"Ever game a Forest Fire and the fire fighting teams" Topic

I know there are some board games dealing with house fires and wildland fires

Trying to gauge the level of interest that type of a miniatures games – Skirmish against the hordes of flames…

(Lowest) O – 10 (highest)

Sorta…Used The Creature that Ate Sheboygan to recreate an urban blaze.

Never done it. But the Smokejumpers game that SPI designed as a training aid for the US Forest Service always ranked high in the S&T feed-bsck columns. Unfortunately, the USFS refused to let them sell it.

I don't know about maybe doing one at the operational level but having been in wildland fires personally quite recently, at the ground level you just do the job in front of you with the decision making very basic. You have water or you don't. Cutting lines works or it doesn't. Wind, weather and terrain drives everything.

I've never gamed one out, but it could be fun to write up some rules and try it.

All of the burnable terrain would need both a pre-fire green and brown and a post-fire black version.

I think that weather forecasting would be important, because you would use it to decide where to send resources.

This could also work as a board game.

Fuel load, fuel type, relative humidity, temperature, terrain and forecast drive everything. All the resources in the world mean diddly if the RH is 4%, the winds are 15-30 and shifting and the fuel load is primarily 2 hour resin filled 6'+ brush in hilly terrain. All you can do is protect saveable structure and use air drops to hang on while things turn to garbage. Wildland firefighting is more about where you can draw functional lines than actually stopping the monster in its' tracks.

No interest in this type of game for me.

The 2012 Waldo Canyon that hit the west side of Colorado Springs featured a major distraction, as firefighters struggled to keep the fire out of the canyon to the south and west, while it slowly moved to the north and east, then a major change when strong winds from the SW sprang up just as the north edge of the fire climbed out of a canyon, driving the fire down on the edge of town at very high speed. Firefighters tried to redeploy, and were tumbled out of 5-6 defense lines in half an hour, and flanked by flames that raced along the top of ridges and in gullies. It hit the edge of town, where the infrastructure--road net and fire hydrants--allowed firefighters to stop its advance and eliminate wind driven islands of flame a mile or so from the main blaze. Did I mention that 50,000 or so people had to evacuate suddenly using a road net that wasn't meant to handle that many and was being used by firefighters at the same time?

Grelber

No – no interest.

The closest I've been is participating in a Desktop exercise (wargame) of a tanker fire while docked next to a refinery. The guys running the exercise had everything in about 1/1200 scale.

However, the game was rigged (to teach us a lesson I suppose) and the tanker exploded.

In addition to the classic MPC and Marx Fire Fighting Figures

A few boardgames that miniatures can be used with

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No interest in this. Too recent and too close to home.

At the operational level, specifically wildland or urban interface, yes I would.

I've known quite a few hotshots, and would really give good consideration to a game covering the subject.

Could be interesting …

Professionally, yes.

Hobby, no. Only done arsonists and pillagers setting things on fire on the tabletop.