By Fire and Sword – Players Edition. First thoughts

Earlier this month my copy of By Fire and Sword – Player’s Edition arrived. The rule book was $20.00 plus $9.75 shipping from Wargamer LLC. The shipping cost seemed a little excessive given the size of the book.

The reason why I ordered the Player’s Edition is that I wanted to explore the rules without spending too much. The Task Force rule book is $40. I am also aware that there is an older rule book that includes the army lists that sold for even more. As the army lists are all on-line and can be obtained in a free pdf from the Polish website, the Players Edition seemed a good low cost way to see if I liked the rules. The one thing that is not clear is whether the Players Edition and the Task Force rule book are the same set of rules or not. It would be great if someone could let me know.

The rules are written to cover the period that I am interested in, the cossack uprising in the 1650s. In fact the creators say that it focuses on the Polish battles between 1640 and 1676, so a perfect fit for me.

Firstly I want to give some details on what I am looking for in a set of rules for the period. I plan to play battles with over 1,000 figures of 28mm. I also plan to host these at the local club where we can often have 8-12 people wanting to join in. Normally I have 2-3 people who have a working knowledge of the rules but do not play a set of rules regularly. The rest of the players pick the rules up as we are playing. I therefore need a set of rules that give a flavor of the period, but are also reasonably fast play and easy to pick up. The mantra of Lou in our club is that a good set of rules needs to be Fast, Fun and give a Flavor of the period (the three Fs)

For this reason I have been a fan of the Pike and Shotte rules for my Italian Wars battles. My first thought of rules for this Cossack Uprising period was also to use Pike and Shotte with a few custom rules for the period (such as some to allow Cossack War Wagon defenses). However, I wanted to have a look at By Fire and Sword to see if it was a good alternative or, at the very least, provide a basis for some custom rules for Pike and Shotte.

Before I delve into the rules themselves, I need to get perhaps my largest criticism out of the way first. The font, type size, line and word spacing are just terrible for me. Here is an image of one page of both Pike and Shotte and By Fire and Sword.

The Pike and Shotte page is on the left and the By Fire and Sword Page is on the right. The Pike and Shotte rules are well laid out, spaced and easy to read. I have found it all but impossible to read the By Fire and Sword without glasses and even with glasses it can become difficult when my eyes become tired. Also, maybe because of the translation from Polish to English, reading the rules can become hard work and difficult to understand what they are getting at. I have read the war wagon rules five times and I am still not entirely sure of what they mean. For this reason I am interested to know if the Task Force book is the same rules but in a larger format to make it easier to read.

Having got this initial criticism out of the way, I can say that the rules are worth giving some time to. I should note that I have not yet played a full game with them at the club, but I have been through them a number of times at home. My opinion may change a little after a club game.

The rules were written for the writers own range of 15mm figures based on their standard bases. All of the distances and ranges are in cm. To use my 28mm figures I plan to just convert the cm to inches and I think that everything will work just fine. I also think that as long as the bases of each army are roughly the same, there should be no problem for a friendly club game.

The first thing that I like about the game is the Initiative and Orders concept that they use. The overall commander and the commander of each regiment (and possibly a subordinate) are given a number of command points. This is often 3-4 for the overall commander or 2-3 for a regimental commander. It can be less for less well commanded troops like levy cavalry. These points can be used for a number of different command activities like issuing orders, rallying troops, modifying the skill or morale of troops, or delaying shooting. A commander can also pass down any command points that he does not plan to use to a lower level commander. The commander can also assign a number of command points to improve his die roll when trying to get initiative at the start of the turn. These command points ensure that a commander and his subordinates can focus their time and attention on critical areas of the battle. I believe that the way the command points are used will have an outcome over how the battle develops and who ultimately wins.

The orders are also well thought out. You can assign troops a move, charge or defense order. The type of order that a unit is given effects how it performs in various stages of a turn. For example a unit with defense orders can fire earlier in the turn and has certain shooting advantages. One particular rule that I like is that a unit with a Defense order can delay its fire to any point in the turn with the expenditure of a command point. This simulates an officer controlling the fire until the optimum time.

The movement section seems a little more complicated than the free movement of Pike and Shotte and consists of movement and maneuvers. Personally I don’t think that this complexity adds much to the game. I believe that it is aimed more to the tournament type of play that the rules were undoubtedly written for. For a club game I think that they will just slow things down.

The firing and combat sections of the game are very similar to Pike and Shotte. You take a certain number of D10 depending on the troop shooting value and the number of bases/troops. You then modify the dice role by a small number of factors to see if you can role under the skill value of the unit to hit. The one minor point here that I dislike is that rolling low is a good thing – it is very counterintuitive and I generally don’t like rules that work in this way. One interesting rule is that hits at long range have to be re-rolled to hit, I think that this is clever way of handling the effect of range. However, it could probably be handled more quickly by adding a factor to adjust the die roll.

Like Pike and Shotte, units that are hit get a save. The unit has to roll under its armor value to save. Again rolling low is better. The one thing that I don’t like on this armor save is that it has to be modified by the effectiveness of the weapon firing at you. Any time that you have to ask your opponent for information to be included in your roll it tends to slow the game down. Pike and Shotte does not have this problem.

Figures bought from the rule writer are typically based three figures to a base. Casualties are recorded by a combination of markers and removing bases from play. One or two casualties are indicated by a marker with the third casualty causing the removal of a base. A unit is typically three or four bases each of three figures. Using the combat system in the rules may require units to be mounted in a similar manner. As my figures are individually mounted, this basing would not be an issue other than requiring some new movement trays. However, as I will discuss later, I probably won’t be taking this step.

The combat resolution is similar to Pike and Shotte where the casualties suffered by each side are compared and then adjusted by a few modifiers to see who wins. The loser needs to test morale. Speaking of morale, there are a few circumstance which will lead to a unit needing to take a moral test. To take a morale test the units morale value is modified by a few factors and then the player needs to roll under the morale value on a D10. Again a low die role is good. A commander can spend command points to improve the chance of a unit passing. There are three morale levels each with their own consequences – good, disorganized or flight. Losing a morale test drops the unit one level, losing by a lot can drop the morale two levels. Rallying back to a good level from disorganized or flight level is done by spending command points and carrying out a new morale test.

There are rules for the army motivation to see when an army breaks, although I don’t plan on going into detail on those rules here.

There are also, like Pike and Shotte, a number of special rules that allow troops and armies to be customized to act like their real life counterpart. These custom rules are very good to represent this period and I may be using modified versions of some of them in my Pike and Shotte games.

Overall, there are a lot of things to like in the By Fire and Sword rules. I particularly like the command points and orders concepts. When I look at the movement, firing, combat and morale sections, there is nothing inherently wrong with the rules. They are similar to Pike and Shotte, but (in the words of Rick and Morty) just with more steps.

I think that the By Fire and Sword rules have sacrificed some playability to make them more suitable for tournament play. There is nothing wrong with this approach, it just is not tailored to club or convention day games that I like to play.

What I will probably try to do is take the command points and orders systems and integrate them into Pike and Shotte – where the command and control systems do not give me exactly what I am looking for. By adopting this approach, I won’t need to base my figures to be compatible with the rules. I will also be using some of the relative unit stats to craft some stats for the Cossack Uprising as well as incorporating some of the special rules for units and armies. The organization charts on-line are also an invaluable resource. Overall I think that the $20 was well spent and I would advise anyone looking at the period to consider reading them. By Fire and Sword is certainly interesting and some of the ideas will allow me to introduce greater period flavor into my games.