Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Here is a Sneek peek of the sales flier,with a link.

http://michtoy-from-the-front.blogspot.com.au/2014/06/sneak-peek-forthcoming-great-war-range.html
http://www.michtoy.com/00_pdfs_blog/WW1armydeals-US.pdf

Copy PAste Job from the BF Forums.

so wonder how the rules will be for some of the weapons,Poison Gas,Old skool Tanks and Aircraft.
I think the one thing i dont like for the rules will be all of the FP checks involved in Trench warfare.I know Breakthru guns.But still i already are at my limits with the rule.Sometimes i miss the good old Invul, save instead.Where it relies on the TArget taking cover vs. Power of the weapon.Enough for now about my FP check rule animosity.
Looks like we will be getting,some nic new kits,The one i would like to see are some of the Terrain pieces.
I wonder how this will play against the old Warhammer Historical ww1 game?

I'll be getting the WI to check it out. It will be interesting to see how they handle MG allocation in infantry platoons. I won't be jumping in straight away, as I don't intend to do British or German. I may do French if a Czech Legion list is not forthcoming.

So the rules are coming out with a WI issue, kind of like they did with Vietnam originally? I'll definitely be getting that issue then.

Not sure if I'll actually play or not, but I want to check it out at least. I hope they eventually do a Austro-Hungarian list and some minis for it though, because that would be something I would be interested in playing.

Hopefully, they will expand to States USEF or USMC wood be kool.Especially the MArines since BF does not make any models for the USMC.

 col. krazy kenny wrote:
Hopefully, they will expand to States USEF or USMC wood be kool.Especially the MArines since BF does not make any models for the USMC.

The nice thing about that is, the Marines used US Army equipment while part of the AEF, so BF would really only need to make one set of miniatures that could be used for both US Army and USMC troops of the AEF.

 Hordini wrote:
So the rules are coming out with a WI issue, kind of like they did with Vietnam originally?

Yes. They did the same thing for the Arab-Israeli War as well

I probably won't take the plunge on this. There seems to be zero interest locally on anything other than WW II.

Not sure how well flames rules will transfer to ww1

Ahh looking forward to this. Already got someone ready to get this with me.

Might have to get this army commissioned too. Heaps of potential here. Wish they had French or one of the more Archaic looking forces of the time but this will do for now.

Welsh_Furey wrote:
Not sure how well flames rules will transfer to ww1

About as well as 'Nam and Arab Israeli. Phil and the guys are damn good at putting out good rules, so even if I don't jump into this boots first, rules quality is not something I'm worried about.

My only issue is I can't decide on which army I want. I do Germans and Brits in WW2 already. So I think I might hold out for a future AEF force.

I've got zero interest in this, but I'll probably grab the WI just to take a look at the rules.


Step in the wrong direction, imo. They should be moving the *other* way in the timeline. Mid-80s Cold War gone hot. Yes please!

Now is the best time for them to make a game based on World War I. With the centennial this year interest will be at an all time high.

With that being said, I totally agree with your comments. I also have zero interest in this and would love to see a Cold War setting (late '70s through early '90s). I'd love to see the likes of the M1 Abrams, Leopard 2, Merkava II and T-72 tanks along with the "what ifs" like the M247 Sergeant York.

I think the game has more than enough tanks... im hoping that this set puts the focus on infantry and infantry support weapons rather than bland tank walls I see on the internet.

Thats just me though.

I think ww1 should be completed before they move on to other events in history.

Eumerin wrote:
I've got zero interest in this, but I'll probably grab the WI just to take a look at the rules.


Step in the wrong direction, imo. They should be moving the *other* way in the timeline. Mid-80s Cold War gone hot. Yes please!

That seems to be the plan with 'Nam and Arab-Israeli.

Once they finish the Pacific it's just a book and two new factions to do Korea.

Vietnam was a fluke. Some of the BF employees watched "We Were Soldiers", and thought, "Hey, that looks kinda cool!" Then they apparently did the required work without mentioning it to their bosses until after the hard parts were done.

Note how the original release of the rules focused exclusively on Air Cavalry, and the rest of the US troop types weren't added until later.


Now having said that, they've certainly run with the fluke ever since then.

A fluke is how many great things are made, if not most of them. It all has to start somewhere.

On the topic of air cavalry, how fun are they to play? Id love to do one after this WW1 set is complete.

But is actually anything like Vietnam?

The only demo I saw at Salute run by BF had lines of T55s fighting M48s.

Its not rocket science to make playable rules... harder to make them actually contain the feel for the period and impart that to a player while still being fun.

Well they gave the options its just up to players to make it suit them. I for one would not include vehicles when playing the period except air support. I feel the same when looking at late war battle reports online. Some of them are a bit too far fetched and so on.

But thats the cool thing about the ruleset. It gives the option for both nutty play and historical play.

North Vietnam did use tanks, especially late in the war when the U.S. was in the process of pulling out. A good example is the Battle of An Lộc. The earlier Siege of Ben Het is one of the few (if only) tank battle that the U.S. was involved in during the war. Battlefront's Tour of Duty book clearly states that North Vietnam didn't start the Third Phase of the war (conventional warfare, with the first being revolutionaries gaining popular support and the second being guerrilla attacks) until 1971 when the U.S. were withdrawing their forces.

NVA tanks weren't available in the first two iterations of the game. They weren't released until the Tour of Duty book was released... and Tour of Duty also included ARVN formations. So historically accurate formations for NVA armor are available if you want to game some of the battles during the post-pullout period.

Plus, as has already been noted, there were at least a couple of battles that involved NVA tanks prior to the pullout.

I would hardly call a few engagements to be the gateway to large armoured battles though. Instead of defending it historically its probably better to just say that many players have a thing for tanks haha. Hence why the released the WW1 rules with tanks, because they would miss out on a lot of sales otherwise.

 Swastakowey wrote:
I would hardly call a few engagements to be the gateway to large armoured battles though

I'm not going to defend large armored battles against US tanks. I'm merely pointing out that there are good historical reasons for including an NVA armor list. And players will do what they always do.

The final phase of the war, the phase that lead to the fall of South Vietnam, is covered by its own lists. The fact that NVA tanks are included in those lists is entirely appropriate.


And just for fun, here are a couple of appropriate (and no doubt dramatically staged - a photographer just *happened* to be there at the time? ) photos that seem appropriate.


http://academics.wellesley.edu/Polisci/wj/Vietimages/nva-tank.html

yea thats true. As i said before thats the cool thing about this game. Has the options there.

They don't really defend it though. As noted, they mention a number of times in the Tour of Duty book that North Vietnam didn't switch to conventional warfare until after the Free World forces had pulled out. Battlefront simply just didn't forbid players from having such battles, just like they didn't forbid WW2 players from having Soviets versus Americans, etc.

I was referring to players who defend it... My Japanese armies main opponent is german. So I can understand that the rules are open to give more flexibility. I should have mentioned it earlier (thought I did) but I was meant to say I dont like it when people use history to defend historically inaccurate battles.

On an interesting sidenote, in FoW Vietnam, the M551 Sheridan comes standard without the Shillelagh, as the missile was never sent to Vietnam (since the NVA wasn't using tanks). But since players will be players, Battlefront included an option in Tour of Duty to use the Shillelagh. After all, BF is well aware that once you add the NVA armor lists, people are going to start using them against US tanks...

Though it also helps out if your group wants to try a blue on blue battle. One of the complaints about the WI Vietnam insert lists was that the US could bring helicopters to the table, but the US lists didn't include any dedicated anti-air. The result was that in a blue on blue, helicopters became extremely powerful...

The Tour of Duty lists (which included all of the WI insert lists) fixed that.

But do the rules reflect the nature of the Vietnam war? I know I tried very hard to replicate the difficulties of that war, for both sides, when I wrote Ambush Valley.

Or is it merely the WW2 rules with different models?

While the PAVN did use tanks prior to the pull out of US ground forces, they only once engaged US armour. Most attacks were attempts to use tanks to over run SF camps, such as Lang Vei.

After the US pulled out, PAVN armour performed indifferently at best and was generally outclassed by ARVN armour and US airpower until the final collapse of South Vietnam.

An Loc is hardly a shining example of a tank battle, it was a brutal infantry seige. Those tanks that were used met an end at the hands of Cobra gunships or ARVN tank hunter teams. Dong Ha would be a better example, but thats quite a small encounter really. But there are a few others, but all tend to be small affairs as both sides were hardly tank rich, nor was the terrain always suited to their use.

My rambling point is, that if historically use was limited, should that not be reflected in the rules, enforced almost, so as to maintain a degree of historical reality?

Surely Viet Cong should melt away into the jungle or pop up again unexpectedly.

If the rules support ahistorical games, does that effect its historical portrayal of a period?

To me Vietnam is a vastly different style of war to WW2 and one where armoured vehicles of any kind were rare enough. It was an infantry war, backed by artillery and airpower. Thus id imagine the rules to reflect.

Being able to field an army of PAVN tanks seems more akin to fictional Cold War than Vietnam.

Or perhaps the FoW system is designed to cater more for tourny style gamers rather than scenario gamers? It seems very like 40k used to be, with endless discussion on 'killer' lists and the like.

But if it floats ya boat, why not!

FoW Vietnam has quite a few rules that are intended to reflect the nature of the conflict.

- PAVN formations follow the same organizational guidelines that the Soviets do in FoW WW2, i.e. what the game refers to as "companies" are in reality battalions, and "platoons" are really companies. I'll be using the real world terms from here on out.
- When a PAVN infantry company is destroyed, it goes back into the reserves. Attached platoons that aren't an organic part of the company don't go with it.
- At the end of the turn, a PAVN player can voluntarily decide that a given company is destroyed, and pick it up off the table. If the PAVN player passes a skill test, then the company doesn't count as destroyed for purposes of the battalion morale check.
- PAVN infantry companies usually arrive from reserve in a random table quarter.
- PAVN "Ironclad" (tank) companies are required to use the infamous "Hen and Chicks" rules for Soviet tank units in FoW WW2.


The scale between the two games is obviously different, so the battles covered by FoW Vietnam are obviously larger (and rarer) engagements. But due to both the game system (i.e. FoW, which is a company level game) and the inspiration for the Vietnam expansion (i.e. The Battle of Ia Drang), this probably isn't much of a surprise. The rules listed above are obviously (with the exception of the last one) intended to help simulate the fact that no one knows how many PAVN troops are going to turn up that day, or which direction they're going to come from. There is no safe and secure rear area, as the enemy can show up anywhere. Of course, the PAVN player doesn't know how many troops he has either, and can't be entirely certain about where they're going to deploy. But he does have some limited control over these variables.


The Tour of Duty book makes it clear that PAVN tanks didn't do much fighting against the Americans. It states that there were only two instances - the special forces camp at Lang Vay, and against an M48 platoon at Ben Het. Further, the Ironclad Battalion list is in the last section of the book, which is meant to represent the final stages of the war (i.e. post-pullout). The designated Free World opponents for that section are the ARVN lists. So Battlefront makes it clear that the PAVN tanks should only be fighting ARVN troops.


But in the entry for the M551 Sheridan, it points out that players are going to do what players do. Sooner or later, someone's going to take the Sheridan up against enemy tanks (which the book points out never happened historically). It might be Blue on Blue. Or it might be a "What if?" foolish early allocation of PAVN armor. And if it happened historically, then the US would almost certainly have shipped Shillelagh missiles over to Vietnam, which are +XX points per tank, btw.


In short, the book is basically saying, "Don't do this. But since we can't stop you, some of you are going to ignore us and do it anyway."


Advantage - Having the Shillelagh statted and costed makes it available for Blue on Blue engagements, or when branching out into a hypothetical "Cold War gone Hot" scenario (the issues with Blue on Blue force discrepencies had been noted in the earlier Wargames Illustrated lists, which included helicopters for the Free World, but no dedicated anti-air; the latter point wasn't a big deal against PAVN forces, but became a serious problem in a Blue on Blue battle...). So if you want to branch out beyond Vietnam, it's nice to have the stats.

Disadvantages - If you put it there, it's like a little flag to some players. They'll just see it as encouragement to do lots of those ahistorical tank battles...



Oh, and finally, unless the PAVN forces are attacking a Free World fire base, the artillery is explicitly left off-table.


Finally, imo, the massive tank battle described by you up above is the wrong way to demo this era. You want PAVN infantry formations on the table so that you can show off the special rules described above.

Big P wrote:
But is actually anything like Vietnam?

The only demo I saw at Salute run by BF had lines of T55s fighting M48s.

Its not rocket science to make playable rules... harder to make them actually contain the feel for the period and impart that to a player while still being fun.

This is my beef as well. As much as I'm happy to see interest in the period and more models available, a set of rules for Vietnam should feel like Vietnam and not just WW2 with different paint jobs.

With WW1 whilst there where tanks at the end of the conflict their role was totally different to one that they had a generation later. I'm cautiously optimistic about what BF will do.

I've been looking forward to this.

Peter Pig do a great WW1 range, but I've been putting off buying any until these rumors were confirmed (And they get around to sculpting Late-War French )

I'm definitely going to pick these rules up.

Tibbsy they have Late War French right now, regulars and Goum, check the Road to Rome book.

Big P wrote:


My rambling point is, that if historically use was limited, should that not be reflected in the rules, enforced almost, so as to maintain a degree of historical reality?

No. Because this is a game not a historical simulation. Battlefront has always emphasized that they put the game first and foremost. Tank engagements happened, so it's realistic and historical to have them, setting them up in such a way that they're balanced however is a sacrifice that must be made to ensure balance and good game play.