Fields of Fire

Thanks for the kind words, repo.

Yeah, I think largely confining the types of fire to small arms, automatic, heavy and grenade attack (generic explosives) is kind of a brilliant simplification of the thousand slightly different industrial weapons of war. I wouldn't have thought of it.

repoman wrote: That was a great report, Steve. Really fantastic.

I've been watching the Burns documentary on Vietnam and the soldiers in that doc say very much what you said about that mission. Utter frustration and anger at fighting and dying for pointless objectives that were abandoned soon after capture only to be fought over again in the near future.

Also I liked your point about "gun fondles". FoF is very unique in its approach and much more emotional than just about any other game.

Absolutely. Other games at this level turn into spreadsheet wonkishness and you can abstract away the human costs of figuring out EXACTLY how much better this gun is from that gun. But FIELDS OF FIRE keeps you on the hook for your decisions, and you know some of them are going to be shitty decisions and those boys will die because you dun goofed. Then it asks you to make another decision, compounded by your ineptitude the previous turn, and you head back in. The toll was too much for me. Great game I don't want to play. Awesome report.

Piggybacking on that, Jeb, I think the hardest thing to accept in FoF is that there are many situations (esp. w/scouting and close combat) where you *know* you are sending dudes off to die, you just need to do it as efficiently as possible. Like in that scenario I instagrammed I sent multiple assault teams into rice paddies to clear contact markers---they all died because they drew contact and I knew that was the most likely outcome.

That is a chilling thing to think about *in this game*, because you know exactly who you represent (CO HQ). That persona has an exact analogy to a tangible real life person. Moreover, FoF has this aspect where it does not pretend there is any brilliant, game-saving way out of most situations. It's not gamey at all in that fashion, and I think it helps the feeling of tension it imbues in you.

Fields of Fire is a solitaire game of commanding a rifle company...

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The next volume is out shortly. Probably still bad rules but at this point the rules are pretty playable and I get tired of doing this rules are bad thing.

Extremely interested to see how these new situations play out---WWII beach invasion and urban combat, including iraq missions, could be pretty eye opening.

Just got charged for this. I'm disappointed they took the Iraq stuff out, I forgot about that, they are just doing urban Hue stuff from Vietnam, but I do get it. I would be interested to see what the designer had to say about modern combat in the system. The difference between WWII, Korea, and Vietnam in the first game is huge but not immediately obvious when you first play---it's not like US troops and opposition have different numbers or anything. I mean, a huge part of how they model the skill and strength of your enemy is via the *AI table* you use in a mission.

As an overall though, I realized that this is probably the game I have thought about the most outside of the playing. It's definitely not the best game I've played, it's a challenge to play at times, but it's probably the one that has the most to say to me imho. Fascinating.

Got excited about this release so I started clipping my old counters for the 2nd edition.

Early reports of volume II do not look good, card and counter errata seem prevalent. GMT usually makes good but at least the 1st volume, even 1st edition, had reasonably well proofed counters and cards. Brutal.

The incompetence with which this title has been managed and developed by GMT is astounding. I get that the designer is mostly AWOL but fuck pay someone who has some attention to detail. They could have solved a bunch of problems by just *going through a compiled bgg thread of errata in the rules*

Anyway, the rules are still mostly playable by now, I may just continue my 1st volume vietnam campaign and see if there are going to be any action from GMT on volume 2.

I started a new Volume I scenario, playing through Vietnam scenarios---scary one, completely surrounded in the middle of the night by a Viet Cong attack in a mildly prepared position:



Will see the full fury of US air and other technology of display. They even give you a gunship.

Got over my frustration with apparent misprints in the new edition by continuing my Vietnam campaign... Vietnam mission 2 is really, really interesting! Night attack and your opponent probes you at first with mortars, RPGs, incoming!, etc---and bumblingly and incompetently just like you yourself do on attack missions---before bringing the big stuff. Putting posts up on instagram if you're interested.

Finishing up my campaign mission on instagram this weekend. If I survive I'll probably go offline and just play the damn thing for at least another mission of Vietnam, it has been very fun but pictures and posts drag the tempo down even slower than it can already be.

Got my copy of Fields of Fire volume II. It drives me crazy that some kind soul on BGG compiled all of the rulings and rules issues in the 2nd edition into a single post... then the designer and whomever they were working with didn't even look at it and they only solved like 1/3 of the problems in the volume II box.

Also, volume II has some fuck ups in the setups in the rulebook, some significant rules things just completely AWOL (how do canals work? how do we land LVTs in the first mission of the Japanese WWII campaign?) and some counter errata with jumbled backs (fire team, not *that* important) which is just like almost a joke with how carelessly this thing is designed and developed.

Dunno what to say about it. Great game, hopelessly fucked up forever by incompetence by the designer, developer, and publisher. It's playable but you have to know you're that type of person. I so wish I could recommend this to heavy wargamers unconditionally. I *still* recommend it for being such an amazingly unique and cool experience.

Finished up the final turns, thrilling mission---21 VC casualties, 6 US. Wild stuff. Did the instagram thing for them all, I need to stop photo blogging stuff because it makes games very slow.

It wouldn't be FoF without some sort of rule annoyance, in this case a virtually impossible (untested? Who knows?) mission objective w/normal PC pulls in turns 6-9. I literally ran out of VC squads because of the intensity of the human wave and assault contacts, who always push forward, and yet to win I'm supposed to somehow have no US units on spaces with enemies, even though I've held and cleared the requisite number of US cards for the win. Bleh. So technically I lost, but it's completely horseshit so I'm calling a win.

So apparently, Gene Billingsly of GMT loves this game enough to sic the whole community and some developers on this game. There is a deluxe edition of the first game (WWII Europe, Korea, Vietnam), a campaign pack specifically on the Bulge campaign in Europe, and they are grinding at making the rules consistent.

Safe to say do not buy this until I tell you but if they do it right (I've got the update kits preordered) then this it the best solo game of all time by a reasonable distance (sorry Comancheria).

Literally cannot believe my first review of this game was 14 years ago. As Joe Pera says, "I’m not too worried about my photographic legacy. In fact, I hope I’m not remembered at all, and that one day I can just disappear."

I recall playing this at first release and getting hammered because I forgot to write down what color of flare meant what command.

Sp yeah, it they can make it playable without having to go to Ranger School first, it will be awesome

They do have incredible faith in it, there have been so many attempts to distill it down.

Many people whose opinion I trust all say basically the same thing - its a total bear to learn BUT once you do, the game is incredible.

i picked up a mostly unpunched copy of this like a year ago and bounced hard off the rules. im curious in the new version, to see if it makes it a little more learnable/playable.