Fields of Fire Volume III Interview: Colin Parsons

 

Fields of Fire Volume III sees the long awaited introduction of the British to Ben Hull’s masterpiece of tactical infantry command. From the burning streets of Arnhem to war-torn Helmand Province, Afghanistan, in this new, stand-alone volume from the team behind Fields of Fire Deluxe Edition, we follow the 2nd Battalion of The Parachute Regiment, commonly known as “2 PARA,” across over 60 years of military history.

The rules and images shown here are not final.

You can find it in P500

-Who is Colin Parsons? What are your favorite wargames?

I live in the United Kingdom, and I’ve been wargaming since the 1970s. I do remember wanting to be a Game Designer when I was about 11, and I made many boardgames and wargame rules, and now I’ve finally done it! :D I served 18 years in the British Army Reserve in an Infantry battalion, where I spent 10 years in the ranks, training as a sniper, machine gunner, and Section Commander and ended up as a Platoon Sergeant for 4 years. I was then Commissioned and became an officer, where I served as a Platoon Commander of a Rifle Platoon and then Company Second in Command and occasional Company Commander. So I’ve been quite a lot of the counters in Fields of Fire!

I’ve played an awful lot of stuff in those 40+ years, both figures-based and boardgames. Early on I had quite an obsession with the Napoleonic period, probably due to the ease you could get OO-scale plastic figures, made by Airfix. I then got into big boxed games, a lot of Avalon Hill and others like Victory Games, SPI and some GDW/Games Workshop. I own (now very well used) first editions of classic games like Ambush, Squad Leader/ASL, Raid On St Nazaire, Space Hulk etc.

I do pretty much all of my gaming solo, either through dedicated systems or playing double handed. My preference is really at the tactical end of the spectrum – individual soldiers, squads or vehicles; I’ve never really been into games where one counter represents a whole Division or something. Because of my background, I also prefer games covering ground forces, though I do have some Air and Naval games (I do like Jerry White’s stuff), and in terms of period, probably 20th Century onwards, but again I do have a little bit of everything in my collection really!

-Why did you decide to make this game?

Ever since finding Fields of Fire I have been constantly impressed by the stories it generates during the missions, and I find it very true to my experiences in the Army: Your troops are focused on something else and not firing in the right direction? Sure. Squads not having enough initiative to make that flanking maneuver you were planning on? Yep! Pinned down by a pesky sniper that you just can’t locate? Yeah, that too. I spend an awful lot of my time playing and testing Fields Of Fire at the moment, but I think I would struggle to go back to a game where huge stacks of my units can see all the huge stacks of enemy units, and they all just add up their firepower on a Combat Result Table to get a pretty-well assured result. Yes, more weaponry often does bring more superiority, but it really isn’t that simple in real life!

In terms of why The Parachute Regiment? Well, being British it was obviously a no-brainer to want to make a British expansion, though the first expansion I made for Fields of Fire was actually for the Australians at Long Tan in Vietnam, as that battle has always fascinated me (watch the movie ‘Danger Close – it’s good!). It was then down to finding the battles that would work in the system. I had made a Goose Green (Falklands) mod a couple of years before because, similarly, I had a keen interest in the Falklands War; I was 12 when it happened, and I remember watching it on the news; my uncle was on one of the Destroyers. The weapons and tactics used there also represent the early days of my experience as a soldier in the 1980s.

Then it was a case of finding other suitable battles featuring 2 PARA. Arnhem is the obvious one, but initially I actually shied away from it, thinking it might be too difficult, and was looking at doing the Battle of Oudna in Tunisia in 1942. I may still do that sometime; it’s an interesting mix of a parachute raid, followed by a long fighting withdrawal through the desert. But Andrew Stead, who is the other Series Designer, convinced me I just couldn’t not do Arnhem!

And then Afghanistan... I had considered doing Iraq 2003 early on as I had been there, but then I came across the story of C Company 2 PARA in Forward Operating Base Gibraltar in 2008 and it seemed like a perfect fit for Fields of Fire.

-We all know the Fields of Fire series. What are the novelties that this game brings?

There are quite a few new things in Volume 3. Not so much in the Falklands Campaign, though that has its own challenges of fighting across terrifyingly flat ground with very little cover, and virtually no fire support (in Goose Green at least, they got it right for Wireless Ridge!), but Arnhem and Afghanistan both have radical new things.

Being on the defensive isn’t a new thing in Fields of Fire, but doing that in urban terrain is. The existing Enemy Activity Hierarchy charts just couldn’t handle fighting in the town, so we’ve made a new one that makes the Germans take advantage of the buildings, without them getting ‘stuck’ or doing anything too silly. They also sometimes set fire to the buildings or demolish them with tank fire or explosives so there are new rules to cover this. Fires may increase in ferocity and spread to adjacent buildings, and potentially cause the buildings to collapse. That is another new thing – the urban terrain cards in Arnhem are going to be double-sided, showing complete buildings on one side, and a rubbled building on the other. Damage created in one mission will be carried forward to the rest of the campaign. They have also been created using period maps and aerial photographs so you will fight over recognizable areas and not just generic buildings.

British Aerial photograph taken of Arnhem during the battle. Most of the area in this photograph is used during the Urban missions.




The highlighted area reconstructed using the Urban Terrain card deck (VASSAL playtest screenshot, not final art)







The same area again, if all the buildings were to suffer battle damage and collapse (VASSAL playtest screenshot, not final art)



By the time of the Afghanistan campaign warfare had changed quite a lot. These weren’t open battlefields where two sides could just throw everything they had at each other. The Rules of Engagement (RoE) were very tight - players will have to get used to positively identifying vehicles or groups of people as Taliban before being allowed to open fire – a definite change to the standard rules. Once identified, the vehicle or group may turn out to just be civilians going about their lives – they will move randomly around the map, perhaps getting in the way of your plans, as you cannot risk killing them. There are other subtle changes to the combat system too, including troops being able to engage in multiple directions of fire in certain circumstances.




7 Platoon form a cordon around a compound whilst a Royal Engineers Search Team checks it out with their sniffer dog. Interested civilians look on, but an unidentified group and some vehicles approach from the east – are they friend or foe? (VASSAL playtest screenshot, not final art)


-Can you recommend a bibliography to get into the subject?

Well, there’s lots out there, but maybe try some of the following? Not all of them are specifically on 2 PARA in the campaigns from the game, but they will all give you an idea of what the theatres were like for the troops on the ground:

Arnhem:

Arnhem (Anthony Beevor). Arnhem: The Battle For Survival (John Nichol/Tony Rennell). The Devil’s Own Luck (Denis Edwards).

Falklands:

Goose Green (Nigel Ely). Penal Company on the Falklands (Phil Neame). 3 Days in June (James O’Connell). No Picnic (Julian Thompson). The First Casualty (Ricky Phillips).

Afghanistan:

3 PARA (Patrick Bishop). Six Months Without Sundays (Max Benitz). Sniper in Helmand (James Cartwright).


-What is the future of the fields of fire series?

Closest to now is the release of the Volume 1 Deluxe Edition and the Deluxe Update Kit, that myself and Andrew have been working on for a while now. The countersheets are pretty much completed, with a lot of improvements, and the updated Mission books have been rewritten, playtested and they are going to the art department to be laid out very shortly.

As part of the Deluxe work we’ve also re-done all the Volume 2 Mission books to the same standard, and we’re discussing how and when we might get these out in some form with Jason Carr of GMT One.

After that? Well, we have lots more ideas! Ben has some potential new Volumes and/or Expansions in varying states of development, as do myself and Andrew. Ben might be demoing something at WBC next month, so look out for that. We aim to keep going as long as there is interest in the Series; some might be more well-known campaigns, but if we can also introduce people to more nationalities or theatres of war that they might not know that much about, then that would be good too. Our approach is to keep introducing new and interesting things as we go, not just some counters with a different badge on.