Monday, September 25, 2006
Fighting At The Peach Orchard With The Fire and Fury Regimental Rules
ACW, Personal
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.
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