Rich Hasenaeur invited a group of us to his house some three weeks ago. The occasion was a public display of his latest variation of FIRE AND FURY (FAF), his extremely successful rules for the American Civil War. I must note that, even in its heyday, ON TO RICHMOND, FAF's predecessor and Paul Koch's successful try at the ACW, never reached the level of acclaim and popularity to which FAF has risen. Just about every hobby magazine, each month, has some sort of article about FAF, its battles, its variants, its scenarios, its suggested rules changes. With a simple sequence and combat procedure, FAF flows smoothly, so smoothly that I've noted the tendency, at games which are put on during the conventions, to "overload the table", i.e., to place so many figures on the field that the table is filled straight across the board. With a large number of players, this, in turn, becomes counter-productive, since now many, many participants must be kept in synch... the result is that there's always a batch of people who are waiting for the "other guys" to catch up. Rich's latest variant concerned his FAF modifications for the Franco-Prussian War. For this, he had redrawn his charts... all basically similar to those in FAF, but, unlike the black-and-white charts contained in the FAF booklet, these were in living color. He had also assembled a huge 15mm army, and the scenario concerned the battle of Wurth, where - no surprise - the Prussians defeated the French. For convenience, I'll refer to these rules as FAF2, thus differentiating them from the ACW version, FAF. Rich has no plans to publish FAF2... there's a perfectly good set of Franco-Prussian rules published by Dave Waxtel, THEY DIED FOR GLORY, he says, and he has no desire to attempt to preempt the Waxtel set. I took my seat at the extreme left flank of the French line. The table measured 6 feet across by 12 feet long, and all along its width French forces were already in place, awaiting the arrival of the Prussian army. FAF2's army organization is similar to that of FAF. The basic unit is the regiment which consists of around 10 stands. Two regiments comprise a brigade, and a couple of brigades constitute a division. There are brigade officers and division officers, each of whom helps out his units when attached. My command was a division, two full brigades, four regiments in all, plus guns. They were placed in line, side by side, along the front, extending from the western edge of the table to some five feet to the east. And there we sat, ready for the appearance of the Prussians. FAF2's sequence for the half-bound is the same as FAF: Active side moves, Non-active side fires defensively, Active side fires, and Melee resolved. Digression To me, is a sequence much more applicable to the Franco-Prussian era than it is to the ACW, for which it was derived. Having left the horse-and-musket era behind, using breechloaders and rapid-firing weapons, both sides in a FrancoPrussian battle should have the same opportunities to fire, whether on defense or offense. In contrast, during the ACW, the employment of muzzleloaders - and the appreciable time requirements of loading and reloading - should give the offense much less opportunity to fire, as the offense must devote its time simply to moving up. The defense, sitting in one position, can load, fire, load, fire, etc... the defense can devote all its time to potting the oncoming enemy. End of digression. The Prussians entered the field, and advanced down the table toward our waiting French line. We opened fire first, for the French breechloading rifles outranged those of the Prussian. We could reach out to 16 inches, whereas our opponent's rifles had a range of 8 inches. In contrast, the Prussian artillery ranged to 48 inches, our own guns only to about 30. In truth, this change, concerning the range of rifle and artillery fire, constituted the major difference between FAF2 and FAF. All else, except for the color of the uniforms, seemed the same. In the center of the field, Graf Robert Von Hurst, in command of a division of advancing Prussians, around Turn 3, ordered an immediate charge of his cavalry against the French line. Rich cautioned against this; you should soften 'em up with your artillery, he said, before you make contact. And for that matter, you shouldn't lead with your cavalry. No matter, said Graf Von Hurst. The battle started at 6 PM, it's around 10 PM, we're only three moves into the game, and if we don't make contact now, we'll never make it. "Charge!" He charged. Bob's charge was initially successful, but his men eventually got blown away. At 11 PM, both Bob and I got blown away.., we had to leave. It was, I believe, Turn 5, we older, and wiser, gamers were pooped, and the Prussians had advanced only to midfield due to the slowness of the bound. Slow, not because of the system, but because, as I mentioned before, of the huge number of troops displayed on the field. Another reason we left was that there was yet another French corps to make its appearance on the field. Enough is enough. Back to PW Review October 1994 Table of Contents Back to PW Review List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1994 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