"Give me the lowdown on Fire and fury" Topic

The brigade level rules, not the regimental.

I get that each base is about 200 soldier, and that each unit is a brigade, but how exactly does that work, is there a brigade formation thing, so you might put 5 bases infront, beeing 1000 soldiers, and keeping 2 bases in reserve. but that dosn't seem to work I read that each brigade has like 4-7 bases, which dosn't seem to look much like a brigade if each base is 200, 7 bases is just 1400 thats might be a small brigade, but 7 seems to be the upper limet, a propper brigade seems to start at 1500 and go up to about 2500, but that means like 12 bases?

Right. 12, 16 bases. I'm pretty sure I've seen some published scenarios where a fresh, green unit of yankees is 18 stands.

A lot of depleted brigades are in the 6-to-8 stand range. 12 to 16 stands is not unusual. It makes for a long line. But it's very common to run your brigades in 'supported line' formation, two stands deep.

6 X 200 man regiments is a perfectly reasonable head count for a depleted brigade, ANV at Sharpsburg or 3rd day at Gettysburg, etc.

No, you can't pick out the individual regiments of your favorite brigade on the table, but F&F is designed to let a club play out historical ACW battles in a day of gaming. They were big battles and a unit is a brigade.

It's a fun game which is quite simple yet satisfying in an ACW game. Single brigades 4 to 18 stands can be in single line or double line. Same as single column or double column. The rules have a quick Tables and Charts sheet which give you all that is necessary to have a game. Once these are memorized you can have a good game in 2 to 3 hours. I've put on game a conventions with people who've never played before and with the first hour they are running the game themselves.

Two weeks ago we had a game with 120 stands a side, the game was done in 2.5 hours. We use 25mm figures with 3 to 4 figures per stand.

Firing is easy, count up the number of stands totaling all who are firing at one target including artillery and roll one 10 sided die for a result. Higher the better.
The more stands firing the more deadly the result. Usually you can at least out a disorder on the opponent, which means firing stands are halved. There are plus's and minus's on the firing chart as well as the melee chart.
Melee, is one die roll each highest wins.

It's not as complicated as Johnny Reb or Stars and Bars.
Our group likes it.

It depends on the battle. At Gettysburg, for example, the Texas Brigade went into battle on 2 July with about 1734 men, and the Iron Brigade on 1 July had about 1829. In BF&F, each brigade would take the field with 9 stands.

You could also use 1 stand = 150 men for smaller actions.

Mike

Great game for grand tactical – been playing for years

Most of our brigades are 8 – 12 stands, but as noted veteran brigades can be 6 stands

They play fast and are a lot of fun – highly recommended!

Highly recommended. I swithched to these when they first came out and never looked back.

Gunfreak wrote:
so you might put 5 bases infront, beeing 1000 soldiers, and keeping 2 bases in reserve. but that dosn't seem to work

That's thinking like a brigade commander: which regiment is in reserve in my brigade formation?

F&F is thinking like a division or corps commander: where is that brigade placed and why isn't it advancing? The locations of the individual regiments within the brigade are abstracted at that level. Whether or not an individual regiment, for example, was able to turn to face the flank attack is assumed in the opposed roll between combatants in a charge.

This game is an oldie but a goodie!

And if you don't mind a few strange looks (most adults who play with toy soldiers should be used to them anyway) from pedants then regimental flags for a few brigades are fine. My union army has a number of standard flags then an Irish and Italian one as well.

Tables always look great as well.

Since basing is the same, you can use the same figures/stands for Regimental F&F as well as "Regular" F&F.

if you can get beside the fact that american civil war battles were regimental fights, sure great game…

One of our groups favorite set of rules. Have made varients of these rules for other periods also…

I own all the F&F books and thought they were great when I firts bought them.

Just returned to ACW gaming last year after learning Regimental F&F was out. Given the choice I would use regimental every time.

The original is still good if you want to game large battles and lack the figures.

If you are trying to decide between the two then regimental hands down IMO.

We have been using F&F for years, after trying any number of other rules. They work great for large to medium actions where the maneuver unit is the brigade. We also use F&F for the Paraguayan War with only a few modifications and it works perfectly.

Although the units are brigades, there is nothing to prevent painting a brigade in a distictive regimental uniform or using a distinctive flag (fortunately, 4 out of the 5 regiments of the Irish brigade used almost identical flags, so that works)

I've used the rules for a number of historical scenarios and, as previous posts say, I've seend from bases to 17 depending on the point in the campaign and whether the entire brigade was in this battle.

A good set of rules for fighting this level of engagement. It looks realy well with 6mm figures or you can use larger and easily use the same figures/bases for regimnetal!