So, in a recent trip to one of the LGSs, I started looking more at the various tanks and other assorted gribblies, and terrain, etc. for Flames of War and it got me thinking that I'd like to check it out.

Now, all of my past TT experience is in DnD, 40k, WHFB, Malifaux and Helldorado...


So, how easy is the game to pick up? is it one which my wife (an almost strictly D&D gamer) might like? How much is a "realistic" investment? How "easy" is it to do OTT themed forces, like Desert Rats, Patton's tank corps, Rommels Afrika Corps, etc. or are you limited in any way (ie, if there are "special characters, like Rommel or Montgomery, does that eliminate some units, or limit options?)

FoW has been described as the game about the movie about the war. If you want realistic, this isn't for you.

It is very similar in 40K to play feel, well, at least it was when I started but I haven't been keeping with 40K.

A strictly DnD gamer is probably not going to like this. It isn't an RPG, you aren't Patton, though you have play his model in your army.

Themed lists aren't OTT in this game. In fact, most themes are fairly limited. Each player's army has an HQ element and typically two core required choices. If you are playing a tank corp, then these will typically be tank units. Infantry...foot troops. Mechanised? Infantry with some kind of transport. After that, you usually have more choices of your corp and then weapons teams and divisional support options. These might be of an allied nation's army, depending on the list you are building from. For example, the 501st list that everyone is familiar with in Band of Brothers. When you select thier list as it was based during Market Garden, you have options of using British tanks as a supporting unit.

Battlefront has broken the war in to early/mid/late. The exact dates are a bit fuzzy, but early is roughly 38-40, mid is 40-42 and late is 42 onward. Late is probably the most popular, but I would say mid is probably the most fun and maybe the most balanced.

Within each period, you will have different lists to build from. There are basic "generic" type lists like a german grenadier list and specific ones like the 506 Schwerepanzer, or Kamp. Bake. You will find the generic ones typically have more choices while the specifics have more special rules or specialized options. You only really get access to the special characters if you play a list associated with that real life character. For example, you can't have Patton in a D-Day assault list as Patton wasn't in the invasion. You can have him though if you play a 4th armored based in the Bulge theater.

Historicals are a different beast then 40K. We aren't all rivet counters or the camo police, but I do have friends that won't play certain lists because thier tanks are painted with the wrong patern/color for that time period. Conversely, you will get looked at funny if you show up with purple Comets and yellow Churchills. There is a definate respect for the human history associated with historicals. Different people go to different lengths to pay honor to it, but 99.9% of the players recognize it is there.

There's an introduction to the rules (something I *really* wish more game companies would do) on the official website. Click the "Bootcamp" button at the top of the page. The videos should help introduce you to the game.

Battlefront has broken the war in to early/mid/late. The exact dates are a bit fuzzy, but early is roughly 38-40, mid is 40-42 and late is 42 onward. Late is probably the most popular, but I would say mid is probably the most fun and maybe the most balanced.

Er... no. The dates are very solid, and not as described.

Early War is through the end of 1941. Mid War is 1942-43. Late War is 1944-45.

Shotgun wrote:
Battlefront has broken the war in to early/mid/late. The exact dates are a bit fuzzy, but early is roughly 38-40, mid is 40-42 and late is 42 onward.

Actually it would be 1939-1941 for Early War, 1942 and 1943 for Mid War and 1944 and 1945 for Late War.

Don't buy anything yet, just go along to a local show and take part in game. Yours always welcome to take part in games and you get to try it out for free before you spend your hard earned wonga

Failing that use the Bovington scale to decide. If you have been to Bovington tank museum more than 5 times the games for you

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:

So, how easy is the game to pick up? is it one which my wife (an almost strictly D&D gamer) might like? How much is a "realistic" investment? How "easy" is it to do OTT themed forces, like Desert Rats, Patton's tank corps, Rommels Afrika Corps, etc. or are you limited in any way (ie, if there are "special characters, like Rommel or Montgomery, does that eliminate some units, or limit options?)

It was originally a 40k mod (a very long time ago) and while the rules are quite different now they have retained the same turn and phase structure. The rules themselves are pretty simple although they aren't always explained very well. A solid 1750 army will cost you about £150 or so but a lot depends on exactly what you are fielding. Its very easy to make historical armies, most famous units, and more than a few obsure units, will have the FoW equivalent of a codex, and they don't require special characters to field. special characters are bolt ons to specific lists, they usually provide platoon benefits, more rarely provide army wide special rules/deployment options and I don't think any change the list's structure.

Have a look here to see what you may field in a typical army. The V3 rulebook lists are free as are the .pdf lists (which can also be found on the Battlefront website) but everything else you need to buy ($2 per book and books will have about a dozen or more lists for different nations).

As far as I know it certainly wasn't a 40k mod although it does bear some structural similarities.

Neither is it true to say it's not "realistic". At an emulative level (in other words aiming for end results) it tries very hard to be realistic and there's an awful lot of intelligent design gone into making the mechanics so. But it is extremely abstracted (on a KISS principal) so it's not (nor does it attempt to be) a low level simulation. It plays more like a tactical level board game in many ways. Movement, for example is more like repositioning than manoeuvring.

In terms of accessibility it also takes a lead from GW games in terms of point balancing lists and boilerplate missions so that it's accessible to club and tournament play. Nothing to stop you using it for historical reenactments but most of the scene and the game's peripheral support materials are based around more casual game arrangement.

I think its realistic on a general level.

It is abstract in some ways (such as the tank bailing rules) but generally its pretty realistic. Some things are kind of iffy (im still wondering about how tanks fight in combat with little disadvantage). But overall realistic, just not when you get to ground level. (if that makes sense).

Once you play a few games and have an army in mind, they sell company boxes which have the bare minimum you need to field an army. That box with some minor support options will get you playing in no time. Support options such a HMG's or mortars are pretty cheap to by and have the ability to impact the game hugely for both sides. Im not sure of exact costs though.

The game seems limiting at first. Having to choose a period, then a book, then a list type makes it sound like you have a lack of options. But this is the most important part of the game and this is where you find that list that fits the theme you want perfectly. With so many lists and variations its hard not to find the list you are looking for. So yes I think themes are pretty easy to get as long as you know what you are after.

But my only advice is to play it a few times first. Make sure there are players and work with them so you dont end up with (for example) an early war list while they all have late war.

Any WW2 game that allows all tank armies loses a little on the realism stakes...

Great as a gamey mechanic, but not realistic.

Big P wrote:


Any WW2 game that allows all tank armies loses a little on the realism stakes...

Great as a gamey mechanic, but not realistic.

I guess it depends how you play. I have never seen a full tank army ever. So I guess I should have worded it, can be realistic.

Infact I have never seen more than 6 tanks on a battlefield. And those 6 tanks are my light tanks.

I've got a 1,750 point Herman Göring Panzerkompanie I plan on doing that will have fourteen tanks (six Panzer IV H, six Panzer III M and two Panzer III N). That being said, I'll still have three Flakpanzer 38(t), two Sd Kfz 231 8-rads, 3 Nebs and a full strength Panzergrenadier platoon.

 Swastakowey wrote:

Any WW2 game that allows all tank armies loses a little on the realism stakes...

Great as a gamey mechanic, but not realistic.

I guess it depends how you play. I have never seen a full tank army ever. So I guess I should have worded it, can be realistic.

Infact I have never seen more than 6 tanks on a battlefield. And those 6 tanks are my light tanks.

I've seen them. Ran one, in fact. It was my French DLM list. And contrary to the post above, that aspect of it was accurate.

I've been informed elsewhere that the mixing of S35s and H35s within the same company was not, however.

If you want realistic avoid artillery except mortars and assault guns. This is due to range disparancies.

If you want non-cheesy avoid special characters.

Other than that its a fairly good sim and an excellent ruleset.

Flames of War can suffer badly from codex creep, make sure you are your opponent are working from contemporary publications because seemingly identical lists from the same army may have widely fluctuating points values. For example I can fit more tanks of the same quality in an Overlord list at 1750pts than I can with the Basic V3 rules in 2000pts.

 Orlanth wrote:
Flames of War can suffer badly from codex creep, make sure you are your opponent are working from contemporary publications because seemingly identical lists from the same army may have widely fluctuating points values. For example I can fit more tanks of the same quality in an Overlord list at 1750pts than I can with the Basic V3 rules in 2000pts.

Agreed. I see the paperback books as sort of an 'open beta test' where they work out the points values and update them as needed in the hardback compilations.

I would like to suggest the Battlegroup rules. IMO, they are a healthy mix of simple and inclusive. I think Battlefront is a great company, run by great people. I use most of their stuff to game in 15mm. I just dont care for their rules.

Look up Battlegroup. Can't say it will lead to a lot of pick up games at the moment but I assure you it is worth a look.

Bezerker Saberhagen wrote:
As far as I know it certainly wasn't a 40k mod although it does bear some structural similarities.

It was a long time ago, written by Phil Yates when he still worked for GW. The rules can be found here although the individual links appear to be broken.

Eumerin wrote:

 Swastakowey wrote:

Any WW2 game that allows all tank armies loses a little on the realism stakes...

Great as a gamey mechanic, but not realistic.

I guess it depends how you play. I have never seen a full tank army ever. So I guess I should have worded it, can be realistic.

Infact I have never seen more than 6 tanks on a battlefield. And those 6 tanks are my light tanks.

I've seen them. Ran one, in fact. It was my French DLM list. And contrary to the post above, that aspect of it was accurate.

I've been informed elsewhere that the mixing of S35s and H35s within the same company was not, however.

This would be the French DLM that had its own organic motorised infantry, and mechanised infantry too, especially in order to keep up with, and support the tanks.

So its not a tank only formation. Its Regiment de Dragons Portes provided its mechanised infantry contingent.

Both 2 DLM and 3 DLM had three infantry battalions plus a motorcycle battalion.

 Palindrome wrote:

Bezerker Saberhagen wrote:
As far as I know it certainly wasn't a 40k mod although it does bear some structural similarities.

It was a long time ago, written by Phil Yates when he still worked for GW. The rules can be found here although the individual links appear to be broken.

I think you're taking the wrong things from that, I don't think Phil was actually an employee of GW. Panzer Battles was a fan mod he wrote and on the strength of that Battlefront employed him to write their own in-house system to support their own miniature line.

Bezerker Saberhagen wrote:

I think you're taking the wrong things from that, I don't think Phil was actually an employee of GW. Panzer Battles was a fan mod he wrote and on the strength of that Battlefront employed him to write their own in-house system to support their own miniature line.

I have read on the old Battlefront forums that he worked for GW and that he wrote Warhammer: Panzer battles with the intent of getting it published via Warhammer Historicals. True, false or somewhere in between it doesn't really matter as there is a definite hint of GW in the FoW rules and publications.

I'm running from a recollection of a video interview some time ago. It might have been part of WWPD's series.

Edit: This was the interview: http://www.wwpd.net/2013/02/battlefront-video-early-days.html

FoW certainly shares similarities with GW games in the turn structure and, aside from the core rules, the aforementioned game arranging elements (point balancing and boilerplate missions) are similarly aimed at casual club hook-ups. Obviously the business model (being primarily geared towards supporting the core models business) is similar too. Just a bit less evil.

The core mechanics however are far different from GW fare in intention and strongly geared towards realistic representations of outcomes. There's a strong feeling that the designers have committed a lot of effort into representing all the important stuff and balancing it. A lot of people don't seem to look beyond superficial structural elements but underneath the hood it's certainly a good deal more complex than 40k despite the designers intentions to keep it streamlined.

Being a old ex gw gamer,i had heard for years that they wanted to do a ww2 game.But i thought that it ended up KGN ,but as for FOW being maybe a test run i can see ir.especially the way they game has similar mechanics and basing like Epic.Since 40k was orginally a 15mm game.
i know that their was a few BF guys that were GW down under and they got the shaft like GW studio Canada did.

Check the link,Nice lists even has PAcfic in it.
On list in the link,It kinad looks like the BA Guys borrowed somethings,After seeing this it make me want to Publish my Gi joe Action figure 40k mod.Wellwhat is a guy to do with his and and his younger brothers collection over 500 figs?

Big P wrote:
This would be the French DLM that had its own organic motorised infantry, and mechanised infantry too, especially in order to keep up with, and support the tanks.

So its not a tank only formation. Its Regiment de Dragons Portes provided its mechanised infantry contingent.

Both 2 DLM and 3 DLM had three infantry battalions plus a motorcycle battalion.

Yes, they did have their own organic infantry. But for whatever reason, the various companies within the units tended not to intermix their platoons as later practices would dictate. Ergo, the earlier comment about mixing the S35s and H35s not being historically accurate.



Edit - And as another example...

The counterattacks by the Allied troops to break out of the pocket in Belgium were supposed to be coordinated activities by the British tanks and French infantry. But the French infantry were late to the jump off point, which meant that the British tanks left without them.

But are these examples of doctrinal use, or ad-hoc reactions made out of need?

A better example would be Crehen in 1940, where 4th Panzer Div. II Panzer Regiment had to attack the town of Crehen with no infantry. Even before the attack, Jugenfeld, bemoaned the lack of infantry and the losses attacking a defended town would inflict on them. A bitter fight caused heavy losses on both sides.

I suppose for me, an army list should generally reflect the doctrinal method chosen rather than the exceptions to the rule, but things like Crehen do make for fun games...


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Strombones wrote:
I would like to suggest the Battlegroup rules. IMO, they are a healthy mix of simple and inclusive. I think Battlefront is a great company, run by great people. I use most of their stuff to game in 15mm. I just dont care for their rules.

Look up Battlegroup. Can't say it will lead to a lot of pick up games at the moment but I assure you it is worth a look.

Yes.... its not a bad game Battlegroup.

I think Big P may have mentioned this before but I would always take Battlegroup over FOW. The rules are more historically accurate than FOW, they're also a bit more balanced and more fun to play. Also, they've got a couple of supplements out and the option to play in 1/72 scale, meaning the game is just as varied or even more varied than FOW. Still, the best bit is that it's made by Plastic Soldier Company. unlike Battle£ront, they actually how to be competitive in the 15mm ww2 market, by offering great plastic models at even better prices rather than banning non-FOW models from tournaments even though some of the best choices don't have a Battle£ront model yet

Seriously, with that and Peter Pig's range, there's no reason to play Flame$ of war.

Another vote for battlegroup. I was converted from Flames of War last year and have never looked back, it's just better in every way.

One of my favorite aspects of FOW is the pdf support. There is just about any army that you want to run available for free in a pdf version on their website. There are some very unique offerings as well.

FOW would be an easy game to go wild with... I mean.
First you get Open Fire and decide to play Germans.
You need some mortars and HMG's to go with those grenadiers.
Oh, and of course you need some Nebs.
What is a german list without Panzers? Three boxes of 5 should do...
Oh, shiny... Panthers... I'll take 10!
Oh, I don't have any air support. Moblewagons or Wirbelwinds????... BOTH!
Recce is damn useful... That's 8 8-rads and 6 Pumas.
Hmm... I seem to need some cheaper anti-tank... Marder's it is.
Oh... I forgot that I need some pioneers. There dang useful.
Hmm... transports... that's 11 trucks, 11 halftracks, and some kubelwagons.
No airplanes... Gotta fix that.
Early War? Well, that's an entirely new army!
No heavy artillery... well, some lists can take 2 sections of 6 guns each. Better make that 12.
I am the German army... I need to build the Atlantik Wall!
And that is how you end up with over 25,000 points of Germans.

Hmm... what can I do with the british tanks and US paras that I still have from Open Fire?!?

I would say to go for the game that you can actually have someone to game with.

 Ghaz wrote:
I would say to go for the game that you can actually have someone to game with.

If gamers picked the Wargames they played based on their quality, then you would be able to get a lot of games of Battlegroup. But they don't and so Battle£ront has half right to call their game "The world war 2 miniatures games" [as in not just a 15mm wargame set in ww2, but the definite ww2 tabletop game of any scale], even though Just checked and not found any company that gives lower quality at higher prices in this niche than Battle£ront.

Do you have anything worthwhile to add to the discussion or are you just trolling?

He asked if FOW was a game for him, and I explained how he shouldn't play the game because Battlegroup Somewhere was a similar but better game, though less popular.

Consequently I don't think the blatant flame of yours was anyway needed.

And what good is a game if he has no one to play with? You didn't once give a reason for him not to play FoW other than for some undisclosed reason you have a grudge against them. Perhaps you should actually give a logical explanation of why he shouldn't play Flames of War instead of randomly flaming them in various unrelated threads. If you can't do that, then all you are doing is trolling, and I'm sure that the mods would agree.

Yeah, based on my local shops, I'd be more inclined to check out FoW over another WW2 era game, simply because of stock and the playing groups there.


As far as game mechanics go, is it a 40k "dump a bucket of dice and take away low numbers" or more of an Infinity "roll this one die a few times for a single resolution" ?? Or is there some fair mix of the two? (accounting for the fact that there's vehicles as well as units)

If someone doesn't like Flames of War and would prefer to recommend a different game perhaps they might more helpfully to give a substantive reason and recommendation instead of just "disliking" Flames of War.

Otherwise it kind of looks like trolling and spam.

I am also interested in Flames of War but the many acronyms and terms kind of confused me.

My question is this: if the players in my area plays late war and had Germans and also other countries, does that mean if I start early war Germans, I wouldn't be able to get a game in?

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:
Yeah, based on my local shops, I'd be more inclined to check out FoW over another WW2 era game, simply because of stock and the playing groups there.

As far as game mechanics go, is it a 40k "dump a bucket of dice and take away low numbers" or more of an Infinity "roll this one die a few times for a single resolution" ?? Or is there some fair mix of the two? (accounting for the fact that there's vehicles as well as units)

Its more the former than than the latter but single rolls are also important (artillery and morale checks in particular).




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 milkboy wrote:

My question is this: if the players in my area plays late war and had Germans and also other countries, does that mean if I start early war Germans, I wouldn't be able to get a game in?

The different era's aren't compatible. The price structure is different (although infantry tend to cost about the same in all periods) and most early war tanks and anti tank guns literally can't kill late war tanks under most circumstances. If you want to play early war you will need to convince someone else to make an early war force.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
If someone doesn't like Flames of War and would prefer to recommend a different game perhaps they might more helpfully to give a substantive reason and recommendation instead of just "disliking" Flames of War.

 sing your life wrote:
I think Big P may have mentioned this before but I would always take Battlegroup over FOW. The rules are more historically accurate than FOW, they're also a bit more balanced and more fun to play. Also, they've got a couple of supplements out and the option to play in 1/72 scale, meaning the game is just as varied or even more varied than FOW. Still, the best bit is that it's made by Plastic Soldier Company. unlike Battle£ront, they actually how to be competitive in the 15mm ww2 market, by offering great plastic models at even better prices rather than banning non-FOW models from tournaments even though some of the best choices don't have a Battle£ront model yet

Seriously, with that and Peter Pig's range, there's no reason to play Flame$ of war.

This is my post that recommends Battlegroup over Flame$ of war. A look at my post would find the following reasons:

*Games are more historically accurate than FOW.
*The rules are more balanced than FOW, where I hear that early-war armies can only win against late-war with a lot of luck and skill.
* They have a couple of supplements that make the game as varied as FOW.
* The game can also be played in 20mm scale [with all the benefits], meanwhile FOW is exclusively 15mm.
* Battlegroup is published by the Plastic Soldier Company. They're a fantastic company full of great people who want to support the hobby with their products, instead of being mainly working to make money.
*The miniatures are far cheaper than FOW. Compare the PSC Sherman and Firefly set [£15 for 5 models] to the equivalent by Battle£ront [£35 for the same amount of tanks] and tell me what you would rather spend money on.
* Battle£ront banned non-FOW miniatures from its tournaments, even though at the time of the ban most of the Aeroplanes in the rules didn't have a model by the company. PSC has done nothing even comparable to this.

as you should see, I've given 7 separate reasons for why I recommend Battlegroup over Flame$ of war. This is far from your declaration of 0 reasons.

Was the above good enough for you kiddies?

Dont want to be nit picky, but reason one and 2 contradict each other. Plus each period wasnt made to be mixed i dont think. So keeping within periods its pretty balanced.

Also they require a 50% FoW model count at their events.

Also good luck finding a game of Battlegroup. I doubt its very popular in comparison. Im not against it (id be playing it if I could) but I think most people have more chance of playing FoW than battlegroup.

I think FoW being based in my country doesnt help their prices. NZ stuff bar dairy products tend to be expensive around the world. But they make up for it with free PDFs and supporting easy army where you can get army books for like 2 dollars.

They also are very customer friendly. After their announcement that no PSC models will be used people complained so they changed it to 50%.

As for model availability I dont think I could get a Japanese force at PSC either.

 sing your life wrote:

Was the above good enough for you kiddies?

No, for the simply reason that most of them are factually inaccurate or personal perception.

Its entirely possible that Battlegroup is a better game than FoW, its almost certainly more historically accurate, but you could at least attempt to get your facts right.

*Games are more historically accurate than FOW.

Games are whatever you set. This has no relevance to the rules.

*The rules are more balanced than FOW, where I hear that early-war armies can only win against late-war with a lot of luck and skill.

Seriously? Your first point is that BGK is more "historically realistic". Your second in that Early versus Late War matchups in FoW are unbalanced?

* They have a couple of supplements that make the game as varied as FOW.

No, looking at their catalog they have nothing even close to the variety of threatres and period Late War ('44=45 Western and Eastern front and Barbarossa). In fact (back to your second point) they don't even have any support for early war yet.

* The game can also be played in 20mm scale [with all the benefits], meanwhile FOW is exclusively 15mm.

Nope. Play it however you want.

* Battlegroup is published by the Plastic Soldier Company. They're a fantastic company full of great people who want to support the hobby with their products, instead of being mainly working to make money.

No PSC don't publish Battlegroup, they only distribute it. They are also a very small company, basically a one man act (Will Townsend), therefore not "full of great people" but at best "full of great person". I assume you actually therefore know absolutely nothing about them. As for any suggestion that Battlfront are "...mainly working to make money" that is complete and utter rubbish as anyone who had followed the company for any period would know.

*The miniatures are far cheaper than FOW. Compare the PSC Sherman and Firefly set [£15 for 5 models] to the equivalent by Battle£ront [£35 for the same amount of tanks] and tell me what you would rather spend money on.

PSC miniatures are no more tied to BGK than to Flames of War and there's nothing to stop you from using them the latter except that the range is fairly sparse. The actual price for Shermans btw is £19.50 - plus provide your own decals.

PSC so far, have exclusively produced the big "main line" tanks and infantry, Shermans, Stugs plus all the standard big army infantry sets, and all for the popular late war period. Producing the plastics moulds for these is expensive and they need large volumes to cover the costs. Battlfront on the other hand have thousands of resin and metal models in their catalog. Some I suspect have annual single figure sales. In order to manage this on a common pricelist the high volume sellers will of course be supplementing the low volume sellers and the breadth of their product line is always going to make them slow to adapt to new technologies. So no surprise that small companies like PSC can undercut them in the volume corner of the market. But on the other hand BF are similar or cheaper than most other metal/resin companies including Old Glory, Peter Pig and Skytrex so there's ceratinly no traction in any suggestion of overpricing in the market.

* Battle£ront banned non-FOW miniatures from its tournaments, even though at the time of the ban most of the Aeroplanes in the rules didn't have a model by the company. PSC has done nothing even comparable to this.

False.

as you should see, I've given 7 separate reasons for why I recommend Battlegroup over Flame$ of war. This is far from your declaration of 0 reasons.

Was the above good enough for you kiddies?

No you pulled a few fabrications out of your nethermost that did nothing but demonstrate your ignorance not just of Battlefront and FoW but also PSC and Battlegroup. I'm reminded that you had in a previous argued that Peter Pig miniatures were cheaper and had that error pointed out to you at the time so repeating it here could only be willful deceptiveness. You repeatedly refer to Battlefront as "Battle£ront" and Flames of War as "Flame$ of War" suggesting some real petty childish grudge or malice towards the company or community.

In short. Troll.

Wow... he is not the only one a little skewed on facts Berserker to be fair.

PSC is not only one man, unless you wish to ignore the other five staff, including me.

Battlegroup is published by Ironfist publishing. Its written mainly by Warwick Kinrade with co-author Piers Brand.


Seriously no need for a flame war, like what rules you like, and allow others to state what they like.


Battlegroup has picked up a few refugees from FoW, and generally they seem to be those looking for a more historical approach to a WW2 set of rules.

While what rules you like is subjective, finding a game also comes down to personal circumstance. Some groups will have that one individual willing to step away from the crowd and try something different in order to satisfy there gaming needs. Sometimes more follow. In my group, you'd never get a game of FoW for instance... for others the GW marketing styles and tourny gameplay is important and in a major gaming shop here you'd only get a game of FoW (though they did sell out of Battlegroup).

But let both sides at least be nice, and play nice.

And I say that as one of the co-authors of Battlegroup. So be nice.

So if I were to start Battlegroup, would I have the same limitations as FoW? The point about early war units being unable to have a game with late war opponents? That's the main minus point I am encountering as I would prefer more freedom in my choice of what to start or buy.

The rules are fairly simple and fun, theres alot of different lists you can use, from generic to themed

I'd say it's probably the most common game out there in the more gamey/tournament style historical, but depending on where you live and gaming places and such, so who knows

investment money wise depends really, if you want a tank force, or a small paratrooper force, to a soviet horde can vary, also theres alot of different companies out there that make stuff so look around for what you like

but i'd suggest pick up open fire its a great set to see what it's all about

Wow... he is not the only one a little skewed on facts Berserker to be fair.

PSC is not only one man, unless you wish to ignore the other five staff, including me.

Which I believe is a fairly recent expansion from the one-man-band that it has been most of its existence.

But apart from that I stand by what I say... sing your life's duplicitous, poisoness and petty little rant (aimed at Battlefront/FoW) does nothing to make the Battlegroup "scene" look attractive and you shouldn't be coming through as being an apologist for it..

In the modern club scene people move all the time from system to system on a regular basis. Command decision and Rapid fire have all been played in my locale interchangeably with FoW in the last few years. Bolt Action is currently the biggest thing in WWII gaming plus of course all of the usual SciFi/Fanatasy games. So there's no issue at l with people switching systems it's happening constantly. Battlegroup's problem is not weaning people off FoW it's attracting people who are choosing new systems from whatever direction.

Battlegroup seems to have set itself up (or been set up by its advocates) specifically as a rival to FoW and often on wholly the grounds of wholly spurious argument ("... I heard that in Fow you could cherry pick the best untis/play pure tank armies..." etc), Slagging off FoW from a position of "I've heard that" ignorance isn't going to sell it to the players base (people are smarter than you give them credit). The absence of any kind of penetration might suggest that it's not working and may in fact be overshadowing BG's positive attributes. It certainly seems to have some negative vibes amongst long term club players.

So maybe a little more open mindedness and a little less sniping and you won't attract trolls such as "sing you life" who in truth do you more harm than good.


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 milkboy wrote:
So if I were to start Battlegroup, would I have the same limitations as FoW? The point about early war units being unable to have a game with late war opponents? That's the main minus point I am encountering as I would prefer more freedom in my choice of what to start or buy.

Battlegroup I don't believe, has support for early war support yet anyway (Big P will know if there are lists). FoW balances points within a period but not across periods because with the dramatic performance differential an early war armoured squadron would need to be impractically large to match a late war (with evenly pointing infantry providing the common standard).

From the question however I assume that you are thinking of stepping outside of the concept of "historical" encounters so I don't know if Battlegroup is intending to allow this either within its focus of historicity.

Bolt action (28mm) does allow this. It's a bit more gamey and a bit less historical than either of the other games mentioned and pitched at a lower (platoon) level. It's also got a big scene growing at the moment as well.

To the OP I say buy some sweet 15mm plastic crack. Get a mini FOW book. Get a mini BGK book. Play both.

Ermmm... Berserker, mate, have you seen a Battlegroup book? Battlegroup was designed as a 20mm system for fast playing, but flavoursome games. Hence why the images are 99% 20mm... odd start for a system set up to prey on FoW. Not really gonna draw a 15mm gamer in on an initial glance. Hence why I think its those looking for a more historical, scenario driven experience. Certainly although you could, I wouldnt see BG as a suitable Tournament system like FoW is supposed to be. I think they are two very different sets from what I can tell. I dont think there is any need for parajoia just yet!


It came from Kampfgruppe Normandy. Warwicks previous set written for GW Historical.

Im not going to indulge in a rant of who is better, as frankly, I couldn't tell you. I have never played FoW to comment on it.

But its a bit of a stretch to try and portray Battlegroup having been set up soley to counter FoW when the authors use a different scale of figure, game level setting and have never played FOW. Indeed, we couldn't have done a worse job if we tried!

But if you want to believe that, go for it. For me, I just hope people play what they like.


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Oh and the early war book, covering Poland and Fall of France, is out this November... im just writing it.

Oh and our lists are kinda set to play list versus list in the same book, though the mid to lates can crossover to do different theatres... for instance I use the Kursk German list and the Overlord British list for some Italian campaign scenarios.

odd start for a system set up to prey on FoW

Actually I implied rather explicitly that it was being presented by its advocates as a rival to FoW.

I nearly got into playing Warhammer Panzer Battles back when it first appeared. I got a mate to download it and print it out from that newfangled internet.

I planned to play it in 20mm but it never really took off with my gaming group.

Fair enough Berserker mate... fair enough.

 Swastakowey wrote:
Dont want to be nit picky, but reason one and 2 contradict each other. Plus each period wasnt made to be mixed i dont think. So keeping within periods its pretty balanced.

Nein, Battlegroup might allow forces from different times in the war, but FOW also does this, meanwhile the list building mechanic means that a BGK force is more likely to have the stuff in it that matches real life than FOW. So BGK is more balanced than FOW yet also more historically accurate [IMO]

I would like to able to reply to other posts but it seems that people are adamant in their love for Flame$ of War and dismissing anything saying they shouldn't love it , so I don't see any reason to keep replying to this thread. Goodbye.

 sing your life wrote:
Flame$ of War...

Really? Thanks to Zvesda, PSC, FiB (and several others) that tag hardly applies to FoW any more.

Sing, perhaps it's the annoying manner in which you add currency symbols to their name. If you want to come off as a balanced source you may want to cut that out?

Just a thought.

I've tried both games (pick-up) and while I liked BG's rules more, FoW was fun, and in the end far more available and accessible.

One day I'll probably build a US FoW list, but I have way too much other expensive hobbies.

 George Spiggott wrote:

 sing your life wrote:
Flame$ of War...

Really? Thanks to Zvesda, PSC, FiB (and several others) that tag hardly applies to FoW any more.

You're joking, right? Zvezda, Plastic Soldier Company and Forged in Battle price their products according to its quality and actual worth. They are not greedy or obsessed with making money, unlike Battl£ront.

 sing your life wrote:

 Swastakowey wrote:
Dont want to be nit picky, but reason one and 2 contradict each other. Plus each period wasnt made to be mixed i dont think. So keeping within periods its pretty balanced.

Nein, Battlegroup might allow forces from different times in the war, but FOW also does this, meanwhile the list building mechanic means that a BGK force is more likely to have the stuff in it that matches real life than FOW. So BGK is more balanced than FOW yet also more historically accurate [IMO]

I would like to able to reply to other posts but it seems that people are adamant in their love for Flame$ of War and dismissing anything saying they shouldn't love it , so I don't see any reason to keep replying to this thread. Goodbye.

No you are just being like the infinity players that lurk in the 40k area. Promoting your game in an undesirable way.

And just because they can mix together doesn't mean you are meant to play them willy nilly. They can mix to create some scenarios but I dont see why the periods would be balanced when pitted against each other at all. Its a pretty dumb argument to make.

Why shouldnt anyone like it anyways. We are all aware its not made to be a simulation. We are all aware it bends some reality for game plays sake. Yet we are still here. So instead of doing what you are doing, look at the people you are trying to convince, see what may appeal to them and then try inform them in a nicer way.

@ sing your life: But you didn't write Battlefront, you wrote Flames of War. Significant difference.

sing your life wrote:

 Swastakowey wrote:
Dont want to be nit picky, but reason one and 2 contradict each other. Plus each period wasnt made to be mixed i dont think. So keeping within periods its pretty balanced.

Nein, Battlegroup might allow forces from different times in the war, but FOW also does this, meanwhile the list building mechanic means that a BGK force is more likely to have the stuff in it that matches real life than FOW. So BGK is more balanced than FOW yet also more historically accurate [IMO]

I would like to able to reply to other posts but it seems that people are adamant in their love for Flame$ of War and dismissing anything saying they shouldn't love it , so I don't see any reason to keep replying to this thread. Goodbye.

Heaven forbid a game actually leave it up to the players to decide the level of historical accuracy they want in their games. Putting that in the hands of the gamers must automatically make it a bad game.

sing your life wrote:

 George Spiggott wrote:

 sing your life wrote:
Flame$ of War...

Really? Thanks to Zvesda, PSC, FiB (and several others) that tag hardly applies to FoW any more.

You're joking, right? Zvezda, Plastic Soldier Company and Forged in Battle price their products according to its quality and actual worth. They are not greedy or obsessed with making money, unlike Battl£ront.

And you've actually looked at the books of these three companies so you can make an informed decision? You know the profit margins, production costs, etc. so you can make an unbiased statement of fact? Or is it just more baseless flaming trying to push your biased opinions off on others? With your continued use of snide remarks like 'Battl£ront' and 'Flame$ of War' all you've done is undermine your own position and have done nothing to prove that you're anything more than a troll. Good riddance.

Alright, actual rules question:

Is it true Flames of War uses mostly segmented turns where I have to ask my opponent to wait and roll the occasional dice while I do everything with my army? In what ways does the opponent actually get to make decisions during my turn? Move models?

It's basically the same as the warhammer turn sequence when one players does the moves/firing for all his units then the other player reciprocates for all his units.

The firing sequence typically involves a 3 roll hit/save/firepower sequence with the save being made by the opponent.

Hit allocation is one key area that the passive player needs to make decisions in.

The save where the penetration versus armour is resolved. Most people's expectation expectation is that penetration would be challenging armour but this is backwards in FoW with armour "saving" against penetration. Infantry saves occur at this point as well.

My suspicion is that this is specifically to involve opposing player in the action, otherwise (with relatively long turns) it would be too common for the passive player to miss die rolling and end up being upset when the active player announces he has just rolled to destroy all his tigers. Getting the other guy actively involved in the firing resolution (even if there are no active decisions to be made) at least engages them.

An opponent does get to make reactive counter attack moves in the post firing assault step where the action resolution is finer. Plus there are a few reactive opportunities with aircraft.

 frozenwastes wrote:
Alright, actual rules question:

Is it true Flames of War uses mostly segmented turns where I have to ask my opponent to wait and roll the occasional dice while I do everything with my army? In what ways does the opponent actually get to make decisions during my turn? Move models?

Aside from the usual armour saves there are a couple of reactive things you can do in your opponents turn. Defensive fire and counter attacking in your opponents assault phase and anti aircraft fire. Aside from that its a time for rumination and model removal.

Big P wrote:
I suppose for me, an army list should generally reflect the doctrinal method chosen rather than the exceptions to the rule, but things like Crehen do make for fun games...

It's a company level game. Real life isn't textbook examples, and the game's lists allow you to simulate things that actually happened regardless of what the strategy guides suggested. And company level is the edge of where you could expect those sorts of force organizations to happen. 17 tanks is a pretty small force in the grand scheme of things.



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In any event, when all is said and done, Battlefront gives you a decent run down on how the Flames of War rules work via videos on their website. Check it out and decide whether the rules seem like something you'd enjoy. You can figure out how best to proceed from there.


I'm not aware of anything similar for Battlegroup, though it's been a while since I last looked.

Thanks for the answers guys. I've been watching through the boot camp videos and listening to the wwpd podcasts. I think FOW is probably not for me. I dislike segmented turns. Like a lot. Here's what I'm currently considering and their turn structure:

Bolt Action: Seems to work fine with multi based infantry, although I'm thinking I'll individually mount mine. Turn structure is drawing dice out of a cup, so it's alternating activation with a potential for activation chains. Plus reaction fire.

Battlegroup: Segmented turns, but your number of commands means you don't generally do your whole army in one go. So it's like alternating activation but you don't know how many things you'll get to use until the dice are rolled.

Chain of Command: Roll dice, but the dice determine not only the amount of actions you do, but the type of actions. It's a Too Fat Lardies game, so there's going to be some interesting turn structure related elements to make decisions on and usually very little wait time for the opponent.

Company Commander: "Go until you fail" like bloodbowl. If you fail to pin an enemy, get pinned by reaction fire, fail to rally a friendly pinned unit and probably something I'm forgetting, you lose the initiative and the opponent goes. These are a free set available at a yahoo group.

Alpha Strike: The new fast play Battletech Rules. I've statted up some WW2 stuff in 6mm for it and it worked. Integrated turns where everyone alternates movement and all shooting is considered simultaneous. Each base represents an entire platoon rather than a team, so it's not the same level as either FOW, Bolt Action or other games.

Flames of War. I might make some sabot bases that my individually based guys go on if someone local really wants to play. I've watched enough of the boot camp videos that I think I can play if someone else makes the army list and knows the rules. I'm not going to actually buy the game or go through the FOW army building process.

I've played quite abit of FOW in the last 2 years and I have a bit of a love hate relationship with it.

It can be a lot of fun but there are a few things that really do frustrate me about it and I'd point them out to someone considering investing in it.


1. The tournament build structure of the game sucks the fun out of it for me.
It seems 80% of the game is won before the match starts..its about optimal list building, which units have the best cost/efficiency ratio, my best unit in the game is the su-122..its one of the soviets weakest AFV in real life.. but 8 of those for 340 points are probably the best infantry killers in the game.
I spent the first year playing FOW being abit more lax on builds..and I always lost to the more competitive players..i just wasn't in the ballpark cuz my lists were build around what figures I had, not based on which would win me the game. I eventually realized I was playing the game wrong..I looked at the strength of soviets national rules and focused on buying units that utilized them. I started thinking bout predictability of the other players..what their tendency was for list building..what was their fallback builds and built my lists accordingly.
after a while I was kicking ass and taking names..and I think we scared away the rest of the casual players while the game got a lot less friendly and fun while we all competed for league money prizes etc.

Now that doesn't have to happen..but FOW is a tournament game.the culture of players generally is to outplay your opponents with your lists.You can all agree to not do that..but if you want public games..thats what you should expect.

2. Purely my own option but I feel that due to their desire as a company to sell more models..they don't balance their lists in their books better to reflect any kind of historical limitations. It starts to leave a bit of a sour taste in your mouth.

3. The infantry 3+ save and then a firepower test if they are in cover is way way way to overpowered. Small arms are pretty useless in this game..which is a shame.

4. the 240 odd page of rules is a mess.its a convoluted takes forever to reference things.because they organized it around what they felt was the logical flow to learn the game..but that left many rules related to a single topic scattered around the book

all that aside its still a good game..but It does have issues.

I find small arms are my back bone. They pin (most important tool in the game) better than any big gun will do.

I will admit though I haven't been to a tournament yet. So I guess I i'll find out if my region suffers the same kind of issues yours does.

bloodydrake wrote:
3. The infantry 3+ save and then a firepower test if they are in cover is way way way to overpowered. Small arms are pretty useless in this game..which is a shame.

4. the 240 odd page of rules is a mess.its a convoluted takes forever to reference things.because they organized it around what they felt was the logical flow to learn the game..but that left many rules related to a single topic scattered around the book

It's hard to say. On the one hand, I often do agree with the general sentiment regarding the infantry save and small arms fire. On the other hand, I'll also point out that whittling away an advancing Conscript Soviet Strelkovy battalion Horde of Doom(tm) still takes place at a decent rate even with the 3+ save.

So I'm not sure.


Also, the 3+ save used to mean that it was very difficult for vehicles to kill infantry, particularly in bullet-proof cover. The Heavy Breakthrough Gun rule changed this when it was added, and I've got mixed opinions about it. On the one hand, vehicles like the StuH(42) were virtually ignored prior to the rule. The latter, for instance, cost the same as a StuG IIIG, and traded one point of armor penetration for a point of firepower. It was generally seen as not being a good trade-off. The Heavy Breakthrough Gun means that it now excels at its intended role - i.e. digging out dug in soft targets. Vehicles like the StuH and the M4(105) now have a purpose in the game. But the rule might be *too* good for those vehicles.



As for the rulebook...

Yeah, it's not very well organized. You live or die by the index in the back when you're trying to look up a rule.

 Swastakowey wrote:
I find small arms are my back bone. They pin (most important tool in the game) better than any big gun will do.

I will admit though I haven't been to a tournament yet. So I guess I i'll find out if my region suffers the same kind of issues yours does.

tourneys and leagues can be fun..but they do stir up the competitive fires more then I'd like..I tend to enjoy a more casual play style in retrospect. I'm thoroughly enjoying set lists in a historical campaigns atm since we're being forced to use forces we normally wouldn't consider


I don't find pinning matters all that much in FOW except when setting up a potential assault.
I do play alot of Canadian forces with their rerolls..they hardly ever stayed pinned on their own turn so maybe thats why.

bloodydrake wrote:

 Swastakowey wrote:
I find small arms are my back bone. They pin (most important tool in the game) better than any big gun will do.

I will admit though I haven't been to a tournament yet. So I guess I i'll find out if my region suffers the same kind of issues yours does.

tourneys and leagues can be fun..but they do stir up the competitive fires more then I'd like..I tend to enjoy a more casual play style in retrospect. I'm thoroughly enjoying set lists in a historical campaigns atm since we're being forced to use forces we normally wouldn't consider


I don't find pinning matters all that much in FOW except when setting up a potential assault.
I do play alot of Canadian forces with their rerolls..they hardly ever stayed pinned on their own turn so maybe thats why.

Im casual too. So this is gonna be a new experience all round. But the guys going seem great so from what i have met of them.

As a Japanese player if i dont pin the enemy I die. If the enemy are not pinned thats 2 rounds of defensive fire I have to take (usually). So maybe it depends on lists.

Eumerin wrote:

bloodydrake wrote:
3. The infantry 3+ save and then a firepower test if they are in cover is way way way to overpowered. Small arms are pretty useless in this game..which is a shame.

4. the 240 odd page of rules is a mess.its a convoluted takes forever to reference things.because they organized it around what they felt was the logical flow to learn the game..but that left many rules related to a single topic scattered around the book

It's hard to say. On the one hand, I often do agree with the general sentiment regarding the infantry save and small arms fire. On the other hand, I'll also point out that whittling away an advancing Conscript Soviet Strelkovy battalion Horde of Doom(tm) still takes place at a decent rate even with the 3+ save.

So I'm not sure.


Also, the 3+ save used to mean that it was very difficult for vehicles to kill infantry, particularly in bullet-proof cover. The Heavy Breakthrough Gun rule changed this when it was added, and I've got mixed opinions about it. On the one hand, vehicles like the StuH(42) were virtually ignored prior to the rule. The latter, for instance, cost the same as a StuG IIIG, and traded one point of armor penetration for a point of firepower. It was generally seen as not being a good trade-off. The Heavy Breakthrough Gun means that it now excels at its intended role - i.e. digging out dug in soft targets. Vehicles like the StuH and the M4(105) now have a purpose in the game. But the rule might be *too* good for those vehicles.

i still think its to hard to kill them..conscripts are almost impossible to miss tho..I never play them since it takes longer to put your guys on the table and take them off then playing does heh.
I'd like to see a 4+ standard infantry save and 4+ 50cal firepower and 5+ firepower on machine guns in version 4. Balance points as needed but Its to much as is.

Breakthru guns are a staple in my builds now..and volley fire.. combined they are the great equalizer for soviets..figuring out how to use them well changed the game for us. There was talk of they are broken ,firepower 1+ shouldn't exist, the dug in vet infantry players didn't like they couldn't turtle and win by attrition.


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 Swastakowey wrote:

As a Japanese player if i dont pin the enemy I die. If the enemy are not pinned thats 2 rounds of defensive fire I have to take (usually). So maybe it depends on lists.

ohh! to be fair I've never played early war FOW just mid and late.. Rising sun might play different

I have only played early war so yea there may very well be differences.

bloodydrake wrote:

I'd like to see a 4+ standard infantry save and 4+ 50cal firepower and 5+ firepower on machine guns in version 4. Balance points as needed but Its to much as is.

Try it and see just how weak infantry then become. FoW is already far (far) too tank heavy, weakening infantry would just make this worse.

Infantry are very survivable when dug in an gone to ground, as they should be, but they are far from invulnerable.

 Palindrome wrote:

bloodydrake wrote:

I'd like to see a 4+ standard infantry save and 4+ 50cal firepower and 5+ firepower on machine guns in version 4. Balance points as needed but Its to much as is.

Try it and see just how weak infantry then become. FoW is already far (far) too tank heavy, weakening infantry would just make this worse.

Infantry are very survivable when dug in an gone to ground, as they should be, but they are far from invulnerable.

I really disagree infantry are too survivable and small arms are too weak due to this.and I've done one better I've tried playing with a much harsher save system.

i'm currently enjoying Battlegroups default save system for infantry significantly more..in the open is 6+ and it scales down depending on the type of cover you have down to 2+ save in hardened bunkers.. +3 up save in fox holes if you buy them in your list is fine but the firepower is incorporated into the roll not separate so they are still more vulnerable to kills .

After playing a bunch of games..and seeing both sides of the coin its very obvious that infantry in FOW are far to survivable and small arms are just to ineffective.
Due to this I just use breakthru guns against dug in vet infantry with recce teams lifting gone to ground or a 20+ stand infantry blob that infiltrates into assault range on turn one and overwhelms them on the assault , both things pretty much negate any save rolls.

Fow is already dominated by tanks, what do you think would happen if infantry were made worse?

Aside from that I actually like the FoW save sytem as I find that it strikes a good balance between realism and abstraction.

 Palindrome wrote:
Fow is already dominated by tanks, what do you think would happen if infantry were made worse?

I don't think it's ever *not* going to be dominated by tanks, though. Keep in mind that Bolt Action, which is an infantry-focused game in which tanks are hugely abstracted, is going to release a supplement for vehicle platoon lists, as opposed to the reinforced infantry platoon lists that the base game requires. Players just like vehicles too much. And unless you cripple them beyond all realistic expectations, I don't think that's going to change.

Eumerin wrote:

I don't think that's going to change.

Unfortunately neither do I but crippling infantry is going to ensure that virtually every army you face is filled with tanks. At the moment infantry work fairly well in terms of the balance between effectiveness and realism so I don't think that their rules need changed. Tanks on the other hand...

Back when I was think of starting FOW [before I realised there were far better WW2 games available], I wanted only tanks in my army, because I thought all the features on the infantry are really tiny in this scale.

Tanks are cool. If you want to have any sort of historical representation of infantry, you need to require it rather than have it be optional, because people will pick tanks. They're awesome.

Chain of Command just gives you a historical platoon of infantry as your core and then you get to add a bit of support. Flames of War could take the same approach. You're Panzer Grenadiers in this year? Here's your platoons, here's your companies, now add support. Even then though, I think you'd see a greater proportion of people choose the tank platoons and companies and add infantry as support, as those are also historical formations.

Tanks are awesome.

Battlefront allows the players to decide how historically accurate they want to be. I hardly see placing that decision in the hands of the players a failing of the game. If the game actually prevented the players from making a historically accurate force, then that would be a failing of the game, IMHO.

 Palindrome wrote:
Fow is already dominated by tanks, what do you think would happen if infantry were made worse?

Aside from that I actually like the FoW save sytem as I find that it strikes a good balance between realism and abstraction.

tank domination is purely due to the way battlefront allows valid lists to be built Its there own fault for not having better checks and balances in their force building... the infantry save is a mess..but within version 3 you can't fix it in a vacuum and not adjust alot of other things as well.
its entrenched in the games balancing atm .but its a fundamental problem with the game that needs to be addressed in version 4


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 frozenwastes wrote:
Tanks are cool. If you want to have any sort of historical representation of infantry, you need to require it rather than have it be optional, because people will pick tanks. They're awesome.

Chain of Command just gives you a historical platoon of infantry as your core and then you get to add a bit of support. Flames of War could take the same approach. You're Panzer Grenadiers in this year? Here's your platoons, here's your companies, now add support. Even then though, I think you'd see a greater proportion of people choose the tank platoons and companies and add infantry as support, as those are also historical formations.

Tanks are awesome.

the more i hear about Chain of Command the more it sounds like I'd like it (Battlegroup has required infantry platoon amounts depending on size of game as well.. combined arms is a requirement.)..is it compatible with bolt action figures @ 28mm? Bolt action is becoming more popular but I've resisted the scale change..but if I could buy 1 army for both games it would be an easier choice.



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 Ghaz wrote:
Battlefront allows the players to decide how historically accurate they want to be. I hardly see placing that decision in the hands of the players a failing of the game. If the game actually prevented the players from making a historically accurate force, then that would be a failing of the game, IMHO.

Its a failing of good game design to allow the lowest common denominator to dictate the balance of your game..Rules are there to fundamentally structure the game in an expected way..If you just want to play in a sandbox with cool figures but make your own rules thats cool(hell look at minecraft its perfectly valid form of entertainment)..but that doesn't make a balanced fair and fun game for everyone else.

Structure is a requirement. Too much freedom can be a flaw, and when you want your game to reflect some semblance of reality (which any game that takes a historical approach to WWII should) its can be a problem

I disagree with you. Flames of War does have a structure and 'semblance of reality', by determining what units are available to the specific unit that the player wishes to field.

Allowing players to determine how historically accurate they wish to make their game is not a flaw of a good game design. Its anything but that. Being locked into a specific army because it is 'historically accurate' would quickly lose replayability. Why stop at dictating what units the player can take? Why not go all the way and dictate the player's actions for historical accuracy as well? Why is it okay to throw historical accuracy out the window with regards to tactics, but heaven forbid you don't field exactly what was fielded at the actual battle in question?

 Ghaz wrote:
I disagree with you. Flames of War does have a structure and 'semblance of reality', by determining what units are available to the specific unit that the player wishes to field.

Allowing players to determine how historically accurate they wish to make their game is not a flaw of a good game design. Its anything but that. Being locked into a specific army because it is 'historically accurate' would quickly lose replayability. Why stop at dictating what units the player can take? Why not go all the way and dictate the player's actions for historical accuracy as well? Why is it okay to throw historical accuracy out the window with regards to tactics, but heaven forbid you don't field exactly what was fielded at the actual battle in question?

Total Strawman argument..you present ludicrous extremes as the bases of your objection that no one mentions but yourself..grats..

I've never agreed that any wargame or a set of rules using essentialy scale toys could possibly historically re-create the madness and horror that is warfare.

Dont worry too much OP, ive never worried about accuracy as ive never really played a game which correctly demonstrates how people die

but that's just my 2 cents

 frozenwastes wrote:
Chain of Command just gives you a historical platoon of infantry as your core and then you get to add a bit of support. Flames of War could take the same approach. You're Panzer Grenadiers in this year? Here's your platoons, here's your companies, now add support.

That's exactly how FoW does work. There are no Panzergrenadier lists that do not force you to take at least a single platoon of Panzergrenadiers, most require two as a minimum.

bloodydrake wrote:

 Ghaz wrote:
I disagree with you. Flames of War does have a structure and 'semblance of reality', by determining what units are available to the specific unit that the player wishes to field.

Allowing players to determine how historically accurate they wish to make their game is not a flaw of a good game design. Its anything but that. Being locked into a specific army because it is 'historically accurate' would quickly lose replayability. Why stop at dictating what units the player can take? Why not go all the way and dictate the player's actions for historical accuracy as well? Why is it okay to throw historical accuracy out the window with regards to tactics, but heaven forbid you don't field exactly what was fielded at the actual battle in question?

Total Strawman argument..you present ludicrous extremes as the bases of your objection that no one mentions but yourself..grats..

Seems like you're doing nothing but avoiding the argument. Why is changing the forces in a historical battle such a heresy but the tactics not? If you can't be bothered to answer this then your argument looks like it is nothing but personal bias and not based on anything even remotely approaching facts.

 George Spiggott wrote:
There are no Panzergrenadier lists that do not force you to take at least a single platoon of Panzergrenadiers

That pretty obvious...

 frozenwastes wrote:
Tanks are cool. If you want to have any sort of historical representation of infantry, you need to require it rather than have it be optional, because people will pick tanks.

Except that plenty of people go for the infantry. I've got an SS infantry list. A guy who used to play at my local game store ran a US infantry turtle list. A couple of friends of mine run Soviet Infantry Hordes. All of these lists have been very successful.

The difficulty arises in two specific issues, neither of which are rules-related -

1.) Tanks are more glamourous than infantry
2.) Building and painting the figures for an infantry list is much more time-consuming. With tanks, you glue on the tracks and possibly the gun, prime the vehicle in the army's base color, and then put some dark paint on the tracks. At that point you've got a decent looking tank. Camo is nice if accurate, but ultimately optional. Same with the insignia. Your tanks will pass muster on the table. Decent looking infantry, on the other hand, require putting all of the infantry on the base (and some assembly may be required if your infantry have crew-served weapons), painting the uniform, putting flesh-colored dabs on the hands and faces, painting the weapons, painting the helmets if they're a different shade than the uniform, and finally adding at least minimal texture to the base. Now multiply that by the number of infantry and gun team stands you have, and you're looking at a lot of additional work.

So, people gravitate toward the tanks.

bloodydrake wrote:the more i hear about Chain of Command the more it sounds like I'd like it (Battlegroup has required infantry platoon amounts depending on size of game as well.. combined arms is a requirement.)..is it compatible with bolt action figures @ 28mm? Bolt action is becoming more popular but I've resisted the scale change..but if I could buy 1 army for both games it would be an easier choice.

It's pretty much made for 28mm. Almost all the battle reports I see for it are in either 28mm or 20mm (with a smattering of 15mm). The ground scale of the game is right around 1:100, so at 15mm you're actually playing at true ranges relative to you figures, but even at 28mm, the ability to shoot across the entire table with a rifle will be refreshing to many.

George Spiggott wrote:That's exactly how FoW does work. There are no Panzergrenadier lists that do not force you to take at least a single platoon of Panzergrenadiers, most require two as a minimum.

So you have to take 300-600 points of them in an army that might be 1500+ points? And then you can take the vast majority of your points in all sorts of other stuff? If I take a 1750 Panzergrenadier list that requires a single platoon of them and then spend 1450 points on non-Panzergrenadier stuff, can I really say I'm playing panzergrenadiers?

I get that the typical 40k-derivative ww2 player would chafe under the restrictions of historical organization and what the commander of that organization could negotiate with his superiors, but when I mentioned Chain of Command being a platoon and then support choices, it's a game where the platoon represents the majority of your forces. And you also don't make your support choices until after you know the scenario and who your opponent is. I also think that if someone finds the idea of the majority of their army being the same all the time to be boring, I think that's a short coming in the game rules and scenario design rather than any same-ness in list building.

An example:

Germans. 1941. Operation Barbarossa.
Force Rate +3

Leutnant (senior leader w/ pistol)
Fedlwebel, (senior leader w/ SMG)
5 cm mortar team with 3 crew 

Obergefreiter (junior leader w/ MP40)
MG34 w/ 3 crew
6 infantry with rifles

Obergefreiter (junior leader w/ MP40)
MG34 w/ 3 crew
6 infantry with rifles

Obergefreiter (junior leader w/ MP40)
MG34 w/ 3 crew
6 infantry with rifles
 
Obergefreiter (junior leader w/ MP40)
MG34 w/ 3 crew
6 infantry with rifles

--

That's your core platoon. Then after you know the scenario, set up the table, you find out your opponent has a force with a rating of +4. So you'll get an extra level of support (the difference between the two force ratings). The scenario then says has you make a roll and you get 7 levels of support. So with the +1, that's 8. There's a list of possible elements a higher level of command might give to your platoon for the scenario. In the case of the German Barbarossa list, there are around 50 possible items spread over six levels. So you end up picking a Panzer III E-G at level 4 and two more 5 cm mortars at level 2 each. The scenario also states that your opponent will get half the support points you do, so he has 4 levels. He chooses an extra 10 man rifle squad at level three and a barbed wire emplacement at level 1.

But nothing starts the game deployed on the table and you don't get to know just how much anti armour he took. Will your tank be able to safely advance? What will you find when you reach his known positions?

--

My own plan is to build all the options for both Germans and Soviets in late 1943. So between the two armies I'm still going to be painting up roughly the same amount of figures as a single FOW army as well as terrain projects like barbed wire, trenches and minefields. It'll be a lot of variety though as I'm probably not going to need more than one KV-2, for example.

I don't need all the options prepared in advance, just a smattering and maybe some extra level 1 options to make sure I can make change for various support levels, but at 15mm, it seems very doable to have all the options including multiples of lower level support.

.

 frozenwastes wrote:
it's a game where the platoon represents the majority of your forces.
.

And that's the issue. FoW is a (tank) company level game. I always take 3 infantry platoons, mortars and MGs or in other words a complete infantry company, when I run an infantry list in FoW but that almost invariably costs less than 1k points so I am forced to include a lot of support options.

I would imagine that this would be true with any game that allowed players to field a functional tank company will result in infantry lists with ahistorical levels of support.

In my experience 28mm games are easy to build historical lists for because they tend to be based around fielding an infantry platoon with a few support options.

I think it's more than just the scope of the game being company or platoon level. There's a fundamental difference here. Imagine if Flames of War assumed an infantry company. Everyone had to take it. With historical TO&Es and field manuals as the reference for what is included, and then some variance and modulation is allowed. Then you add support based on what was historically used to support an infantry company.

Very, very different approach to list building than the 40k menu style points build.

I'm sick of 40k style army building. And I'm sick of self contained IGOUGO turns. And rolling progressively shrinking buckets of dice to cull out misses and saves and firepower and whatever.

40k isn't for me. WW2 40k likely isn't either.

 frozenwastes wrote:
I think it's more than just the scope of the game being company or platoon level. There's a fundamental difference here. Imagine if Flames of War assumed an infantry company. Everyone had to take it. With historical TO&Es and field manuals as the reference for what is included, and then some variance and modulation is allowed. Then you add support based on what was historically used to support an infantry company.

The "Aces" escalation campaigns for FoW work with this idea. You start with a small number of points, and minimal allowed support (if any). Then as the campaign goes on and your commanding officer gets promoted, you get access to more points, troops, and support.

Of course, there's no reason why the basic idea and framework for such a campaign can't be ported over into another game system.

http://www.flamesofwar.com/hobby.aspx?art_id=2666

The Infantry Aces page for reference.

That sounds pretty cool. I'm a sucker for campaign material as I find transferring it to other systems makes them long lived in their utility.

 frozenwastes wrote:
So you have to take 300-600 points of them in an army that might be 1500+ points? And then you can take the vast majority of your points in all sorts of other stuff? If I take a 1750 Panzergrenadier list that requires a single platoon of them and then spend 1450 points on non-Panzergrenadier stuff, can I really say I'm playing panzergrenadiers?

Players going down the minimalist route would probably just take a Panzer list. There's no compulsion to take infantry. But to answer your question, if you're taking a Panzergrenadier list and you're forced to take 2/3 of the company's infantry and all your other choices are support from the Batallion and Division level then yes you're playing panzergrenadiers.

I think alot of army choice is really down to player style, though rule mechanics can help to set some restrictions and guidelines to enforce a greater or lesser historical make up. But some types of player will find ways and means to get around it regardless.

It happens in all rules, its not the games fault per se, but the games design can help or hinder such things for that type of player.

 frozenwastes wrote:
I think it's more than just the scope of the game being company or platoon level. There's a fundamental difference here. Imagine if Flames of War assumed an infantry company. Everyone had to take it. With historical TO&Es and field manuals as the reference for what is included, and then some variance and modulation is allowed. Then you add support based on what was historically used to support an infantry company.

That is exactly how FoW works. If you take an infantry company then you have to take the HQ and 2 platoons of infantry minimum. Then you'll have historically accurate support options available to supplement your force that will range from the company to the regiment and divisional level.

On some specific formations, that are meant to represent particular battles or campaigns, you'll also be able to add a spattering of platoons that while not originally part of the same TO&E will have actually fought together in those battles.

There are not just two platoons in a company. For example, the American infantry organization from 1943-45 looked like this:

Company HQ (2 Officers, 33 men, many are administration rather than combat ready)

Weapons Platoon comprised of;

Platoon HQ (1 Officer, 5 men)
Mortar Section (17 men)
Machine Gun Section (12 men)

Three Rifle Platoons, each comprised of;

Platoon HQ (1 Officer, 4 men)
Three Rifle Squads, each comprised of 12 men

Going, "take two thirds or part of it and then whatever you want off this menu of options" isn't the same at all. I get that it's a vague nod towards historical formations, but it's still fundamentally about present players with 40k style army lists to drive model sales. Especially when the couple of platoons is a fraction of the total army size and you end up with more stuff on the table that is "special" than from the core formation of the company.

So scrap points, take the full company. Then if it's taken casaulties you haven't gotten replacements from, determine that with some die rolls and remove some models or entire sections. Then figure out who you are facing and the relative strengths of your core companies and then roll to see how much support you each get and make your selections.

If the company of American Infantry was facing a company of dug in germans with their full compliment of machine guns, they'd get more support than if the batallion commander thought the only thing in front of them was some Italians induced to "volunteer" for the RSI.

A company commander might make all sorts of requests of his battalion commander to direct the mortar platoon's fire power his way. Or send some 57mm anti-tank weapons from that platoon. Or ask him to go further up the chain of command for brigade/regimental/divisional assets. Or perhaps even some supporting armour from outside that structure.

The requests though, don't mean they were always granted. The battalion commander has other companies that need the various resources he has and so on up the chain of command.

It's a completely different approach to army building. One method is about figuring out points efficiency and all the usual process that goes into making a 40k type system army. And definitely one of the primary concerns is a framework to sell models. The other represents what decision making processes actually went on during the war.

Flames of War is a very artificial application of GW's marketing techniques to historicals. Fortunately it hasn't completely gone the way of GW in recent years, but the common ancestry is more than there. And people who left 40k for FoW didn't really escape the army list driving model sales ecosystem. The end result is a gamey mindset where people think if they take a couple of platoons, they've done the same thing as taking a company.



Automatically Appended Next Post:
I got some 15mm WW2 miniatures a year or so because I thought they were cool and wanted to paint them. I finally recently got them all out, built my tanks and was figuring out what sort of game I might want to use them for. I watched all the FoW Boot Camp videos and read some articles and then asked some questions on a couple of different forums.

It became apparently that FoW is literally just 40K WW2 with the old Warmammer Historicals brand filed off and then a few editions of separate evolution and development. The core approach is the same though. I'm glad it became apparent sooner rather than later as I almost impulse bought some FoW rules related stuff after watching through the videos. And I have no desire to get back on the GW treadmill.

Instead I'll build platoons and companies of various forces with a selection of plausible support and use whatever rules I feel like. And whatever miniatures I feel like. The costs of being locked into a total package provider is just too high. Especially in terms of ahistorical armies and wooden IGOUGO gameplay.

EDIT: So I went to the FoW website and thought, maybe I got it wrong. The army books seem to be about given conflicts rather than being Codex: Panzer Grenadiers. I saw "Road to Rome" and figured "hey, a book about the war in Italy. Let's see what's in that."

Only allied forces. It is a codex. In any other WW2 game if a company published a book about a given theatre and then only included forces for one side of the conflict, they'd be a laughing stock. It's a ludicrous approach. It's about selling more books which are then designed to sell more models rather than being an actual good game product. If you want the rest of the Italy stuff, there are too more books to buy. Fortress Italy for the axis lists and Italy Battles to get the scenarios.

Rulebook $15/$60
Italy battles $12
Road to Rome $50
Fortress Italy $50

$125+ just for the rules to play WW2 in Italy? And we haven't even added in templates and tokens and other stuff like that. Or any miniatures. Oh? I don't need both books because someone else is supposed to buy the enemy book and forces? Sounds familiarly like 40k's approach.

So no, I definitely made the right call. This is just more of the same GW treadmill.


.

You can make your own templates and status tokens you know, or do you only play with game manufacturer specific dice also?

If a person is starting out with one army, they only need the book that army is in. BF has free army pdf lists on their website, which are also available on EasyArmy. EasyArmy also makes available the the lists in books for a couple bucks per book. There's also FowLists who doesn't charge for his list building tool at all.

I'm not going to bother with the rest of your post since it's about game design, and they are simply different games.

To be fair, few armies operated forces that match any of their TOEs...

Losses, lack of replacements, breakdowns all contribute to losses. For instance, after the fighting around Breville in 1944 some of 6th Airbornes battalions amounted to much more than a company of men.

To take such TOEs as the historical reality is almost as ahistorical.

As another example, Von Der Heydte's FJR3 in normandy was more like a brigade in size with all its additional units.

So you have to be careful in claiming that proscribed organisations are the norm. In reality, on the battlefield they were the exception.

Sidney Jary's 18 Platoon, was down to around 18 men after the fighting at Mont Pincon...,

 frozenwastes wrote:
Going, "take two thirds or part of it and then whatever you want off this menu of options" isn't the same at all. I get that it's a vague nod towards historical formations, but it's still fundamentally about present players with 40k style army lists to drive model sales. Especially when the couple of platoons is a fraction of the total army size and you end up with more stuff on the table that is "special" than from the core formation of the company.

So scrap points, take the full company. Then if it's taken casaulties you haven't gotten replacements from, determine that with some die rolls and remove some models or entire sections. Then figure out who you are facing and the relative strengths of your core companies and then roll to see how much support you each get and make your selections.

Rolling a d6 at the start of any battle involving Char B-1bis tanks, and removing any that rolled a 1 or a 2 would be historically accurate (roughly 1 in 3 broke down between the jumping off point of the French counter-attacks, and the front lines with the Germans). But the players would refuse to use them if you did that. There's only so much control that you can take out of a player's hands before the players revolt. As it is, I'm not entirely comfortable with the random troop quality of the Italians and Romanians because it means that you could end up with an exceedingly incompetent and unmotivated force... or an exceptionally motivated one. The dice usually even out... but they don't always.

I once played a battle in which a US armored company charged a German anti-tank line (with PaK 40s), broke through, and destroyed the defending German Grenadier company - along with the Konigstiger that arrived from reserves mid-way through the battle. The US didn't lose a single tank over the course of the battle. And it was because of the dice. While a certain amount of randomness is unavoidable, and in fact pretty much required, minimizing that is a good part of game design. Making players roll to see whether or not they even have troops makes things far too random, imo. It's bad for the owning player if the player rolls poorly... and it's bad for the opponent if the player rolls well.

The random troops thing is a small variance rather than a large one. Having a third of your stuff not turn up is a bit beyond what I'm talking about. I'd handle the Char B1 situation by assuming the lower amount shows up and giving the player the chance for bonus ones to make it to the battlefield. If you're going to use randomness to see what you get, it should be about what you do get, not about what you lose or don't get. That's just a negative approach and not a great atmosphere to start off a game with.

To use the example of Chain of Command, where you do roll to see how much support you get, you're still always going to have your core platoon. In a company level game, I'd assume a minimum of your actual company. The idea of a unit arriving under strength that I wrote about above was just a nod to the possibility of that happening.

After playing Company Commander and reading a lot of aars for Chain of Command and Battlegroup, it looks like historical scenarios work great as long as the rules actually work for the period.

toofatlardies wrote:Let’s take another example. I wrote a piece for Miniature Wargames in the current, August, edition which presented a scenario for Chain of Command but, as I said in the piece, will fit other rules which do the same job. I had an email from “Disgruntled of Basingstoke” who was very upset that he couldn’t play the game with his preferred set of rule. The scenario he said “doesn’t work”.

That was an interesting one, as the scenario was taken directly from a British Army 1944 Battle Drill manual. The game that played out was the solution presented by the rules as the text book way to drive off the beastly Hun from his woodland lair. On further discussion, it turned out that his 2” mortar did not have the range to put down smoke where it was needed, the section acting as the base of fire was too far away to do so, the Bren gun in a covering oblique position did not have the range to do its job.

From http://toofatlardies.co.uk/blog/?p=1750

It shouldn't be surprising that games like Bolt Action and Flames of War which are 40k derivatives fail in the simple task of working for a historical scenario. They are (like their GW ancestors) tools to market miniatures first and foremost and historical wargames only as a secondary priority.

The actual events of World War II provide enough source material for miniature gaming that you could spend a life time playing scenarios and never exhaust all your options. All you need is a set of rules that gives an approximation of historical results (without being needless complex would also be a good idea) and a selection of figures representing proper troop organizations and their support. The army list and codex approach isn't about enhancing game quality, it's about enhancing sales numbers.

.

 frozenwastes wrote:
The random troops thing is a small variance rather than a large one. Having a third of your stuff not turn up is a bit beyond what I'm talking about. I'd handle the Char B1 situation by assuming the lower amount shows up and giving the player the chance for bonus ones to make it to the battlefield. If you're going to use randomness to see what you get, it should be about what you do get, not about what you lose or don't get. That's just a negative approach and not a great atmosphere to start off a game with.
.

I'm sorry, but I guess I didn't make it clear enough. I would personally refuse to play ANY game that involved a random number of troops showing up. It doesn't matter whether the variance is big or small. Showing up on random turns is one thing - and I've seen enough runs of bad die rolls to sometimes get annoyed even at that. But random troop numbers are something that I would refuse to do.

And I can say with a certain degree of confidence that I'm hardly the only person that holds that opinion.


You might personally feel differently. But I can guarantee you that the majority of players will not.

 frozenwastes wrote:
There are not just two platoons in a company. For example, the American infantry organization from 1943-45 looked like this:

Company HQ (2 Officers, 33 men, many are administration rather than combat ready)

Weapons Platoon comprised of;

Platoon HQ (1 Officer, 5 men)
Mortar Section (17 men)
Machine Gun Section (12 men)

Three Rifle Platoons, each comprised of;

Platoon HQ (1 Officer, 4 men)
Three Rifle Squads, each comprised of 12 men

Going, "take two thirds or part of it and then whatever you want off this menu of options" isn't the same at all. I get that it's a vague nod towards historical formations, but it's still fundamentally about present players with 40k style army lists to drive model sales. Especially when the couple of platoons is a fraction of the total army size and you end up with more stuff on the table that is "special" than from the core formation of the company.

Very, very rarely in any battle in WW2 was a company present with its full TOE intact, so I would argue that FoW's model is allot more historically accurate than some other that would force you to always take the full TOE.

 frozenwastes wrote:

So scrap points, take the full company.

Scrapping points would throw any notion of balance out the window and would make pick up games and tournament games an impossibility. This would have the immediate effect of alienating the vast majority of current FoW players... Not a very good move on BF's part.

 frozenwastes wrote:

Then if it's taken casaulties you haven't gotten replacements from, determine that with some die rolls and remove some models or entire sections. Then figure out who you are facing and the relative strengths of your core companies and then roll to see how much support you each get and make your selections.

If the company of American Infantry was facing a company of dug in germans with their full compliment of machine guns, they'd get more support than if the batallion commander thought the only thing in front of them was some Italians induced to "volunteer" for the RSI.

A company commander might make all sorts of requests of his battalion commander to direct the mortar platoon's fire power his way. Or send some 57mm anti-tank weapons from that platoon. Or ask him to go further up the chain of command for brigade/regimental/divisional assets. Or perhaps even some supporting armour from outside that structure.

The requests though, don't mean they were always granted. The battalion commander has other companies that need the various resources he has and so on up the chain of command.

That is a terrible, terrible idea. Not only are you taking control of army creation out of the player's hands, automatically making the game less strategically deep, but you are replacing it with random mechanics that would, more often than not, cause a further imbalance of the match up.

I would blatantly refuse to play any game where the force that I was fielding was determined randomly.

 frozenwastes wrote:

It's a completely different approach to army building. One method is about figuring out points efficiency and all the usual process that goes into making a 40k type system army. And definitely one of the primary concerns is a framework to sell models. The other represents what decision making processes actually went on during the war.

You do realise that your idea would force the players to have a much bigger collection of models than the current rules? Because the players would be forced not only to have all the models for the full company TOE as well as all the models for all the support that they could possibly have...

How can you complain that the current model is only in place to sell models and then propose a system that would force the players to buy much, much more?

 frozenwastes wrote:

Flames of War is a very artificial application of GW's marketing techniques to historicals. Fortunately it hasn't completely gone the way of GW in recent years, but the common ancestry is more than there.

Only if you apply that same distinction to every miniature game that has list building as a component. And if you do, then I don't think we have anything more to discuss...

 frozenwastes wrote:

And people who left 40k for FoW didn't really escape the army list driving model sales ecosystem. The end result is a gamey mindset where people think if they take a couple of platoons, they've done the same thing as taking a company.

Why would I wan't to "escape" list building? List building is fun. Researching a determined unit's history and TOE in a particular campaign and then replicating it in the table top is fun. It is a wonderful thing that FoW allows both mindsets to co-exist.

 frozenwastes wrote:

EDIT: So I went to the FoW website and thought, maybe I got it wrong. The army books seem to be about given conflicts rather than being Codex: Panzer Grenadiers. I saw "Road to Rome" and figured "hey, a book about the war in Italy. Let's see what's in that."

Only allied forces. It is a codex. In any other WW2 game if a company published a book about a given theatre and then only included forces for one side of the conflict, they'd be a laughing stock. It's a ludicrous approach. It's about selling more books which are then designed to sell more models rather than being an actual good game product. If you want the rest of the Italy stuff, there are too more books to buy. Fortress Italy for the axis lists and Italy Battles to get the scenarios.

Rulebook $15/$60
Italy battles $12
Road to Rome $50
Fortress Italy $50

$125+ just for the rules to play WW2 in Italy? And we haven't even added in templates and tokens and other stuff like that. Or any miniatures. Oh? I don't need both books because someone else is supposed to buy the enemy book and forces? Sounds familiarly like 40k's approach.

So no, I definitely made the right call. This is just more of the same GW treadmill.

Those single faction books are compilations of several other sub-books that were made specifically because the fans said that they wanted just books that covered their particular forces and didn't care about the other side.

For Italy those are Dogs and Devils which focuses on the battles around the Anzio beachhead and Cassino that focusses on the battle with the same name. Those books have all the forces for both sides of those particular campaigns, as well as the relevant scenarios.

And I'm sorry, but you are the one that seems to still be caught in the GW treadmill. This isn't Pokemon, you don't have to collect them all. Just find whatever force or theatre interests you the most and get the book for that. The books are somewhat expensive, but you definitely don't need to buy them all.

I think his point is that WW2 company commanders didnt design their army... they made do with what they had, and on occasion had assets given for specfic task.

But to think a game has more depth strategically cos of picking points based armies does make me scratch my head a little. Plenty of historical rules use no points systems, do these have less depth? No of course they dont.

Points systems have their place, our own rules have them, for pick up games and ease of play, but they dont add depth. They are just a mechanic to ease play without the need for scenario design, something that takes time.

You could argue that a lack of points forces a player to design a more immersive scenario designed to present specific strategic or tactical challenges to the players. It woukd not of course be required to be balanced by troop type, but different scenario objectives can easily provide a 'balance', common enough in asymmetric rule sets like Force-on-Force or historical scenarios like Rapid Fire.

For me, I like points, the ease of pick upmgames suits my busy life, but I do love the immersion that comes from a well designed scenario based game.m

Big P wrote:
I think his point is that WW2 company commanders didnt design their army... they made do with what they had, and on occasion had assets given for specfic task.

But to think a game has more depth strategically cos of picking points based armies does make me scratch my head a little. Plenty of historical rules use no points systems, do these have less depth? No of course they dont.

Points systems have their place, our own rules have them, for pick up games and ease of play, but they dont add depth. They are just a mechanic to ease play without the need for scenario design, something that takes time.

You could argue that a lack of points forces a player to design a more immersive scenario designed to present specific strategic or tactical challenges to the players. It woukd not of course be required to be balanced by troop type, but different scenario objectives can easily provide a 'balance', common enough in asymmetric rule sets like Force-on-Force or historical scenarios like Rapid Fire.

For me, I like points, the ease of pick upmgames suits my busy life, but I do love the immersion that comes from a well designed scenario based game.m

I was talking about strategical depth, not depth of play (which would be tactical depth). You are correct that list building doesn't add anything to the depth of play of a game, but systems that have list design incorporated in them forces players to think about the ways that the different units will interact with each other and what role they are going to play in the game / battle. That's strategical depth.

I too love to play out a good narrative scenario in FoF. But in that game my force is chosen for me by the scenario itself and so is the opposing force so the available strategies that are available to me are also allot more limited (do I use an armoured force and just blast my way through to the objectives, or do I use a recon force and go for hit and run attacks or do I go for an infantry assault backed by massed artillery, those types of things). Is it a more historical game if the scenario was designed properly? You bet!

Yes, cant disagree with any of that mate...

Though im biased to FonF... I worked on it and wrote the Vietnam book!

Big P wrote:
Yes, cant disagree with any of that mate...

Though im biased to FonF... I worked on it and wrote the Vietnam book!

I actually prefer FoF to FoW as well (especially when it comes to infantry combat and asymmetric conflicts like Vietnam). I think that it manages to capture and emulate the tactics that modern forces use on the battlefield almost perfectly while at the same time the rules are pretty simple and straightforward.

If AA somehow managed to make the game a bit more "pick-up" friendly and gave it a more commercial presentation, I think that there wouldn't be a reason why it couldn't have the same success in moderns that FoW has in WW2.

Frozen, your system would force me to buy 22 panzers (and then discard some of that and not use it) instead of ~12. Typically PzIV players will field from 10-14. Panther players around 8, Tigers 6-8. @12.50USD per tank, I'd rather not spend the extra $125. I can buy the rest of my force with that.


Re points vs scenario. Points are really only required in a tournament game. When you are just playing with friends, you can design and play any scenario you want. The problem with historical scenarios is that generally one side had a much larger force then the other, the other is that the players might not have the forces used by the designer.

Well, that and the American player gets 19 battalions of artillery for free.

I've never had problems playing FoW asymmetrically with the guys in my play group.

One guy gets a jones to play a specific battle and researches the history on it. Builds a force list and shoots out an email to the group saying he needs people to bring x, y, z that he doesn't have in his collection.

I've heard alot of complaints about FoW but the list structure and what it may or may not cause you to buy is not one of them. With the amount of free books (or insanely low cost) sources out there for the system the cost of make up of the books has not been an issue either. In fact, the access to the books has always been seen as a plus in pulling new players into the game. Book info can be had for practically free, minis are found from a myrad of different sources. About the only thing "BF" we encourage a new player to buy is a bag of bases to aid the ease to putting your infantry on the table.

Big P wrote:I think his point is that WW2 company commanders didnt design their army... they made do with what they had, and on occasion had assets given for specfic task.

They could even request specific things. And were given access to battalion and divisional fire support. There are even cases where a platoon commander got his artillery request routed to a battleship.

But to think a game has more depth strategically cos of picking points based armies does make me scratch my head a little. Plenty of historical rules use no points systems, do these have less depth? No of course they dont.

I also noticed a straw man being built. What I'm talking about isn't 100% random army generation. It's having a core force and getting the support you can based on the situation. There's definitely picking of options involved.

I'd say that points systems actually reduce depth. The main way they do this is by creating the expectation of equal points games being normal. Instead of having to figure out how to deal with the given situation, the player instead thinks about building an army that will face similar forces. When you take a historical scenario based approach as your default and then make a good selection of miniatures and use them as needed, you have way more potential for strategic and tactical depth as you have to request/select your support to deal with a larger possible array of situations.

For me, I like points, the ease of pick upmgames suits my busy life, but I do love the immersion that comes from a well designed scenario based game.m

Chain of Command seems to handle pick up games just fine with it's system of selecting some support based on comparing force ratings, dice rolls and generic scenarios. I don't think it's an either-or situation or that points are the best way to handle pick up games.

I play battletech regularly. It's a perfect case study of how points systems don't ever really balance anything. They've tried tonnage, c-bills, and three points systems and while BV2 is better than using tonnage, the end result is that in a competitive atmosphere, you get sub-sections of the available forces that are points efficient and work well in the meta. I understand FoW events are the same thing. Just like 40k or Warmachine or whatever. A points system can't reflect the capability of your forces when what you are facing is variable, so you end up figuring out the best choices for the meta that's developed as a result of the artificial framework.

PhantomViper wrote:but systems that have list design incorporated in them forces players to think about the ways that the different units will interact with each other and what role they are going to play in the game / battle. That's strategical depth.

And I'm advocating an approach that includes some list building elements. And you get to know the scenario and which army your opponent is playing. Then you'll get a limited number of support selections that you think will be worthwhile. Some times you may even know the terrain. Way more information to make strategic decisions about what support you request.

Shotgun wrote:I've never had problems playing FoW asymmetrically with the guys in my play group.

That's awesome. It takes a level of taking ownership of one's hobby to break out of the equal points menu selection approach. GW showed that the way to sell more miniatures is to do that, so I can't fault BF for using a model that works. I just think it's a poor game design choice compared to the alternatives. Especially if you want to pretend your game is at all connected with history.


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AndrasOtto wrote:
Frozen, your system would force me to buy 22 panzers (and then discard some of that and not use it) instead of ~12.

I'm sorry, I missed when I mentioned anything but infantry companies. I haven't yet thought about the best way to do a full company of armour, but I have my suspicion that it requires a higher level game to do right.

15mm probably isn't a smart choice for full companies of armour. I'd recommend checking out micro-armour for that. If you do want to stick with 15mm, I'd recommend checking out Plastic Soldier Company, Old Glory and Peter Pig. You can get your 22 panzers for a whole lot less than $12.50 each.

Re points vs scenario. Points are really only required in a tournament game. When you are just playing with friends, you can design and play any scenario you want.

There's a difference between what you can do and what the default expectation of the player base that the army list approach creates. While you can chuck out the whole army list approach and use the rules to run scenarios. I think many people will find resistance to that approach because they've been sold on the idea that equal points army list forces are how you play the game.

The problem with historical scenarios is that generally one side had a much larger force then the other, the other is that the players might not have the forces used by the designer.

You make a list of what you need for your project and you get it and you paint it. It's a project based approach to gaming.



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PhantomViper wrote:
I would blatantly refuse to play any game where the force that I was fielding was determined randomly.

Then I think you need to broaden your horizons. If you can't enjoy playing a game where you didn't personally craft every part of your force, then something is wrong with the rules you are playing (they should be fun regardless of what army you play) or you as the player.

You do realise that your idea would force the players to have a much bigger collection of models than the current rules?

Only if they want to have every possible support option. You can have a good selection of support choices without having everything.

Only if you apply that same distinction to every miniature game that has list building as a component. And if you do, then I don't think we have anything more to discuss...

Then we don't have anything more to discuss. This thread is called "Looking at FoW, but no idea if it's "for me". If you don't like that it's not for me because of it's army list approach, I don't know what to tell you.

And I'm sorry, but you are the one that seems to still be caught in the GW treadmill.

I point out that I would need $125+ of books to run games in Italy with FoW and that I decline to engage in this complete package approach and your response is that I'm the one who seems to be caught on the treadmill? That's an unbelievably stupid thing to say. It's the internet forum equivalent of "I know you are but what am I" or "I'm rubber you're glue."

You're the one lapping up the army list approach to marketing miniatures, not me. My personal opinion is that the model of selling people both rules and miniatures is one of building an isolated market dependent on customer ignorance. You get people in an ecosystem where they can make choices that benefit the publisher and don't benefit themselves. Like paying twice the price for tanks as the competition and paying tons of money for books that don't even give you enough information to run a game in a particular theatre unless you purchase multiple volumes.

For those of us who get their rules from one publisher and their figures from another manufacturer, and paints and hobby supplies from more companies still, we have the advantage of requiring the rules and the figures being viable on their own merits rather than because of a marketing approach.

Flames of War as a product does not meet my criteria for a game that stands on its own merits. It has an archaic IGOUGO turn structure that asks people to stand there and occasionally roll dice while one side does everything with their whole army. It assumes army list building as default. It has 40k's back and forth buckets of dice for hits and saves and whatever. It has an inflated model count relative to the table size. It has weapon ranges that are silly like 40k. It's just a bad game that thrives because of marketing rather than it's actual merits. It's a shiney all in one package that a distributor or store can easily sell. I want games that are designed to be successes as games, not as marketing packages.

I've looked into it and figured out that it's not for me.


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Eumerin wrote:
I'm sorry, but I guess I didn't make it clear enough. I would personally refuse to play ANY game that involved a random number of troops showing up. It doesn't matter whether the variance is big or small. Showing up on random turns is one thing - and I've seen enough runs of bad die rolls to sometimes get annoyed even at that. But random troop numbers are something that I would refuse to do.

And I can say with a certain degree of confidence that I'm hardly the only person that holds that opinion.

You might personally feel differently. But I can guarantee you that the majority of players will not.

I do think it depends upon scenario though, and I have seen example of when it has worked well. I'm thoroughly enjoying Peter Pig's Bloody Barons at the moment, which is a War of the Roses-era system. A large component of the game is the 'pre-game', where the player can choose to play with a cadre of smaller, much more reliable retinue and household troops, or a larger but more unreliable force. But, there is an entire pre-game sequence that sees the players trying to scupper each others supply trains, delay reinforcement, spy on each other, even turn entire units to the other side. It's tremendously characterful, a lot of fun, and fits the background of the era very well.

I suppose the key is implementing this in a thoughtful and appropriate manner. Really, in the case of WW2, I suppose you could introduce similar elements - air raids destroying components of an army, bad weather delaying reinforcements, inaccurate force dispositions - but, this would introduce a strategic level of involvement that would normally go beyond the ken of a straightforward and simple, pick-up wargame. Again though, if the players involved were willing to implement it as part of a campaign, there's no reason it couldn't be done very well and add a lot to the historical accuracy and wargaming experience.

Big P wrote:
For me, I like points, the ease of pick upmgames suits my busy life, but I do love the immersion that comes from a well designed scenario based game.m

I feel exactly the same way. Most of the time a pick-up game is all I have time for. But, the themed special games I have played, that people have spent time organising and setting up (and this covers a massive range of games I have played - From FoW D-Day beach landings, 40k themed Horus-Heresy weekends, an Infinity hostage rescue scenario amongst a futuristic city) are always my favourite and the most memorable.

I suppose the key is having a rules system that is versatile enough to carry out both types of game, and having like-minded individuals who are reading from the same page.

 frozenwastes wrote:

And I'm sorry, but you are the one that seems to still be caught in the GW treadmill.

I point out that I would need $125+ of books to run games in Italy with FoW and that I decline to engage in this complete package approach and your response is that I'm the one who seems to be caught on the treadmill? That's an unbelievably stupid thing to say. It's the internet forum equivalent of "I know you are but what am I" or "I'm rubber you're glue."

You're the one lapping up the army list approach to marketing miniatures, not me. My personal opinion is that the model of selling people both rules and miniatures is one of building an isolated market dependent on customer ignorance. You get people in an ecosystem where they can make choices that benefit the publisher and don't benefit themselves. Like paying twice the price for tanks as the competition and paying tons of money for books that don't even give you enough information to run a game in a particular theatre unless you purchase multiple volumes.

For those of us who get their rules from one publisher and their figures from another manufacturer, and paints and hobby supplies from more companies still, we have the advantage of requiring the rules and the figures being viable on their own merits rather than because of a marketing approach.

Flames of War as a product does not meet my criteria for a game that stands on its own merits. It has an archaic IGOUGO turn structure that asks people to stand there and occasionally roll dice while one side does everything with their whole army. It assumes army list building as default. It has 40k's back and forth buckets of dice for hits and saves and whatever. It has an inflated model count relative to the table size. It has weapon ranges that are silly like 40k. It's just a bad game that thrives because of marketing rather than it's actual merits. It's a shiney all in one package that a distributor or store can easily sell. I want games that are designed to be successes as games, not as marketing packages.

I've looked into it and figured out that it's not for me.
.

Yes, yes you did. But I have a feeling that you've done that long before creating this thread and then just decided to create the thread to bash FoW. Specifically your last paragraph implies a much deeper knowledge and a rooted dislike for the game's mechanics that seems to be really strange on someone that just took a look into the game and was originally interested in starting it. If I would have to take a guess, I would say that you are a Chain of Command player that much like "sing your life" decided that the best way to support its chosen game isn't to praise its good points, but instead to try and bash the popular choice. Your cherry picking of the elements in FoW that you dislike while completely ignoring others that seem to support your chosen play style also seems to indicate this as well as labeling anyone that disagrees with you as a "GW lover" or some other such nonsense.

In other words, this discussion is pointless because you were never interested in having it in the first place, it was just a cover for you to be able to bash and rant about FoW. So in light of that, I'm going to excuse myself from taking any more part in it, have a good day.