The second run of my little comparison scenario is based on Crossfire Lite by “Warren”. The rules are a simplification of the Crossfire system by Arty Conliffe.

The system is particular in that movement and shooting are not limited by distance. A unit can move forward indefinitely, as long as it does so along a straight line and on homogeneous terrain. So, it is important to have different kinds of terrain, in order to make things interesting. Initiative is kept by each side until actions (shooting, close combat or recover) are failed. The other side can try to acquire initiative by means of Reaction fire against figures moving into sight.

This is the already described initial set-up: the red Attackers are led by the guy with the pistol. They must cross a stream and a wood and reach the building on the North side of the board. The Defenders are initially represented by four PEFs (Possible Enemy Forces) that can resolve to a minimum of 3 and a maximum of 4 figures.

The advanced PEF near the stream is resolved as a single figure.

Turn 1: Attackers

They move forward towards the stream. The Defender shoots and misses. All the attackers can reach the stream. They shoot to the Defender and the first attempt “Suppresses” it (this was lucky, since two dice were rolled and two results of 5-6 were needed).

Suppressed units cannot move nor fire and are penalized in Close Combat. The leader crosses the stream and easily kills the Defender in close combat.

Since there are no enemies in sight, all can freely move until the North border of the wood, where they come in sight of two more PEFs. Those are resolved as two figures (so the last PEF is removed, since we have reached the number of 3 Defenders).

The Defender shoot, but they only score Pins, so the Attackers keep the initiative. The Leader manages to recover one of the Pined units, then fails.

Turn 1: Defenders

They shoot to the attackers, but they are in cover so they only score a pin and lose the initiative.

Turn 2: Attackers.

The leader manages to Recover all his men.

A couple of figures have sight of one of the builds they must reach, and can go there with a single move, avoiding the rough going terrain represented by the brown triangles.

The figures try to reach that building, but they are pinned by Reaction fire. Pinning the adversaries does not grant the initiative, with stays with the Attackers. Moreover, the Defenders have spent their Reaction fire, and now they can only wait for the Attackers to fail. The Leader move out in the open, until the border of the rough going area. He successfully recovers the two Pinned figures. Then he moves forward into Close Combat with one of the Defenders and kills him.

Again, lucky rolls for the attackers. On the left, another Attackers moves into Close Combat. It’s basically a fifty-fifty fight, but the Attacking side is lucky again.

All the Defenders have been killed in Close Combat without any loss on the Attacking side.

The Crossfire system is really special, this is apparent also in this very simplified version. It it important to get the initiative and to make the best possible use of it. In general, I also used a better attacking strategy: since the Defenders are in a good position, going for hand to hand combat is the option that gives more possibilities of success (while long exchanges of fire could in the long run benefit the Defenders, as happened with the PZ8 run of the scenario). It must also be noted that today the Defenders have been regularly unlucky with the dice (starting from the fact that they only got 3 figures from the PEFs).

This is the first in what I hope will be a short series of games comparing different sets of rules on the same scenario.

The scenario is straightforward: five Attackers enter the map from the South. Their objective is to cross a stream and reach the three buildings on the opposite site of the map. The Attackers should search the three buildings: a figure must end its movement next to each building and roll 4-6 on a d6. The defenders are initially represented by 4 PEFs (Possible Enemy Forces, using Two Hours Wargames terminology). Each PEF is resolved by rolling a d6 when the Attackers get in sight: 1-2=no Defender; 3-4=1 Defender; 5-6 2 Defenders. I decided not to remove all PEFs after 3 or 4 Defenders were generated (since there are only 5 Attackers, 3 or 4 Defenders should be enough).

The guy with the gun is the leader of the Attackers: a Veteran. All the other fighters (Attackers and Defenders) are average figures armed with rifles.

The first set of rules I have used is the Pz8 Ultra Simple Postcard Sized WW2 Infantry Skirmish Wargame Rules.

With these rules, whenever a figure must do something (moving or firing) a d6 is rolled. If a 1 or 2 is rolled, the action fails and the turn passes to the other side. When firing, a 5 or 6 is a success, i.e. a kill. No special states for the figures are specified.

Turn 1: The first PEF was resolved as a single Defenders. The Attackers have the initiative, and manage to kill the Defenders at the second shot (a 6 was needed, since the Defender was in cover).

Turn 2 and 3: The Attackers cross the stream.

Turn 4: the Attackers cross the wood area across the stream and get into view of the two PEFs near the first two buildings. The PEFs are resolved as three Defenders (so I removed the last PEF, having generated a total of 4 Defenders). The first two Attackers to get in view of the Defenders are immediately killed (6 rolls again, since the Attackers are now also in cover).

Turn 5: the other Attackers move to the border of the wood. More shooting on both sides, but all miss.

Turn 6 and 7: more firing. An Attacker and a Defender killed. Now there are only two Attackers and two Defenders left.

Turn 8: one of the Attackers runs forward and fights Hand to Hand against one of the Defenders. In the PZ8 rules, HTH immediately leads to the death of one of the two contenders. In this case, the Attacker loses.

Turn 9 to 12: shooting between the only surviving attacker and the two Defenders.

Turn 13: the Attacker moves in close combat and is killed.

The game was extremely quick. A rather easy victory for the Defenders, who only lost half of their men.