Fall In - Part 2 - By Fire and Sword, Demo Game

The second game I got into at Fall In was a learning type game for By Fire and Sword, another Pike and Shot game, this time based around Poland and the wars they got into in the 17th Century. I have a few unpainted forces I picked up from their Kickstarter and thought it would be good to try out a game to encourage the painting.

By Fire and Sword Demo
Rules - By Fire and Sword
Scale - 15mm
Period - Pike and Shot

This game had 2 smallish forces facing off against each other, some Poles vs the Swedes. The objective of each side was to capture a village, basically to control the table I guess.

My job was to defend the village and the woods, and after splitting up the forces my side decided I would get 2 Infantry units, a unit of Dragoons, and a small unit of cavalry to defend my flank. On of the main mechanics of this game is that your generals only have the ability to issue a small number of orders, and I had the worse general, so I would only be able to change 2 orders a turn. It's a little bit like Medieval Warfare in that regard.

Here's a close up of the miniatures.

I moved up my units to defend and tried to stay out of trouble with my cavalry while the commander was ordering the infantry around. On the rest of the table the cavalry commanders got into it right away, with both sides charging on the first turn. My infantry started taking some long ineffective shots at the swedes infantry.

Here we are a few turns later, a few stands lost down here. My commander as set up the defensive position and is now coming through the town to order my cavalry to start some charges across the fields. They keep charging each other on the rest of the field and trading a few stands but not to much is happening really due to poor attack rolls and good morale rolls.

My cavalry got wiped out in no time, charging pistol carrying cavalry in a field where you don't get all the polish charge bonuses is not a good idea it seems. But I have more infantry so they are easily winning the musketry duel with their cover. Battle continues further down.

We ran out of time here, with no one having achieved much so the game was considered to be a tie. I think it was meant to be a quick game but some of the players we ended up with were extremely slow and didn't pick up on the rules that well so it was a bit of a slog.

Still I found the rules and game enjoyable and look forward to playing it again with my own stuff some day. I am really only interested in the smaller skirmish scale games thou.

This report is a bit shorter so I am going to toss in the pictures of the other games I found to be interesting but didn't play in.

American Civil War Game with huge paddle wheel boats:

Not sure what this is, but nice forests:

Huge city set up for a gangster game, something like 1920s or 30s. They had lights for the movie theaters and the city was playing period music. Very cool.:

I think this is another Civil War game, that was the theme this year I believe:

Zombies:

Aztec War:

WW2 Air Battle:

Few Shots of the Muskets and Tomahawks Tournament, This game is becoming popular it seems, may have to look into it:

Thanks;
Mike