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I hate to be down on this, and I might be being a bit unfair but read this and tell me what you think....

http://www.flamesofwar.com/hobby.aspx?art_id=3689

After reading this I'm starting to feel that 2013 is looking like year of the Re-hash. Almost everything is an update or re-vamp of what has already been and it's all LATE WAR.

1. LW - Market Garden - Bridge by Bridge (Update of older books - Okay an update that's worth doing).
2. Vietnam - Tour of Duty (Update and expansion on the Tropic Lightning - Okay an update on a more specialised conflict - still no word on a possible Korean Book!?!)
3. LW - Earth & steel - Turning Tide (Update of older books - hmmm these books aren't too old, I do get 50% off for trading in, but they gain +50% for not alot of effort?)
4. LW - Cassino - Devil Dog (Update of older book - Hmmmmmmmmmmmm once again....).

Right so I'm looking at £150 to replace all my books? Some New Vietnam era releases (and some Plastic M113's - although I can pick the older one's up at bring and buy's and Ebay relatively cheaply).

Still no Korean War despite the wealth of material, forces and most the equipment already existing, or any plans for a Far East or Burma Campaign? They have the Gurka's and Indian models already, roll out the Japanese and some USMC and we could see some interesting battles like Guadalcanal, the Phillipines, more scope for the NZ' and AUS troops. A bit disappointing.

Given the scope of Flames of War, I'm very underwhelmed by all this especially the lack of any models other than Vietnam Era stuff, which other miniature porducers already cover very well in 15mm . I am hoping they have some surprise releases, but for my money I will playing my own Cold War 15mm based on the FOW v3 Mechanics. I get more excited by PSC release schedule than the BF one...

Meh. With Easy Army, I don't really care for their books anymore. That being said, the day BF decides to cut Easy Army off, I'm out.

Although I have been thinking about picking up a copy of IABSM.

 infinite_array wrote:
Meh. With Easy Army, I don't really care for their books anymore. That being said, the day BF decides to cut Easy Army off, I'm out.

Although I have been thinking about picking up a copy of IABSM.

Seems to be more and more traction with the two fat lardies book.

Personally I think they're being sensible. This way over the course of 2012-2013 Battle front will have done LW eastern front (red bear/grey wolf) Normandy (redo this year - yes I also think it's not needed!) market garden, bulge and Italy! That means they're able to leaveLW alone and focus on MW and EW.

It's interesting that people all complain GW don't have all their codecies updated at once, but this way BF will get at least one era 'done' (bar the push to Berlin)

As for Vietnam I think it's worth the update as it's very limited in scope currently, updating it to at least 4 factions will make it more interesting, and I think if it goes well they can expand the rules to other battles in that part of the world

My answer for this Big Deal. i am still and willl use older books. I just paid good money for my ES and TT,now they are releasing them yaaaaah.....

 Reaver83 wrote:
Personally I think they're being sensible. This way over the course of 2012-2013 Battle front will have done LW eastern front (red bear/grey wolf) Normandy (redo this year - yes I also think it's not needed!) market garden, bulge and Italy! That means they're able to leaveLW alone and focus on MW and EW.

It's interesting that people all complain GW don't have all their codecies updated at once, but this way BF will get at least one era 'done' (bar the push to Berlin)

I don't agree, they are modernising books that don't need it. There is very little wrong with EARTH & STEEL that an Errata or FAQ couldn't solve or even a set of stickers which you could add on the right pages to cover rules or clarify them. My recently purchased "Know your Enemy" of 2012 proved it to me.

If anything Early War and Mid-War players now know they are getting nothing for another 13months! So the Late war focus continues to the detriment of other periods. I would point out, that if you compare this to GW Codexes it is like redoing a codex, after only 4 other codexes have been released before looking at another race when there are still others which need updating. Which makes BF much like GW in that regard, things like King & Country or other Early War stuff etc all need to be updated, to V3 or even to be V2 compliant. The number of books released for early war, has dropped off significantly.

Well, at least ew and mw players know where they stand - they know they wont have to buy anymore books and updates in 2013!

I can agree with you that updating TT and E&S is a bit strange, but having all of late war up to date will help, having watched US Para's from NUTS take on the HG division from D&D there is an ability here to get decent balance

I'm underwhelmed for sure. They are going to spend half the year re-covering their tracks. Makes sense but its disappointing mainly because its so soon and seems like it is taking up far more of their resources than it should. Then they are giving us more stuff for what I consider a limited side-project that deserves a lot more attention than it will ever receive IMO (and AFAIK I still won't be able to play a Riverine force or call in CAS from a flight of F-4 Phantom II's). And then in the last few months they are going to give us an Early War Eastern Front book... yaaaaay... I imagine it won't be too terribly dissimilar from the mid war one... still no sign of the Invasion of Norway or other such limited scope (but nonetheless interesting) "distractions") during this timeframe. And then we get more Late War leading up to but not including Berlin... which means we're going to be seeing more Late War while Early/Mid basically languish.

BTW, what happened to the Operation Sea lion book they were supposedly going to do??

@chaos0xomega - Wow, forgot about that Operation Sea lion book...good call... Didn't WPDD adopt this as a Campaign this year?

To me it makes perfect sense to focus on Late War. There's probably 2 LW players for every 1 EW or MW player.

Not prioritising Pacific Theatre or rushing into another war seems sensible to me too, Vietnam has a pretty limited appeal I would say Korea would have even less.

All in all these threads are silly. Companies like BF and GW plan releases within an overall marketing strategy that may not fall into what people want to see in any arbitrary 12 month period but that's the way she goes. Looks like you get to save your cash for a few months.

MarsNZ wrote:
To me it makes perfect sense to focus on Late War. There's probably 2 LW players for every 1 EW or MW player.

Not prioritising Pacific Theatre or rushing into another war seems sensible to me too, Vietnam has a pretty limited appeal I would say Korea would have even less.

All in all these threads are silly. Companies like BF and GW plan releases within an overall marketing strategy that may not fall into what people want to see in any arbitrary 12 month period but that's the way she goes. Looks like you get to save your cash for a few months.

The thread is not silly, that's basically saying anyone who has an opinion that isn't yours is silly. Which in itself is silly?

The lack of EW and MW players is BFs fault to begin with. Why would anyone play a period that is poorly supported and lacking in the amount of depth and breadth given to Late War? The amount of variety available in Late War currently is far greater than in the other two periods, a Late War minis collection allows you to play several different lists while an early/mid collection is much more limited in its use. The argument that Late War should get more love because thats where the money is is a lot like GWs argument about Space Marines. Ever consider that the reasons LW/SM sell so much more is because they get the most new releases? Its a self fulfilling prophecy.

Besides that, its also Battlefronts fault for starting in Late War. Had they started in EW and released books/models chronologically, then everyone would have a mix of the three periods, especially since, historically there was significant overlap in the issue of gear etc. As Early War moved into Mid war players would make incremental purchases to stay up to date, so a unit of Panzer 3s or 4s to replace their 1s/2s here and a unit or two of infantry with updated uniforms there. The same would occur as Mid moved to Late until the end result was everyone having a mix of units spanning the full time period. Chances are Late War would get the most use as that is where the newest stuff would be, but BF could then go back and make updates/new releases for the prior periods to give players incentive to keep playing them and revisit it, comfortable in the knowledge that a large part of the playerbase would already have most of what they needed to play any period. Instead BF has concentrated on LW at the expense of the other two, worse still they keep pushing further into the Late War period to the point that by the time they "complete" the period, players will be very heavily invested in the end of the war where much of what they own will see no or very limited use in prior periods, giving them less incentive to invest in those periods as it would require an additional significant financial and time investment to make their forces backwards compatible. Assuming that LW players do overwhelmingly adopt Early and Mid War in the future, both approaches will have netted them the same amount of money in the end, however I don't see too many players going "backwards" (for various reasons) whereas almost everyone would have gone "forwards".

I don't know, I must admit that a year without a big spangly release may be a good thing. There are still gaps in the late war range to plug before they move on. Expanding the Nam range sounds like a good thing, I've considered dabbling.

Sorry but I don't think Korea would do well. Firstly, unlike Nam, it doesn't have the benefit of lots of popular culture to generate interest in the period and also in terms of tech it's fairly indistinguishable from WW2. In fact most of the kit required is already avalible. If they want to do a separate Cold War game then the 80's is where it's at.


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chaos0xomega wrote:
The lack of EW and MW players is BFs fault to begin with. Why would anyone play a period that is poorly supported and lacking in the amount of depth and breadth given to Late War? The amount of variety available in Late War currently is far greater than in the other two periods, a Late War minis collection allows you to play several different lists while an early/mid collection is much more limited in its use. The argument that Late War should get more love because thats where the money is is a lot like GWs argument about Space Marines. Ever consider that the reasons LW/SM sell so much more is because they get the most new releases? Its a self fulfilling prophecy.

I don't know about that. Even before Flames of War existed the vast majority of WW2 wargaming was focused on Late War Western front. It's more a matter of popular culture than anything else, more people know about the Normandy landings than any other part of WW2 and so people want to set their games there. Every miniature company focuses there and with good reason. Battlefront can't be blamed for that.

I love early war and I'm glad to see it getting some love but its the late war gaming that funds it. Unsurprisingly you will see 2-3 late war releases for every early/mid war one.

Personally I think both Korea and 'Nam should be treated as "Periods" within a wider Cold War ruleset. Personally, I think I see Korea being more suitable than Vietnam for wargaming purposes. The fact that much of the kit is already available from the WW2 range makes it the logical next step, as it would require less resources to develop and thus result in a faster release schedule and less drain on the main focus of WW2, but also because Korea was actually a "balanced" war in that you had the allied/UN forces fighting against regular (and irregular) North Korean and Chinese forces whereas in Vietnam a large portion of the war was basically a counterinsurgency against the vietcong, with a few limited (albeit large scale) scraps between regular forces (unless they decide to go backwards and include the French Indochina War). Generally I find that gamers are more likely to try something if it requires minimal investment to do so, and Korea, particularly the early portion of it, would definitely be easy for a lot of American and Russian WW2 players to get into.

This presents another problem however, as within the US there is a lot of stigma against the Vietnamese forces and few people actually want to play them (in my community we discussed the possibility but found that none of the 8 or so people potentially interested wanted to play Vietnamese forces). In part this stigma exists because of a lack of education, with most people assuming there was no North Vietnamese army to speak of, or that the Vietcong WERE the regular army and every battle would be highly trained US/allied forces with tanks, artillery, and air support against a few rice farmers with AKs (much like how most people don't want to game WW1 because they think the entire war was 4 years of armies staring at eachother across no-mans land with a futile charge or two thrown in for good measure).

I will bet that the New ES and TT,Will have more stuff added.They did say that a 1st SS d day list was in the works.Me personally i would like toa Bulge book with all of the GErman lists that are not included.HEck they should atleast do a errata or something to include Volks. with KG pieper.

Yes, i do like the books.I buy alot of the older defuct ones off of ebay.I mainly get them for reading purposes.Gaming wise i usually use the emost current.Rite now my two main books are Nuts and E&S.

While you are correct that most people are primarily interested in the late war period, the ruleset is solid and attracts lots of players on that basis alone. Also it seems that many of the preexisting 15mm WW2 gamers didnt really make the switch to Flames, as Flames is not considered a "proper" historical ruleset and is little more than 15mm "Warhammer WW2".

I am really looking forward to the continuing of the early war especially the Barbarossa books but I have to say I am not happy about the reprinting of the TT and E&S books. The Nam stuff is particularly awful, having played it several times I am glad I never sprung for the figures and used a friends.

I have to agree with the Korean war stuff as it is really a further extension of the late war especially in terms of weapons. The additions of jets and newer tanks would be awesome.

I for one am not looking forward to a Pacific Flames of war. The pacific war is an entirely different feel and I may be biased but I think it is better gamed in 28mm.

Chaos I will agree that FoW is not a "proper" WW2 rules set and anyone who says they are has not really played a good set of WW2 rules. Someone mentioned IABSM but again this is more of a 28mm scale. If you guys are looking for true 15mm WW2 rules Combat Action Command (CAC) and Rapid Fire are much more in tune with the true feel of WW2. Off board artillery, a real set of ambush rules as oppossed to the teleporting tank destroyer rules that exist in FoW.

I play FoW because the vast majority of people where I live play it, not because I particularly like the rules. The nice thing is the 2 sets of rules I mentioned can use the same basing for FoW.

It all seems fine to me except the D Day books since most of the things that need fixing in that could be put into a PDF. I'm more concerned by the Mid War books which are neither being redone or getting a PDF it seems.

They're also releasing Winter War.

I never bought any of the books they are redoing, and I won't buy these either.

The reason I go on about Korea is that the scope of Korea for conventional battles far exceeds the long protracted draw out conflict in Vietnam.

Battles such as The Battle of Imjin River is an incredible battle and in many respects eclipses some of the Battles of World War II.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Imjin_River

Unfortunately it has been forgotten in the popular conciousness.

Equally for the Far East, it wasn't all Island Hopping. The Burma Campaign, under Slim was probably the greatest campaigns of WWII, if you have the time I can heartily recommend "Defeat into Victory" by Fieldmarshall Slim.

Popularists talk about Patton, Rommel, Montgomery real soldiers talk about Slim....

I for one would love to fight out the Solomon Islands campaign with USMC and Naval Gunfire Support. Granted it will be limited to Infantry with only sparing amounts of Armour, but there are plenty of guns, artillery and airpower to supplement the lists. Some Campaigns of interest for USMC:-

1.Soloman Islands Campaign
2.Mariana and Palau Islands campaign
3. Gilbert and Marshall Islands campaign
4. Battle of Iwo Jima
5. Battle of Okinawa

Equally the Japanese forces would be interesting, with the Battle for Singapore or the invasion of Malaya.

There is literally tons of material for the Far east, I would speculate that there are many players in the US who would love to get their hands on some USMC and fight out some of these infamous and desperate campaigns taking inspiration from films like "Thin Red line", "The Pacific" and "Flags of our Fathers".

I just think BF is really limiting itself at the moment and concentrating on things which may need a little tidy up, but would be more than covered by an Errata or FAQ.

chaos0xomega wrote:
Personally I think both Korea and 'Nam should be treated as "Periods" within a wider Cold War ruleset. Personally, I think I see Korea being more suitable than Vietnam for wargaming purposes. The fact that much of the kit is already available from the WW2 range makes it the logical next step, as it would require less resources to develop and thus result in a faster release schedule and less drain on the main focus of WW2, but also because Korea was actually a "balanced" war in that you had the allied/UN forces fighting against regular (and irregular) North Korean and Chinese forces whereas in Vietnam a large portion of the war was basically a counterinsurgency against the vietcong, with a few limited (albeit large scale) scraps between regular forces (unless they decide to go backwards and include the French Indochina War). Generally I find that gamers are more likely to try something if it requires minimal investment to do so, and Korea, particularly the early portion of it, would definitely be easy for a lot of American and Russian WW2 players to get into.

Agreed, I think gaming wise Korea is a very unapreciated war and full of potential. I just see it as a bad choice business wise because of the fact that I can't see many people having an enthusiasm for the period but mainly becuase that there would only be limited scope for releasing new models, which ultimately is what makes the money.

All the Communist vehicles are available anyway and for the UN the vast majority are. The only things really missing are the Centurion and Pershing and we will almost certainly be seeing a Pershing being released by BF later this year. QRF do a Korean war range in 15mm to plug the gaps. In fact miniature wise there is nothing to stop you playing Korean war right now if you are so inclined.

Fow of IABSM would e easily adaptable and Cold War Commander allows for Korean War games now.

In fact I recommend checking out this guys blog for some great inspiration for doing Korean War games. It's in French but you can just run it through Google translate. He games in 1/72 but it's full of inspiration on how to turn WW2 miniatures into use for the Korean war.

I'm working on a 1986 FOW Addon ruleset based on Tropic lightning stat lines and extraplotated forward using the statlines and also the Helicopter rules with additional Artillery rules.

It is currently being play tested, if you PM I will send you a copy via e-mail once it's been cleaned up.

If you can play it in 20mm i would be in.

Having just got North Africa, I'm fairly pleased it's not getting updated for another year

 col. krazy kenny wrote:
I will bet that the New ES and TT,Will have more stuff added.They did say that a 1st SS d day list was in the works

1st, 9th and 10th SS in Normandy used to have a PDF. I'm assuming these are being incorporated into the book.

 mwnciboo wrote:
I'm working on a 1986 FOW Addon ruleset based on Tropic lightning stat lines and extraplotated forward using the statlines and also the Helicopter rules with additional Artillery rules.

It is currently being play tested, if you PM I will send you a copy via e-mail once it's been cleaned up.

Cool. So Im' not the only one here adapting the FoW rule set for other periods (I currently do Spanish Civil war).

I'd also really like to do Chinese Civil War, inspired by my love of this film.

Cool, I would like to see the Yangtze Incident with a Royal Navy Ship being chased up the Estuary whilst under artillery fire! You could treat it almost like an armoured train? Moving say 10" per turn along a river whilst under fire? I would convert a Black Swan out of a 1/144 Fletcher or similiar, I've always wanted to do a decent FOW Modelling project.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Swan_class_sloop



Use a 1/144 Destroyer like the Fletcher etc and convert it with an RN Ensign. I would love to do that!!!