Fields of Fire

I think you would love this thing if you ever tried it. If you ever want I can return the favor and teach a turn or two on VASSAL with discord.

DAMMIT. I'm buying this again.

This is one of the best games I ever played. My kids are older, I am more mature, and I might be able to handle this now. I traded this long ago because it is really heartbreaking to send soldiers into enemy fire to capture a stupid fucking hill that some doofus in a better hat decided was a Very Important Hill™.

To be clear, 2nd edition fixed a few things but not much and it is what is around right now. So the deluxe edition is the one they're working hard on the new rules for and they are on P500 so you know how that goes. But Gene loves loves loves this game so he tends to push it up the order and it seems to sell well, currently I think 1 is OOP.

The good news is that they are releasing this Battle of the Bulge mission pack expansion (cheap, like 20 bucks) but more importantly they will be releasing the digital 3rd edition rules draft concurrently that the community and new developers have been working so hard on. That should be real soon since that mission pack is basically printed. So you'll get a chance to have a digital look at their work to see if you want to go ahead and go in for the deluxe edition whenever they make that. I'll post here when I have a chance to read the third edition rules in the next month or two and give my reaction. Deluxe edition will have the thing they have needed for years, which is introductory small scenarios with limited assets teaching the system.

Also, I was watching Ben Hull talk about his games including Fields of Fire. Guy seems fine but his shit needs development so badly, he's a god awful developer. Anyway, he had originally planned and pitched having an Afghanistan module in one of these, which is interesting to me, I'd be curious to see how modern comms technology and more precise support changes the system and infantry combat in his view. If you've ever played the Vietnam missions you can see how helpful it is to have better radios and how much it solves a lot of problems and lets you coordinate a thousand times better and keep your officers safer. But he shared the reason he didn't include the module as planned is that he is under a 25 year NDA since he works in the defense industry now and used to be in active duty... so those sorts of things have to wait.

Also, if you try it again do some Normandy but if you feel up for it try either Korea or Vietnam. It's a very interesting contrast in terms of what the game is thematically imparting to you.

Yeah, I went for the P500 on the Deluxe. At $55 or whatever, that's a steal. I liked the game when it was a clumsy jankfest; the same game with 15 years of fixes by its deservedly dedicated supporters is going to be great.

I only played WWII scenarios and had to stop, because the fog of war effect was just so anxiety inducing in me. Just telling some squad to go that way and wondering if a Nazi MG nest is chilling there and oh well, sorry guys, I'll send your feet home to Mama. I best having sliiiightly better intel would be very helpful, because the other thing that would happen is Squad A might actually get there and then I have no way to tell them what to do afterwards if they got cut off. At least then I knew I was sending Squad B into a fight.

Yeah, being the CO HQ and telling your platoon leader to create an "assault team," knowing what that means, and send it into the unknown PC contact is pretty chilling. In later missions you can at least send in a tank on ahead which doesn't feel quite as bad.

One thing that Fields is really good at is this weird message about how infantry are in part there to draw out fire and identify targets so that you can get the industrialized weapons of war online (air strikes, artillery, heavy machine gun team fire, and mortar calls).

insidegmt.com/the-fields-of-fire-series-...ilable-for-download/

Take a look at a draft of the new rules. They're very promising and much better (and linearly) organized and explanatory. If you're a long-time player, you'll also see how there have been some things really cleaned up and categorized into verbs and universal nouns.

Can't imagine being the team that is doing this, these rules have been bad for 10+ years and the game is still quite complex.

Can definitively recommend the new ruleset. It has revived my interest in playing this game, I've been ignoring a set of Arkham card game new player cards which is high praise. The rulebook is comprehensive, even if it can be slightly hard to find stuff due to a ~100 page rulebook. Their updates to the enemy AI are really sensible and comprehensive too---nothing worse than not knowing what a unit is supposed to be doing.

Today, I wondered what happened when someone who had suffered a grenade attack retreated from their card. I found the answer in the section on grenade attack volumes of fire, specifically addressing the issue. That sounds like nothing, but it's huge. The sort of issue that used to use up a lot of time with me puzzling about it when iterated over a lot of different corner cases.

I just finished the 6th of 7 missions in the Normandy campaign. Still having a great time.

By mission 6, you're given a Sherman tank platoon. I'm not sure how I feel about the rhythm it imparts to the system---and I'm definitely sure it is the absolute last thing ruleswise you should have to figure out in the system. Tanks and vehicles really thread in very strangely into the normally quite steady and normal consistent timings of the game. The biggest, weirdest thing is you can be pretty aggressive with tanks in a way you can't be with almost any other type of unit in the game. They can still get blown up without too much trouble, but it's also possible to thrust them boldly into areas with dangerous infantry that don't have rockets or other AT equipment. By contrast, you have to be super circumspect with your infantry doing the same thing.

The P500 page is making a big deal out of the Starter Guide, to help onboard new players. Curious to know how effective that is. It looks like in general there's a push to getting this game more accessible simply from the standpoint of conveying information.

Gary Sax, is this a worthwhile investment for someone who is in the market for something long and solitaire, but doesn't have a ton of wargaming experience? (But would like to!)

I would wait until the starter materials are released next year to know if they're any good. This series has consistently terrible development and I don't trust anything being solved till I see it---the rulebook being massively improved I only believe because they released it and I've used it.

By default I'd say without good starter materials I'd definitely warn you off with only limited wargame experience.

Thanks for the follow-up, sounds like I can follow the buzz if it's something I'm really interested in.