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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.



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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.


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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.