A little Fire and Fury at WB3D – Another Slight Diversion

For once circumstances conspired in my favour and last night saw the planets aligned and me able to be dropped off in Whitley Bay for a meeting of the Whitley Bay 3D Gamers club. I’d seen that Ian and Andy were putting on another 15mm Fire and Fury game and as I’d enjoyed the last one I put my name down. It ended up with fie of us. Three Union divisions facing two Confederate. Myself, Ian and Nick took the Union side and Andy and Malcolm took the Rebels.

We had a fairly large table for the forces involved. I took a large Green division and the plan was to hold the right flank with another division, push the main force up the middle and roll over anything there, using the Green troops to weaken the Rebel force and then hit them with an Elite following force.

Unfortunately the Rebs deployed on the other side! So we still pushed forward and intended to bring the right-hand division round the flank of the cenral reb division.

My troops pushed forward well towards the fenceline and the Rebs seemed rather tardy in their response!

This enabled Nick to push his guns forward and place the slowly advancing Rebs under fire….

The other Reb division was equally slow getting moving which was a big help as it enabled us to engage the central troops and push round the right flank.

My Green troops soon made the fence and awaited the inevitable Rebel charge!

And waited….

And waited…

The other Rebs finally pushed round the left flank forcing Ian to divert his division fro supporting me to defending the left flank.

Finally the Rebs prepared to charge. They had been stalled by fire from the flank and my fire was less than effective…

And when they finally went in my Green troops weren’t happy, rushing their volleys.

And were thrown back!

Nick’s division had finally driven off the Rebel guns and was swinging round to threaten the flank of the charging Rebs!

Luckily my brigades held but only one turned to face the next charge…

Again the volley as they came in was not great but support from the flanks caused some loss of stands. Would the centre hold?

Meanwhile on the left Ian had brought his brigades round to face the Rebel threat and a valiant struggle was to ensure on the hill.

While my troops fought on…

After a tough fight the Rebs were thrown back on the left.

And against the odds my two brigades threw back the Rebel attack!

Both commanders were supporting the troops in the centre.

And the left flank was still undecided but the Union had the upper hand…

And it was clear that the Green troops had held the centre and the right hand brigades were closing in for the kill! A Union victory seemed assured!

It was a good game and showed that even with small forces you can have a fun game with Fire and Fury. Occasionally the usual D10 1’s and 0’s extremes cropped up but as with other games they just feed the narrative. There seem to be various ‘fixes’ suggested for this (2D6, 2DAvg etc.) but if it ever becomes an issue for me I may just go with allocating a number of chits per side to ‘buy’ re-rolls… Thanks again to Ian and Andy for setting the game up and to Nick and Malcolm for providing fine allies/opponents.

The other result from this game is that I’ve decided to switch my planned little home game to Fire and Fury. I’ve cleared off some of the terrain and replaced my big roads with the Fat Frank rubber roads I’ve just bought off eBay. These are rather nice and quite good value seeing as they come painted with flock down the edges. I’ve also decide the table needs more trees so I dug out the Bachman tress I’ve had for ages and soaked them in PVA and stuck them to coins. Still need to do a bit of dry brushing on the bases but they will look fine. Now, I still need to find the time to play..!

There were two other games on last night. Combat Patrol and Bolt Action. I’ve played neither system but Lawrence seems very keen on Combat Patrol and as ever with his games the table looked excellent! Some pics of both games: