement because of the COVID-19 pandemic, I found myself diving deep into Volko’s COIN series. My journey into the COIN system began somewhat by accident. I had played a couple of games, only with two players, and hadn’t enjoyed the experience. But as I discovered a new Discord server dedicated to the series, full of young and fun players, I finally wrapped my head around the genius of Volko’s system. There was a lot of enthusiasm and creative energy in this online space, and we all had a lot of time on our hands. One of the people that struck me the most was Joe Dewhurst. I tried and thoroughly enjoyed the early version of his prototype of The Pure Land. You might say it was love at first sight.
Three Days of Gettysburg Deluxe Edition’s design is picking up pace and is now moving through both alpha and beta testing of the current scenarios.
These include the traditional first-day battle. However, multiple scenarios have different starting times for the whole July 1st fight. The first scenario begins at 7 AM and is designed with the optional Skirmisher rules to cover the small unit fighting and maneuvering before the Union infantry arrive. While the original 3DoG first-day scenario was fun and exciting with a slow-moving Southern infantry division facing a nimble but smaller Union cavalry force, it had little to do with the actual history of the morning fight before Reynold’s Union infantry arrived. The typical competitive play focused on the threat of cavalry charges against the flanks of the Rebel force and had no resemblance to the fighting early on that July day.
All the French Tanks can be seen. Most of the Germans can also be seen.
French Commands – The Tanks have Fire commands while the infantry, coming from off board, have Move commands.
Welcome back to Firefight Fridays. Last week in the eighth article I talked about the second scenario, “Between the Reich and a Hard Place”. To do that, we had to cover the basics of support weapons. Now as we move on this week we will look at the third scenario, “A Shot in the Dark”. This scenario is a demonstration of two new concepts in the game: night combat, and reinforcements.
It was a good year! Thirty-six individuals competed across a spectrum of five Revolutionary War games at RevCon during Prezcon in Charlottesville, Virginia last week.
As always, players either played in only a single favorite game, in multiple games, or they competed in all five games in pursuit of the coveted “George Washington Award” for excellence in American Revolutionary War gaming. This year’s “George,” as we affectionately call the plaque, was once again provided by friend of the series Tim Miller with Miller EG Designs. We are grateful to Tim for his generosity.
The relatively simple rules of Manoeuvre leave plenty of room for stratagem, despite the card-fueled bouts of dice-chucking. Sometimes the game feels like chess as you feint, counterattack, and reinforce on a tight map. And while combat may be subject to the whims of fortune, your movement across the map is almost always in your control. Thus, thoughtful movement of your pieces and careful hand management are crucial pillars of a successful strategy. Here are five strategy tips to try out in your next game.
