Close Fire & European Order

The main focus of these wargames rules is European warfare from roughly 1700-1720. It was a period of military history that bridged the gap from the ‘pike and shot’ armies of the preceding century to the familiar ‘horse and musket’ armies that saw their full development in the latter half of the 18th Century.

Too often wargames in this ‘Marlburian period’ are fought using conventional ‘horse and musket’ rules which have been developed to re-create the atmosphere of the Seven Years War or even the Napoleonic Wars. The result, usually, is just another Napoleonic game using different looking armies. Therefore, the historical period covered by Close Fire has been kept deliberately narrow in order to concentrate on trying to re-create the flavour of this interesting and formative period of military history.