What could be more horrifying than to have your unit lose a melee and have it “swept from the field”? I shall tell you what’s more horrifying… it’s to be engaged in an American Civil War battle using FIRE AND FURY (which, to me, are the pits of all ACW rules systems), and have the aforesaid results show up. The use of FIRE AND FURY (FAF) was somewhat alleviated in the battle by a very interesting scenario set up by Bob Liebl, using his 25mm figures on a table measuring 6 feet across by 12 feet long. As the map shows, a vastly outnumbered Union force… outnumbered and outflanked… was attacked by a superior Confederate army determined to wipe it out. I was a Union commander, and our orders were to hold on for as long as we could, and then make for the southern baseline to see if we could get our units off the field. As the map shows, the Rebs came against us from the east and then, after a huge flanking movement to the west, north of the river, down the longer dimension of the table, i.e., the 12 foot distance, they came at us from the west. The Union had 3 infantry divisions, each of 2 brigades, plus a small cavalry brigade. I commanded one division, consisting of the 33rd Utah and the 42nd North Dakota. Both of these units ranked pretty low… I was told they were of militia status, and to prove it, they were each given a -1 modifier whenever they diced on the dreaded Maneuver Chart. He who is familiar with FAF knows that when a unit is selected to move, you run to the Maneuver Chart, toss a 10-sided die, and see if the brigade obeys orders. The die is modified by several factors… is the unit disordered?, what’s its current strength?, is a general nearby?, and so on. If a unit is in good order, and at full strength, the worst that can happen to you is that the brigade will hold its ground and refuse to move. As the brigade’s strength goes down (stands are removed), and if, under enemy fire, it becomes disordered, there are several negative modifiers that do you in. And for my brigades, the additional -1 modifier definitely did me no good at all. For example, my 33rd Utah was hunkered down behind some works when, to its front, a Confederate brigade presented a tempting flank to be charged. It was all the more tempting because another Union unit had charged the Confeds from the front, and the contribution of my brigade to the melee, would have been decisive. And so to the Maneuver Chart I went, shouting “Charge!”, tossed my die, and rolled a 1. The 33rd Utah held its position behind the works… they refused to move. No glory for them. The FAF manual defines a full bound as a half hour. But for our battle, Bob said that full turn represented an hour. This didn’t quite make sense to me. For example, the Confederate cavalry entered on the eastern baseline on a road, and moved westward each turn a distance 36 inches. Normal cavalry movement is 18 inches per turn… the road doubles this. The cavalry traveled along the northern edge of the river at road speed, and on Turn 4, having moved some 10 feet from the east baseline, they proceeded to cross the river. The FAF scale is 60 yards to the inch… hence the 10-foot distance they traveled represented a distance of 7,200 yards, or 4 miles. In other words, they took 4 hours (4 turns), whizzing along the road at road-speed, to travel 4 miles… 1 mile per hour… which is slightly out of kilter. If the turn, instead of being a full hour, was a half hour as indicated in the FAF book, then the travel time to move 4 miles becomes 2 hours… they’re now going 2 miles per hour, which, while it won’t win any Olympic medals, is certainly more “historically realistic” than 1 mile per hour. Gaming scales to me are rather meaningless, and why authors even mention them has always puzzled me. Back to the Battle On Turn 5, we Yanks were now being attacked from the east, from the west and from the north. Neither the 3rd Utah nor the 42nd North Dakota had taken any casualties, and I thought it prudent to have them change face, i.e., do an about face, and run for the southern baseline. And so it was off to the Maneuver Chart. And this time, Glory Be!, both units obeyed. I had had a choice in my fallback mode. I could have them simply retrogress 6 inches, facing the enemy to the north, thus moving at half speed (full movement is 12 inches per turn). Or I could have had them about face, turn to the south away from the enemy and move back a full 12 inches. I chose this option. Sad! Sad! I thought that there was another Yankee unit which would defend my rear end, and my intent was to put as much distance as possible between my units and the Confederates. Alas! the Yankee unit defending my rear got whupped… low die tosses did it in, and the victorious Confederate brigade, having won decisively, earned itself a bonus move. And the bonus move carried them right into the rear of the 42nd North Dakota! And that was when I tossed low, the Confederate commander tossed high, and the result was “swept from the field!” Enough said. Back to PW Review June 2002 Table of Contents Back to PW Review List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 2002 Wally Simon This article appears in MagWeb.com (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com