CAMPAIGN: Creating Firestorm Sicily

By Scott Grasse

I am very excited to be talking about Firestorm Sicily which launches this weekend on May 25th. The notion of creating a Firestorm Italy campaign has always been a burning desire but when Tom Richards approached me with his vision of a Mega Firestorm Italy Campaign – one that would cover three phases of operations in Italy and spanning from mid-war into late war – I immediately became energized to join the team and get to the fun.

Themed campaigns are a great way to delve deeper into the historical elements of WWII battles and tactics. The Battle for Sicily represents an interesting, dynamic and unique time period in the war that makes for a particularly great campaign. Many things were changing at the time. Everything from – the terrain the battles would be fought on to troops and equipment that would participate. Political and military leadership strife was occurring on both sides. The fight for Italy would be a very different experience than the battles fought in the open deserts and rugged terrain of North Africa just months before. Sicily was to be the flashpoint for a new phase of the war.

The first attempt at drawing map sectors.

Creating new units and armament that players could field in the game was a top priority we joyfully spent our time on. This started small with some of the core new units we wanted to include that we hadn’t seen in mid-war yet including US and British paratroopers and the unique Italian Coastal Defense units that were part of Sicily’s defense.

We had to get the Italian rail guns in for Tom Richards. Then, we attempted to create eligible equipment lists from the core mid war books by restricting equipment and vehicles not present in Sicily at the time. We quickly found, however, that to fully capture this unique period a substantial number of new units would need to be created.

Using source material from earlier versions of the game and the deep historical knowledge brain banks of Christian Sorenson we set out on this great endeavor. You can read about the force, formation and unit design in Christian’s forthcoming article here on NDNG in the forums.

An early draft of the Parachute Company Command Card.

Firestorm Campaigns have been around for a while (originally created and published by Battlefront) and there have been many notable campaigns written, many of which were authored by Jokull Gislason that can be downloaded from Battlefront’s web site. One particular inspiration for me was Tom Burgess’ Firestorm Bastogne which, in addition to playing out as a great campaign, was successfully run online. I used his format to create Firestorm H-Hour (covering US Airborne operations June 6-11, 1944) and more recently, Firestorm Tunisia.

Creating a Firestorm Campaign is a unique endeavor each time, to be sure. This is because each campaign has a different map scale, operations structure and its own set of objectives.

All these features need to be translated into a playable “board game” using a base set of pre-established rules. So in a sense, each campaign is an entirely new game. It starts with defining the operational objectives and understanding the plans and methods that were used to achieve those objectives. This has to be ultimately translated to a playable victory point scheme that allows for both historical end results as well as realistic “what ifs”.

Creating the map partitions into battle sectors can be a challenge, as well, because the map is of a fixed area that can range in scale depending on the campaign. The time frame that the battle was fought on has to be incorporated with the map scale. Lastly, the size of the map units (e.g., battalion regiment, division or Corp) must integrate with the map scale and timeframe to create realistic movement distances each turn of the campaign. For example, in a 5 turn campaign, Firestorm Sicily covers 6 weeks over a 9000 square mile area. In contrast, Firestorm Tunisia covers 5 months over 63000+ square mile area.

Firestorm Troops are a mix of Division and Corp sized units.

Every Firestorm Campaign incorporates new rules mechanics to introduce historical flavor and to “make the map work”. Firestorm Sicily uses division sized Axis units while using Corp size Allied units. This was required to allow the proper length of the Axis defensive front while at the same time keep the Allied Divisions coordinated.

It also provided the right number of Firestorm Troops on the map that would force Axis withdrawal of Firestorm Troops (because of sector stacking limits) as the Allies push across the island. This structure doesn’t work, however, if we want to emphasize the Airborne operations so separate division-sized units were created for the airborne. Special map battle rules had to be written to handle the airborne operations in sectors co-occupied by both Axis and Allied Firestorm Troop.

Another interesting map “issue” we had to address was the feasibility of attacking Messina from the coast (east of Mount Etna). Given the low number of sectors, an attack vector from this route had the possibility of ending the game in two rounds. We didn’t think this was feasible, so we created a “restricted front” boundary between Catania and Messina.

This allows attacks to proceed across the sector but does not allow advancement following a successful attack. Thus the Allies can support an attack on Messina from the south (in terms of offense and tying up Firestorm Troops) but the narrow road, which was easily defended, forces a capture of Messina to come from the west, as it was done historically.

From the flavor side, Tom has introduced a number of special campaign features to highlight some of the political and personal conflicts. Allied players will feel the brunt of the ego battle between Patton and Montgomery. Axis players will experience the frustration of ill-coordinated leadership and wavering political uncertainty.

The nature of the Sicily campaign meant we had to revisit the Air Assault (Seize and Hold) and Beach Assault (Hit the Beach) missions. By experience and recent playtesting we found that Seize and Hold had a real problem with the scattered reserves, especially since we nixed the Pathfinder rule (as they were invented AFTER Sicily, as a result OF Sicily).

We like the effect that scattered reserves is trying to recreate but felt it ignored the likelihood that an airborne assault would be preceded by a unit rally and would have some sort of attack order. We recreated this by limiting the Defender reserves to a long side of the table.

We also gave parachute and airlanding units Night Training, so they can cross-country dash at night. And the gliders. What about glider? Dust off your Red Devils and take them in on a glider assault, Coup De Main.

The original map

 

The new Hit the Beach Mission map

The Hit the Beach Mission proved extremely difficult to adapt to Sicily and we ended up with a significantly different beach assault mission than the Normandy-type landings for which the mission was originally designed for.

The redesign was prompted by several historical factors that had to be implemented which had the effect of reducing the assaulting forces firepower (due to lack of air, floating artillery, and tanks) while concentrating defender firepower and unit density (due to the presence of a lot of cheap infantry since the force lacks expensive fortifications, air, and tanks).

Dynamics also changed because of the mission starting at night, and the objective conditions having been updated to the current game version. The new mission has a different board setup that brings the attackers in from a long table edge and begins at night. We think this is a balanced and fun twist on the classic mission that will better recreate the Sicily landings.

So that is a bit of our story. We have attempted to create a rich platform (and had a blast doing it) that is as much of historical interest as it is stimulating and fun to play. We hope you enjoy.

Firestorm Sicily goes live May 25th. Get the downloads from the NDNG Campaign Forum and run your own Campaign or join a worldwide event such as the one being hosted by the Pasadena Gamers and Game Empire. https://www.facebook.com/groups/283596605923270/