Monday, September 25, 2006
Fighting At The Peach Orchard With The Fire and Fury Regimental Rules
We played a game centering around the Peach Orchard at Gettysburg this past weekend using the Fire and Fury regimental level rules, America’s Wars. The rules, which apparently are still in playtest and are available at the Fire and Fury website provided a fun game using mechanics that were at least somewhat familiar to our group of veteran Fire and Fury players.
The scenario was from the Enduring Valor scenario book by Scott Mingus. The scenario book is teriffic (although way too expensive), offering clear orders of battle and beautifully done color maps.
The main difference between the regimental and the standard Fire and Fury seems to be in the firing charts. One of the things that makes the original Fire and Fury rules stand out is the elegant simplicity of the combat resolution charts. You added up your fire points, rolled a die, added in a few modifiers and got a clear result.
In the regimental version, the fire chart bas been made more complex. You still add up the fire points, but then you reference the total to get a modifier. Tactical modifiers are added to this, and then a die is rolled. The modified result is cross referenced against a second chart comparing the die result to the quality of the target troops.
It’s not a bad idea, but lacks the elegance of the original system, because you end up looking at two separate charts each time you want to resolve a combat. It would have made far more sense to use the original chart, but to add modifiers according to target type. That could have produced the same results, but eliminated the second chart.
The only reason we can imagine for the change is that the Fire and Fury publshers want to make sure that they sell copies. If the original charts are used, then players could use existign rules sets and jsut pencil in the new modifiers.
Other charts have been, of necessity, expanded. Since the rules set encompasses all troop types in American Wars from 1775 to 1865, there are a lot if different weapons. The movement charts have been expanded to include various formations that wouldn’t have appeared in the original brigade level system.
With some minor differences, the rest of the rules played much the same as the original Fire and Fury set.
The scenario went pretty much as expected. After some hard fighting, the Rebs drove the Yanks from the Peach Orchard, while fighting raged back and forth north of Trostle Lane around the Klingle House. Ultimately, due to some horrible die rolling by yours truly, the Rebs pushed their way across the board, and won a decisive victory.
You can see some photos from the game here.
Monday, August 07, 2006
American Civil War Gaming and Reading Blog
Brett Schulte has a nice blog called the American Civil War Gaming and Reading Blog. No need to describe it’s contents.
Monday, May 01, 2006
Battles and Leaders of The American Civil War CD ROM
If you consider yourself a serious student of the American Civil War, you absolutely must own a copy of this series. Compiled by the editors of Century Magazine in the 1880s, Battles and Leaders consists of a series of articles written by the participants themselves: Grant, Sherman, Longstreet and others. No other book provides the insight, detail and personal narratives of Battles and Leaders For research purposes, the best way to get this series is on a fully searchable cd rom.
Battles and Leaders of the Civil War CD-Rom
Monday, October 31, 2005
Library of Congress Civil War Maps
Another treasure from the Library of Congress:
Civil War Maps brings together materials from three premier collections: the Library of Congress Geography and Map Division, the Virginia Historical Society, and the Library of Virginia. Among the reconnaissance, sketch, and theater-of-war maps are the detailed battle maps made by Major Jedediah Hotchkiss for Generals Lee and Jackson, General Sherman’s Southern military campaigns, and maps taken from diaries, scrapbooks, and manuscripts—all available for the first time in one place.
Most of the items presented here are documented in Civil War Maps: An Annotated List of Maps and Atlases in the Library of Congress, compiled by Richard W. Stephenson in 1989. New selections from 2,240 maps and 76 atlases held by the Library will be added monthly.
Sunday, October 16, 2005
Confederate American Civil War Maps
The Library of Congress has a collection of
cartographic items made by Major Jedediah Hotchkiss (1828-1899), a topographic engineer in the Confederate Army. Hotchkiss made detailed battle maps primarily of the Shenandoah Valley, some of which were used by the Generals Robert E. Lee and Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson for their combat planning and strategy. Several of the maps have annotations of various military officers, demonstrating their importance in the military campaigns. The collection also includes maps made or used by Hotchkiss during his post-war years, including maps with information about railroads, minerals and mining, geology and history, most of which focus on Virginia and West Virginia, but also cover other states and even the world.
The collection consists of 341 sketchbooks, manuscripts, and annotated printed maps, the originals of which reside in the Library of Congress’ Geography and Map Division.
A good many of these are available online
Sunday, July 10, 2005
Fire and Fury Scenario Generator Software
Vincent Tume offers a Fire and Fury scenario generator program. I can’t test it, because I don’t own a macintosh. But I’d really like someone out there to give it a go and tell me what its like.
