Crossfiregrad on overdrive

Steven Thomas' 'cool' Stalingradesque ruins

My commitment to wargaming tends to get elbowed out during the Summer months, but the obsession usually returns at some point. I did, in fact, play a few games up till June, but my posts here ended in February. If time permits I will at least dig up some photos of the games (Xenos Rampant and Blucher) and take some photos of the semi-flat scenery I made for Blucher.

I haven't actually yet returned to gaming and painting/modelling, but my interest has been stirred by the magnificent collection of Stalingradesque ruins that Steven Thomas of Balagan has recently completed to play the Crossfiregrad and Ponyri Crossfire scenarios.

Originally inspired by Steven's '2 foot city' Crossfire scenario, I turned out some foamboard buildings in 2011. They involved a lot of cutting! But technology has moved on, and this allowed Steven to design and commission customised MDF kits from Warbases. Please read all about it on Balagan!

Steven is a phenomenal gamer, modeller and blogger, and Balagan is probably the most useful wargaming website I have ever encountered.

Balagan's Steven Thomas runs and reviews my 'Crossfiregrad' scenario

Steven's faithful rendition of the battlefield -
an uncanny recreation of my own table.

Steven Thomas' Balagan blog is one of my favourite wargaming websites and was an immense help when building my Spanish Civil War Crossfire armies. He also has a wealth of Crossfire scenarios and other Crossfire-related information, as well as a huge amount of historical and wargaming articles with a particularly Iberian flavour.

Steven recently ran and reported on three games using my 'Crossfiregrad' scenario. He was very complimentary, but also suggested some improvements.

He added the Barmaley Fountain to the square and treated the workers' cottages as a Forest of Chimneys (i.e a wood). He suggested the Germans should be allowed to leave and return via their base edge, and he took a more cautious approach to 'stacking limits' for multi-storey buildings, all of which I am happy to adopt.

We have different views about ignoring suppressed stands as a target priority (an old Crossfire controversy) and I am not yet convinced that the current scenario balance is biased against the Germans.

Do visit his article where you will also find my response in a little more detail. I would also love to hear from anyone else who has tried this scenario.

Crossfire at Cavalier AARs

The calm before the storm

Cavalier is one of Britain's smaller shows, but well worth attending. It is supported by some major traders, and, falling in February, is the first show of the year for many in South-East England. Tonbridge Wargames Club ran my 'Crossfiregrad' scenario as a participation game. They have been keen Crossfire players for many years and helped to tweak the scenario. Although the toys were mine, getting the game developed and presented was very much a collective effort, so thanks to everyone for their efforts both on the day and leading up to it.

Crossfire at Cavalier

Tonbridge Wargames Club is staging my 'Crossfiregrad' game as a participation game at Cavalier this Sunday. If you're a reader of this blog, please come over and say hello, and if you're a Crossfire enthusiast or would like to give it a try, please volunteer for a game!

Here are the posters we will be using on the stand:

The 'Crossfiregrad' scenario

This game was originally inspired by Steven Thomas' 2 Foot City, and my thanks are also due Nikolas Lloyd for his 'nearer than' house rule (see below). My version of this urban Crossfire game has been around for some time. After going through a number of iterations, it has finally solidified into a set scenario for staging at the Cavalier show in Tonbridge, Kent, next month.

Crossfiregrad facelift Part 3: finishing touches to the scenery

It's been about three years since I first posted about what I have come to call my 'Crossfiregrad' project - a Stalingradesque cityscape for playing Crossfire. It's been through several reincarnations. This post illustrates the final touches and the final look of the cityscape.

The starting point for the finishing phase. Cat litter has been added around buildings. I didn't add a fully realistic amount of rubble, partly because this rubble is merely decorative and needs to be differentiated from rubble that features as Crossfire areas, and partly because creating too much of a 3D effect would add to my storage and transport problems.

Crossfiregrad facelift Part 2: Game trial

Part of the reason for developing a permanent layout for my 'Crossfiregrad' game has been with a view to making it a possible participation game for wargame shows.

View from the German assault gun late in the game.

Crossfire: Multistorey Buildings

The higher the building, the more squads allowed.

Vanilla Crossfire is essentially 2D. Crossfire hills, for example, are just 'lumpy places where people hide' as someone once described them. I played around with contours at one point, but I thought they just added complications so I went back to the 2D approach.

Buildings in Crossfire are similarly 2D. By default, they are single-storey and can accommodate two squads. This didn't have the right look and feel for my 'Crossfiregrad' cityscape, but putting figures on different floors wasn't practical either literally or theoretically.

But then I hit on the very simple expedient of allowing taller buildings to house more squads. The figures are always physically placed on the readily accessible top floor, but while single-storey structures are allowed only  2 squads, two-storey structures are allowed 3 and so on. In every other respect the buildings function in '2D mode'.

This is very obvious and easy to keep track of, and it gives purpose to having buildings of different heights, with the higher buildings forming natural strongholds.

Crossfiregrad facelift Part 1

Invariably providing both armies and the scenery, I tend to think in terms of 'games' rather than armies, and 'Crossfiregrad' is the new title I've given my Crossfire mini-Stalingrad game. As previously mentioned, I've been wanting for a long time now to improve the look of this game by adding pavements and rubble-strewn streets, but was torn between (1) adding pavements to the buildings, (2) adding separate pavements or (3) modelling pavements and roads as part of a modular tile system.

Current priorities

28mm Irish War of Independence for FUBAR rules

All finished apart from varnishing. That's waiting for a warm dry day but there's little sign of that.

15mm Crossfire 'Stalingrad'

I'm now planning to create some new cork terrain boards incorporating roads and to add separate pavements to the buildings. This will hopefully improve the aesthetics and make the 'Stalingrad' cityscape a little more convincing.

15mm Armies for Maurice rules

These rules have recently captured my interest. I'm looking at doing the the Jacobite Rising of 1745 and the Irish Rebellion of 1798 in 15mm and maybe the American War of Independence in 15mm or 10mm. The Seven Years War (Austrians vs Prussians) also appeals.

I've been drooling over the look of 28mm figures, but they would take a long time to paint, would be bulky to carry and require a big table. I think 6mm could be rather fiddly with each unit consisting of four separate square bases. So 15mm, or maybe 10mm, seems a better idea.

In any event, painting up even two new armies in 10 or 15mm is time-consuming. I get there in the end, but by then my interest in the period and/or rules has usually passed on to something else. It's a no-no in some clubs but I'm seriously wondering if putting unpainted figures on the table is the only answer. I could then be using one pair of armies whilst painting another. Alternatively I could make up some counters like the birds-eye-view counters used in the rulebook diagrams.

15mm Stalingrad armies for Crossfire

A Soviet company (top) and a German company (bottom): all you need for a good game of Crossfire. The infantry are by Peter Pig. The Soviet A/T guns are 45mm obr 1943 and the German A/T guns are 75mm Pak 97/38, and are all from Battlefront Miniatures.

The Soviet T-34s (left) are the STZ (Stalingrad factory) variant. The German  assault guns (right) are the monster StuIG33B. The T-34s are finished in a burnt orange colour representing red lead primer. Legend has it that T-34s were rushed to the front from the factory unpainted.  The colour coincidentally blends in with the crushed brick terrain. All AFVs are by Battlefront Miniatures.

15mm Crossfire - Stalingrad games

May 2011 game

These shots are of a Crossfire 'Stalingrad' game played at my local club in May 2011. The home-made foamboard buildings have undergone some trauma and need patching up in places. If I was making these again I'd make them slightly smaller (3" x 3" modules) and add some rubble on the outsides. If I did this now the 4" x 4" structures wouldn't fit in the Really Useful Boxes in which I store and transport them.

The Soviet left flank. Note the T34 (Stalingrad variant) straight from the factory! The colour represents red lead primer and is coincidentally good camouflage against the red brick rubble. 

15mm Crossfire - foamboard buildings for Stalingrad

I used foamboard (foamcore) to produce some 15mm buildings for my Stalingrad project. Many wargames use templates for built-up areas. The buildings are purely aesthetic and are moved around or even removed when the areas are occupied by troops. For Crossfire I wanted some multi-storey structures with individual footprints of about 4"/100mm into which elements (representing squads) could actually be placed. I bought some readymades but I also decided to make some ruined and semi-ruined buildings from foamboard. There are lots of good articles on the Web to which I am indebted. This is just an account of my personal approach. Foamboard has a layer of foam sandwiched between two layers of card and can be bought in 3mm and 5mm thicknesses from art shops for as little as £2 for an A3 sheet. After some experiment, I developed the following procedure.

Design the buildings on a computer. I use CorelDraw and allow a basic height of 30mm per storey for 15mm scale. Print out the designs and trim to size with scissors. Stick the print-outs to the foamboard using Spraymount. The model illustrated is actually a double unit (4" x 8").

15mm Crossfire - Stalingrad

Inspired by Steven Thomas' '2 foot city scenario' for Crossfire, my 'Stalingrad' project involves small German and Russian forces (15mm Peter Pig figures) and an extensive cityscape. I'm using some J R Miniatures buildings from Magister Militum and some generic ruins from Ironclad Miniatures, but most of the buildings are scratchbuilt using modular foamboard units.

These pictures show the cityscape as originally envisaged. Unfortunately, placing figures within the mult-storey buildings proved to be fiddly, confusing (the bases got lost) and complex (house rules were needed). At first I separated the floors and used all the buildings as single-storey, but this didn't look right. Finally, I stuck the buildings back together.

My cityscape now consists of rubble areas interspersed with buildings, and I will add some pictures of these in a later post. Bases are placed only on the top floors. A single-storey building accommodates two squads with an extra squad allowed for each extra storey. This allows the buildings with more floors to be occupied by stronger forces. Gameplay is otherwise exactly as in the basic rules.

The '2 foot city' in progress.