In the initial scenario of Field of Fire’s Normandy campaign, task organization isn’t rocket science. Everybody is at full-strength and the mission seems fairly straightforward. As a player, all you have to do is remember two things: 1) organize according to mission tasks and 2) organize to keep your cardboard company under control.

In the historical time frame covered by the game, organic fire support is a real challenge for the US. Compared to your run-of-the-mill German infantry company, a run-of-the-mill American infantry company has very few machineguns. Light machineguns were a squad-level weapon in the German Army. American tactical doctrine at the time kept the machineguns (and not very many of them, at that) at the company level so they could be doled out as support teams by the CO.

This means machineguns are a precious asset. As I organize my company for action, I’ve got three teams to assign: two light MG teams (.30 cal guns) and one heavy MG team (.50 cal gun). This is a very straight ‘by the book’ TO&E, so apparently all of the skilled scroungers have been taken by one of the other rifle companies.

The Starting Lineup

The game system encourages dispersion when it comes to assigning assets. Here’s why: If you concentrate the deployment of your support weapons, it’s very likely that they will all spot and engage the same target at the same time. The result will be a huge waste of valuable machinegun ammo, because combat is based on a Volume-of-Fire principle that is NOT additive – usually only the ‘best’ VOF rating (in terms of combat modifier) is applied to a target card. So if both of your light machinegun teams and the heavy machinegun team all engage the same target, you still only get a net -1 combat modifier – but all three teams expend a unit of ammo.

So my machinegun teams are going to be deployed with a little distance between them. First platoon and second platoon each get a light MG team. I figure that 1 Plt, my main maneuver element, may need some close-in firepower as it tries to close on the objectives. 2 Plt is my base of fire, so it gets a light MG too. The heavy MG team stays unattached and under the direct control of the CO.

There are some other support assets to dole out. Each platoon gets one of the company’s three bazooka teams. Then there’s the matter of what to do with the company’s 3-tube platoon of 60mm mortars.

Two options are available for deployment of the mortars. Option 1 is to deploy them as a complete platoon which can lay down an ‘H’ (heavy weapons) rated VOF. Option 2 is to break the platoon up into its three constituent 1-tube mortar teams, each of which can generate a ‘G!’ (grenade) rated VOF.

An H-rated VOF carries an -3 net combat modifier that impacts every unit on the target card. A G!-rated VOF generates a -4 NCM against a single target unit — IF a grenade attack attempt is successful. And G!-rated VOF is the only VOF in the game that is additive.

Tough decision. But I’m fairly new to the game and I want to keep as tight a rein on my cardboard grunts as possible, so I opt to deploy the mortars as a unitary platoon. This will also simplify ammo resupply.

One further note to amend some of my earlier organization. The company’s XO will not be deploying with 3 Plt as I had originally planned. For the time being, our Junior Butterbars is going to stay under the CO’s thumb as a sort of combination licensed troubleshooter/glorified gofer.

As it is entirely a solitaire exercise, one of the things you should understand about Fields of Fire is this: The instant you sit down at the table with it, you are playing the game. It’s not like other ‘tactical’ games where you spend 20 or 30 minutes setting things up and then begin play. In Fields of Fire, ‘set up’ is part of playing the game.

Once you’ve finished placing terrain cards and potential contact markers on the table (or on the virtual table, in my case), you’re out of god mode and smack into your game-role of company commander. You have to receive your mission (read the scenario), develop a plan to accomplish the mission (figure out how to hit the victory conditions), task organize to fit your plan (fill out your force roster) and then structure tactical controls and comms to help keep your guys organized and in command during mission execution.

Map with tactical controls

Certainly, you can fudge the whole process. But why cheat yourself? A large part of the game’s ‘simulation value’ is built around coming up with a plan, and then seeing how well that plan handles events as the mission unfolds.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, the better your comms plan, the better chance you stand of keeping your guys under control. At times, everything will go wrong. Radios have an annoying habit of not working very well. Field phones are more dependable, but not very flexible. The orders that you anticipate will be most urgently needed in a crunch should be backed up with pyro signals.

The first mission in the Normandy campaign is an offensive mission with the goal of capturing two objectives in the third row of a three-row map. The 4 x 3 map configuration seems compact enough, and the 10-turn mission length seems generous. But the bulk of the company’s leadership is inexperienced (including the CO) so I’m sure some hard times ahead will alter those perceptions.

Simple plans are the best, right? Task organization for this trip into the bocage is straightforward. First platoon is my assault element, bolstered by the presence of the company’s experienced (line quality) First Sergeant. Second platoon is the primary fire element and includes some weapons attachments. It will be kept under tight control by the CO himself. Third platoon is the reserve element and includes the XO. It’s mainly organized for an assault role and can be used to either respond to the unexpected or follow-on assault the secondary objective as needed.

The smallish map should be easy to navigate, but all of the appropriate tactical controls need to go in place because you never know what’s coming next. Placement of the phase lines and the limit-of-advance are no-brainers. The point controls require a bit more thought.

One nod to the ‘game’ aspect here is that you get the luxury of selecting where your objective markers are placed. That’s not generally the case in the real world, although I will note that within the context of the game setup your choices are fairly limited anyway.

Note that objective placement can be a bit tricky. Objective cards that are light on terrain may be difficult to hold after you chase away the bad guys. More defensible objectives are also more defensible for the enemy. So you get to pick your poison – keeping in mind that it’s highly unlikely the map will be cleared of enemy contacts by the end of the game.

For this mission I’m keeping the objectives close so both can be covered from the Attack Point. That simplifies movement coordination and fire support and gives me the option of putting a couple of easily understood pyro signals in place to cover a few contingencies.

More on the specifics of task organization and the comms plan in my next post.

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.

Sometimes the lure of technology is simply too great to resist.

No, no. I’m not blogging today about how my best wargaming intentions have once again been hijacked by another bout of Fallout 3 or about how sooner or later my will to resist buying Dawn of War 2 is going to collapse in a whimpering heap.

Nope. Today the great evil of digital technology is actually going to help me dive into a ‘real’ wargame – in this case, GMT’s Fields of Fire.

Snappy screenshots!

Strangely enough, even though I’m a fairly savvy ‘digital’ guy, I’ve never been a heavy user of any of the computer-based gaming aid systems that are available. I’ve used a number of them over the years, but I’ve never stuck to just one and I’ve never used any of them as much as you’d think the average space-limited wargamer might.

That’s probably because when I’m sitting at a computer, I tend to drift into games written for the computer (as opposed to tools used to play electronic versions of board games). I seldom have the patience for play-by-email and I like the instant gratification of smashing an AI into flinders with by brilliance and native military genius. There’s also the issue of the tactile experience of board wargaming. I like all of the fiddly bits. I like looking at the whole game spread out on a table. I like fumbling around with counters and clackity-clacking around with blocks and wondering how the hell I managed to bend the weapons on that many miniatures.

Regardless, sometimes I still poke at the digital stuff. I suppose I did play games with ADC/ADC2 quite a bit when that program was fairly new – even when the Big Table was really big, it hardly had room for some of the larger OCS games and a few of the other monsters I had in the closet.

I went through a Cyberboard phase a few years back. I have more ‘gameboxes’ than I can count – more than a few of them fairly crude and home-made (by me) for games that didn’t receive any digital love from their publishers. I probably have even more gameboxes left in various phases of construction after my ambition waned.  Cyberboard still gets the occasional workout, mind you – but I’m not a maniac about it.

Remember when VASSAL was used exclusively by ASL gamers? Yeah, I went that route for a little while. Now it’s been expanded and adapted to a broad range of games. Including, for the purposes of this blog, GMT’s Fields of Fire.

I’ve decided to use VASSAL this time for several reasons. First, I’ve just barely made a dent in getting the game’s counters ready to go. Next, scuttlebutt is that the VASSAL module for FoF is pretty good. I thought the module for Combat Commander was pretty handy, so I’ll give it a try. It also facilitates making clean, easy-to-view screen caps (as opposed to blurry digisnaps from the tabletop). Finally, if I play FoF using VASSAL, I can get something else equally interesting setup on the Big Table – so when my famously short attention span acts up I can easily distract myself with something entirely different for a little while without taking down FoF.

Oh yeah. I also think that using VASSAL will help to confirm my status as a complete gaming twit. I manage to reclaim the Big Table and what’s the first thing I do? Start a new game on my computer. Rock on!

Now, if I can just get the lawn mowed and the garage cleaned out this weekend – while dodging the predicted 98-degree heat – I’ll have some time to get things started.

First, a not-so-quick point of order. As I slowly make my way into this game, it occurs to me that my initial question slightly missed the mark. Fields of Fire isn’t so much concerned with infantry leadership at the platoon level as it is with infantry command at the company level. So the appropriate Army field manual to consult would be FM 7-10 The Infantry Rifle Company.

Crap didn't work 30 years ago, either. (FM 7-7, circa 1977)

Or, at least it would have been back when I was a boy. It’s come to my attention that at some point in the last 30 years, the Army has had the audacity to re-number many of its field manuals. Probably just to throw off bald old farts like me. The venerable “7 Series” of field manuals has now been tossed into the documentation salad along with a bunch of other crunchy bits and assigned new designations. So in these modern times, it’s FM 3-21.8 The Infantry Rifle Platoon and Squad and FM 3-21.10 The Infantry Rifle Company.

Damn complicated if you ask me.

And now a few more nuggets about the game itself that I’ll toss around to cover my blogging butt while I demotivate myself through the counter-clipping process.

For those of you who have missed it up to now: This game has no map. Or at least no map in the old-school style of “a hexagonal grid has been superimposed on the playing surface in order to regulate movement and combat”.

The map in Fields of Fire is created from a deck of terrain cards. Typically, cards are drawn randomly from a terrain deck and laid down in a grid of rows and columns. A small action, for example, might be played out on a map 4 columns wide by 3 rows deep. As you might imagine, the ‘map scale’ is a bit abstract.

Map, shmap. I got me cards.

There are three terrain decks in the box – one for each historical campaign covered: Normandy, Korea and Vietnam (lowlands). The cards themselves are fairly information-packed, including cover/concealment ratings, line-of-sight indicators for both sides and corners and a bunch of other stuff I’m sure I’ll get into later.

All of the card-based info aside, that’s still considered only a broad-brush picture of the terrain in play. During the course of the game your individual combat units find and utilize tactical ‘micro terrain’ that provides cover benefits on each card.

It looks like an interesting little process. At the beginning of a mission you’ll probably know where a ‘Village’ card is located. But what you don’t know is the exact nature of the cover your units will discover once they get there. Cover markers ‘discovered’ on each card provide a defensive benefit (duh) and persist throughout the mission.

One of the things that surprised me when I first cracked into Fields of Fire was that, in addition to whatever else was going on it was one, big box o’ wargame.

My God, it's full of ... counters

Yeah, yeah. So I didn’t pay attention to the hype and the shills — or even the list of components before I bought it. I probably glanced at the ‘in the box’ list without paying any attention to it. Which would explain my reaction of “Wow. Five sheets of counters” when I opened it up for the first time.

Obviously, I’m not somebody who buys his wargames by the pound. When I’m mapping out my plans for game purchasing (which I do with a lot more care than I did, say, five or six years ago) I’m on the lookout for possible Red Flags of Weirdness in the component lists, but otherwise I’m not digging out a calculator to figure out which games yield the best paper-to-price ratio.

So. Basically there are two thoughts running through my head right now. First: This is one wild-assed counter mix. Seriously. I have been playing wargames for a long (long) time now, and this is the first game I’ve owned (at least that I remember) that includes markers for smoke grenades with different colors of smoke. Different colors and types of flares, too.

I-S-Y-N: Lots of smokey colors

Smoke and the other pyrotechnics are mainly used for signalling. Remember – there is no automatic or instant communications in this game. If you want a squad or a platoon to do something, you have to communicate the order from your HQ unit. Sometimes they’ll be on the same terrain card and will have direct commo. Sometimes you’ll have radio comms. But sometimes you have to do it the old fashioned way – either send a runner with orders or use visual signalling.

Of course, the orders assigned to each pyrotechnic signal have to be assigned before the mission on the company roster. Red smoke means advance to phase line such-and-such, purple smoke means assault objective one, yellow smoke means stop and take a leak – that sort of thing.

The second thought running around my mental attic is that a big counter mix means I’m in for a lot counter trimming. Nowadays I use the almost-world-famous Counter Culture Corner Cutter to trim my counters, so the work goes a bit faster than it did back in the days of snip-snip-snip with the nail clippers. But it’s still a bunch of counters.

So I’ll forgive you if you think this post is a bit BFD-ery that I’m using as a stall tactic while I trim out the Field of Fire counters. Right you are. As I mentioned to a friend earlier today: If counter nubs were rocket fuel, right now I could blast my ass all the way to Pluto and back.