Explaining troop Characteristics in Crossfire

By Steven Thomas on 21 Feb 2003 | Last Updated 23 Aug 2013

I’d been puzzling over how to characterise various historical units and so asked the Crossfire discussion forum for guidance. This page
paraphrases the responses from Steve Holmes, Nikolas Lloyd and Jeff with some of my own thoughts mixed in.

Officer / NCO quality

These are defined in the TO&E, but you don’t have to stick to them. It is important to remember that commanders are rated separately in
their ability to influence Close Combat and Rallying.

Command and Control

I think of the three levels as: Good/Adventurous (e.g. German), Okay/Independent (e.g. Commonwealth), and Poor/Dependent (e.g.
Soviet). Good/Adventurous troops are superbly drilled and masters of fire and movement, whereas, Poor/Dependent troops must be
shepherded around by their officers, and Okay/Independent troops sit in between.

Standard Crossfire makes all Germans Good/Adventurous, however, Tim Marshall suggests this is inappropriate – Volksgrenadiers should
have a worse command and control, perhaps Poor/Dependent.

Troop Quality

Despite the fact that the three levels of troop quality are called Veteran, Regular, and Green, a higher quality really indicates greater staying
power, grit, and the ability to sit out the rough end of the firefight. If you want troops to stand their ground in a game better than any
others, then make them veterans and the others regulars or green.

Specifically troop quality gives a modifier for:

 Close combat
 Rallying

The first of these means that a group of vets are more likely to succeed in close combat. So vets would be the types of troops who don’t
mind getting stuck in with cold steel, or taking combat to close quarters to achieve a decisive result.

The other benefit of veterans takes a little thinking about. It is as easy to suppress a stand whether green, regular or veteran, but the
veterans have a far better chance to rally. In game turns this tends to feed into a simple equation where pinned or suppressed green stands
are not worth the attempt to rally, and drop out of combat. Meanwhile a good NCO has a great chance to rally his veteran stands, making
these the core of your troops who will hold up in defence (Keep their heads up and fight back instead of get overrun), or press on past the
tough resistance in attack.

Troops might behave differently in different circumstances in the same way that some officers count for rallying but not close combat. For
example:

 Gurkhas might be vets in close combat, but regulars in other ways.

 Spanish Civil War militia might be Regulars in towns, but Green elsewhere.

Elite versus Veteran

If you want a rules-distinction between “elite” and “veteran”, then you could say that “elite” troops are adventurous in terms of command
and control, and “veterans” get the +1 to rally and CC.

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Nikolas Lloyd on Campaign Rules and Group Morale in

Crossfire
By Steven Thomas on 15 Apr 2002 | Last Updated 19 Aug 2013

Some musing by Nikolas Lloyd on Campaign Rules and Group Morale in Crossfire. Shared on the Crossfire-WWII discussion forum.

Scenario design can take the place of morale rules. You win if you achieve Objective Alpha with fewer than X casualties. Someone posted a
morale system to the Spearhead list ages ago, which i have since tinkered with. I should one day get round to sticking it on my website, but
until then, here’s a summary:

Count all the stands each side has, and add this number to 100. Each side has this starting morale. Both sides attack the table, trying to take
the central objective. Each time a unit is destroyed, take a certain number of points off the starting morale. Example values: tank 10, officer
8, stand 5. The exact values will depend on the scenario. Some troops might be more dismayed at certain losses than others. Green troops
might lose more morale than veteran when their officers’s die etc.

When the morale score of one side goes under 100, it roll 1d100. If it rolls under its current score, it is fine. Next time it loses a unit, it rolls
under the new score. When eventually it fails, all its units pull back off the table, and the other side occupies the whole table as it wishes.
End of part one.

Part Two:

The losing side rolls for every stand it lost, with some score denoting that it gets that stand back. This represents rounded up routers, and
re-enforcements. The likelihood is that the losing side now has more stands than the winning side. The winning side, though out-numbered,
has the advantage of defence. The losing side now attacks the table again, and follows the same procedure.

One side wins part one, other wins part two: draw, or minor victory to the side with the higher end morale score. One side wins both fights:
decisive victory (took objective AND held it).