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.

So, I dropped by my FLGS for the first time in months a few days ago to look for some models my local GW store didn't have in stock, and I found that they stock a huge amount of Flames of War models. Doesn't seem that they carried Bolt Action, though. Now I've heard opinions that go both ways on both games.

I'm partial to Flames of War because of the 15mm scale. At the same time, I've heard Flames of War can lean heavily in favor of the Germans. So, I'm trying to decide which is best for me to get started with. I'm leaning towards Flames of War but open to opinions.

Thanks

SG

Depends on what you want out of the game.

Bolt Action is squad level. Unless you play their Tank War, you're unlikely to see more than 1-2 tanks per side. It's really a game about the infantry.

Flames of War is a bit more zoomed out; you can comfortably run a tank platoon of 5-10 tanks easily with mechanized infantry and such. As it is a bit zoomed out, infantry tend to loose their punch in favor of vehicles.

Germans will be strong tank-wise in the early period. The closer you get to '45, the stronger Russian and American tanks get, and they get other hard-hitting equipment that catches them up.

If you're familiar with Adeptus Titanicus/Space Marine/Epic, Bolt Action is the WW2 version of 40k, Flames of War is the Epic version of WW2.

I don't play Flames of War or Bolt Action for WW2 games...

Neither does any of my gaming group.

Big P wrote:
I don't play Flames of War or Bolt Action for WW2 games...

Neither does any of my gaming group.

Well that was a useful contribution.

For me Flames of War is my favourite game of them all. The rules are excellent with no unbeatable nations, yet still allowing each it's own characteristics and traits. I would concede that some forces have slight advantages, but then if you want to play something completely balanced you'd be better off playing chess rather than a wargame. The scale makes for great looking battlefields, and there are loads of cost effective scenery pieces if you don't want to make them yourself. All the major countries are well represented with models and rules, and you can pick from three parts of the war to choose your forces from. Artillery, air power, armour and infantry are all important, but I would say my infantry tends to win me more games than anything else.
Bolt Action on the other hand has a really good turn dynamic, and also a good set of rules. As has already been mentioned this is a squad based game with more in depth rules to reflect that.
I like them both, but if I had to pick one it would be Flames of War without a doubt

It's very easy to unbalance FoW, especially in late war.
When you play the usual 1800-2000 points and diversify it's ok, but if you start small it's better to have restrictions or matched armies cause randomly it could turn to rock vs paper. It's also better to start in mid-war.
Didn't play BA yet, on the todo list.

 Huron black heart wrote:

Big P wrote:
I don't play Flames of War or Bolt Action for WW2 games...

Neither does any of my gaming group.

Well that was a useful contribution.

Well its a valid response to the question asked...

They're both very different games, in terms of the scale and level of abstraction they represent, how the mechanics work as well as general 'feel' of the game.

In short, you should play both (as well as Battlegroup)

I personally prefer Bolt Action to Flames of War because of its simplicity, but I suggest you buy the starter sets for both games.

Then use them to play Battlegroup.

Of the two systems asked about, I personally prefer Flames of War because I like the 15mm scale and company-level+ focus. The battle can include more elements, the terrain is much more affordable if you don't like building it and the models feel like they paint up faster even though in reality a base of 15mm is probably about the same kind of time you'd likely spend to put paint on a 28mm model.

As Big P and others allude to, the nice thing about historicals is that it's more about scale you prefer than rulesets. Battlegroup, Bolt Action, Crossfire and so forth all can be made to work at most any scale. If you like Battlefront's models, it's really more of a basing change and some scale adjustments (replacing inches with centimeters is a decent enough short-hand) to use them for Bolt Action. If you're far more clever than I you can find a way to do that basing shift with the same models but the path of least resistance would be to just buy two boxes of whatever manufacturer's product. Personally, I like Battlefront's plastic infantry and their infantry overall compared to most competitors. However, Plastic Soldier Company (PSC) has some very nice offerings in this arena as well and are generally more affordable. Peter Pig, Old Glory and many more can add a lot of variety if nothing else with metals.

From your post I would advise going with the 15mm scale. As far as game systems give Flames of War a shot; if you can snag the Open Fire box set that's an excellent starting point. However, make sure it has the subtitle "We'll Start the War from Here!" written under the Open Fire! like this one; that box will have the newer plastic vehicles which are so much better than the old set it is not even funny. It doesn't include the "full" rules anymore, but likely you can find the softback rules reasonably cheap. If you skim the rules and decide you like that, then carry on. If instead you find don't like it you still have a decent amount of figures to make sure you do indeed like the scale and then you can start shopping around for a ruleset you like better. Battlegroup would be a likely next stop on that tour.

I like the Battlegroup rules set for my 15mm games but for 28mm I prefer Iron Ivan's rules Disposable heroes and Coffin for seven brothers.

Bolt Action, especially the new edition. It made an already great game into one of the best on the market, hands down.

Prefer flames for the scale of it, that and allowing splitting of fire within a unit, a lot of the actual mechanics are abstracted a fair bit but overall the results feel about right.

Germans can be overpowered? Will inform Haan's to stop hiding... Seriously though the game balance is not that bad, a seriously 'killy' list for example tends to have trouble doing its thing and guarding home objectives - the best bit of the game is the mission system, you have a job to do, the enemy is simply in the way.

Have Bolt Action, though not the new version, its ok for small platoon level games, doesn't work below that or if the sides have radically different numbers of activations, also bogs down in larger games, but within what it seems to have been written for its not bad, I gather V2 is better.

For 28mm though much prefer Chain of Command

 Krinsath wrote:

From your post I would advise going with the 15mm scale. As far as game systems give Flames of War a shot; if you can snag the Open Fire box set that's an excellent starting point. However, make sure it has the subtitle "We'll Start the War from Here!" written under the Open Fire! like this one; that box will have the newer plastic vehicles which are so much better than the old set it is not even funny. It doesn't include the "full" rules anymore, but likely you can find the softback rules reasonably cheap. If you skim the rules and decide you like that, then carry on. If instead you find don't like it you still have a decent amount of figures to make sure you do indeed like the scale and then you can start shopping around for a ruleset you like better. Battlegroup would be a likely next stop on that tour.

IIRC, these days the Open Fire box comes with what is essentially a stripped down rules set that has its own points values. You can even assemble Late War units for all of the big four powers using special lists that are exclusive to Open Fire (due to different points costs because of the slightly different rules). If you decide that you like the game, you can then get the big rulebook and convert your Open Fire lists over to the "normal" points values using the lists that come with the rulebook.


As far as the two games go -

Flames of War is a company (battalion) level game. The advantages to using it are that you get a slightly higher-level view of the action, and a proper "combined arms" feel to gameplay. The game utilizes the traditional "I go, you go" turn sequence.

Bolt Action is a platoon-level game focusing heavily on infantry. Armored vehicles and guns (including artillery) are more heavily abstracted than they are in Flames of War to keep things simple and keep the focus on the infantry. Unlike Flames of War, the game utilizes a randomized turn order. You randomly determine which player gets the next activation, and then that player chooses one of his or her units to activate.