Valour & Fortitude rules for ACW

The V&F rules by Jervis Johnson and the Perry Miniatures gaming group have seen their support expanded from just covering Napoleonics, to include new ACW army lists.

Basically the core rules are thought suitable for a wide range of periods and it is the army lists that are intended to bring the period to life, so it is good to see the rules spreading their wings.

Though I am of course interested in taking the ACW version for a spin, the intent of this post is to show how under version 2 of the V&F core rules, the game originally designed for the big table with fairly big forces, can work with a just couple of brigades per side, bringing a more sustained game to the 6’ x 4’ playing area than the original version did.

Please use the ‘read more’ tab for a small AAR and some rules observations. 

Valour & Fortitude V2 on the table

Valour & Fortitude are a set of war-game rules authored by Jervis Johnson (of Black Powder fame) in collaboration with the Perry's, covering land actions from the Napoleonic Wars

With version 2 of these rules released tomorrow as a hard copy freebie with the October edition of Wargames Illustrated magazine and also currently available as a download from the Perry Miniatures web site, I thought I would give them a run and put them under a bit of pressure by having only 1 brigade per side, showing how suitable they are for an easy game at home.

Essentially the rules were initially conceived to help the Perry demo table at conventions, to get through a big game of 28’s in the limited time that a show permits. So designed with big tables, several brigades and multi-player games in mind, how will these fare on my smaller domestic table with a smaller scale and just one brigade per side.

Well, with some minor tinkering, I could get version 1 to cope, but the changes made to version 2 actually make this an easier thing to do.

Anyway, if any of this remotely interests you, please use the ‘read more’ tab for the rest of this post.

Napoleonic rules from Perry Miniatures

The Perry brothers have just got together with Jervis Johnson (of Black Powder fame) to produce a set of fast play Napoleonic rules, called Valour and Fortitude, intended to allow ease of play in demo games at conventions and based around army lists that support the Perry range of miniatures.

At just an initial 4 pages (in a small font), plus a page of special rules that are tagged onto the army lists, Jervis has done a great job, especially accepting that in truth, short and good rules are perhaps the most difficult to write.

As soon as these rules were brought to my attention (thanks Steve - of Sound Officers Call! Blog, see link below), I was interested and so with a bit of queue jumping, things moved quickly to getting a small game of Valour and Fortitude onto the table, using my Warlord Games Epic 13.5mm Napoleonic figures (sorry Perry’s!), which are still mostly unpainted I should add.

This post looks at the process of terrain placement and army building, through to the final act of a victory on the battlefield and as usual, all done on a smaller table.

For the rest of this post, please use the ‘read more’ tab.