"Getting started" Topic

Starting ACW with Fire and Fury old school for 10mm figures,any suggestions to get things started:which theatre,east or west,which states,units,army lists,scenarios,….any suggestions welcome,thanks

Are you going to focus primarily on Regimental F&F or Brigade F&F?

Eastern theatre gets most of the attention with the Trans-Mississippi getting the least. F & F has scenario books which might inform your decision. The Western theatre had many battles with more even numbers than the East. In any event, welcome to the War of Southern Succession Club!

Or, as it is better known, The War of Northern Aggression!😁

Which theater is of most interest to you? Gettysburg and the East are the attention getters, but the West won the war. The Trans-Missippi is interesting but gets little love, but it has some interesting small battles.

My ACW forces were always generic -- I had no intention of making Eastern and Western theater armies.

Get the Fire and Fury scenario books. Eastern and Western. Lots of good actions.

For Regimental Fire and Fury you can use stuff from the Zouave (if you can find them) or Johnny Reb scenarios.

As far as 'lists' go, find an Order of Battle or scenario you want to fight and build the forces to match. Once you have that you can switch out stands to match other battles

What got my interest in the ACW going was the battle of New Market – small forces, a great story with a former Vice President and a Boys Schools (VMI). From there I added in unique uniforms and units of other battles as I grew my forces.

Published a scenario for it in MWAN at one time – I am sure there are others out there as well

Eastern Theater is basically the Union Army of the Potomac under its succession of generals versus the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia under General Lee.

Western Theater has three main Union armies -- Army of the Cumberland, Army of the Ohio, and Army of the Tennessee -- under such generals as Buell, Thomas, Rosecrans, Sherman, and Grant, versus the Confederate Army of Tennessee (under Bragg) and the "Army of Mississippi" under Pemberton.

Whichever one has the most interest to you should be the one you choose.

In organizing your forces, select opposing orders of battle for a particular campaign then build your forces to replicate them. As others have said, make your units as generic as possible so that you can move from one campaign/set of battles to another without having to paint a lot of new units. [See link below for how I've organized my forces.]

Be careful with your Confederate flags so you won't lock yourself into a particular theater or campaign. Or just be prepared to paint multiple command stands with the differing theaters flags.

Union flags were (at 10mm) very standard with each regiment having the US national colors and a blue regimental flag.

And finally, don't forget about the US Colored Troops (USCT) regiments in 1864 and 1865. They will give your Union army a little diversity.

Jim
link

Since you mention 10mm figures, let me mention why I asked about RF&F versus BF&F. Although of course you can adapt any basing system to any set of rules with a little common sense, both sets of rules have a common suggested "standard" infantry base size, namely 1" wide by .75" deep. This infantry base represents 150 or 200 troops for Brigade level, or 40 for Regimental level.

With 10mm figures it's easy to put two ranks of figures on one of these standard bases, but be aware that for the Regimental version, the standard Line formation is actually two ranks of stands deep, using a single rank of stands to represent open order. Therefore if you are planning to use your troops for the Regimental version, consider mounting only a single rank of figures per stand, so that when the stands are double-ranked for "Line" formation they are only 2 ranks of troops deep, as opposed to 4 ranks which really doesn't correspond to anything in the ACW.

Fire and Fury is a great set of rules. I would suggest that you prepare a couple of generic brigades for both sides with a few batteries to try the rules out – once you get a feel for the rules you can decide which battles you might want to fight and which specific units you might want to add

FYI commonly done units are the Union Iron Brigade, Berdan's Rifles, the Irish Brigade and zouave units – the 114th PA springs to mind (and, for the East, Wilder's Lightning Brigade). The USCT are a nice addition as well. For the Rebs, at least for me, the 1st and 4th Virginia (the Black Horse Cavalry), Wheat's Tigers (short lived but colourful), the Texas Brigade and the Stonewall Brigade as well as the Rockbridge and Washington Artillery

If I were starting ACW in 10mm I would use BFF 2 (there's also a scenario book out for the western theater) and base 6 or so per base in 2 ranks. 😀

(and, for the East, Wilder's Lightning Brigade)

Ah, Wilder's "Lightning" Brigade was part of Thomas' XIV Corps, Army of the Cumberland, a Western Theater organization.

Creating a few generic Union and Confederate commands and giving the F&F rules a tryout is good to do. I've played a F&F game using one of the Shiloh scenarios. It was an interesting game and I enjoyed it.

Jim

If "Fire and Fury old school" refers to Original Fire and Fury, then I would recommend you look at the second edition (Brigade Fire and Fury). I liked the original version but found it generic, tied to replaying the Gettysburg scenarios in the back of the rules, and so needed special rules unless you were only playing 1863 Eastern theatre battles. Brigade Fire and Fury incorporates more detail from Regimental Fire and Fury which gives a more varied flavour (e.g. weapon types).

Your choice of army and theatre are connected (e.g. Army of the Cumberland – Western theatre, Army of Northern Virginia – Eastern), so look at the battles of each army and in each theatre and decide which appeals.

At Brigade level, generic units with plenty of command stands that have flags to identify the state will allow you to switch easily.

Large scenarios for Regimental Fire and Fury, Johnny Reb and other regimental level rules are a good source for scenarios. I have done several smaller games (1 or 2 divisions per side) by calculating the numbers in each brigade, and then converting these to the required number of BFF stands. There is also the scenarios page on the publisher's website.

Thanks guys,will be looking at brigade f&f and start with generic units

I've been using Gettysburg Soldiers with my grandson as the game plays quick without a lot of complexity and gets a result. While I do prefer FF 2d edition Gettysburg Soldiers gives a good game with little fuss.