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Fields of Fire - An In Depth Review

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There Will Be Games

In the game, Fields of Fire, you take on the role of a company commander in the 9th US Infantry leading your men through various battles in World War II, Korea, or Vietnam.

That sounds like pretty standard fair for a war game but this game is anything but standard. Ben Hull, the designer, has a unique take on the subject. It is in that unique vision that the triumph and the tragedy of this game lay.

.....................................................................

"You must unlearn what you have learned." - Yoda

Fields of Fire jettisons many of the preconceived notions we have about war games. Notions so ingrained into our conscious from prior gaming experience that it takes a concerted effort to let them go. It is by no means an easy thing to do, to start fresh, to be in a position where experience is a handicap of sorts rather than an asset. But if you can force yourself to leave your baggage behind, you will be rewarded with one of the most engrossing gaming experiences possible.

(Aren't wargames for two or more people?)

The game is designed from the ground up as a solitaire experience. Usually, solo war gaming involves a player taking both sides of the conflict and trying to blank from his mind the objectives, strategies, and any information that would normally be hidden from the opponent. This results in a player focusing himself only on the immediate tactical situation and refusing to have or to think about the larger strategies at play. Because solo play was the idea all along, this is not an issue here. The majority of the game revolves around tactical battlefield decisions, but larger strategy plays it's part as well.

(Shouldn't the board be a map of a village or something with a hex grid?)

Much of what is concrete in other games is abstracted out in Fields of Fire and one of the most fundamental examples is the battlefield. In war games, and especially in war games of this scale, we are used to a map illustrating the area of conflict where hexes define the spaces for such purposes as range and movement. 

Here, the battlefield is a grid of cards. 4 x 3 or larger depending on what scenario is being played. The cards do have photographic images of the terrain they represent such as hedgerows, woods, villages, etc. and they do serve as the spaces upon which the soldiers move and fight but the actual area they represent is vague. Normally a space in a game like this would be fixed at say 50 feet per hex. A card, however, represents a space where a leader could reasonably command his units with voice or hand signals. This could be anywhere from 10 meters in a woods space to 100 meters in a large open field.


(Shouldn't my soldiers know what their orders are and strive to obey?)

The flip side of abstracting what is normally concrete is making actual that which is usually abstracted. The prime example of this is command and control.

Here we have come to the main vision of the game. Men must be led into combat. Without leadership and guidance, a group of men become confused and lack direction. They become less efficient and, in combat, at greater risk.

In other games, it is usually assumed that your squads and men can be commanded. You want that squad to shift it's fire from that squad on the right to the machine gun nest in front? They will do it or at least try to do it. You want that scout to stop heading towards that building and instead move towards the woods? He will change direction in mid creep.

That is not the case in Fields of Fire. The main driving force in the game is command. Each leader in the game is either in contact with his superior or he is not. If he is, he has the proper guidance and knowledge to tell his subordinates what must be done. If he is not...he may still try to accomplish something but he will be far less effective. 

Likewise, your units don't have a god like vision of the battlefield. They will start shooting at the first available target whether it is the most important target or not and they will keep on blazing away at it. They don't know if that German squad retreated under fire or is just laying low. They must be told to cease firing or to fire at another target and for that to happen they must able to communicate with their leader.

At the lowest level this means that the platoon leader must be within shouting or visual range of the squads (that is on the same card). The platoon leader usually must communicate with company command via field telephones or radios.

If your leading elements are suddenly taken out of the communications net, say by having their phone shot to pieces or the phone line leading back to Company HQ gets cut by an artillery barrage, you can watch your well co-ordinated attack fall apart very quickly. 

(In combat shouldn't I add up the attack strength of my units, roll some dice and consult a Combat Result Table to see how well they did against your defense?)

The last major difference in Fields of Fire is how combat works. Numeric combat ratings are thrown out the window. Each unit has a "Volume of Fire" be it small arms, automatic weapons, heavy weapons, etc. No matter how many units are firing it is only the best Volume of Fire that matters. So a heavy machine gun and three squads firing at one location are pretty much as effective as the machine gun alone.

If you think those squads are wasting their time, you had best move up one of your leaders and tell them to knock it off and do something better. Of course your leader is most likely going to come under fire himself and risk becoming a casualty to accomplish that.

One other big difference in combat is that your squads don't fire at individual units. They fire at locations where enemy units are spotted. All units in that location friendly and enemy suffer the effects of what ever the highest  Volume of Fire is. So one machine gun firing at a card with three squads on it has three times the chance to ruin your day.

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"Man is not made for defeat." - Ernest Hemmingway

Earlier I mentioned that the uniqueness of the game was both a tragedy and a triumph. Lets talk about the tragedy half first.

The biggest flaw in this game is that it is very tough to learn. I don't say that lightly. Those who are likely to read this article are probably experienced gamers and thus familiar with learning new games. Even with that in mind, learning this game is going to be daunting. 

Part of the difficulty is the uniqueness I  have attempted to describe. It does take some work just to internalize the angle the game is coming from but the major problem lies in the rule book which is simply horrible. It is long, it is dense, and it has a remarkable lack of examples of play. If you attempt to learn it from the rule book alone you are in for a long rough road.

It is this very difficulty that keeps many who otherwise would love this game from ever playing it or even attempting to play it. It is a time commitment. It is butting heads with frustration. To be honest I'm surprised I was able to keep my resolve.

Two things helped me. One was the revised rule book available as a download from the GMT website. It is a huge improvement over the original rules. There are illustrated examples, better organization, and a better attempt at defining concepts and ideas. It does have examples that refer to the "on line" tutorial which I think was ill advised. Just replicate the image your are referring to in the rule book rather than make me look something up on the web.

The other thing that was the biggest help was the step by step walk through of the entire first scenario in video form by Chris Hobbs (aka Lancer Deuce). They are accessible from either BGG or the GMT website.  I can't stress enough how much easier it was after seeing the game played and explained in a step by step basis. Be warned, these videos are long and dare I say a bit boring, like watching somebody else bowl, but they are worth every minute you spend.

Victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival. -Winston Churchill

Now the triumph. I have never been in combat, thank god. So I have no idea of what it would be like to command men in battle. I will say that this game makes me feel tense and anxious. It makes me dread what may be lurking just ahead. It makes me want to be over cautious but the time limit means I MUST push forward. It makes me breath a sigh of relief when my men are merely pinned rather than shot to bits and it makes me curse when my men suffer the severe consequences of my mistakes.

The game tells a story. Not with "flavor text" or colorful illustrations. It's not a story that must be twisted from a string of relatively independent events. It's a story that is written through the game play. When the scenario is over it is almost as if you have  just watched an interactive  movie about combat in which your decisions changed the story for good or ill. You'll remember what a bitch it was to clear out that bunker on the hill.  You will fall in love with that .50 cal machine gun and the havoc it can bring. You'll hear its staccato boom in your heart. You'll want to hit the floor when those German artillery barrages are incoming. 

Simply put, this is one of the most immersive games I have ever played. The turns flow smoothly once the concepts are grasped and it will have you on the edge of your seat the whole time. 

It is a damn hard to learn with not so much a learning curve as a learning cliff. if you have the courage to scale that cliff and reach the summit, the view from the top makes all the pain of getting there worthwhile.  

 

 

 

 

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