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According to BF's forums (via Alliance) version 3 is due out sometime in January or February. Speculate away...

I have no idea what they could change.

A reformatting of the rulebook would be nice. And I guess they could clean up the assault rules a bit.

Anyword on changes?

Got something here, from the Flames of War forum:

Zardoz wrote:
We just received a short solicit pre-order from Alliance Game Distribution here at the store. Included was this item:

BFM FW003M FoW 3e Mini Rule Book $0.00

Short solicits normally mean a time frame of 2-6 weeks.

Make of this what you will.

From rumors from the FoW boards and from "writing for the next edition" blurbs from Red Bear and Grey Wolf:

* The infamous hen and chicks change becomes permanent for all future books.
* One man turret rule for tanks gets a similar change, +1 to shooting the main guns when moving, instead of not being able to shoot at all.
* Every 100mm gun and over gets the Heavy Breakthrough Gun rule, meaning infantry hit by these guns automatically fail their saves. French tank companies rejoice.
* New classes for tanks and vehicles, as well as mobility, considering some vehicles in RB/GW are listed as "standard tank" instead of the usual fully tracked mobility.

There's going to be a lot of changes, and probably changes that were needed overall.

Other things like blanket point cost changes. Like the Panzer 4 actually going down in cost by a little bit compared to Stugs or other similar tank hunters. Which I think is nice considering that Stugs outperform P4s quite a bit for their cost due to the higher front armor, better gun, and only slightly worse anti-infantry performance.

Oh,Great.Go figure,I just got started on playing and just went and got a Hardback rule book and fortress Europe.I hope this does not end up like 40k.Because i am really starting to like this game!

Oh great seconded. And that is why I only bought the mini rule book (it's already falling apart after several uses so a new one would be okay minus the Open Fire extras)
Ditto the last comment. I don't mind updates to rules, but when hardbacks cost 27 plus pounds you don't want to have to buy them more than 6 or 7 years apart. That's one of the reasons why I have just sold off ALL of my 40K and most WFB stuff - never to return!

Hmm quite interesting on what they might change though I'm terrible at thinking on what should be changed, I'll leave that to the experts

col. krazy kenny wrote:I hope this does not end up like 40k.Because i am really starting to like this game!

How does the joke go? Flames of War is the 40k of historicals?

kenshin620 wrote:Hmm quite interesting on what they might change though I'm terrible at thinking on what should be changed, I'll leave that to the experts

col. krazy kenny wrote:I hope this does not end up like 40k.Because i am really starting to like this game!

How does the joke go? Flames of War is the 40k of historicals?

Ha! That's just something the detractors say. Honestly, I prefer 'Flames of War: The Game of Movie World War 2!'. Much more exciting.

The thing with FoW is, every old "codex" (since you are of 40k background) is still legal. Sure the points are worse, but you might get a bonus ehre or there in the force org.

Secondly, they MAY do this like with v3, but with v2, you could hand in the v1 rulebook and get the mini for free or half off the new hardback. Again, don;t know if thats the case here, but I hope so!

With regards to old army books, the old North afrika book has SO MUCH MORE history in it than the new one, its not even funny. Its must-have to try and figure out which symbols go on what british unit, whereas the new one is a lot like 40k.."paint them this color, who cares what unit its from"

Fortress Europe is a few years old now, it was the basic LW list book when Late first came out, much like Blitzkrieg is the catch-all EW book when EW came out a year ago.

Vertrucio wrote:From rumors from the FoW boards and from "writing for the next edition" blurbs from Red Bear and Grey Wolf:

* The infamous hen and chicks change becomes permanent for all future books.

Sorry, what did they change about "hen and chicks"? I haven't been following FAQs or updates.

New Hen and Chick rules:

Battlefront wrote:If a Platoon Command team moves in the Movement Step, all of the Tank and Transport teams in its platoon (Soviet company) must move as well. If the Platoon Command team does not move, only Tank and Transport teams that started the Movement Step as being Out of Command may move. Any vehicle that moves adds +1 to the score required to hit when shooting with its main gun. This gives a cumulative penalty of +2 for ROF 1 weapons. However, machine-guns and Flame-throwers do not suffer this penalty.

col. krazy kenny wrote:Oh,Great.Go figure,I just got started on playing and just went and got a Hardback rule book and fortress Europe.I hope this does not end up like 40k.Because i am really starting to like this game!

When they upgraded to 2nd edition, everyone who had the original hardback could get a free softback version of the new rules. I wonder if they will do the same thing this time around?

Not so sure about those new rules, Russian armour is already pretty nasty, it could have done without the upgrade (although I will reserve judgement until I see the rule in the final version of the book).

Point cost for red tanks going up though

My wishes for the new edition:
1. Move out of the IGOUGO concept.
2. Simplify the infantry assault rules.

olympia wrote:Point cost for red tanks going up though

I think they're actually decreasing for tanks with ROF 1 guns - which would make sense, when simply moving nets you an automatic +2 to hit.

Wildger, I think moving from IGOUGO (as cool as it would be) is unlikely, thats a pretty major mechanic change, you might as well be playing a different game at that point.

My hope is that they keep the past pattern of not invalidating books, at this point BF has released SOOO MANY books for the Late War, it would be foolish for them to start over and rerelease things, further delaying releases for Mid and Early war.

You guys are forgetting BF's wanna be GW mentality, it don't have to make sense, its all about money.

I will not be buying a version 3, I'll stick with what I've got.

In Battlefront's defense, a lot of games have new editions. Realistically, after a while it's the only real option. There's a difference between a blatant cash-grab and trying to provide a better product for customers.

I do wonder if perhaps this is more of a '2.5' as it seems like it's a surprise to nearly everyone. Maybe it's mainly a clean-up and errata fix? I remember looking for the 'Das Book' rules add-on a while ago and finding it was unavailable.

Aldramelech wrote:You guys are forgetting BF's wanna be GW mentality, it don't have to make sense, its all about money.

Yeah, you're totally right. Except for the free V2 rulebooks for people who owned V1, the loads of free, tournament legal PDF army lists on the website, the fact that so far no army books have been invalidated (even V1 army books are still legal, and they released free PDFs with info to update lists made from V1 army books), they respond to rules questions and accept feedback, have generally well-balanced army lists, release useful FAQs, have developers that interact with players and answer questions on their forums, and the fact that you aren't restricted to Battlefront miniatures at events and tournaments, BF is just like GW.

Let's not get too much into the GW and BF argument guys.

FoWv2 still has issues I think that could use both more clarity, and new rules for balance and usefulness of certain things.

For example, another change is that weapons with the Bunker Buster trait can no longer fire at vehicles on the turn they move. This was done to make things like Brumbars, basically giant assault guns, not useful as offensive anti-tank weapons.

The changes to 1 man turret and hen and chicks were also needed because of how absolutely debilitating, frustrating, and, honestly, boring it was to use vehicles with these aspects. One smoke template basically denies you the use of your guns

I do hope they also make changes to Air and AA dynamic. I know historically air attacks weren't really that organized, but planes are just too hit or miss.

Aldramelech wrote:You guys are forgetting BF's wanna be GW mentality, it don't have to make sense, its all about money.

I will not be buying a version 3, I'll stick with what I've got.

I'm 100% sure you have no idea what you are talking about. BF and GW are almost polar opposites in every way now. They update the rules and you call them GW? Give your head a shake and lose the 40k basement gamer, Internet tough guy mentality.

Hordini wrote:

Aldramelech wrote:You guys are forgetting BF's wanna be GW mentality, it don't have to make sense, its all about money.

Yeah, you're totally right. Except for the free V2 rulebooks for people who owned V1, the loads of free, tournament legal PDF army lists on the website, the fact that so far no army books have been invalidated (even V1 army books are still legal, and they released free PDFs with info to update lists made from V1 army books), they respond to rules questions and accept feedback, have generally well-balanced army lists, release useful FAQs, have developers that interact with players and answer questions on their forums, and the fact that you aren't restricted to Battlefront miniatures at events and tournaments, BF is just like GW.

Really? Try an put anything even remotely critical on the BF forum and see how fast you get jumped on, I answered a question "What happened to all the BT tanks?" with "Other people make BT tanks" and you'd think I shot Jesus!

I didn't even mention any names or post any links, only the above.

As for the the V1/V2 that was a very long time ago, it won't happen again.

Internet tough guy? And for the record, I don't play 40K.

Got Fan Boys a plenty though obviously.................................

Hordini wrote:

Aldramelech wrote:You guys are forgetting BF's wanna be GW mentality, it don't have to make sense, its all about money.

Yeah, you're totally right. Except for the free V2 rulebooks for people who owned V1, the loads of free, tournament legal PDF army lists on the website, the fact that so far no army books have been invalidated (even V1 army books are still legal, and they released free PDFs with info to update lists made from V1 army books), they respond to rules questions and accept feedback, have generally well-balanced army lists, release useful FAQs, have developers that interact with players and answer questions on their forums, and the fact that you aren't restricted to Battlefront miniatures at events and tournaments, BF is just like GW.

Haha right...

Joyous_Oblivion wrote:I'm 100% sure you have no idea what you are talking about. BF and GW are almost polar opposites in every way now. They update the rules and you call them GW? Give your head a shake and lose the 40k basement gamer, Internet tough guy mentality.

People have noted that some BF decisions seem to be emulating the GW path - i.e. buying their own magazine (Wargames Illustrated) and picking up another company or two that could be useful (GF9 for terrain). On the other hand, the decisions in question seem to be emulating GW's good old days. So make of that what you will. And BF is being very diligent at limiting the FoW material in Wargames Illustrated. WI is still a magazine that covers a wide variety of miniatures games. It's just now the magazine has better production values and a small section on FoW every month.

Also, Battlefront seems to be generally friendlier to its customers with its willingness to allow other companies' figures at official events and the many free PDF lists that are 100% official.

In any event, for those people complaining about having to buy a new rulebook, remember that it's been quite a while since V2 of the rules was released. Battlefront was going to release a new version sooner or later, and someone was going to pick the wrong later to buy their own copy of the rules. It just happened to be you. Also, the timetable mentioned in the first post is still speculation. BF hasn't provided any information on the release timetable, or even officially announced that it's coming out. It's entirely possible that Alliance jumped the gun on this particular announcement. I expect V3 to be released in 2012, but I also suspect that it's still at least a few months away.

Aldramelech wrote:Really? Try an put anything even remotely critical on the BF forum and see how fast you get jumped on, I answered a question "What happened to all the BT tanks?" with "Other people make BT tanks" and you'd think I shot Jesus!

I didn't even mention any names or post any links, only the above.

As for the the V1/V2 that was a very long time ago, it won't happen again.

Internet tough guy? And for the record, I don't play 40K.

Got Fan Boys a plenty though obviously.................................

And you getting jumped by fans on the company forums is the companies fault obviously...

Also see how fast you got jumped in this thread! That was also BFs fault. Or maybe, just maybe its your general atitude and the way you come across in your posts that people might find them a bit "too agressive" and a bit "has no idea of what he is talking about".

Also you obviously work for BF to know what they will or will not do when they release V3...

Don't be such a wan*er sunshine, its the authorities on the site, not the members who jump up and down.

Isn't it wonderful how I express my point of view and those who don't agree with me instantly start trying to be clever with increadbly sarcastic posts, and then tell me I have an attitude problem.

Im really sorry if they didn't teach you this in your various overpriced colleges in North America, but just because someone has a different opinion to you does not mean they have an attitude problem. But then again you do tend to bomb the sh*t out of anybody who doesn't agree with you dont ya?

Battlefront operates in a much more competitive environment than does GW. Accordingly their customer care/rules support etc. is superior to GW.

Don't be such a wan*er sunshine

Im really sorry if they didn't teach you this in your various overpriced colleges in North America, but just because someone has a different opinion to you does not mean they have an attitude problem. But then again you do tend to bomb the sh*t out of anybody who doesn't agree with you dont ya?

Got Fan Boys a plenty though obviously.................................

Attitude problem? Naaaw...

Also, the second part is absolutely hilarious, coming from a Brit.

Anyway, let's not allow a single person to derail the thread. Having got into FoW about a year ago, I didn't know that they allowed people to trade in there old v1 books for the mini-v2 books. Did they take them in any condition?