Rules: Fire Combat

Fire combat in Then Holler is resolved naturally along with movement. It is based on a comparison of the firepower and quality of the attacking unit with the Fatigue Grade of the defending unit. Consider this situation, when the 2nd Virginia gets caught flat-footed by 69th New York.

Note the arrows on the lead companies: these determine the facing of the entire regiment. The "Combat Grade" of a regiment is determined by its "frontage"--put simply, a regiment puts out an amount of firepower equal to the number of companies that can fire. In this case the 69th New York has a frontage of 6 companies (a combat strength of roughly 820 at 1st Manassas) firing for a Combat Grade of 6.

This, plus a few modifiers, is added to the current Fatigue Points of the target regiment. Let's say that the 2nd Virginia has taken the following Fatigue Points so far:

Moving in double line +1 (This is determined by frontage. Regiments that move or change formation take Fatigue Points equal to their final frontage minus one)

Crossing a stream +2

So the 2nd Virginia has a total of 3 Fatigue Points. The Yankee volley has the following modifier:

Close Range +1 (barring extraordinary differences in weaponry, close range will be within 2 inches, normal range within 4, and long within 12. Also note that close range is determined by the range from the lead company.)

Altogether the 69th New York has a Combat Grade of 6 plus 1, 7. They add 7 Fatigue Points to the 2nd Virginia for a total of 10.

Later in the turn action will stop and all units will evaluate their Fatigue Grade. If the 2nd Virginia stays safe until then they will regenerate 5 Fatigue Points (as per their Fatigue Grade) and come out with 5 Fatigue Points left. That's right on the edge of breaking, so they'll need some support or some timely intervention from Jackson himself to hold the line.