Game: Firepower

Thread: Re: Claymore spread diagram

alcazar — 2008-06-05T20:57:06+00:00

GlobalSecuirty.org has a handy-dandy diagram showing a 60-degree arc with an optimum 50m wide kill-zone at 50m with a 18m 180-degree 'keep-out' zone to the rear (for the M18A1, for the original M18 30m/30m/6m)

Diagram at bottom of page http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/policy/army/f...

Thread: Re: Review of Firepower

lucky luke — 2008-06-01T19:06:27+00:00

I tried a new tactic once with the "Tank killer" scenario: with a lot of maneuvers I moved a tank to a "hull-down" position with only the main gun sticking out behind a contour line and smashed the jeep...but in any other way the jeeps always win!!!!

Or in a DYO scenario a bold M-163 destroyed the thread of a T-62, leaving it immobilized near a lurking M-72 armed soldier...Firepower is tailored to infantry actions, on the map a veichle is without maneuvre room...but you should try the solitaire scenario with two minigun armed jeeps and a few soldiers as your intruder force, like a Rambo movie!!!

LL

Thread: Re: Claymore spread diagram

wargamer55 — 2008-06-01T02:42:30+00:00

I know longer have the game, but here was a diagram in the rules or on one of the charts. The blast diagram included something like seven total hexes in front (1-3-3?) and one in back, I believe.

Thread: Claymore spread diagram

ChandlerB — 2008-06-01T00:51:05+00:00

I am having trouble remembering how the blast of a claymore is supposed to spread. Was there ever a chart for this? If so, I cannot remember ever seeing it and cannot find it now. I know from basic training it is directional but being a national guard tanker did not have any practical experience. We used to use a house rule that gave it a 60 degree cone of blast but is this to restrictive? Maybe 180 in front and one hex blast behind?

Thread: Re: Review of Firepower

ChandlerB — 2008-06-01T00:29:09+00:00

I have always felt this was a great INFANTRY game but the ARMOR rules seemed tacked on and clunky. I never really did get comfortable with them but spent uncounted hours playing infantry battles especially the ambush scenario. I even came in second at an Avaloncon .

Thread: Re: Basic game rules LOS questions

ChandlerB — 2008-06-01T00:21:40+00:00

Howdy, new to this site but bought Firepower while ASL was delayed (showing my age a bit ). I will try to answer these.

6.3.4.1 Correct, open ground counts as a hill with respect to depression hexes.

6.3.4.2 Yes, LOS is blocked if either unit is prone.

6.3.4.4 Yes, if it is not a hill or a depression, it is ground level.

I cannot help with the Basic Game Card because I accidentally swapped mine for an extra Advanced Rule book while playing in a tournie at Avaloncon. If I remember the chart correctly, your comments look correct.

Yeah I think that should be 6.3.2.2 instead of .1. It does say in that rule that a soldier must be standing to throw at range >5. It would have been nice to include a note to that effect but since ALL grenades require standing posture to be thrown farther than five hexes I guess they figured we could just remember.

This where I really miss the ten+ years of the General I lost in Hurricane Katrina (luckily my games where on a shelf but my magazines where stored in cardboard boxes on the floor). The issue featuring Firepower was one of my favorites especially the ambush scenario replay. I believe it included errata as well.

Thread: VASSAL Module

gzamos — 2008-03-12T02:05:02+00:00

I have a VASSAL module posted for this game on the VASSAL webpage. Look under modules for Firepower/Close Assault.

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Fantas — 2008-03-05T19:41:03+00:00

Character sheet, used with optional rule

Thread: Rules scanned

gwailo — 2007-12-03T14:40:44+00:00

Does anybody happen to have a scan of the rules?
I have a copy unpunched but I lost the rules.
Thanks for your attention.

Alberto

Thread: Re: Anyone tried with minis?

xmbalmr — 2007-07-17T06:01:27+00:00

Long ago I picked up several boxes of ESCI 1/72 scale NVA and US Vietnam era infantry to try using minis with Firepower. IIRC the designer did state somewhere it began as a minis game. With 1/72 scale I used 1" = 1 hex and it worked out very nice, I mounted each figure on green poster board with individual numbers for tracking. I also made some templates for grenade blasts and smoke with white cotton. For posture I just used the counters by the figure. I ran a few games of it and even went so far as making some palm tees with small bamboo sticks and construction paper as well as some huts using poster board and construction paper. I gotta say I thought it was an incredible mini game and with the price of the plastic ESCI figures you're out maybe $20 for 200 soldiers. Now that I finally have a decent sized house I'm planning to try it again...I'll definitely have to take some pics this time.

Here's a link to the minis I used:
http://michtoy.com/MTSCnewSite/newplastic_folder/Revell_fold...
http://michtoy.com/MTSCnewSite/newplastic_folder/Revell_fold...

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morsecrossing — 2007-05-11T19:33:14+00:00

FIREPOWER CAMPAIGN GAME: Charts and Counters from General vo.21, no.6

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morsecrossing — 2007-05-04T14:49:00+00:00

From General vol.24, no.1: Hypothetical scenarios for a general war in Central Europe

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morsecrossing — 2007-05-04T02:37:47+00:00

From General vol.26, no.3: Ian-Iraq scenarios for FIREPOWER title page

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Keng Ho — 2007-04-29T12:58:43+00:00

All four mapboards

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morsecrossing — 2007-04-24T17:28:46+00:00

Title page for scenarios of battles in El Salvador (1979-85) for FIREPOWER from General vol.22, no.6

Thread: Re: Scan of Basic Rulebook

Kozure — 2007-04-24T14:58:10+00:00

Pathirtle wrote:
Drop me a message with your e-mail address, and I'll send you a scan this evening after I get home from work.

Thanks, PM sent.

Incidentally, what is BGG policy concerning posting scans like this to BGG - essentially portions of rules from games that aren't likely to be republished?

Obviously don't want to contravene BGG policy, but it's unfortunate that "legacy" games like this have to founder due to lack of support.

Thread: Anyone tried with minis?

crusher100 — 2007-04-24T13:07:03+00:00

Does anyone use or have tried with minis? What size? Pics? Do you use the 3 postures: Stand, Crouch and Kneel?

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morsecrossing — 2007-04-24T03:07:44+00:00

South Africa Scenarios title page from General vol.25 no.2

Thread: Scan of Basic Rulebook

Kozure — 2007-04-23T20:59:43+00:00

I've played this game for years, but put it down for a while I was in school. Coming back to it, I discovered that I've lost the basic rulebook. I remember enough of the rules that I can still play with the advanced rules, but it's been long enough that I'd like to make sure the rules I'm playing with aren't half-remembered and incorrect.

Does anyone have a scan of the basic rulebook? As I recall, it was only 4 or 6 pages long, but it has been a while.

Thread: Re: Basic game rules LOS questions

arcastbooster — 2007-04-10T09:52:21+00:00

Hi !

No one can really help me ?

Are there any official FAQ and errata for basic FP ?

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Cleitus the Black — 2007-04-07T05:35:14+00:00

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Cleitus the Black — 2007-04-07T05:34:26+00:00

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madmanrick — 2007-02-28T16:52:12+00:00

General Vol 26, #3 variant counters

Thread: Re: Review of Firepower

lucky luke — 2006-10-16T12:09:14+00:00

I have to say I LOVE this game...sadly it has some glitch spoiling his taste.
Luckly the two mayor glitch I have ever found are in the Opt. rules so we could live without them.

The culprits are "Morale" and "Umpired Sighting".

With the morale rule you can play the engagement between two sides and, with a morale advantage to the smaller side you can have a balanced game.
But, if you play a such game, you MUST forget about the turns limits!
Because, when you lose men, you lose activation chits...so in a given turn you have less and less chits and can do less things. When the morale "break" ala Squad Leader, the men stand up and run using 4 activation chits.
It is easier to find in this situation when you start with a 3/2 squad, so you run away better than you fight!
Try playing an "Ambush" scenario and you could never return fire qwith the ambushed (they are still running from my last play...!)or in an "Assalut" one, you can literally NEVER cross a street because you are down to ONE act. chit....realistic? Maybe. Fun? For no one.

The umpired sighting needs also the lift of the turns limit because you spend 1 MP for 1 sighting attempt, so during an attack you have 2 options:
1) sight and don't move
2) move and don't sight.

in the first case you are better in a defensive position, in the second you are dead! Your enemy(remember: HIDDEN!) can track you during your blind run and take you down.

While the sighting rules, as written, are useless and needs a rephrasing, the morale one BTW is about right...in special situation as SAS (see the General Scenarios) or other Special Forces taking on lesser trained foes.

Thread: Re: Review of Firepower

Thundergoat — 2006-10-02T21:00:54+00:00

Great review; you touched on a lot of what I feel are this game's strengths and weaknesses.

I also found the best aspect of Firepower to be it's amazing level of detail in terms of weapons, squad composition, and sheer data on various countries and their fighting forces.

While it is a little bit too pokey for me, I agree that a group of hardcore hex-gamers could have a blast with this for a practically endless amount of time.

Thread: Basic game rules LOS questions

arcastbooster — 2005-07-15T18:04:53+00:00

Basic Firepower is fun to play; however I've found that the basic LOS rules are unclear. There is no errata for this game, so can you help me ?

6.3.4.1 : What happens if both hexes are depression hexes, or if the firing unit is in a ground level hex and the target in a depression hex (or vice-versa)? I assume that any intervening ground level hex blocks the line of sight. Correct ?

6.3.4.2 : If both hexes are ground level hexes that are divided by an intervening fence hex (including units actually in the fence hex) and either or both units are Prone, does the intervening fence blocks the line of sight?

6.3.4.4 : I consider , for game purpose, that any hex that is not a hill hex or a depression hex is a ground level hex. Correct ?

Furthermore the Basic Game Card seems to be in error:

Regarding The Basic Game Movement Factor Expenditure Chart I consider :
- that the movement costs for Crouch to Stand or vice-versa should read : “ (1) (1) (-) ”. Correct ?

- that the “Prone to Crouch or vice-versa : (-) (1) (1) ” line is missing. Correct ?

At last, I assume that something is missing in the “range line” printed in the Hand Grenade line; there is no indication that a soldier must be Standing to throw a hand grenade at 6-8 hexes ... and case 6.3.2.1 (or .2?) of the rules doesn't help.

Thank's a lot

Thread: Review of Firepower

elijah234 — 2005-07-12T13:03:46+00:00

This is my first game review. I guess I took the safer option by reviewing a game I had since 1989 and has no reviews on BGG so there’s nothing to benchmark against. But please rate my review (good and bad ratings are welcome) or better still, let me know how I can improve my review writing skills. Cheers!

Description

Firepower is a tactical infantry combat hex-and-counter wargame covering the period from the Vietnam War to ‘modern’ times (1984). The scale is as small as combat gets: each counter represents individual soldiers and vehicles.

Contents and Components

The game has:

216 counters
4 8” x 22” mapboard panels,
1 Game Card
3 reference cards of infantry equipment and vehicles
1 building card (to show higher floors)
2 holding box cards (for vehicle crew and those manning defensive positions)
1 10-sided die

Firepower is typical of the Avalon Hill games of the era: mounted mapboards, cardboard counters and a slew of charts and tables. In terms of detail, the charts cover all the major weapon systems available between 1965-84 and most of the minor ones. A nice touch by Avalon Hill is the white dot in the middle of the hexes on the mapboards, which facilitates line-of-sight measurement.

Time

The 60 minutes shown in BGG is strictly for the Basic game. A full non-umpired Advanced Game with Optional Rules would take about 3-5 hours, depending on the number of units involved.

Rules

The game is intended to be a simulation, therefore the rules are lengthy and cover many details of infantry combat, from Claymore mines to morale to wound location. To facilitate learning, Firepower’s rules are broken up into three levels of difficulty: Basic, Advanced and Optional. I will not go into all the rules here; just to summarise the Basic Game rules, which covers how this game works. Every other rule merely adds to the realism of the game. The rules are daunting at the beginning but the Basic Game is not difficult to learn and by the time you move on to the Advanced and Optional Rules, you should be familiar enough with the game to absorb the Advanced and Optional Rules with minimal effort. Firepower provides a Game Card of tables, each with a reference number referring to the chapter in the rulebook where it is explained. After some practice, players will be able to find what they want on the Game Card. One drawback: Firepower has only one Game Card (I find it best to have more copies for the other players to speed up game play).

Squad Leader probably has a better way of introducing complex rules to the players, by teaching only the rules which are needed for the scenario. But that method is problematic for Firepower. Unlike Squad Leader, Firepower does not have strong scenario setups and so the game relies less on its own scenarios but on providing a framework of rules upon which the player creates his own scenarios. I played a lot of homemade scenarios in Firepower but don’t recall ever feeling I needed to create my own scenarios in Squad Leader!

The Basic rules cover setup, turn order, movement and fire resolution. Firepower is an impulse phase game. Each side has X number of impulses and can activate units in X hexes per impulse. The impulses are represented by chits which are randomly drawn each turn. The player whose chit is drawn get to take his turn, activating 2 hexes or more worth of units (the better trained the troops, the more Impulses/hexes per Impulse the player has). When all the chits are drawn the current turn ends and the next turn begins. Each unit has its own movement factor. For the Basic and Advanced Game, infantry units (vehicles are introduced in the Optional rules) have 4 movement factors, which are used to move, shoot or melee. Weapons are given “to hit numbers” which varies according to range. If players roll that number or below (modified by the posture of the target, cover etc.), the target is hit and eliminated.

For the Basic Game, players fight a meeting engagement with a squad of soldiers, which ends after four turns. Once players get the hang of this, they’ll want to move on to the Advanced and Optional Rules, which is where the real attraction of Firepower is.

There’s one aspect of the game which I’ll not go into – The Umpired Game, as detailed in the Optional rules. This is a rare setup requiring 3 copies of Firepower: one for the each player and one for the umpire. The umpire reveals the enemy to the opposing player as and when observation permits, thus adding to the uncertainty of combat. Rarely will you have 3 copies of Firepower nor a player experienced enough to be an umpire.

How the game plays and who should play it

If the Advanced rules (and most of the Optional rules) are played, there’ll be a lot of looking up tables and charts and dice rolling: nothing too much for a hard-core wargamer but may be too tiresome for even a moderate wargamer. But where the game shines is in its attention to historical detail. The most impressive part in the whole game is the lists of different squad make-ups and the table of equipment of different countries, some of which do not exist today (South Vietnam and Rhodesia, to name a few). For added historical significance, the reference cards provide game stats of actual equipment from the well-known like the M16 and AK47 rifle to the M1 Abrams and T-72 tank, as well as lesser known equipment like the Japanese KAM3D anti-tank missile. Players would be able to find a squad and its associated equipment to play out any action, viz., Vietnam War, the Arab-Israeli Wars, the Indo-Pakistani Wars and the Rhodesian conflict. This game would be tedious if it was just Army A vs. Army B but if you’re interested in the Vietnam War, playing out an NVA attack on a US Special Forces camp would be very exciting indeed. With some research, players can even game out hypothetical scenarios like the 2nd Korean War and the Chinese invasion of Taiwan. My own favourite scenario is the recreation of the events depicted in the Black Hawk Down movie and book!

As the phases are randomly determined, players will be caught up in some tough decision-making. Charge out from cover and hope to overwhelm the enemy position in the next impulse phase? Or would the enemy react faster and cut down your troops in the open? This game also shows how heroes are born in the midst of combat. Playing an assault scenario on a Gaza village in 1967, I had an Israeli paratrooper who stormed into a building and killed 3 Egyptian soldiers with his Uzi. The Egyptians just didn’t react in time (No Egyptian impulses were drawn!).

Replayability

Given the amount of actual and hypothetical scenarios, the replayability is endless. To add to this, the Optional rules allow players to customize their squad members and play them through a campaign. However, this appeals only in solitaire mode as the squad would probably be fighting ‘hordes’ of faceless enemies; it would be unrealistic for 2 squads of the same soldiers to continually face each other off in the battlefield! Given the difficulty in finding players for this game, that might not be a bad thing.

My rating: 6
This game appeals only to a group of specialized gamers, viz., hard-core wargamers interested in the modern infantry combat. For me, finding such people has been the major obstacle in this game hitting the tables more.

Thread:

crusher100 — 2004-12-18T10:01:31+00:00

Can anyone post the articles from the GENERAL and AAR or Game replay for Firepower?

Thanks

Thread: Re:Compared to...

GeoMan — 2004-06-04T16:48:33+00:00

Firepower is a more complex game compared to Ambush and since it doesn't feature any pre-programed scenarios you can play the game solo by playing each side to its best ability (with no hidden information).

Thread: Re:Compared to...

Cynosure — 2004-06-04T14:32:30+00:00

Ten or so years ago, my wargaming buddies and I used to play Firepower a lot. I remember the game being much more about the individual weapons, and much less about the individual soldiers firing them. I also remember the M249 SAW machinegun and the M202 "flash" four-round rocket launcher (w/ white phospherous rounds!) being *the* most effective weapons in the game, to arm your squads with.

I don't think Firepower is at all a good game for playing solo. The best solo games are the ones that were designed for that, in the first place: Ambush (for WWII squad-level tactics) and Apache/Thunderbolt Leader (for modern-day, tactical scale battles). Other wargames have some good solo rules variants, but I don't think Firepower is one of them.

Thread: Re:Compared to...

tathui — 2004-06-03T23:51:02+00:00

them (#36574),

Firepower feature individual soldier just like Ambush. Unlike Ambush, it has no paragraphs to guide your soldiers through. You may play Firepower just as you play SL solo, i.e. play both sides.

Thread: Compared to...

them — 2004-05-18T20:03:48+00:00

How does Firepower compare to something like say, Ambush (and does it play well solo)?

I understand it's less complex than SL/ASL, which bodes at least better for getting played in our house, but how complex is it really?

Thanks!