"Hail of Fire: Go to Ground" Topic

There seems to be a rule missing: Go to Ground. The first reference to it is:

Non-Vehicle Units may be ordered to Go To Ground before resolving Received Fire Checks. If ordered so, Teams in the open or in Soft Cover resolve Received Fire Checks as though in Hard Cover, and Teams in Hard Cover ignore "Killed" results.

It never says what happens if you Go to Ground beyond that, therefore why would everyone not simply declare they are going to ground and take the benefit? Is they penalty that the Team loses the order they have just issued?

Thanks in advance,

Dale

Yes, the penalty is that it is an order and so costs a order point to do so. HOWEVER, there IS a rule missing! (which I put back in last night when going through the other stuff we've discussed, thank you again!) Teams ordered to go to ground can't be given any more orders fro the remainder of the turn. They can't move, shoot, rally. They can still make their quality checks if assaulted (if they're not suppressed) because that's not an order, but otherwise that's it. "Turns" are often very short in HoF, so it can often work out, but it's a gamble depending on the situation.

Thanks for your help!

Okay, but now you have this statement:

Teams fired upon when moving in the open resolve their Received Fire Checks immediately.

If it is immediately, I assume that means when they receive the RFP. Correct? Well combining the two rules, I Go To Ground, take the bonus, but don't lose the order because I am doing it during your turn, not mine after I have activated them.

Just a further clarification:

When a Unit with any RFP assigned to it is activated, all RFP must be resolved by rolling a Received Fire Check for each point assigned per Team.

Given that it is very possible that you have fewer orders than units to receive them, some units might not receive an order immediately and thus not activate for a long time, therefore not triggering this check. That is intended, correct? I assume so because it essentially means you are not doing anything, but as soon as you want to, BAM! :^)

Dale

"If it is immediately, I assume that means when they receive the RFP. Correct? Well combining the two rules, I Go To Ground, take the bonus, but don't lose the order because I am doing it during your turn, not mine after I have activated them."

Going to ground is an order, so when resolving RFPs while moving, Going to ground isn't an option. I literally just added some language on GtG earlier this morning which should help make that clearer.

"Given that it is very possible that you have fewer orders than units to receive them, some units might not receive an order immediately and thus not activate for a long time, therefore not triggering this check. That is intended, correct? I assume so because it essentially means you are not doing anything, but as soon as you want to, BAM! :^)"

Exactly. A unit can sit on an objective the entire game getting shot up, but neither side will know how effective the fire was until either the unit tries to do something, or the opponent forces the issue by going in to look for themselves. That said, put enough fire on something and the odds are it's toast, but you never know…

A concern I've heard from another player regards the idea of infantry being invulnerable to fire when gone to ground in hard cover. My initial thinking was that games are generally too lethal to infantry in cover, and that while they may still be kicking, infantry that infantry is generally suppressed and (as you already noted was a missing rule!!!) if GtG, are unable to be issued other orders for the remainder of the turn. These make them easy targets for assaults. I've considered recently changing gone to ground from increasing cover to something like, removing up to 3 RFPs or something like that, but haven't tested it. (I haven't been able to play any minis games in a month+) Let me know if you have any thoughts on this. And thank you again!

If they're really in hard cover and it's a non-explosive direct fire, just simplify by making them invulnerable when they go to ground. Getting the odds right otherwise is too difficult. (Cumulative probabilities start making a mess of things very quickly.)

my original thought as well. However, to your point, it includes all incoming fire. small arms, artillery, HE. Because fire is resolved after the fact, it's difficult to differentiate weapons the same way you would in a more traditional approach. So small arms and HE in the end produce the same thing, Received Fire Points, and those are resolved later when the unit does something. This means that, currently, if a units in hard cover has been receiving small arms fire all day, it can choose to go to ground rather than move or shoot for the turn, and know for sure it will survive (but probably super surpassed and unable to defensive fire when assaulted). However the same is currently true if shelled by HE the whole game. I don't inherently have a bad reaction to this, but my buddy sure does and I curious is others do as well.

Ah! You mean literally that they are using a Move order and they are fired upon while in the open. Does that imply that Opportunity Fire is an interrupt and not done immediately after the Move completes?

Would it not be easier to give an (generic) Order to a unit, and then allow each team within that unit determine whether it will Move, Fire, or Go To Ground as its one action for that Order? If one team has RFP you are essentially burning a whole Order on this one team. It is bad enough that you have to burn an Order for each TEAM outside of LoS of the PC in order to move them, as it is.

Or do you not want that much flexibility to an Order. I can see, however, using one team to provide covering fire while another maneuvers. Requiring two Orders for this common tactic seems excessive. I may house rule you on this one! :^D

Looking at my response above I see I kind of described that wrong. It's more like the resolving of the RFPs is the interrupt for opportunity fire, rather than an interrupt for the move, if that makes sense. Normally RFPs are resolved after the order is given, but before the action is taken. In the case of opportunity fire (of targets in the open), RFPs are resolved immediately after being allocated. So its one of the two times (the other being if assaulting targets with RFPs on them) where you resolve RFPs without actually giving those teams an order.

The idea is basically that these are unique situations where the shooters can actually confirm these results (shooting at targets moving in the open, or fighting them in close range. Every other situation requires action from the target since the shooters are firing at hedglines, woods, windows, etc rather than specific human targets.

As for generic orders, you're correct that the effect is intentional. First and foremost being it plays much more cleanly. declaring and resolving multiple actions causes all kinds of complications. But if you can, play the house rule and tell me if you think I should reconsider!

Otherwise you have the effect of a whole platoon laying down suppressing fire in one Order and then the whole platoon advancing on another Order. One of the chief complaints about Bolt Action that I have read over and over is the inability to use fire and maneuver tactics by splitting a squad. If you carry that up to the inability to split a platoon (with a single Order) you will lose some people.

If Go to Ground is an actual Order, you need to move that designation up to the Turns and Order section of the rules.

It will be interesting to try this out this weekend. I think applying an Order to move to a platoon is going to trigger a number of Op Fire orders, making it fun to remember where you left off in the move you interrupted. And if you don't interrupt the move, you will be one of those games where you have to pull back a move and say "okay I am shooting you when you were there". Otherwise you will never shoot people in the open as they rush from cover to cover.

These are interesting concepts, but you may need a TFL-style video explaining how stuff works before all this is done.

If its possible to have one order do multiple things without causing it collapse under its weight Im definitely open. Le t me know how it pans out! I agree with your note about mentioning gone to ground with the rest of the orders.

Op fires are intended to happen after teams have completed their move, and teams are not intended to be pulled back into previous positions. This is a big reason for the random movement distances; you declare the direction they go and then roll. if the destination is close, they're likely to not be in the open before the shooting, its its 4" or more it's pretty risky. I used to have an additional rules in there that teams hit with opfire roll cover saves as though in in the least protective cover they could have been hit in while moving, but that went away with the delayed combat fire results.

Personally I think pulling a team back to shoot at them is fine when activations are a single playing piece at a time, but if you're activating multiple playing piece at once, i can' stand the practical issues involved in pulling them back, trying to decide who could shoot at who at what position, where they go back to after its all finished, did he gets extra inches when putting them back, blah blah. I'm much happier with the random distance rolls. It's also how most of the fire in CoC works. Break the turn into smaller more random subunits and you negate most of the need for inter-turn interaction. YMMV though so please let me know.

There's been a lot of discussion about this and similar topics here on TMP. Another issue people bring up is terrain placement. Scenario and map design are as important to a set of rules in how a game plays. If every terrain piece is within 3" of each other then in that game it will be very hard to get shots in the open, which isn't necessarily bad. infantry in the open die much more quickly. If you put a few more inches between your terrain pieces your have more shots in the open happening. If thats the game you want.

That helps a lot. This is why you need to play a game before reviewing rules: some things don't smack you in the forehead until you actually try them out. The low random movement roll does cover getting caught in the open when your intent is to rush from cover to cover.

Yes, terrain is important and unfortunately commercial scenarios are not always suited for every set of rules. That was one of the "issues" with Crossfire; they wanted really dense terrain. Most of the scenarios that I have from TFL for IABSM flat out would not work out of the box with CF.

I will try it straight, first. But my gut feeling is telling me that the game will feel like it is running in slow motion if Orders are not generic and a platoon cannot split its actions on an order. Generally when that happens, people start rushing their attacks.

You are going to regret asking for my feedback! :^D

By all means! I look forward to the results of your experiments. :D I will have an updated PDF uploaded tomorrow with the clarifications we've been discussing.