ACW Fire & Fury

Each unit represents a brigade or a battery of guns. There is a limited command and control system, but the rules play fast and are suitable for large group games.

Johnny Reb 3

Still our favorite set of tactical rules. We haven't been playing this much as with a large group the games can last a long time. Probably the best set of ACW rules eveer made.

ACW WARGAMING

Our group has been gaming the American Civil War since we first started out over 10 years ago. for many of those years we have used Johmmy Reb in it's various editions. We even rebased most of our forces for JR3 and have been playing that version for a few years now. Lately we have been doing Fire & Fury as we can finish a scenario in a single evening which is important since we can't leave our games up for a second week. Johnny Reb III is scaled at 1:30 so it is very much a grand tactical game where the basic unit is the regiment. The rules are a little more complex than usual, but that is because of the varying types of artillery. troop morale. leaders, and the number of formations used. The system creates a fast moving battlefield where the ability to use formations and maneuver are rewarded.

Fire and Fury uses the brigade as the basic unit, with each stand representing about 120 soldiers and one gun equals one battery. These rules are much less complex than JR3, so even newcomers can pick them up quickly. The game plays very fast and is quite exciting, especially the hand to hand combat which gives the game an air of desperation. We've fought several historical battles and the results are well within historical parameters, plus we finish them in a single evening.

We currently have a few corps for each side and are working on increasing our selection of cavalry along with artillery. We hope to do a campaign in this era sometime soon as it's been a long time since we did one. There are hundreds of scenario possibilities for both scales and most of the published ones have options to convert to one or the other set of rules. The Last Square has a number of scenario booklets that are a great asset for any ACW gamer or club.

We are also some day toying with the idea of using a Sword & The Flame variant for the ACW in 25mm scale. It actually sounds pretty good, but we need to paint up a bunch of stuff for it as all of our figs are currently 15mm.

15mm figures by Old Glory, Essex, Frei Korps, and Minifigs.

We have enough for 6-8 players to run a division or small corps in F&F or one or two brigades in JR3.