Firefight Tactical Interview: Sam London

 

Firefight Tactical is an innovative dice-driven tactical WW2 wargame at the squad level. Quick to play and learn, this compact game follows American forces through 12 scenarios in the weeks after the D-Day landings. The scenarios gradually introduce game features as you progress. Starting with small infantry engagements on tight maps, players will work their way to larger scenarios with multiple phases, artillery, and tank-on-tank action.

The rules and images shown here are not final.

You can find it in P500

-Why did you decide to make this game?

I was motivated by the fact that despite the large size of my game group, I often have difficulty getting my non-wargamer friends to try my wargames. I wanted to make a tactical game that would draw in the modern euro gamer crowd but still have the depth of tactics and chrome that us more traditional war gamers expect from the genre. I like to think I have succeeded here. The core mechanic is original for tactical war gaming, offering a fresh new decision space for those of us who have played many such games, while also being familiar for many non-hardcore wargamers who want to explore our corner of the hobby. The basic infantry rules are also very simple and quick to learn, but once you start adding in armor, artillery, night rules, etc, things get really interesting.

-Tell us about the mechanics.

The game revolves around the impulse dice draft. At the beginning of each game round players roll all the dice in a common pool, as well as each player’s private dice reserves. Players then alternate drafting the dice and assigning them to their units that do not already have dice on them. Each unit has an action menu that is entirely unique to that unit type and nationality. The menu tells you which dice can be used to trigger which action with that unit. The chosen action is then resolved for that unit, and it becomes the opponent’s turn to pull a die. Since the dice you draft also limit your opponent’s options, sometimes when you are happy with the position of your forces you can alternatively choose to pass and burn any one dice from the pool of your choice. This can be very powerful at limiting options when you are on the defensive side of a scenario. Once all the dice from the common pool have been drafted it triggers the end of the game round. All the dice are returned to their pools and rerolled to start the next turn.

The battle itself takes place on a grid of terrain cards. Many of these are randomly dealt out at the start of the scenario. While the relative position of these cards is constant, the cards themselves are not (meaning that while two cards may change during play, one slot will always be south of another). This represents that while units may occupy the same general area of the battlefield, the terrain that is tactically relevant in that area may change over the course of the battle.

For action resolution (fire checks, morale checks, etc.) things become a bit more familiar. Two dice are rolled and are added together with the goal being to roll equal to or less than a target number. It gets a bit more interesting when doubles are rolled however, with doubles below the target number being a critical success and doubles above the target number being critical failure. These unexpected effects can result in things like automatic casualties during fire checks, explosions when tanks are under attack, or a “valor” result on morale checks. I commonly hear from testers that valor results are their favorite part of the game. A unit critically succeeding on a morale check interrupts the normal flow of play to resolve any of their actions without assigning a die to them, even if they already have a die on them. This often leads to the most memorable and cinematic moments that will happen during play.

-Is there any difference between the sides?

Yes, there is. It is more subtle for the Americans and Germans but generally the Americans have slightly stronger morale and mobility, while the Germans have better defensive abilities and lethality.

The bigger difference that most don’t notice until I call it out is that if you study the dice menus between the American and German forces you will see that they are inverted. The aggressive entries for the Americans are higher dice values while those entries are lower dice values with the Germans. This is also true for the more mobility focused actions but in reverse. This is intentional, so that even without purposely drafting the options your opponent wants, as you take more aggressive actions you generally degrade your opponent’s capability to effectively mobilize this turn. Conversely if you are very mobile it becomes more difficult for your opponent to get organized and meaningfully consolidate firepower.

As I mentioned earlier, the units for a given nationality are also entirely unique, so outside of the more obvious differences in capability, like one stat being higher than another, the dice menus themselves are also unique. Some might have a wide range of options required for performing a certain action while another’s may be more limited, but will also let you trigger the action with ANY blue dice regardless of what value is showing on it. These subtle differences go a long way to making the sides feel different and offering a unique gameplay puzzle for both players.

-Tell us about the scenarios.

My focus in designing Firefight Tactical was for it to be an awesome engine for WW2 combat in an interactive way that wargamers had not seen before. As such, there is a lot of cool chrome that fits into that engine, but it would be overwhelming if it was all there from the beginning. My goal with the scenarios was to offer engaging gameplay situations of ramping complexity that paid homage to some of the better known engagements following the American landings at D-Day through Operation Market Garden.

Most of the early scenarios are all infantry (appropriately) and focus on getting players comfortable with basic tactics and terrain navigation. Armor shows up shortly after Carentan, then we add elevation, then artillery, etc. The idea is that by the end of the 12 scenarios you understand how to employ everything cool we are packing into the box. Then we will be including a guide for custom scenario building, which is incredibly easy in Firefight Tactical. Then you have your foundation to assemble as elaborate scenarios as you want.

It is worth noting that the replay value of these scenarios is already tremendous. Because scenario setup tells you how to construct the terrain deck, but not specifically where most of the cards go, every time you play a given scenario the exact location of the terrain elements will be subtly different. This means that while pastoral fields and streams will always describe the battlefield of a given scenario, you will not always have a stone wall on the right flank as you are approaching an orchard. This means that even after many, many plays of the same scenario, you will still be presented with a different tactical puzzle. Add to this the fact that your options for orders are limited by the dice that are available at a given moment, and you will never be faced with the same decision in two plays of the same scenario.

-Do you have any other project in mind?

I am an overly ambitious designer. At any given moment I have several designs in the works. However, this is my first design to have a chance to be published and it is getting a lot of my focus. Depending on how well it performs I have a lot of big plans for the Firefight Tactical system. If the demand is there, expect loads of content to follow.