Welcome back to Firefight Fridays. Last week we covered the game’s bot, how it works, and the design philosophy behind it. This week we are wrapping up Firefight Fridays with a subject I am very excited about. I have mentioned many times over the course of this series how I wanted it to be easy and rewarding to build custom scenarios for Firefight Tactical. Even the core game scenarios themselves were designed in part to demonstrate the ease of making tweaks to the system to significantly alter gameplay. This week we will be talking about the logic behind custom scenario creation. Let’s jump in.
Welcome back to Firefight Fridays. Last week we wrapped up our coverage of the scenarios in the core box with “Crossing the River Styx”. We are nearing the end of Firefight Fridays, but before we call it a wrap, I have two more things to talk about. This week I will be doing an overview of the bot in Firefight Tactical. I have covered the bot elsewhere, mostly on YouTube, but I wanted to make sure I talked about it as part of this series and use the freedom to talk about why I designed it the way that I did. Let’s go.
Welcome back to Firefight Fridays. Last week we covered the paratrooper scenario “Best Laid Plans”. We also took a look at Demolition Teams. This week we will talking about the final scenario of the core box, “Crossing the River Styx”. This scenario covers the battle for Nijmegen. There are no new rules to introduce in this scenario (though there are a couple scenario specific ones). It is just a big, epic scenario with all the bells and whistles on it. Let’s jump in.
Bridge Over Troubled Waters
After securing the canal crossing at Eindhoven, the next set of bridges to fall for Operation Market Garden were those in the city of Nijmegen. The British forces which had dropped at the final city of Arnhem were up against stiff resistance and needed to be relieved. This meant time was of the essence for the paratroopers at Nijmegen. Unfortunately, delays after the drop gave the German defenders of the city time to organize a defense and secure the targeted bridges over the Waal River. Most of the bridges were destroyed, but the primary road and rail bridges were occupied and remained intact. After days of sustained fighting in the city itself, desperation led to a plan by the Americans to use canvas boats to cross the Waal River downstream of the bridges and then attack from the side. The thought was that continued conventional fighting over the bridges would cost the Allies in Arnhem time they did not have. The plan was a success, but came at the cost of heavy casualties from the men of the 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment while crossing the river.
Welcome back to Firefight Fridays. Last week we got back onto talking about the scenarios with scenario #10, Panzer in the Pocket. This week we will be talking about the penultimate scenario “Best Laid Plans”. This one has has a small but interesting wrinkle to it that I will cover first, then a new unit type, and then we will get into the usual overview.
Welcome back to Firefight Fridays. Last week I took a bit of a breather to recover from GMT’s Weekend at the Warehouse. This week we are starting on the home stretch of scenarios going into the core box. We begin with “Panzer in the Pocket”, our Falaise Pocket scenario. This is our first scenario with infantry guns, so we will cover that first and then get on with the scenario work up. Let’s jump right in.
Welcome back to Firefight Fridays. This is going to be a very brief article this week, but I wanted to both give myself a moment to recuperate (ran a LOT of demos over the last week) and also talk about how Firefight Tactical was received at GMT this month.
Welcome back to Firefight Fridays. Last week, in the fourteenth article, I talked about the eighth scenario, “Hedgerow Highway”. This scenario saw the first of a series of much larger battle grids and plenty of combined arms action. This week we are continuing that trend with our Mortain scenario, “To Hill with Them”. This scenario also makes heavy usage of the elevation rules that we covered last week. There aren’t any new rules to look at this week, so let’s jump right in.
Welcome back to Firefight Fridays. Last week, in the thirteenth article, I talked about the seventh scenario, “To the Last Man, to the Last Cartridge”. This was Firefight Tactical’s Cherbourg scenario and got into some claustrophobic urban fighting. This week we are getting into some claustrophobic rural fighting with our St. Lo scenario, “Hedgerow Highway.” Despite what I said last week, we do have to cover some new rules this week. Let’s start by talking about elevation!
Welcome back to Firefight Fridays. Last week, in the twelfth article, I talked about the sixth scenario, “Bloody Gulch”. This involved a rules dump on vehicles. Now that we have covered all of that, virtually all the game’s core rules have been covered. We can instead start jumping straight into the scenarios. This week we are talking about “To the Last Man, to the Last Cartridge”, our Cherbourg scenario.
Welcome back to Firefight Fridays. Last week, in the eleventh article, I talked about the fifth scenario, “Purple Heart Lane”. This got us into artillery and multi-deck scenarios. All this pales in comparison to this week though, where we only have one thing to cover before our scenario: Armor. Almost every scenario from here on out will feature vehicles in some capacity so they will be important to understand.
