Turn Sequence

Summary
Crossfire's most distinctive feature is its sequence of play as, unlike most wargames, players do not take it turns to move and fire all their troops. Instead one player has the Initiative as the Active player and carries out Actions until one fails. At this point Initiative passes to the other player, and they swap over. An Action is typically moving, firing or rallying. The Inactive player can interrupt moves in order to take Reactive fire. If the Reactive fire hits then the move has 'failed'. Likewise if the Active player fires and fails to hit, or attempts to rally and doesn't get the required score then this is a fail. Most units have no limit on the number of Actions they can perform in a single Initiative so, for example, they can keep firing until they miss, or keep moving across the map until they are hit by enemy fire. This means that the situation in a game can change very quickly, and the outcome is much more dependent on the tactical decisions of the players than in many comparable rules.

The need to use Reactive fire means that the '' Inactive" player is kept engaged in the game, and can't wander off to get a coffee while their opponent moves all their models. The fact that one side's turn ends when the Initiative passes does cause issues when there are multiple players on each side, and ways to approach this are discuss in detail in this Balagan article: https://balagan.info/how-to-play-multi-player-crossfire-games