By Fire and Sword – An Introduction

Hello friends! Здравсте друзья!

Today I’m starting a series of posts about the game By Fire and Sword by Wargamer.pl. By Fire and Sword has been around for a while now, launching in the early 2010s. I personally first got involved with the game with the English language rulebook kickstarter in 2013 and started actually playing in early 2019. This post is to introduce new players to the game and give a basic overview of what the game is about and how it plays.

The Setting

By Fire and Sword is a historical wargame focused on the mid 17^th century in Eastern Europe. As could be expected by a game written in Poland, the primary focus is on the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, its triumphs and its disasters. One of the great strengths of this is faction variety, with western European pike and shot battalions facing up against Turkish Janissaries and Tatar horse archers. The game is based in history, with army lists and special rules reflecting the makeup of the forces of the day and how they fought. It is perhaps not a hardcore historical wargame, as it maintains an emphasis on pick-up games and offers rules for competitive, tournament style play for those who prefer that.

Tatars circle a cossack wagon train

The Game

By Fire and Sword is a complex game to learn, with a fairly long set of rules to read and numerous unit abilities to learn. Despite this the game flows smoothly and plays well once you start to learn it. My regular opponent Nathan and I still found ourselves forgetting rules on occasion, but it never ruins the outcome of the game and we often play hard fought, close games. By Fire and Sword has two things that set it apart from other wargames. The first is the mechanics, revolving around a command point economy and a unique turn sequence. Every commander in By Fire and Sword has a number of command points, or CPs. CPs are used for multiple things including influencing the initiative roll (who goes first in the turn), rallying broken units, reorganising casualties but most importantly giving orders. Orders are one of the key components of the key and consist of move, defend and charge orders. Move and charge are perhaps obvious, but defend is possibly the most important order, conveying advantages including bonuses to combat resolution and the all important ability to fire early.

By Fire and Sword is an I go-you go game by phase, i.e. you move, I move, you shoot, I shoot. In addition, By Fire and Sword’s combat phase is split up into multiple sub-phases, where units firing defensively fire before combats are able to gain an advantage over charging opponents. Combat is fought in two rounds, meaning pursuits must be carefully managed with CPs to ensure units do not overrun so much that they find themselves out of range of their commanders (and new orders).

Special rules are reasonably extensive and take some learning, but offer an enormous amount of period flavour. Musketeers firing in salvos or using the countermarch drill to advance, light cavalry breaking off from charges and the tough nut that is the Cossack wagon trains give the game flavour and depth without descending into rules for the sake of rules or ridiculousness.

My own Muscovite border dragoons. They suffer from their poor training and rabble special rule.

Game Levels, Balance and Scenarios.

The game itself is divided into three levels of play – Skirmish, Task Force and Division. Skirmish level games are the smallest, requiring a small amount of figures and only a 4x4 table to play on. Despite games often being most popular at the high levels, By Fire and Sword’s most popular level to play has consistently been skirmish. Skirmish level has been the basis of tournaments but more importantly despite the smaller size, still offers the full depth of gameplay that By Fire and Sword has. Games are playable in a couple of hours and can be tense affairs. Division level is the largest level, featuring forces 3 or more times larger than skirmish forces! Division is where the full flair of the game appears with huge formations of cavalry with banners and massive pike and shot battalions duking it out. Games however are much longer, potentially taking up your whole day. The large gap between the levels led Wargamer.pl to release Task Force, which sits between skirmish and division in terms of force size but tends more towards skirmish level in play time.

A Polish skirmish boxed set. This is enough to get playing even against larger forces.

Games are uniquely balanced in By Fire and Sword. Unlike most games slaved to a points system, By Fire and Sword deliberately allows unbalanced forces to fight, but then uses various advantageous scenarios and effects to balance the game. As an example, a weaker force may fight a scenario to defend a river crossing or use additional effects lay an ambush, cause panic in the enemy ranks or plague the enemy commander with a bad day, reducing their command points. A final balance point is reconnaissance, which is handled differently depending on the level. At skirmish level reconnaissance is done by comparing recon points and if the differential is high enough the player with more points may get to purchase more effects. This system of balance is unique and one of the best parts of the game. A player building their force can fight someone with a larger force and still be assured of a balanced game, while the player with the larger army still gets to use all their favourite toys.

Scenarios are varied, with simple “capture the hill” type scenarios, attacks on supply camps, as well as river defence and night attack games. As mentioned, these scenarios are used to balance uneven forces to fantastic effect. I have yet to play a scenario I didn’t like. At division level the system is slightly different, with no set scenarios and more a kind of “build your own adventure” system that is still used to balance forces but is perhaps a bit more flexible than pre-written scenarios. Of course, you can always fight historical games. Wargamer.pl has encouraged this by releasing campaign books around the Danish Wars and Siege of Warsaw.

I hope you enjoyed this overview of my favourite game By Fire and Sword. If you are on the fence about it or have perhaps had a rulebook or miniatures already, please, give it a go. I am yet to meet a player who has played the game and disliked it. It truly is one of the gems of the wargaming hobby with a varied setting, great rules and fantastic miniatures. Thanks for reading and I hope you look at the upcoming faction overview post.

Bye! До свидания.