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What is Fire Team: Red Eclipse

David Heath

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So What is Fire Team: Red Eclipse?

Fire Team: Red Eclipse
is the first game in the new Kontact Now game series. Fire Team: Red Eclipse covers the Cold War Gone HOT in West Germany in 1989. Fire Team: Red Eclipse is designed and developed by Steve Overton with Jon Southard, designer of the original Fire Team game, consulting.

Fire Team: Red Eclipse covers the US and Soviet forces fight on geomorphic maps that are represented with 50 meter hexes and 2 - 5 minute turns.

The series brings together mechanics to represent the OODA Loop, training and experience of military organizations, Command and Control of tactical combat units, random impulses based on the capabilities of your leaders on the map, intuitive game play based on the units responding to game play as soldiers do in actual situations, and the ability to create random events such as happen in small unit actions.

Couple the OODA Loop with the training and experience of each nations organizations in the series to create a unique blend of Command and Control with organizational traits. Tactical Event Cards add additional options for play, Command Points give you a varying number of orders per impulse - determined by the quality and condition of the leaders you currently have in play on the map. As the overall leader in the game you can do whatever you want. You just won't be able to do it all at the same time. If one of your Command Point chits is drawn you will have between 1 and 3 orders to issue. Those orders range from firing at the enemy to repairing support weapons and everything in between. That's all great but which orders do you give 'RIGHT NOW'? Each of us has a different idea about what's the most important thing to do at any given moment.

Leaders play the pivotal role in the game by creating orders, directing fire, providing a movement bonus, and assisting in rallying of broken/disrupted units. The state of your leaders on the map determines how many orders they can give each impulse during the turn. The organization of the nationality you have determines the number of orders you may get in an impulse. The player who can utilize his leaders to the greatest effect will usually be the winner. Usually, because nothing is ever 100% certain in Kontact Now.

Weaponry has not been left out of the game. All weapons of the era are in the game. All weapons systems in the series have been created using the same formulas. This allows each unit - weapons system - to be created with it's own unique values in relation to the other weapons of that same weapons class over the past 70+ years and into the future. Armor penetration values are constant throughout the series as are armor defensive values; for all vehicles and helicopters. Each weapons class has been exhaustively researched to give you the best unit values to work with. You don't have to worry about the weapons and the systems. All you have to worry about is using them in a winning combination.

Fire Team: Red Eclipse will include Off Map Artillery, night rules, engineer obstacles (mines, wire, bunkers, trenches), multi-level buildings, rubble, fires, roadblocks, helicopter, Close Air Support (CAS), Antitank Guided Missiles, Surface to Air Missiles, Man Portable Air Defense systems, with both high and low unit counter density scenarios, exiting the map, all of varying degrees of complexity. Special rules governing helicopter and column movement activation, as well as snipers, medics, wounded and vehicles with multiple weapons systems.

Asymmetrical Victory Conditions combined with the Tactical Event Cards and concealment counters, random CAS attack packages, random size artillery missions, and Opportunity Fire adds a heavy layer of Fog of War to the system.

Because of the random chit draw for each impulse during a turn the series is extremely solitaire friendly.

Kontact Now very much adheres to the chaos gaming method. This is not an "I take a turn/ You take a turn" game. This is random events, varying length impulses per turn, surprises at every moment kind of a game with an intuitive set of rules. It is not so random that you have nothing to do but sit back and let the game play itself. The choices are there every impulse for the gamer to impact game play. Tactical Event Cards can be played at any time, no matter whose impulse it is. Game play gets so intense that the gaming table may crack!!

I will leave the rest for Steve Overton to dive into. Please post your questions and we do our best to answer them.
 

Steve Overton

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The system is based on the available actions small unit leaders make in combat. It takes into account the training, experience and doctrine of the organizations involved in the battles.

For those of you looking for a fast paced, loaded with depth and information, easy to learn and play tactical game system this is it.

This first game covers US and Soviet forces in West Germany in 1989. The rest of the games in the series cover from 1937 through near future. Fire Team: Red Eclipse is just the first in a long line of connected games. Start your journey in one of the most fast pace and deadly combat theaters the world could have ever seen.

Good Hunting.
 

Jake

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What is(are) the role of the player(s)? When I see 'small unit leaders' I wonder is that Platoon leaders (who in theory maneuver squads but can direct the fire teams), company commanders (maneuvering platoons)?
 

Steve Overton

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Small unit leaders in KN are representing anything from a Company Commander and lower.

In addition, a Hero leader quite possibly wasn't a formal leader in the structure of the unit but may instead be a soldier that simply took things into his own hands.

Leaders in the game are not given ranks because the leadership values of actual leaders vary not according to rank but according to their ability in a given situation. They may perform well on one day and not so well on another. I thought the immersion would work better if the leaders were named and not ranked.

Hope that helps.

Good Hunting.
 

sdickes

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So the scale is 50m with squads, leaders, weapons, single vehicles -- correct?
 

HariSeldon

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I want to confirm that all the games in the series will be consistent (ie - GMT Panzer & MBT) across all time periods. If that is the case, sign me up for each game you publish.
 
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HariSeldon

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David,
Thanks for your answer. The consistency across all time periods is an important feature for me. I'm not interested in purchasing another series of stand alone games. I'm looking for full compatibility among all the titles.
 
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David Heath

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Hi,

Ok, the series will NOT be different games, I took your question to mean all the rules are 100% the same. We like to have a set of core rules, and then each game has module rules. I guess what I am saying we like to keep our options open.

David
 

Steve Overton

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This is a response I gave to a question on a Face Book wargaming page:

"Where would this system sit in the tactical wargaming spectrum as far as simulation vs. game, and/or rule density v.s abstraction? Sounds very dynamic and chaotic (which is good for soloing)."

The game is based on the original Fire Team game created by Jon Southard and sold by West End games.

There were some things about the original game that I felt could be improved on and I wanted the game system to cover WW2 as well. So, when I did the expansion for West End they asked me for I started work converting the system. I did the expansion for the original game but West End sent it back to me saying they no longer sold wargames. At that time I put my time and resources into computer gaming. There was just something about Fire Team that I couldn't leave alone though so I kept tinkering with it.

It uses Jon's original Command Point system to get the type of organization. NATO being very fluid - Soviet being very rigid, with everyone else falling somewhere in between. Random CP chit draw was kept.

To that I added Tactical Event Cards. These were added after I played a lot of Chad Jensen's Combat Commander. I HATE cards in wargames but CC does as good a job with them as any game ever made. Still, in the end, CC didn't change my mind about card driven games. What it did do was to make me think about how the cards could be used to show the tendencies for a military organization. For instance, the Viet Cong never called for air support but the US Army regularly did. Those differences are reflected in their Tactical Event Cards. Each player normally has up to 4 Tactical Event Cards in their possession at any one time out of a deck of 50 possible. With a normal 5 turn game that means you have the possibility of drawing 20 of those 50. Special Scenario Rules can alter the number of Tactical Event Cards you may hold, so 4 is not a hard and fast rule.

Adding the Command Points and the tactical tendencies together allowed me to create the OODA Loop in a ground combat game. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OODA_loop)

What this does is create a situation where you don't have to worry about if you are using a national organization correctly. You get the options that organization gets. Their tendencies will be your tendencies because they are built right into your game options.

In that regard this is a simulation.

Where the game comes in is with ease of play.

I spent some time polling veterans about how things were done in their areas of expertise. The best advice I got was from Joe Steadman. He told me to, "just let the guys do their jobs." So, the rules and mechanics reflect that. The gunner uses his experience level and the equipment to hit the target, the driver puts the vehicle hull down, the MG gunner attempts to fix a broken gun with his experience level, and so on.
There are other things that show up as well, like asymmetrical objective values, the 3 dice roll resolution that can trigger random events, both good and bad for a player, the ability of the system to create a rich story line with a minimum of rules and a common sense approach to game play that makes for fast easy play, the combination of random activation and Tactical Event Cards creates an intensity and a 'boots on the ground' level of uncertainty that will draw you into the play.

So, like most games, this is a combination of sim and game. The KN system uses the best of both styles to produce what I believe is a ground breaking gaming experience.

The game is very much a chaos system. Which does in fact make it very easy to play solitaire."

I hope this will help answer some of the questions about the game.

Good Hunting.
 
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