Fire & Fury

Our club still hasn't returned to its regular venue at the university, but there has been some gaming at one of the local RSLs. This has included semi-regular Sunday games; bigger battles where you need more than just an evening to play. I generally haven't worried too much about them, but I was tempted this week because they were playing one of my favourite rulesets from days gone by - Fire & Fury.

I used to play tons of F&F back when it was fresh, new and exciting in the 1990s. I even designed scenarios for it, most of which are lost in the mists of time, although I think I have a folders somewhere with the best of them. It does need a fair bit of space, though, and did take up a lot of time, so it kind of fell by the wayside over the years.

Anyway, I played a game of the newish regimental set a few years ago, and that's what was on offer yesterday. It's more detailed than the basic brigade set (and I believe that has acquired more detail as well), but the principles are the same and that's what mattered.

Gary put together the game, using 25mm figures from various people's collections, and kept everybody on track. We played a kind of meeting engagement, with the Union holding a hill and expecting reinforcements, whilst pairs of Confederate brigades came on looking to oust them. I got the honour of running the initial attack because, as someone who had played F&F before, I could show the others how you did stuff.

Here's the initial setup:

It was a good-sized table, with the Confederates to the right and Union to the left. The two ends were open woodland, whilst the centre was relatively open but criss-crossed by fences and with some dense woods on the Confederate side. The flank nearest the camera wasn't used at all.

The initial Confederate advance. I aimed at the right flank of the hill, which was covered by some green-looking Union troops skulking behind a fence. I hurled a full brigade at them.

I survived the long-range fire, and charged home.

Or tried to. In Regimental Fire & Fury you can be thrown back by fire before you get a chance to fight the close combat. And that's what happened; two of my three units decided that they wouldn't attack.

However the third - veterans all - did go in, and threw back the Union troops on the fence-line.

Meanwhile we had other troops appearing, but so did the Union. A big fight was developing in the woods on our right.

Confederates advance.

But that's a lot of guns!

A view through the woods

I had a second brigade, which spent most of the battle sitting in the dense woods in front of the hill. This kept a reasonable number of Union troops pinned, whilst the rest of our force tried to work around their flanks. The plan was that when one of the flank forces assaulted the hill, this brigade would advance as well and help administer the coup de grace.

On the right our troops were pushing forward boldly and the Union were falling back less boldly. We began to swing their line around and back them up towards the hill.

Here you can see the Union line with a right-angle in it, as the Confederates organise for yet another push.

My initial brigade was suffering badly. I'd formed them up along some fences, but the Union had reinforced with some dismounted cavalry and I found myself up against breech-loaders. My regiments were whittled down and forced back, with the only satisfaction being that the Union were taking a surprising amount of time and men doing it and that those units weren't available to bolster their position elsewhere.

The main Confederate attack was looking impressive. To the bottom left you can see my troops, who had left the cover of the woods when we realised that the corner of the Union position was looking very unsafe indeed. They took a lot of artillery fire as the went in, but the Union lost some of their artillery and had to reorganise in response.

At that stage we had to pack up - we'd had 4-5 hours of playing time, and felt that the game was nearing a conclusion. I think we called it a draw, but the Union, whilst still in a line along the flank of the hill, were close to a break in morale which would seriously hinder their ability to act. Most of the Confederates were still fighting fit, and had a few attacks left in them. 

Of course, as a Confederate player I would say that.

Here's one final shot of the table and the impressive (if gloomy) auditorium we got to play in.

Thanks to Gary and Ian for organising things and to everyone else for making the game run smoothly, quickly and in an entertaining manner. I really enjoyed playing F&F again, even with the strange changes.

52 Games - Game 27

Regimental Fire & Fury

Last night Gary and I tried out Regimental Fire & Fury. Some twenty years ago I was a big fan of the original brigade-level Fire & Fury, but we played it less and less at my UK club, and I never really got the chance to play it in Australia. So this was, in some ways, a trip down memory lane to visit a new version of an old friend.

As the name suggests, Regimental Fire and Fury takes the regiment as the base unit, so is scaled down one level from the original game. This means that it includes details which are abstracted out of the original game; weapon types, for example, and more detailed troops classifications. For our first game we kept things simple, though, making all troops trained and reliable, with rifled muskets. We had ten eight-stand regiments each, and three pieces of artillery, and I set up a simple terrain.

I didn't really take pictures with a view to a detailed narrative of the game, so I'll just let them sit between various comments. Here's the Confederates advancing down a road towards the defending Union troops. Formations are similar to the original game.

Union troops. Command and control is different in this game, with a single roll being used for all regiments within command radius of a particular officer. Only one officer can affect a given unit. This single roll does speed up movement a lot. There are some additional modifiers to create extra command tension, however; units take a penalty if their side has sustained a certain level of casualties, if key objectives are occupied by the enemy, or if they are outflanked.

As with the original game, movement distances and firing ranges are generous, and the game rattles along. We used troops on 20mm square stands, with each stand actually representing two stands in a supported line. We tracked odd casualties with markers. It wasn't too hard to keep track of.

Firing is the same as the original rules, with the only major change being that the number of fire points is now simply a modifier to a die roll, rather than there being a large matrix to cross-reference them against. Again, this speeds up play. The firing results are a little more detailed, with the score affecting whether charging units make contact, and some results scoring hits on units which are already disordered, instead of just inflicting redundant extra disorders.

Our game saw the Confederates on the offensive, pushing across a stream and into a farmstead, as they drove down the road towards a Union-held church. But a lot of the game is about inflicting casualties on the enemy.

Charge combats are the same as in the original game, which will disappoint some, as the wide range of results possible from an opposed D10 roll seemed to be a sticking point with some. I liked it. There is the option to charge in with cold-steel at this level; you have more chance of completing the charge, and get a bonus in combat, but don't get to fire as you go in. A useful thing to use against an opponent who is shaken, or if your own firing is limited in some way.

Going low on ammunition in this game is more of an issue, since you can't just replenish with a simple withdrawal. Both sides had an ammunition train, and a unit must perform a movement action within a certain radius of it in order to remove the out of ammunition status. On the plus side, going low on ammo isn't quite so easy to achieve.

Supporting units are still a thing in this game, but are at more risk from adverse results, both in charge combat, and from firing where they take a reduced version of any damage the front unit receives.

Anyway, we blazed away at each other, charged back and forth and both armies took roughly the same level of casualties. I was happy to concede, however, when one of my charges was repulsed with heavy casualties, seriously compromising my centre, and adding to the discomfort of my already wobbly right.

It was fun to play Fire & Fury again, despite the work of having to deal with the changes to core mechanisms, and the addition of regimental-level chrome. Apparently a new edition of the brigade-level game is out as well; it will be interesting to see what changes have been made to that. I'm certainly looking forward to playing one or other of the games again.