Battle of Green Wood Fields

Catching up on some of my back log. A couple weeks back Tim and I had a trial run of the Regimental Fire&Fury system. I've long been a huge fan of Brigade Fire&Fury and so I was very keen to try out the regimental version of which I was not disappointed. I like many of the new changes with the best being a casualty inflicted if a second disorder result is rolled.  My friends that was a much needed improvement! Before it could get quite frustrating with disordering a unit repeatedly with no additional effect. I also like the additions of a the high casualty status for an army which has the effect of reducing the effectiveness of your overall army and I also like an actual ammo pick up point marker instead of just withdrawing one move back to re-supply. Some have complained the new version plays slower then the original and it does a little bit, but I think it's worth it as I like the extra bit of detail as it adds more flavour without overly bogging the game down. As a matter of fact, I don't think it plays that slow at all and after a few turns of accustoming ourselves to the rules we were playing at pretty darn good pace.

Now.. virtually all ACW games have a high figure count which is fine by me as I like my ACW games that way and RF&F is no exception. At the moment we do not have enough figures yet to play any of the scenario's in the books, but this is not a problem as you only need a few units per side to get started. So, with this in mind we created a fictitious battle with 2 union brigades of 4 and 3 regiments supported by 3 guns attacking a confederate brigade of 4 regiments and 1 gun dug in defending a redoubt and some stone walls.

Staying on the subject of a high figure count we decided at 28mm we would need to make some adjustments in basing to accommodate this. We felt 4 figures per base is impracticable to both build an army and play games on our tables to the size of engagements we eventually want to do. Also we determined if we did 3 figures per base then figure count would still be very high and would cause us to re-base a lot of figures already done. So, we opted in the end for 2 per base on 40mmx20mm. This effectively doubled our unit sizes without any re-basing needed or additional space taken. So, in the future units already based on 40mmx40mm will remain so as making adjustments isn't all too hard, but all new units will be on 40mmx20mm bases. We also used the 15mm scale for movement and ranges, because the suggested 28mm ranges would have just been too enormous!

So.....how did the 28mm figures on 20mmx40mm bases and 15mm ranges work you may ask....... just wonderful would be my reply!:-)

Looking at my table it still needs quite a bit of work yet to give a proper ACW feel that I want as most of my collection is geared towards European Dark Ages and AWI/F&IW, but I do have some buildings and fencing in mind to hopefully give a more convincing look that I'm after. The figures are a mix of both mine and Tim's collections.

As to the game Tim commanded the two union brigades and I commanded the confederate brigade with the union needing to throw the confederates out of their defences. In the opening rounds Tim brought his first brigade on line and began to engage my rebels in a fire fight, but soon learned this was not to his advantage and withdrew his brigade out of musketry range to form up with his other brigade to support each other in order to launch a full assault on my defences which would be his only real chance at victory. Wisely, he launched a strong attack on my regiments defending the right stone wall and a diversionary attack on the redoubt to keep me from supporting my right flank. Not surprisingly his attack on the redoubt didn't work at all, but the attack on the stone wall did and with great success and allowed him to outflank my troops in the redoubt which pretty much collapsed my army and routed them!

I did think he would have real problems overcoming my dug in troops, but a combination of good tactics and a few key rolls for Tim broke my lines. Tim played a very good game and deserved the win and I tip my hat to him.

I'm really looking forward to another game! Also, with the release of Longstreet plus Fire and Fury should see quite a bit ACW action here at Bunker Hill in future months!

Some pics of the game in no particular order.