Saturday, June 27, 2020

Unfinished Business

Back in the early 90's Ron and I got into Fire & Fury in 15mm. Armies were quickly painted up and the games began. For the next two years, our little, informal, Friday night group mostly played 15mm ACW Grant Teasers. Then, suddenly, things changed. Some players got posted out, others joined us, periods changed, scales changed, games of some sort went on for a while longer but by the end of the century, regular Friday night games were a thing of the past and the Civil War was over. 

Our Fire & Fury era was pre-digital, pre-smartphone and I don't have so much as a single photo of any of those games. However, in Jun 2011, a handful of our ACW 15's came out to try an early draft of the Portable Wargame: 
https://gameofmonth.blogspot.com/2011/06/portable-civil-war-with-morschauser.html


About 8 years ago, as part of my downsizing, (desperately needing space) I decided that I didn't really need ACW armies in 15mm, 20mm and 54mm.  Since I had both sides in 20mm, and they were being used, I decided to keep them and let the others go.  The plastic 54's I donated, the 1,000 odd 15's were sold off in batches.

The clean up and reorganization of my room continues though I am getting close enough to start being able to imagine it (relatively) organized and tidy and once again suitable to host a friend or two for a game. However, yesterday I stumbled on a little bag of unpainted 15mm acw. Some left over Old Glory Zouaves and some Freikorps infantry that someone donated. 

    
One day's work. They're smaller and fuzzier than they used to be and they won't stand still while being painted, but they'll do. 

I've always felt a little bad that I left Ron's Yankees stranded, so I have decided to paint up what I can so that once the "Light's Come On Again"  I can gift them to Ron so that his Yankees can least play some small Portable ACW games.

Three stands will nicely fit in a hex and at that unit size, I have enough figures for 5 infantry, 2 Zouave (Tigers and....??), 2 gun crews and 1 cavalry unit. There will have to be more scrounging and borrowing I think. 

6 comments:

  1. I too have very fond memories of the original Fire & Fury games, just so playable, and despite lots of critics over the years I would play the rules again tomorrow if I still had the figures. Maybe one day ........

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    1. Too much time spent looking at charts, these days the reading glasses would be on and off 20 times a turn. :)

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  2. It's like finding money in an old jacket ;)

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  3. Yes, they will be prefect for the portable wargame. We started with Johnny Reb (original) and felt that the brigade level Fire and Fury "genericized" our beloved regiments a bit too much. Later they came out with Regimental Fire and Fury!

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