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Got 2 starter sets about 2 years ago and played about 3 times but that's where it all ended
We enjoyed the game but things cropped up and never pursued it further.
So where to start I won't be buying much official fow stuff because its generally a rip off in my opinion and I prefer plastic models as much as possible.
So as for sides my mate as always choose Germans me I am not sure at all so open to some suggestions
I may have lost the starter sets too which sucks (moved house twice)
There are a lot of other company that make 15mm stuff check the list in the online resouces above.
Plastic soldier company is good comapny for plastic
Buy the 3rd edition rulebook.
Choose a time period.
Next, choose a major power you like other than Japan.
USA: has all the toys best tanks 2nd best artilley
British: best artillery night attaking
USSR: horde area and can do with some good tanks
Then buy the book that is in the theather that the two side fight.
There are the book that are allowed in the 3rd edition.
Atlantik Wall
Operation Overlord
Bridge by Bridge
Market Garden
Grey Wolf
Red Bear
Blood, Guts and Glory
Devils Charge
Nuts!
Fortress Italy
Road To Rome
Desperate Measures
Bridge At Remagen
Nachtjäger
Berlin
There also have added Force of War online army deisgn and Flames of War app for ipads and iphones.
Vietnam force of war and Great War force of war got reasled and Team Yankee( Cold War) is being relased.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2015/07/31 01:43:21
Thanks bob
USA has best tanks?? Your kidding right? Best tanks has to German, Russian, british, American
But anyway yeah will prob be late war
Did much change in 3rd edition rules?
Not sure which rule book I had came with the open fire box so prob version 2
Will have a further look and make sure a mate or two are going to start this up this time
USA has the best tank list in FOW American German British Russian.
a lot of changes in 3rd edition hen and chicks got nerfed.
transport does not count for morale check but can trigger one, smoke and recon play a big part, nearly all list of them.
lots of new tanks(Jumbos, Jagdtiger, Easy Eight,)
(Vietnam and Great War come out) Cold War and Pacific is going out soon. We got Japan Early War forces
In 3rd edition in Blood Guts and Glory there got the best list(tie with USA buzzsaw Artylist)
7Ad Jumbo/Easy Eight crush any tank list expect maybe the British Firefly/Sherman.
American tanks have Jumbos Easy Eight and Smoke
Jumbo's speical rule make it have the lowest armour os the first hit is usually on it it has 13 Front armour more than the Panther and Tiger.
Easy Eight'speical rules make it have full RoF without penalies if it moves 6inch or less.
Right now Panther and Tiger are waste of points as their Front armour of 10 and 9 are weak against 13-15AT
German have lots of heavies and some of them are cheap
British 15AT fireflys and smoke and reroll at long range
Russia have hen and chicks and those heros that do not have them cost way to much. the pros are horder and cat killer replace volley fire
I'd personally say that best tank list goes USA>USSR>=Germany>Brits if we don't include minor factions. The Always Attacks Guards tankovy in Red Bear is rather potent, and whilst the other lists they get aren't great, that one puts them at least on par with what Germany can field. It suffers somewhat against latelatewar US lists, though, thanks to Jumbos getting a 76mm option and making E8s in the same platoon pretty much immune to Gun Tanking, previously the only way of dealing with them if you couldn't bypass or destroy the Jumbo--and since BF think the Soviets hadn't invented smoke rounds yet, you can't simply smoke the Jumbo like German or British lists can.
My experience with fighting US tanks with Brits is more or less don't bother. Your fireflies/challengers will sit under smoke for the entire game, the omnipresent US AOP will prevent ambushes, and US tanks have blanket superior firepower, similar if not larger numbers, and almost blanket superior manoeuvrability, bested only by the light Cromwells. Your best hope as British armour is that your US opponent isn't always attacks, that he fluffs his dice, or that somehow your 17pdrs get a clear shot, live long enough to take it, and don't miss. Either that or play the far superior British infantry. Roll up more 6pdrs than you could shake a stick at, and dare the US player to come and get the objective.
Mandorallen turned back toward the insolently sneering baron. 'My Lord,' The great knight said distantly, 'I find thy face apelike and thy form misshapen. Thy beard, moreover, is an offence against decency, resembling more closely the scabrous fur which doth decorate the hinder portion of a mongrel dog than a proper adornment for a human face. Is it possibly that thy mother, seized by some wild lechery, did dally at some time past with a randy goat?' - Mimbrate Knight Protector Mandorallen.
Excerpt from "Seeress of Kell", Book Five of The Malloreon series by David Eddings.
"You need not fear us, unless you are a dark heart, a vile one who preys on the innocent; I promise, you can’t hide forever in the empty darkness, for we will hunt you down like the animals you are, and pull you into the very bowels of hell." Iron - Within Temptation
Fireflys and Shermans.
the fireflys also have rerolls at long range and the Sherman smoke back
what about the british AOP
Germany also need to be flanked and get smoke vs USSR tanks t-34,is-2, ius-122, isu-152 get blowed up into bits
Hold on a minute USA did not have better tanks than the Germans more yes better no
Tiger tanks had great armour
Sounds like the game has moved away from being historical or remotely realistic well that may bring an end before we start.
Think will have to do more research into this as mate is big on his history German and Russian tanks where the best of world war 2 I know the game took liberties on some date lines as some tanks weren't in the war but made it into game.
bobjoerock wrote: Fireflys and Shermans.
the fireflys also have rerolls at long range and the Sherman smoke back
what about the british AOP
Germany also need to be flanked and get smoke vs USSR tanks t-34,is-2, ius-122, isu-152 get blowed up into bits
British Shermans have nothing on the US super Shermans. US get a bucket of special rules that let them go faster, shoot faster, and move and shoot full rof without penalties. A Brit list either has 2-3 fireflies one per platoon, or 3-4 in a single platoon. The US player smokes all but one platoon and pours fire into it, able to at least Gun Tank the firefly out. Once that firefly is out of the picture, the Jumbos cannot be harmed from the front, or even easily from the side. Rinse repeat with other platoons.
Brits with all fireflies together sit under a smoke bombardment all game. Dealt with. If they move, it's 3 or 4 shots without semi-indirect. Remember, Jumbos Lead the Way is a choice, so even if one 17pdr shot hits, if you can take it on an ablative 75mm Sherman, you can. The Jumbo is safe, the fireflies are out of position, and can be smoked/shot up.
The British AOP doesn't have the Column Security rule, so is simply an artillery observer. Only the US one can block ambushes.
A competent US tank list with Jumbos, an AOP, and 105s (see: most of them) can make an absolute mockery of a British armoured list. Between smoke bombardments, column security, a flying observer, and Jumbos, there's little a British list can do, especially on the defence, when it's even easier to isolate armoured platoons, and where your reserves can decide to never even show until turn 5. There's only so much smoke a British list can throw downfield before it doesn't matter, and that's not even factoring in Smooth Ride on the Easy Eights. Being able to move up to 6" and use stabilisers without penalty allows them to laugh at smoke.
Mandorallen turned back toward the insolently sneering baron. 'My Lord,' The great knight said distantly, 'I find thy face apelike and thy form misshapen. Thy beard, moreover, is an offence against decency, resembling more closely the scabrous fur which doth decorate the hinder portion of a mongrel dog than a proper adornment for a human face. Is it possibly that thy mother, seized by some wild lechery, did dally at some time past with a randy goat?' - Mimbrate Knight Protector Mandorallen.
Excerpt from "Seeress of Kell", Book Five of The Malloreon series by David Eddings.
"You need not fear us, unless you are a dark heart, a vile one who preys on the innocent; I promise, you can’t hide forever in the empty darkness, for we will hunt you down like the animals you are, and pull you into the very bowels of hell." Iron - Within Temptation
the problem is that the Sherman smoke back and the Easy Eight end up in the smoke
if all fails call down the arty
but still Jumbo and Easy Eight is OP Okay USA>Germany>British>USSR
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2015/07/31 12:25:36
I think the main problem is that FoW has 3 periods when it should have 4.
There's Late War, which encompasses Italy up to the Fall of Berlin. For WWII, that's too much time, as the technology moved so rapidly during this period that "state of the art" equipment in Italy was hopelessly out of date by the end of the war in Europe. So where the Americans and British would be outclassed or at least equal to German equipment at Normandy, by the time the Americans are pushing the Rhine in FoW they've got Easy 8s, Jumbos and Pershings out the wazoo.
So there should be an "End War" period that encompasses all these big crazy tanks and last-ditch lists from the Germans, probably from the Rhine onwards.
10penceman wrote: H Think will have to do more research into this as mate is big on his history German and Russian tanks where the best of world war 2
I think your friend might want to stop huffing the Dunkelgelb spray paint so much. Sure, the German's might've had better armor and guns in some of their tanks, and were constantly upgrading. But how much 'better' can a tank be when it breaks down and you can't get replacement parts for it?
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2015/07/31 12:52:41
Easy Eights don't particularly care about smoke, though. With stabilisers they can fire at full rof, and Smooth Ride means they can move 6" past the smoke to do it, and not suffer the +1 to hit for using stabs. Smoking E8s is only worth it if they're pinned down, and moving will absolutely get them killed. Against Brit armour, that's not usually going to happen, thanks to having only 3-4 tanks capable of blowing away the Mother Jumbo or otherwise posing a threat at anything but short range.
Smoking a platoon of E8s only inconveniences the Non-E8s, which almost defeats the purpose, and should only be done to cloud the Jumbo in smoke so you can get clear shots at the Easies. That requires your own tanks to not be smoked, though, and you lack any sort of ability to move out of it and reliably return fire, even smoke.
US armour falls to British infantry, though. A platoon of Shermans backing up an infantry company complete with the late war 6pdrs of doom will do infinitely better. There's a lot more of a threat, hellishly fast-firing, and nigh impossible to assault for tanks. A wall of 6pdrs can't shoot down a Jumbo, but you're getting 6-18 shots at at11 per 6pdr platoon. The Jumbo can only be allocated so many hits, and sheer weight of fire will bring down the tanks around it. In an assault, the Jumbo's side armour cannot withstand that many shots in defensive fire, not counting fire from anything else in range.
A US tank list's nightmare is an infantry list with numbers, or good support. Thankfully, what Brits lack in late war armour they make up for by being incredibly capable infantry.
Mandorallen turned back toward the insolently sneering baron. 'My Lord,' The great knight said distantly, 'I find thy face apelike and thy form misshapen. Thy beard, moreover, is an offence against decency, resembling more closely the scabrous fur which doth decorate the hinder portion of a mongrel dog than a proper adornment for a human face. Is it possibly that thy mother, seized by some wild lechery, did dally at some time past with a randy goat?' - Mimbrate Knight Protector Mandorallen.
Excerpt from "Seeress of Kell", Book Five of The Malloreon series by David Eddings.
"You need not fear us, unless you are a dark heart, a vile one who preys on the innocent; I promise, you can’t hide forever in the empty darkness, for we will hunt you down like the animals you are, and pull you into the very bowels of hell." Iron - Within Temptation
A US tank list's nightmare is an infantry list with numbers, or good support. Thankfully, what Brits lack in late war armour they make up for by being incredibly capable infantry.
Unfortunately, the current meta for FoW - at least in Late War - seems to be either Big Killy Tanks or WWI-esque groups of infantry and artillery that just sit there and don't do anything.
I think it's a big failing of FoW that it manages to make infantry-on-infantry fights boring, since despite all the glamour and glitz the tanks get, WWII was still an infantryman's war.
So there should be an "End War" period that encompasses all these big crazy tanks and last-ditch lists from the Germans, probably from the Rhine onwards.
I'd agree with this. The war was fought and won with the basic Sherman. Including all the high powered variants that showed up in the last few months, or god help us Pershings, makes the game less about the the iconic history, and more about the final coup de gras.
A US tank list's nightmare is an infantry list with numbers, or good support. Thankfully, what Brits lack in late war armour they make up for by being incredibly capable infantry.
Unfortunately, the current meta for FoW - at least in Late War - seems to be either Big Killy Tanks or WWI-esque groups of infantry and artillery that just sit there and don't do anything.
I think it's a big failing of FoW that it manages to make infantry-on-infantry fights boring, since despite all the glamour and glitz the tanks get, WWII was still an infantryman's war.
This is more or less why I'm trying to get into early war. There's less of a focus on technology, and more on using what you have at hand to its best ability. Of course, infantry vs infantry is probably fairly boring regardless of period, but armour is more fun to play. Very little anti-tank with firepower better than 4+ a focus more on similar mainstay tanks than special snowflake shermans or kooky IR panthers and late comets.
Barbarossa mixes it a little by throwing KVs and T-34s into the mix, but they're kept to single platoons, are incredibly costly, and can be neutered by taking out the platoon commander. A platoon of conscript T-34s sitting unmoving in the open is a platoon you don't really need to worry much about. Germans even have the tools to defeat them in 88s, pioneers, and schwerepunkt priority stukas. Not like LW, where it's constant 1-upmanship and Germans needing increasingly expensive, or many decreasingly skilled teams.
A balanced EW German list could possibly take on a Barbarossa T-34 or KV list and win, as well as have a crack at other factions. In LW, there are far more almost auto-lose match ups.
Mandorallen turned back toward the insolently sneering baron. 'My Lord,' The great knight said distantly, 'I find thy face apelike and thy form misshapen. Thy beard, moreover, is an offence against decency, resembling more closely the scabrous fur which doth decorate the hinder portion of a mongrel dog than a proper adornment for a human face. Is it possibly that thy mother, seized by some wild lechery, did dally at some time past with a randy goat?' - Mimbrate Knight Protector Mandorallen.
Excerpt from "Seeress of Kell", Book Five of The Malloreon series by David Eddings.
"You need not fear us, unless you are a dark heart, a vile one who preys on the innocent; I promise, you can’t hide forever in the empty darkness, for we will hunt you down like the animals you are, and pull you into the very bowels of hell." Iron - Within Temptation
I'm not planning on making a move to any other period in FoW - especially now that the scene in the area where I live is basically dead - but I've got a couple companies of Brits painted and a couple for Germans in the painting queue. I tend to stick to Normandy for the most "balanced" of Late War games, or use Market-Garden for a little variety.
Depends on your definition of "better" when discussing history. Spoilered for those who don't feel like wading through a mildly tangential post.
Spoiler:
As a strategic weapon, the Sherman was in a neck-and-neck race with the T-34-85 as the best tank of the war. The T-34 was easy to build and reasonably reliable for the length of time it was expected to survive. The Sherman was incredibly reliable, to the point that the British looked down on their own tanks in comparison as requiring far more maintenance and support (see also: Excercise Dracula in 1943). So they beat the British ones, which is why until very near the end of the war you see the British mainly using Shermans. I think the comparison was beautifully summarized by the comments of the British CO of the exercise:
I would be glad to take a Sherman squadron to war tomorrow and a Cromwell after several month’s further trial and experiment.
The Russians agreed with the Sherman being an excellent tank. A large number of the Emchas ended up in the Guards Armies (i.e. - the soldiers the Soviets cared slightly more about keeping alive). Combined with many of the anecdotal reviews away from state propaganda you can tell the Russian soldiers held the Sherman as an equal to their own machine, and vastly superior to British tanks (which it should be mentioned that to my recollection the Soviets mainly only received Matilda, Valentine and Churchill tanks, so the competition isn't particularly fierce). I particularly like this quote from an interview with a Russian tanker Dmitry Loza:
I want also to add that the Sherman's armor was tough. There were cases on our T-34 when a round struck and did not penetrate. But the crew was wounded because pieces of armor flew off the inside wall and struck the crewmen in the hands and eyes. This never happened on the Sherman.
The Tiger had thick, but poorly sloped armor. The effective difference in glacis armor was about 25mm thickness compared to the Sherman. While that's an appreciable difference, it is not nearly as vast as most people seem to think. It's somewhat stark when you consider that performance-wise it doesn't seem to offset the hugely increased logistical requirements; a gun that could easily knock out a Sherman frontally would likely knock out a Tiger too. It's mainly good luck for the Germans that the Americans declined to really bring such a gun along for D-Day on a tank. There were actually a few hundred M4s with 76mm guns left in England on D-Day because Armored commanders didn't feel the gun was needed and it would be an increased logistical and training burden. Remember that they had experience against Panther in Italy where it was not deemed to be sufficiently worrisome; the quantity of Panthers available was what surprised the Americans, not the tank itself. The Konigstiger (which historically was what the Americans usually encountered if they met one at all; Tigers of all stripe were exceedingly rare in actual combat) is certainly a different situation, but it suffered many of the same shortcomings of the Panther.
The Panther had impressive frontal armor for a "medium" tank, but was horrifically unreliable and was easily out-manuevered and destroyed assuming it didn't do the job itself. Really the only point in the war where you see the Sherman struggle operationally is in the bocage country where the terrain plays to the Panther's strengths. Yes, a huge chunk of German tank losses are attributable to the wholly deficient German logistics situation of '44 on, but major engagements like Arracourt and St. Vith demonstrate that the Sherman could hold it's own versus German armored formations.
That the Sherman saw service in Korea, on both sides of Arab-Israel Wars in various upgraded forms and were used by some states into the 70s speak to a certain amount of success in the fundamental design lacking from those that didn't endure. Pershing isn't found anywhere anymore, nor will you find Panthers wandering around (side note - the French maintained a regiment of Panthers while their tank designers got up to speed after the mysterious pause in French military industry from 1940-1944; even with properly manufactured equipment the tank wasn't particularly reliable). I'm not certain, but I also believe the Sherman had the lowest casualty-per-loss rate among the crew in the war which is rather significant if you were one of those crewmen.
In tactical usage, such as what FoW replicates, yes German armor should be slightly superior on a tank-for-tank basis. However, history shows the Sherman was a capable, if not particularly glamorous, tank. Having that capable tank available in larger numbers and able to negate the characteristics difference would look to be exactly in line with reality where as a combined arms weapon the Sherman excelled. Where FoW struggles in the rules that encourage unrealistic tactical formations and goofy special rules. Not sure the argument about how scare Jumbos were in actuality really holds a lot of weight when we start count Konigstigers...
To summarize, the gulf between the Sherman and German tanks is not nearly as wide from a real-world perspective as many common sources would have you believe. Tank-for-tank and tank-on-tank, the Germans fare better. As part of unified army, the Sherman was vastly superior with it's versatility and reliability.
10penceman wrote: H
Think will have to do more research into this as mate is big on his history German and Russian tanks where the best of world war 2
I think your friend might want to stop huffing the Dunkelgelb spray paint so much. Sure, the German's might've had better armor and guns in some of their tanks, and were constantly upgrading. But how much 'better' can a tank be when it breaks down and you can't get replacement parts for it?
That and the fact that your uber tank is outnumbered 100 to 1. A tiger 1 may have a lot of armour, but it only takes one round from a 17 pdr and bye bye tiger.
Srsly though, my advice is to just pick a period with your friend, an army with "character" or "models" you like, and find a book that army is featured in (obviously look at the force organisation charts before you buy models) so you buy the right combination.
This isn't GW. While fow has unbalanced aspect (like all wargames) You don't just look up an uber list, buy the models and insta-win. Competitive list building can only be done once you understand the game.
A tiger 1 may have a lot of armour, but it only takes one round from a 17 pdr and bye bye tiger.