FIRE AND FURY (FAF) was first published in 1990… the booklet is a true work of art… lots of color photographs, lots of diagrams, lots of explanations. But, to me, its glory ends there… FAF doesn’t rate too high on my list of favorite rules sets. I’ve played it often, and consistently moan and groan about its silly fire chart, its silly melee-result chart, and its even sillier sequence. And so when Bob and Cleo Liebl invited me to their house for an evening of FAF, how could I refuse? For this game, I chose not only to groan about the rules, but also to focus on the adventures of one of my brigades, the 84th Hawaii. Factoid. It is not generally known, but just prior to the outbreak of the Civil War, the King of Hawaii, Po-ah-no-ah, submitted a request to the Congress of the United States for admission to the Union. Congress was too busy with the issues of states’ rights and slavery and secession to consider the request, and so it lingered until it was finally taken up and Hawaii was admitted as a state in 1959. But way back in the 1860’s, Po-ah-no-ah, as a token of good faith, sent several brigades to assist in the war effort. End of factoid. And so with this factoid behind us, let’s concentrate on the 84th Hawaii. This brigade had 9 stands in it, each representing a regiment. The FAF rule book gives two scales… the first, in which the regimental stand represents 150 men and the distance scale is 1 inch of terrain equals 45 yards, while in the second, a stand represents 200 men, and an inch of terrain represents 60 yards. What is fascinating about both scales is that figure mounting and the movement distances and firing ranges are the same for both… for example, infantry always move cross-country a distance of 12 inches per turn, while cavalry move 18 inches. The booklet states: “The number of figures placed on each stand is for visual effect only and is irrelevant to the play of the game.” Musket range in both scales extends to 8 inches. Why, therefore, does the author give two “scales”? What does the term “scale” mean? In the smaller scale (45 yards to the inch), maximum musket range is 8x45, or 360 yards. In the larger scale (60 yards to the inch), musket range is 8x60, or 480 yards. But don’t bother your pretty little head about this apparent anomaly in this most historic of rules sets… no one else does. Neither Bob nor Cleo, our hosts, mentioned the scale of our battle, and so, in effect, I was free to decide that for myself. I chose to assume that we were using the larger scale, and my stands each represented a regiment of 200 men. This was important to me because each of the 9 regimental stands in the 84th Hawaii represented 200 men from a particular Hawaii village. For example, the village of Po-ku-na had emptied its jails and sent its entire prison population to the states. And so all the bad guys from Po-ku-na were represented on the single stand… the druggies, the bank robbers, the muggers, the murderers, etc. One would think that the boys from Po-ku-na would be tough in the clinches, and I was going to track them in the battle and see just how tough they were. Similarly, the village of Ha-u-no had sent 200 men, with vastly different backgrounds than those form Po-ku-na. Ha-u-no had mustered 200 college graduates, some with post graduate degrees. Would these troops make a better showing than those from Po-ku-na? In our battle, I commanded the Confederate right flank, a small division of 4 units. I had 2 cavalry brigades, one infantry brigade (the 84th Hawaii) and a horse battery (a single gun model). Remember that I said that King Po-ah-no-ah sent units to participate in the war effort? Well, it seems that, somehow, the 84th Hawaii found itself fighting for the Rebels and not the Yanks… JT’s infantry division, about 3 or 4 brigades, were positioned to my left, and JT was consistently full of good advice as to what I should do. “Move up your infantry!” and “Charge out with your cavalry!” and so on. JT loves the FAF rules, and on our end of the field, he was the guy who read and interpreted all the charts and listings and tables. And JT also loves COMMAND DECISION… which is also a chart lover’s paradise. Prior to troop movement, FAF requires all units to refer to the Maneuver Chart. Here, you toss a 10-sided die for each unit, and add certain modifiers, and the chart then tells you if your unit will obey, or stand flat-footed, or whatever. When a brigade is “fresh”, meaning it still has its initial number of regimental stands, there are lots of “plusses”, and it’s hard not to be able to maintain full control of your units. As the brigade loses stands, control is harder to obtain. And thereby hangs a tale. It seemed that whenever I tossed a die for the Maneuver Chart, I would get a “1” or a “2”. Adding my modifiers, the result was that my units either moved half distance, couldn’t change formation, or couldn’t move at all. And so as JT’s brigades, immediately to my left, forged ahead, my own units fell way, way, behind. Directly opposite us were the Yankee units of Cleo Liebl, and around Bound #4, I was privileged to witness a WONDERFUL EVENT! First, however, I must describe the FAF sequence, which, for the entire bound, consists of 8 phases: (a) Yanks move all troops (b) Confederate defensive fire (c) Yankee fire (d) Resolve melee (e) Confederates move all troops (f) Yank’s defensive fire (g) Confederate fire (h) Resolve melee Note that both sides get to fire twice within the bound, and since the fire phases are independent of the movement phases, there is no provision to permit a stationary unit, on the defense, emplaced behind works, to have more fire power within the turn than a unit advancing up the field. Both fire with equal effect. Now, having explained the sequence, let’s get on to the WONDERFUL EVENT. One of JT’s Confederate brigades, let’s call it the 44th Georgia, charged its full move distance of 12 inches into the flank of one of Cleo’s cavalry brigades. The turn before, Cleo had advanced her cavalry too far forward, and in an effort to withdraw them, had permitted their flank to be exposed. a The 44th Georgia, moving its permitted 12 inch distance, according to the scale of the game, charged across the field some 12x60 yards, a distance of 720 yards, or 2,160 feet, around a half-mile. Were these men winded? No! Were these men exhausted? No! Were these men affected in any way? No! In fact, so athletic and well trained were they, that they managed to catch up to a moving cavalry unit! b And so the 44th came in on the flank of the cavalry, catching the horsy-boys unaware. Did the cavalry see the charge coming? No! Was the cavalry permitted a response? No! Was the cavalry permitted some sort of evade move as the opposing infantry ran forward a half-mile? No! c If you look in the listing of the phases of the bound that I gave above, the infantry surged forward on Phase (e). The cavalry, with no defensive weapons, had no fire on Phase (f). And so, now, the 44th Georgia, having dashed across country, was permitted to fire on Phase (g)! These same guys, not even breathing hard, loaded their muskets and blazed away! d Now we’re in Phase (h), and the melee is resolved. Each side adds up its points, adds the toss of a 10-sider, and the higher total wins. Not surprisingly, because of its sneaky cross-country flank attack, the 44th Georgia comes out on top. The cavalry loses a stand, and retreats. e And what happens to the 44th Georgia? Do they lose anything? No! Do they become exhausted? No! Do they suffer anything? No! Do they incur any casualties? No! Do they get disorderted? No! According to the FAF melee result chart, a victorious unit never, never, never, suffers any loss of capability. It doesn’t even get disordered! f And in the following bounds, JT’s 44th Georgia took part in a couple of other WONDERFUL EVENTS! They charged half-miles at a time, and won, suffered no loss, charged again, won and suffered no loss… How could anyone help but love the FAF rules, which provide for such historical veracity? JT seemed to be handling the entire Confederate right flank by himself, needing no assistance from me, who was battling the Maneuver Chart, instead of the Yankees. On one of Cleo’s cavalry charges, her horsy brigade contacted the 84th Hawaii. We both summed up our points, tossed our 10-sider, and Cleo’s unit won. The 84th lost a stand (regiment) and fell back some 12 inches. I asked JT to remove one of my regimental stands. There were 9 of them, and he picked one up at random and we placed it in the salvage bin. And which regiment did he select? Non other that that of the village of Ha-u-no, the boys with post-graduate degrees! This was a sad day for Ha-u-no, which lost an entire generation of brilliant young men. When the 84th lost the melee to the cavalry and retreated, this took it out of the fight. Cleo’s battery had also caused my troops a certain amount of losses, and when I diced on the Maneuver Chart, I found the men even less responsive than before. For example, the listing on my data sheet for the 84th Hawaii gave 3 critical numbers: 9/7/4. The first number indicated that if the brigade had 9 stands in it (the original number), it was termed “fresh”. The second number, 7, indicated that if the brigade lost 2 stands and was down to 7, it was termed “worn”. If the brigade was down to 4 stands, the 3rd number, it was “spent” and received a negative modifier on the Maneuver Chart when dicing for its movement capabilities. Alas for me and the 84th! When the 84th and my other brigades lost a stand, I had been giving them the “spent” modifier… that’s why they were so hard to move up! I had been reducing the Maneuver Chart die roll with a nice fat negative modifier, and in response, my boys refused to move. I don’t blame them! At battle’s end, the Confederates gave up the ghost… we couldn’t hold up the Union advance. I still retained my 2 cavalry brigades, somewhat shot up and reduced in size, and the 84th Hawaii still had 7 of its original 9 regimental stands in it. And amongst them were the bad guys from Po-ku-na. These boys weren’t even touched! The 84th had lost a stand in melee to cavalry, and lost another stand due to Cleo’s battery fire, but the men from Po-ku-na remained firm and awaited their discharge so that they could return to the village jail and serve out their sentences, thence to resume their lives of crime. Why is FAF so popular? To my mind, simply because it lays out a very simple, mechanistic sequence of 8 phases that take place during the turn. Go down the list, toss your dice and you produce a you-go/I-go multi-player game that keeps all players busy. Note that I used the term “game”, and not “war game”, and certainly not a war game supposedly re-creating what went on during the ACW. Are the procedures “realistic”? Not when an infantry unit can dash a half-mile across the field, and surprise a cavalry unit with a flank attack. And not when the infantry, having completed their dash, can then unleash a volley against the cavalry just prior to melee. Are the results “realistic”? Not when, in the horse-and-musket era, a static, defensively emplaced unit gets no augmentation in fire power relative to a unit that has to spend time during the bound moving cross-field. Not when two units can engage in hand-to-hand combat, clubbing each other with their muskets, stabbing each other with their bayonets, gouging out each others eyeballs, and then, when the winner is determined, the winner can emerge completely unscathed… no losses, no injuries, no casualties… the unit isn’t even disordered. And then it can charge on… and on… and on… The first edition of FAF was published in 1990 and there’s been no second edition. There’s been no need to, when wargamers will swallow whole the pap contained in the rules book, and then roll their eyes, and mutter: “Wow! That’s really good stuff!” I note that there are many clones of FAF, all of them purportedly adopting the rules to a different era, and all of them incorporating the same silly procedures of the original. FAF’s predecessor was Paul Koch’s ON TO RICHMOND (OTR), and I’ve never fully understood why FAF surpassed OTR in popularity. Back to PW Review March 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 (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com