Sometimes it’s difficult to entirely glean the ‘meaning’ of a wargame from reading through the rules, or even, in some instances, from playing the game. Solitaire games are rarely discussed across the table with another live human, so the opportunity to noodle through them is further reduced.
My take on Fields of Fire is that it largely centers on planning and on command control. Mission planning – the ‘pre-game’ – should be as important to the player as it is to a real-life infantry officer. That’s actually a hefty culture change for many wargamers, and especially for gamers used to pushing around counters that represent squads.
Don’t get me wrong. That’s not to say that other squad-level games don’t benefit from planning. But for the most part it’s very broad-brush planning. Fields of Fire requires you to think at an entirely different level of detail. There’s the usual ‘who gets the machinegun?’ stuff, of course. And the almost-as-common ‘where are we going?’ plan. But then comes the ‘how do I tell my guys when to do it’ part – which isn’t often found in tactical wargaming.
It's like purple haze, man.
Ask anybody who has ever tried to direct 25 or 30 people in accomplishing a complex task that requires coordination and teamwork. Large groups of people – even well-trained people – generally need simple, specific instructions to get from Task A to Task B without screwing something up. I imagine instructions need to be even clearer and more specific when the tasks involve getting shot at.
Fields of Fire spans about 40 years of military technology. In the Vietnam campaign, the availability of decent field radios makes control a bit easier. In the Normandy campaign, though, you’ve really got to work at a signals plan to keep a handle on things (and to get the full flavor of the game, I think).
Who has a radio and who can they talk to? Are you going to use field telephones instead? Who’s carrying wire? Where are your pyrotechnics assigned and what do they mean?
Pet peeve mode for a minute. I think the use of pyro signals is often misunderstood. I’ve seen a few example roster sheets around the Internet that are really kind of a mess, with actions like “Move up” or “Shift fire” assigned to various pyro signals.
Think about it for a second. ‘Move up’ to where? ‘Shift fire’ to what? That’s really not the way visual signals work. Game-wise, remember that every unit that can see a visual signal will attempt to execute the order assigned to the signal. So unless you want your whole company charging forward when you fire off that ‘Move up’ Green Star Cluster, you probably need to come up with a more life-like signals plan.
That’s where Tactical Controls come in. Things like phase lines and point controls are there for a reason – you can key your signals to them so that things make more sense for your ‘guys’ and they stand a better chance of doing what you want, when you want it done.
But let me wrap up this rant before I use up my entire word quota for the day. My next post will examine some of my pre-game planning – including my notion of what a signals plan should look like.
