Tony Figlia invited me, Fred Haub and several other guys to participate in a wonderful, wonderful game. He had downloaded a variant of FIRE AND FURY (FAF) for the English Civil War from a British web site. Tony set up the battle of Edgehill on the table, some 8 feet wide and 5 feet deep.
In 1642, King Charles met the Earl of Essex at Edgehill… the armies were fairly equal in size, around 12,000 men (infantry and cavalry) each, and they battled all day with no conclusive result. Our table top battle ended in a similar result, a boring, boring, endless game.
Tony umpired and there were 4 players per side. I commanded the King’s cavalry on the Royalist right flank, Prince Rupert’s own, a total of 5 cavalry regiments, each composed of 5 15mm stands. Just to my left was Fred Haub, in charge of a number of pike-and-shot regiments and artillery pieces.
We Royalists had a total of 7 cavalry (5 of which were my own on the right flank), 15 pike-and-shot units, several guns, and 2 forlorn hopes (one of which was also under my command)… around 27 units in all.
The battle started, and we Royalists moved first. Immediate agony! Under FAF doctrine, each unit had to refer to the Maneuver Chart to see if it could move full distance or half distance or hold position. This meant that, whenever it was our turn, with our 27 unit force, our players tossed their dice some 27 times, testing to see how their units fared. This is time consuming and. to my mind, completely unnecessary. The Maneuver Chart has a buncha factors which must be added to the toss of a 10-sided die, after which, having referenced the factors, you then reference the chart itself to see the outcome. Very slow going.
On the very first turn, of my 5 cavalry regiments… remember that they were all directly under Prince Rupert’s own command, all eager and chomping at the bit to close with and engage the enemy… 3 moved forward, 1 moved half its permitted distance of 15 inches, and 1 held its ground and wouldn’t move at all. During the entire battle, half my cavalry, each turn, proved unresponsive. These are great rules, indeed! Truly reflecting the flavor of the period!
Eventually, the sides drew close enough to fire on one another. Musket range is 6 inches, artillery range is 12 inches. When the 4 musket stands of a pike-and-shot unit fired, they’d each contribute 1 fire point, and, according to the Fire Chart, with 4 fire points, there was a 40 percent chance to impact the target: toss a 10-sider, and a roll of 8, or 9 gave the target unit a disorder marker, while a 10 or 11 gave it a marker and also resulted in the loss of 1 stand.
The “11” came about because you added a +1 to the die roll if the target was a unit in column or in a “move mode”. The “move mode” business made no sense to me because all units were constantly moving up… did that put them all in a “move mode”?
The sequence for the half-bound itself was the FAF standard:
- a Side A moves
b Side B fires
c Side A fires
d Resolve melee
Note that an advancing side got as much fire power as that of a side which was stationary and entrenched in works, doing nothing but loading and firing its weapons. I’ve always found this sequence to be inappropriate for the horse and musket era, but, as I say, guys lap this sort of stuff up.
Most of the time, when a side fired its weapons, the result was to produce a disorder marker on the target. When the targeted unit was itself activated and referred to the Maneuver Chart, the marker yielded a -1, making it slightly less anxious to move up. But a good die roll removed the a marker and the unit could move as desired. What was happening on the field, therefore, was that disorder markers were constantly appearing and disappearing, having virtually no effect on the units involved. This caused one player to comment: “This is not a firing game, this is a maneuver game.”
I have no idea why, but the firing procedures used a 10-sider, while the melee procedures used an 8-sider. We found this out about 5 turns into the game, having tossed 10-siders for all combat.
Huh?
The guy facing me, in charge of the Parliamentary cavalry, knew even less about what was going on then I did. At the end of the 7th turn, people still didn’t understand the sequence. One guy said: “Royalists always move first!” And in melee, another guy commented: “What does a disorder marker do? Beats the hell out of me!”
On my flank, our cavalry melees were endless… we’d engage and one side would put a disorder marker on the other, and it would disappear in the next movement phase. Then we’d charge forward again, and again a disorder marker would appear and disappear.
In melee, each side would toss its 8-sider, and add several modifiers. There were 21 such modifiers, and at first, I’d sit back and let Tony do all the lookups for me. The guy opposite me was even more immobile. Finally Fred Haub, to my left, shamed me into reading the Melee Chart myself, and I summed up the modifiers myself. A truly great event!
I took one of my superb cavalry regiments and broke through the Parliamentary lines… in its 15 inch move, the unit went far to the rear of the opposing units. My thought was to have the unit about face and come in on the rear of the enemy horse.
Big mistake! I discovered that a unit could wheel a maximum of 45 degrees per movement phase. This meant, that to complete the maneuver, I needed 4 turns, simply to turn around. Fred then suggested that instead of wheeling, I change formation, and end up facing the enemy cavalry. This sounded good to me, so I did just that and was then informed that, in changing formation, I wasn’t allowed a simple about face, but I had to end up in column formation, with a disorder marker attached!
This meant that the next turn, I had to again change formation back to my deployed line, and would again receive a disorder marker. Keep in mind that these rules were generated on a British web site… do the Brits have something against a simple about face maneuver? Shouldn’t a cavalry unit be permitted to reverse direction? Don’t ask me…
My clever maneuvering with that one regiment essentially took them out of the battle. And in my other combats, I couldn’t seem to toss anything other than a 1 or a 2 on my 8-sided die. In melee, each side tosses its die, adds its modifiers, and the difference, the delta, is looked up.
The losing unit moves back, gains a disorder marker, and sometimes, if the delta is great enough, loses a stand. The winning unit is not even disordered. It loses nothing, but can go on and on and on. If the delta is large enough, the winning unit receives a “breakthrough marker”, which Tony explained as indicating that the unit is all pumped up and wants to run off the field to pillage the opposition’s baggage train. My opponent gathered a couple of these breakthrough tokens, and I thought that these units would run off the field, and I’d get rid of them.
But no! Tony added that these enthused breakthrough units would only run off the field if the commander tossed a 10 on his die for the Maneuver Chart… and so these guys continued to remain in the field, twisting and turning to harass the Royalist forces.
I had a forlorn hope of 6 stands, and I had them stand up to the enemy cavalry, thinking that if the cavalry zonked this unit, and received its breakthrough marker, then by sacrificing the forlorn hope, I’d get rid of 2 cavalry units. Not a bad bargain. Except that the cavalry didn’t run off the field as expected.
Tony’s comment was the Royalist cavalry commander (tha’s me!) wasn’t properly thinking ahead. Who sez? I had broken through the enemy lines and then found out that the rules didn’t even permit a simple about face maneuver. And I had sacrificed a forlorn hope, thinking that it would rid me of 2 enemy cavalry units, only to discover that “breakthrough” doesn’t really mean “breakthrough”!
We started our battle around 1 PM. We finished up around 5 PM, a 4 hour engagement. Of our total 15 Royalist infantry units, we had lost, I think, 3, while all the cavalry, badly battered, still remained on the field.
As is usual when I play in a game of FAF, I came away fully dissatisfied. Dissatisfied with the rules, the sequence, the slow flow of the game. But it always interests me to observe the other gamers, who don’t seem to care about the nitty gritty, and who simply plow ahead and follow the procedures and the umpire’s rulings.
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© Copyright 2002 Wally Simon
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