Tony Figlia said there was to be a great game at his Fort Meade site… I shouldn’t miss it… Bill Rankin, a PW member, was going to present a set of rules for the British-colonial era. Knowing that Bill was a Thinking Man, I accepted the invitation and showed up on Saturday morning. The table size was about 8 feet long by 4 feet deep… when I arrived, all the 15mm troops were already set up. This was to be a re-creation of the Battle of El-Teb, 1884, when Osman Dingi (at least I think that’s his name) took his troops, and abandoned his fortifications, and went out to do battle with a huge British square, which beat the pants off him. I sat down at the table, and because of their proximity to my seat, I took control of the British cavalry, two small units of 4 stands each. I figured that, commanding the cavalry, I wouldn’t even have to get out of my seat for the entire game. And then it was that disaster struck! Bill Rankin distributed copies of his rules, titled "Fire and Fury Colonial." Omigawd! Is there no surcease? Must everyone and anyone take the FIRE AND FURY (FF) rules, and try to massage them into something playable? In the past couple of months, I had been exposed to Tony Figlia’s variation of FF for the ECW era, which definitely failed to win a Grammy Award. And I noted several attempts by contributors to Hal Thinglum’s MWAN magazine to mold FF into a Napoleonic version. And another effort for the Franco-Prussian War. And so, this time, it was a Rankin effort, which I shall term Rankin’s FIRE & FURY (RFF) to distinguish it from the original set. About the only difference between RFF and FF was the inclusion of an RFF table permitting the British an "emergency response" when things got tough, and the natives appeared to be getting the upper hand. This "emergency response" procedure is a derivative of Howard Whitehouse’s SCIENCE AND PLUCK colonial rules, which gives the Brits an additional volley or, perhaps, a chance to form square as the native hordes descend upon the British lines. Battle At the beginning of the battle, the native forces occupied a town in the middle of the field, and it was the British goal to take it from them. The commanders of the native units, having read the reports written in 1884, were determined not to repeat Osman’s mistakes. And so, the town was crammed with persons of the native persuasion which we Brits could see, and, indeed, there were even more native troops around, hidden in rough terrain, which we couldn’t see. At first, except for my cavalry, all the British troops were formed up in one huge square of 6 British battalions plus guns. A British battalion ranged from 6 to 13 stands, while native units went from 10 to 22 stands. The big difference was that all the British troops had fire power, while Osman had only a couple of guns and one rifle unit… the remainder of the natives were semi-fanatic spear-chuckers. The British square started about 2 feet from the town, and as it moved closer (6 inches per turn), Tony, who commanded the bulk of the British units, began to break his units out of square, the better to get some fire power against the town. Rifles ranged out to 20 inches (fairly ineffective), while their effective range was 12 inches or less. When the first British rifle battalion fired, we looked at the following: First, at a range of 14 inches, a table indicated that each firing stand contributed 1 point, so that the 10-stand battalion had 10 Fire Points (FP) Second, the target, the native unit, was categorized as a mass target, which doubled the total FP to 20. Third, we looked on a fire chart to the row for 20 FP, and got ready to toss a 10-sided die and cross reference the toss along the top of the chart. But fourth, before the die was tossed, we noted that the target was in "fortified cover", and that we’d, therefore, deduct a minus 3 from the die roll. And then we noted that since the firing unit was British, it received another modifier, this one of +1. Our total die modifier was +1-3, or -2. Fifth, the die was tossed… yielding a 3… 3-2 equals 1… and looking along the ’20 row’, down the ’1 column’, we got zero hits. Notice that we had one modifier for the FP (which happened to double it) and we also had modifiers for the die roll. Another unhappy item was the ‘Maneuver Chart’. Here, before every unit could be activated and move, a 10-sided die was cast, and the result indicated the inclination of the unit to obey orders. There were two Maneuver Charts, one for the British and one for the natives. This is a carryover from FF, a method which purportedly represents the ever-increasing difficulty of controlling troops in battle. Under the original FF rules, the intent is to replicate how hard it is to make troops advance, and so the chart makes it difficult to get units going once they take casualties. Unfortunately, this is not the right approach to take with non-firing native colonial units. It was backwards. When the native units took casualties, they should have had their dander raised and been anxious to close with the Brits, not to halt and think about what was going on. But here, the procedure was reversed and the opposite occurred. The charts said that, statistically, native units would refuse to move up when fired on. And so, the natives were hit with a double whammy… first, they had no fire power, therefore the only way they could get at the Brits was to keep advancing. Second, they ran up against the Maneuver Chart, which tended to make them halt and mull around instead of continuing a charge. Bill had failed to modify the chart adequately. The British "emergency response" called for lots of discussion. What was an "emergency"? Couldn’t the Brits declare an emergency anytime native units were near? And if the natives charged out and made contact, did the Brits have enough "response time" to form square in the face of the charge? I must note that I was happy with the "emergency response." One of my teeny cavalry units of 5 stands, tried to charge a native gun position, and suddenly, to protect the gun, a huge 18-stand native fanatic mass ran out to hit the cavalry. A quick "emergency response" die roll and my cavalry evaded the charge and fell back. But I was having trouble with the Maneuver Chart. Initially, I had 2 cavalry units. Suddenly, around the 5th turn, someone pointed out that I actually had 3 units… one of them was a single stand of mounted cavalry which could halt, dismount, and take a pot-shot at the natives. This was kinda silly, for if my 1-stand unit dismounted near the natives and fired, then (a) its measly number of fire points, when referenced to the fire chart, would do nothing but enrage the bad guys, and (b) it would become immediately inundated with a zillion scimitar-bearing fanatics and get wiped out. Each of my 3 units had to toss on the Maneuver Chart, and most of the time, my cavalry failed to move and sat, immobile. This didn’t seem to me to be the way to conduct a British-colonial game. And so, once again, the FF procedures flubbed-de-dub. I can hardly wait until the next person calls, and says: "Hey! I’ve got this great version of FIRE AND FURY!" Back to PW Review January 2001 Table of Contents Back to PW Review List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 2001 Wally Simon This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com