Fields of Fire is a solitaire game of commanding a rifle company between World War II and the Present Day. The game is different from many tactical games in that it is diceless and card based. There are two decks used to play. The Terrain Deck is based on a specific region and is used to build a map for the various missions your company must perform. The Action deck serves many purposes in controlling combat, command and control, and various activity attempts. The units of the company are counters representing headquarters elements, squads, weapons teams, forward observers, individual vehicles or helicopters. A single game is a mission and several missions from a historical campaign are strung together for the player to manage experience and replacements. A mission can be played in about 1 – 4 hours.
The Deluxe Edition includes a rewritten series rulebook, with a rewritten third edition ruleset, packed with examples, diagrams and clarifying notes while maintaining continuity with the second edition rules, a Starter Guide, a Full Starter Mission, which is a stand-alone mission tailored towards easing new company commanders into the full game, 4 fully Redesigned Mission Books, Normandy, Heartbreak Ridge, Naktong River and Vietnam campaigns are presented in a clarified and expanded manner, over 200 updated counters plus various additional reference markers and new units, new elevation cards to enhance the Heartbreak Ridge campaign and a completely new set of redesigned player aids including new charts and air assault planning cards.
-Grant
It is a great SOLO game.
Better in Offensive player mode than in Defensive mode.
The AI is a bit lacking when the Bot has to attack in many scenarios. Bulge expansion… I am looking at you…
I hope they fix that in the upcoming Arnhem module.
Rules heavy, but luckily I play with NotebookLM these days. When in doubt ask this rules cruncher any time. So I avoid huge mistakes and the more you play the more fluid your fun is.
One other remark: FoF is a tactical game so like most tactical games it is very generic. The mood counts not the actual realistic terrain simulation of certain fights.
That is why it is a top 10 game for me not top 5. Because the Grand Tactical System for example offers tactical overview with true terrain of the battle you simulate (Race for Bastogne, D Day scenarios, Strike Counter Strike).
But the true strength of FOF is its pure SOLO playability and we finally have an AI rules machine (Notebooklm) that helps playing this beast in solo mode…which was simply too heavy to conquer previously.
Now it stands at 9/10 for the game.
Better : GTS – BCS – Panzer
Most other tactical games offer far less.
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Insightful comments Ben. Thank you for your thoughts. I very much enjoyed the game and want to get back to it with some more plays, particularly of the Korea and Vietnam modules.
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