"First Bull Run, Regimental Fire and Fury?" Topic

Hi All,
Has any on done OOBs for First Bull Run using Regimental Fire and Fury. I'd love to have a go at this battle.

It would be pretty large at Regimental level. I am sure there are at least some partial scenarios out there and OOBs that you could create one. The area covered on the map would be huge if you were doing the whole battle. And lots of figures. The regiments were enormous.

Agreed. You'll need a table maybe 6 miles across to do the battle, and probably 5 miles deep:

And the regiments are huge as noted. At Gettysburg they average about 450 men. At Bull Run, newly mustered they would have been closer to full strength. The brigades add up to three and four thousand men at times!

I would do it in brigade level F&F or just do Henry Hill in regimental…

I agree with everything said above. There is a 1st Bull Run scenario in the Regimental Fire and Fury scenario book Vol 1, but because it is regimental level the scenario only covers Henry House Hill.

However, if you can get the new Brigade Fire and Fury 2nd Edition book you will get the Brigade F&F rules PLUS a scenario that covers the entire 1st Bull Run. All in the same book! Brigade F&F uses the same basic mechanics as RFF with a bit less detail because of it being brigade level.

The Brigade F&F scenario is designed to be played on a 5 foot by 6 foot area if you are using 15mm troops.

I appreciate that there could be large regiments but I aim to do this in 6mm so the base sizes and figure numbers could be managed I think.
Oh I like big army collections lol
I did the ancient battle of Raphia in Xyston 15/18mm figures nearly 2000 figures plus 34 elephants lol

Well, the game's scale is 1" = 25 yards. Let's say you double that in 6mm to 1" = 50 yards. That means either stands that have 1/2" frontage (very fiddly) or halve the number of stands and make each one = 80 men. This seems more reasonable.

A 5 mile wide table will need to be 15'. So you'll need a very big table indeed. It will probably need to be a "gap" table. I'd do it in three parts. Henry hill on the middle table, then two gaps, one for each side and secondary tables behind the main positions. If the tables are on wheels they can be moved when needed.

Wargaming in History Volume 6: First Bull Run 1861, by John Drewienkiewicz and Adam Poole, published by Ken Trotman Ltd in 2012.

The book covers the Campaign, Union Mills Ford, Henry House Hill (three variants) and the historical battle. The battles are fought using Regimental Fire and Fury.

I think that our book, flagged up by Mollinary above, has all the detail needed and doesn't need an impossibly sized table. We ran the Campaign as a 'Play by Mail' game, with Richard Clarke of TooFatLardies as Beauregard. Figures were 15mm, Rules were an early version of Regimental Fire and Fury, which worked very nicely. The Union player made a plan not much different from the historical plan, and Beauregard reacted to what the umpires relayed to him as the day unfolded. We then played the clashes at the various locations, which are the historical crossings since they were all that there was. Our first game was at Union Mills Ford on a 10 feet by 6 feet board. Then we set up the central battle, with the Union trying to storm the Stone Bridge to link up with the Union column that had crossed at Sudley Ford. This needed a 12 foot by 6 foot board, and we played it twice with different commanders and got two very different results. Finally we set up the historical action on and around Henry House Hill. Before we did any of this we walked the battlefield and made sure that we understood the ground, not least the significant reverse slope behind which Jackson kept his brigade out of harm's way until it was needed. And finally we included the full order of battle and details of the many (almost 20) units with non regulation uniforms, which do so much to make the battle so spectacular.

It can be done on 4'x4':

link

It can be done on a postage stamp if you dumb it down enough.