Regimental Fire and Fury was released last year and I've just got around to ordering it do to first trying to clear my project loads, but have given in and decided to order it. I was going to wait until next year, but I really can't! I'll talk more about the game, but first I want to give some background on this period and what it means to me.
If some of you were curious as to what is my favourite period in history is, then the answer is the American Civil War. It's the period I've studied and read the most about in my life.
I was first introduced to the American Civil War when I was about 12 years old perusing a friend of my Fathers home library while visiting, who just happened to be a history teacher btw and grabbed the nearest book out of boredom. As fate would have it, I happened to take arguably the single greatest volume written on the subject by the greatest Civil War historian ever in my opinion for it's broad appeal. The book was The American Heritage Picture History of The Civil War by Pulitzer Prize-Winning Historian Bruce Catton.
I remember I was fascinated by the fantastic map pictures of battles in action and the massive wealth of wonderful pictures. This caused me to be curious what this was all about. Now comes the brilliance of the author in that he was able to write in manner that was both understandable for a youth and to capture his interest while at the same time provide an overview that satisfies an adult reader as well.
I read the book several times and continued to read other books on the subject from time to time.
The next event was when I was about 20+ years ago when I saw Ken Burns documentary The Civil War and that just blew me away.
Not only is this the greatest film documentary ever made on the American Civil War I personally think it was greatest film documentary ever made period with The World in Flames coming in a close second. Let's just say at this point I couldn't get enough of this period and began reading other works from Catton(more in depth works of his) and also Foote another fantastic historian who btw was featured in this very film.
It was at this point I first started Military wargaming using rules. My first set of rules was using Fire and Fury in 15mm using old glory miniatures. They revolutionized wargaming colour book formatting and had me drooling over it. The rules themselves are and still are best ever written for this period.
I've been playing the game ever since. Some of you may be asking why haven't we seen your mini's for this? The truth is I painted these miniatures so long ago that the painting is just awful and needs to be redone and really not worth posting. Also, I'm not that keen on painting 15mm any more as 25/28mm is my preferred scale and where I'm most happy these days. True, I do still do some 15mm, but on a much reduced miniature count and nothing like the vast amounts you need to play Brigade level F&F and so I'll just keep using my old stuff.
Now that you know some background you will understand why I'm so excited Regimental Fire & Fury has been released.......I can now use my favourite rules in 25/28mm!!Yes!!!! I know other rule sets have been released for this scale, but I wanted F & F which I knew was being play tested. I plan on using Perry and the older Foundry range. Expect to see in the future quite a bit of ACW coming up on this blog! I still intend to do most of my planned projects, but ACW could very well slip in this year at some point and no question feature regularly in the following years.
I'll discuss more about the rules themselves in another post. Until then keep your powder dry and thanks for reading.:-)
