You know we love tactical scale wargames here at The Players’ Aid. We love the hot and heavy action, the small scale with counters representing individual soldiers and the interesting choices and tactics you are confronted with. In the September 2023 Monthly Update from GMT Games, they announced a very interesting looking tactical level wargame that used dice as action selection for the units from a new designer. Following that announcement, we actually got a chance to play the game while attending SDHistCon in November 2023 with the designer Sam London. After that experience, we were hooked and reached out to Sam to ask him some questions about the design and its progress.

If you are interested in Firefight Tactical, you can pre-order a copy for $55.00 from the GMT Games website at the following link: https://www.gmtgames.com/p-1065-firefight-tactical.aspx

Grant: First off Sam please tell us a little about yourself. What are your hobbies? What’s your day job?

Sam: I hate to say it but all of my hobbies revolve around gaming. The most outlandish I get is miniature painting. I used to be a huge baseball nerd and a cinephile but the transition into fatherhood has forced me to focus on the nearest and dearest. By day I am a Data Scientist in big tech. I did the job for years in the video game industry, but have since become more generalized. My time doing in-depth analysis in the game industry has certainly served me well as I have been trying my hand at game design.

Grant: What motivated you to break into game design? What have you enjoyed most about the experience thus far?

Sam: It is hard to put my finger on a motive since I cannot remember a time that I didn’t want to do it. Initially I had wanted to design video games, but as I fell out of love with that medium and in love with analog gaming my ambitions traveled with me. The best part is obviously watching people enjoy your work. That is my most significant reward, but as a new designer I have had comparatively little of this to enjoy so far. Besides that, it is intensely rewarding when something that works in your head ends up working in reality and happens to also be fun to play.

Grant: What is your game Firefight Tactical about?

Sam: Firefight Tactical (FFT) is a fast-playing tactical squad level wargame set in World War II that in no way resembles (at least superficially) what comes to mind when people hear those words. The game uses an interesting and unique dice-driven system, which makes the game fairly quick to play and learn. The game follows American forces through 12 different scenarios in the weeks after the D-Day landings in 1944. 

Grant: Why was this a subject that drew your interest?

Sam: I am a huge tactical game player and as such I have played a lot of different systems depicting squad level combat in World War II. WWII was never not the subject because my focus was how I would attempt to take a novel approach to very familiar ground. Put differently, I am hoping the system debut will be well received and I think the contrast to other systems will be much starker in a well-known setting.

Grant: What is your design goal with the game?

Sam: I wanted to make a wargame married to some euro mechanics to gamify things a bit. The hope is to simultaneously make the experience novel to seasoned wargamers and less intimidating to people that wouldn’t necessarily consider themselves wargamers. The feedback that I have gotten so far makes me think I may have hit the nail on the head.

Grant: What elements from WWII are most important to include in the design?

Sam: There are so many things that make WWII combat interesting that they fill countless books, so the question is really what I enjoy most about modeling WWII combat. For me it is what I would call the democratization of maneuver. The combat puzzles in any WWII tactics game worth its salt focus on dynamism and every aspect of the game should serve that dynamism. Due to this focus FFT has a tremendous bias towards action.

Grant: What research did you do to get the details correct? What one must read source would you recommend?

Sam: Lots of research has gone into this project. Where I can, I prefer to listen to or read interviews with soldiers that were present on the battlefield. There is nothing better than firsthand accounts. I have also spent more time than I care to think about going over maps (which is ironic considering FFT doesn’t have predefined maps). Regarding tactics, there are a lot of great books out there, but my favorite was Closing with the Enemy: How GI’s Fought the War in Europe, 1944-1945 by Michael Doubler. His study of the tactics used in the ETO as something that was constantly evolving within the confines of each nation’s command structure encouraged me to think of things a bit more holistically rather than mechanically (a major danger for me as a statistician).

Grant: I’ve read where the design is described as an “innovative dice-driven tactical WW2 wargame at the squad level”. What does this statement mean?

Sam: Dice are the driving force of Firefight Tactical. That is because the core mechanism of FFT is a dice draft. I think some people hear that and worry that the game will be too random, when in fact the dice serve more as a tightening mechanism on top of the pacing of play rather than a purely random agent.

Grant: How exactly are dice used to drive the game?

Sam: During each impulse of FFT, you draft a die either from the common pool shared between players or from your own private reserve and assign it to one of the available units you control. You may then take an action with that unit that corresponds to the die you assigned to that unit. Each unit has its own action menu denoting the dice associated with each action. Fairly standard actions tend to have less restrictive dice requirements while special actions or stronger versions of standard actions will have more stringent die requirements.

Grant: What are the different colors used and how do they tie back to individual units on the field of battle?

Sam: The different colors broadly map to action focuses. White is generic, blue is command, yellow is mobility, and red is aggression. The dice action menus on the units will usually have greater flexibility around colored dice, so they tend to be priority targets in the draft to limit your opponents’ options quickly.

Grant: Where did you get this idea from? What other games have inspired this use of dice?

Sam: Dice drafting itself is by no means a novel mechanic. A few games I like which use it are Coimbra, Santa Maria, and Tekhenu. I simply thought to myself that it would be interesting if instead of assigning dice to activate something and generate resources, you assigned it to a unit to generate firepower.

Grant: The game is scenario based. How many scenarios are included in the game?

Sam: There will be 12 scenarios included in the base game along with very simple rules for designing custom scenarios. It is important to note also that these scenarios are tremendously replayable. The scenarios define the terrain deck, dice available, each sides available forces, and the objective. However, due to the fact that the map is randomly generated at setup by drawing cards form a deck, it is incredibly unlikely the same scenario will play quite the same way twice.

Grant: How do these scenarios build on the mechanics? Why was this a choice you made with the scenario design?

Sam: As I stated earlier, I wanted to make FFT as unintimidating as possible at first blush. Even though there is all the chrome a wargamer could reasonably want here, throwing the player straight into the deep end is the opposite of what I wanted. The nice thing is that if players want to pause a bit before adding more rules into the game, they can play the same scenario over and over due to the tremendous replay value. Further, I am very serious when I tout how easy the custom scenario design is. If players want to wait a bit before adding in armor or artillery they can throw together scenarios to their heart’s content without them first, and add the rest when they’re ready.

Grant: What is the anatomy of the unit counters?

Sam: The unit counters are straight forward outside of the dice action menu. The dice action menu gives several potential actions (usually 5) that may be performed, and the dice associated with those actions. Besides that, infantry have a morale value, a firepower, a range, and a movement capacity. The only other relevant pieces are the facing of the unit (orientation matters) and the artwork which depicts the relative size of the unit which is used in melee.

Grant: How do leaders differentiate from other units in their abilities?

Sam: Leader’s action options are generally more powerful and more utilitarian than normal unit actions. Obviously, a leader by themselves cannot exert a significant amount of firepower, but they can coordinate a large group of soldiers to exert a much more significant amount of firepower. Leaders are major targets in play, and rightfully so, as the loss of a leader is much more significant than the loss of any other single unit,

Grant: What different type of capabilities do units have?

Sam: For the most part, all infantry units share the capability of the same 3 standard actions, which are firing, taking cover, and moving. Beyond this, each of them have 2 special actions that exist only in that combination with that unit type. These are things like a recon squad’s capacity to scout or an assault squad’s capacity to deploy smoke. Utilizing each unit’s unique selection of actions optimally is crucial to coming out ahead.

Grant: How are these abilities activated?

Sam: These abilities are tied to the dice activations just like anything else. The more special actions do tend to be a greater focus when “hate drafting” though, because they are both impactful and usually restrictive enough for it to be possible to remove the necessary dice ahead of time. For example, it could be hard for me to prevent you from having dice options to move, but I can restrict your ability to scout by choosing the dice you need to do so, which is even more of a priority.

Grant: How do players build the shared pool of activation dice? How do they supplement this pool with their own dice?

Sam: The common pool of dice and the private reserves are specific to the scenario. At the end of each round, a specific die from the timer area is then added to the common pool. Since the Game Turn does not end until the common pool is depleted, the number of impulses in the turn keeps getting longer as dice are added from the timer.

Grant: What is the result of rolling doubles? Why did you want to include this element?

Sam: Any time you make a check in FFT you are rolling two dice, summing them, adding modifiers, and trying to roll equal to or under a target. When you roll doubles on the two dice something special happens. If you succeed and roll doubles something great happens. If you fail and roll doubles something terrible happens. My focus in game design is always to make games that people will tell stories about. Doubles in FFT are when things go sideways. I have not had a conversation with a tester discussing their favorite moments in play where doubles were not a part of the story.

Grant: What type of strategy does the dice drafting and particularly the shared dice pool create for players?

Sam: The dice draft is the beating heart of the game. Frequently, newer players will lose to a more experienced player having far more to do with how they handled the impulse dice draft than their tactics in the field. It is important to remember that the impulse dice represents momentum on the battlefield. Letting your opponent dictate that element is a recipe for disaster. As such, to play optimally a player should be as focused on their opponent’s priorities and what dice are required to meet them as they are on their own. Drafting the dice most integral to your opponent when possible, at a time the opponent cannot easily reciprocate, is a big part of a winning strategy.

Grant: How does combat work in the design?

Sam: Combat will be generally very familiar to fans of the genre. The active unit targets a zone and tries to roll under their firepower after modifiers. If they succeed the units in that zone must each attempt a morale check. There are some notable wrinkles however. First, the amount by which the firing unit beats their check is called the Fire Success Margin and becomes a key penalty modifier on the resultant morale checks. Second, if a unit is already pinned and fails another morale check it is forced to rout. Anytime a unit must rout and can’t, it is eliminated. These situations and some of the doubles rolls possible are where a lot of the casualty reductions come into play,

Grant: How is the Battle Grid formed?

Sam: The scenario will specify a battlefield diagram called the Battle Grid. The Battle Grid consists of areas called Zones, each of which is represented by a single Terrain Card. The Battle Grid during setup consists of three types of Zones, Starting Terrain, Fixed Terrain, and Fog of War. Fog of War Terrain is simply the Zones where the Terrain Card is randomly dealt face down during setup. Starting Terrain begins play revealed and represents aspects of the battlefield described by initial reconnaissance but not integral to the scenario. Fixed Terrain is a subset of Starting Terrain, but unlike Starting Terrain, Fixed Terrain features are always integral to the scenario. The important thing to keep in mind with Zones is that they are large, and the Terrain Card representing that Zone is not the only terrain in that Zone, but rather the terrain that is tactically relevant at the time. Fixed Terrain is usually tied to the scenario objective, so it is always the most tactically relevant thing in the Zone, but the rest of the Battle Grid is more fluid.

Grant: What different Terrain Cards are included?

Sam: For the core game the Terrain Deck depicts common terrain and features encountered during the Battle of Normandy. Players will be mostly encountering rural fields, houses, and hedgerows while there are also some more urban elements. Each of these terrain pieces have their own personality they bring to the tactical puzzle in how they affect movement, line of sight, or combat rolls.

Grant: What options do players have for changing out poor terrain? What does this represent from history?

Sam: As mentioned earlier, for the most part the Battle Grid is not static. Units can move laterally within a Zone to replace the terrain they occupy with another piece of terrain from the top of the Terrain Deck for that scenario. Beyond that there are a couple of special actions that units can use to increase their chances of finding choice terrain. Recon squads can scout, which will allow them to draw multiple cards from the Terrain Deck and choose which terrain they enter from among them. The most powerful action in this regard is a Leader’s survey action, which does the same thing as scout but can be done at range and gives the player the option to return the chosen card face down. This can create opportunities or even potentially set traps for enemies that will advance into the Zone. I wanted FFT to model terrain in such a way that it could both be a known quantity and could be something dynamic that players must contend with. Obviously there have been plenty of both circumstances in history. What I wanted to challenge is the standard gaming situation where the map and all of its details are known ahead of time by both players and there will be no surprises. In FFT players will have the choice between charging headlong into the unknown with limited recon or being more cautious and trying to make sure terrain is in their favor.

Grant: What are the Victory Conditions for each side for various scenarios?

Sam: Victory conditions vary between scenarios. Many are about trying to take a key piece of terrain from a defending enemy while the other player attempts to run out the clock. There are also search and destroy scenarios, scenarios requiring one side to exit off the opposite end of the map, and scenarios where both sides are attempting to push their units into enemy territory.

Grant: How long does the game take to play?

Sam: This is very scenario dependent, but the range is about 30 minutes for smaller scenarios to 2 hours for the larger ones.

Grant: Is there an option for solitaire play? What priorities does the bot use to make its decisions and what is the experience like?

Sam: There is solitaire play against a bot represented by a small deck of cards. On the bot’s turn you reveal the top card of the Bot Deck and follow the priority instructions on the card. I designed the bot to be very customizable. The bot works differently on offense or defense (some scenarios would be offense vs offense) and each in turn has 2 dispositions, reckless and cautious. The intent is that players will mix cards from the reckless and cautious dispositions to get a bot that will be cautious in some circumstances and reckless in others. My personal pet peeve is playing against a bot and knowing what it will do because I have been in that game state before. The bot in FFT doesn’t behave entirely randomly. It will make good decisions, but you will never know for sure what those decisions will be and the order in which it will prioritize them.

Grant: What changes have come about through play testing?

Sam: The core gameplay was pretty good from the get-go, and has remained unchanged. Beyond that though a lot has changed. The armor rules were entirely revamped, the cover rules were changed, and facing which was always a part of the armor rules was added to the infantry rules. Those are just some examples. We are still trying out some new ideas. Ultimately, I want FFT to be as fun and replayable as possible. I have heard some ideas that outright would not work in FFT, but otherwise my attitude is “let’s give it a shot” and if it improves the game, let’s get it in there.

Grant: What do you feel the game design excels at?

Sam: The game does a great job of eliminating a sense of battlefield omniscience without feeling like it comes at the expense of player agency. Put succinctly, fog of war is everywhere in FFT. There is a lot about the terrain you don’t know, about the enemy you don’t know, and you don’t know at what point your command will begin to have issues. None of that feels in play like “oh I rolled poorly” or “oh I drew poorly”. Those moments can certainly happen, but for the most part these random elements are more a depiction of circumstances that must be overcome. They in turn tell a unique and memorable story every time you sit down to play.

Grant: What new subjects are you contemplating for this system?

Sam: I have a lot of plans for filling out WWII for FFT in various theaters of operation. All of this is of course contingent on how well received the system is. Assuming people love it however, I have already been asked about a Vietnam War version, and I would be also very interested in doing a modern combat version.

Grant: What other designs are you currently working on?

Sam: Too many to count easily. Fewer are wargames and even fewer still can be talked about. One is an asymmetrical strategic level AmRev war game called Absolved from All Allegiance. I am planning it as the first game using what I am calling the Will to Fight System. I am happy to say I have already been approached by a couple of designers who would like to do other games in the series. The elephant in the room is my fast playing, asymmetrical space 4X game Microverse. Microverse gives you the feeling of a full-fledged space 4X game in about 15 minutes per player. I have been working on that one for around 8 years, so I am glad it is starting to get some attention.

Thank you Sam for your thoughts on your game and for the effort you have obviously put into it. Having played the game while attending SDHistCon this past November, I can say that we had a great time with the game, felt all of the aspects you discussed, including Fog of War, fast and furious combat, “hate drafting” of dice and a general narrative flowing from the game. I think that this one will be a winner and I look forward to playing it further in the future!

If you are interested, we posted a quick video interview with Sam while at SDHistCon and you can view that at the following link:

If you are interested in Firefight Tactical, you can pre-order a copy for $55.00 from the GMT Games website at the following link: https://www.gmtgames.com/p-1065-firefight-tactical.aspx

-Grant