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I've been looking at getting into FoW, so I've done the reading posts, threads, reviews, blogs, watching the "Boot Camp" videos, etc etc thing the past several weeks on and off.

But I've also got reservations about some things I see in the FoW system, so I've been taking a similar look at Rapid Fire and Battlegoup (by Iron Fist).

While I continue looking stuff over, would anybody who has played these systems be willing to offer up and lay out some pros and cons between them?

It might be helpful if you told us what your reservations about the system are, and what you're looking to get out of a historical game.

I can't speak on Rapid Fire and Battlegoup, but I have played a lot of different game systems over the last 30 years and FoW is by far the best thought out of all of them. The way the game moves and flows, the effort that was put into writing the rules and making sure they worked, the way they actually take advise from the playtesters and community regarding what is broken, etc, etc. There is a HUGE diversity of lists to play so you won't get bored and personally I love the minis. Definitely do your homework so you are not throwing your money away but I think you will enjoy it. Check their website and see if you can find any demos in your area. Try it before you buy it.

 Hordini wrote:
It might be helpful if you told us what your reservations about the system are

Not too awful many really, I'm mostly just looking for responses "unbiased" by my own bias.

Tressel wrote:
Check their website and see if you can find any demos in your area. Try it before you buy it.

I'm reasonably sure I'd be the one having to introduce it here.

Rapid Fire basically let's you field larger forces and in my opinion is very much easier to play. Fow rules are a lot more complicated

I,ve been playing RF rules for some time and know a lot of wargaming clubs use the rules as well. Saying that I still play a FOW rules as well

I,ve also played Battlegroup Kursk,only once but it seemed ok


Also note you can base your models so you can play RF and FOW as long as you bend the rules a bit. Rapid Fire has no strict basing rules

If you want a game that uses army lists in a historical manner, rewards historical tactics, has in built historical restrictions and forces a player to5constantly think about what units to control while never really knowing the true state of the enemy - Play Battlegroup. Not too mention almost instant rule clarifications on the rules forum...

If you want WW2 40k - Play FoW.

Rapid Fire sits betweenthe too but has no points system is scenario based and scaled to battalion level.


Oh and I am biased, I write Battlegroup with Warwick Kinrade. But have a lookat the Battlegroup Game group on Facebook, lots of ex FOW players there and I acan point you tosomeforums with less biased comparisons if you would like...

I would second the recommendation for Battlegroup.

My friends and i struggled for ages to find a WW2 ruleset we liked, we started with a home brew game for 40k rules, then tried blitzkreig commander followed by Rapid Fire and Nuts (some problems with some of these not having points values) before we gave Flames of War a go.

FoW was not to bad really, but we started to find it a bit obscure, units flying about and little translation of real world historical tactics into the game.

Then we came across battlegroup, and though Big P may be biased what he says rings true, the constant not knowing how close or how far you are from victory adds a real nice dynamic to the game. I also like the pinning and morale mechanics in general, weight of fire against heavy tanks from smaller guns that might struggle to penetrate can still have an effect especially on a crews morale, something that FoW does not account for.

So in all would suggest give battlegroup a go and will quote what Big P said as pretty much agree with it all

If you want a game that uses army lists in a historical manner, rewards historical tactics, has in built historical restrictions and forces a player to5constantly think about what units to control while never really knowing the true state of the enemy - Play Battlegroup. Not too mention almost instant rule clarifications on the rules forum...

Some interesting responses so far, thanks. And feel free to link stuff for any of the three, in case I missed something in the mass of search results.


A few things I saw in the FoW videos and rules that give me pause;

* Rolling a handful of dice for most every check, often met by a roughly equal amount of dice, that usually results in nothing. This is an issue I saw when looking at Dystopian Wars as well. I want to play a game, not collect and show off dice. And that most of the time you aren't able to do anything anyways with that many dice is a little silly and leaving too much to chance instead of gameplay.

* Flat (+) modifiers that make it absurdly easy to require other players needing to roll a 6. Or even a 7, which is an impossible attempt.
* Attacks at range... that quite often do nothing, if they even hit in the first place.
* Endless bogged down results, because a crew must roll for the same target each subsequent turn instead of facing a lowering target number.

* Bulletproof cover, everywhere, when it's already so hard to hit anything, and that probably shouldn't be bulletproof anyways.
* The "gaminess" of being able to call in other units when assaulting based on a certain distance.
*The German forces remind me of the Confederate forces in most tabletop and computer games - just a lot better than everyone else, even when they weren't.

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 Smilodon_UP wrote:
*The German forces remind me of the Confederate forces in most tabletop and computer games - just a lot better than everyone else, even when they weren't.

Lately of the FOW forums the arguments have been just the opposite, that the Americans with all of their Jumbos, Easy Eights and Pershings are too good and the Germans are being left behind

I play early war, and the Germans seem sub par to my Japanese over all. But I have yet to find the German problem, I hear its in late war (which in my opinion sucks so bad anyways). I advise early war personally.

I dont know if you have played 40k, but if you have you will notice that you will roll a huge amount less over all during a game. Most checks require one dice and its to represent the fact that soldiers arent perfect and so on. So if you fail to dig your men it just means they where incompetent or there was an error in command etc. Its pretty abstract in that way but step back and think about what you are actually rolling dice for it makes a lot of sense.

In reality shooting isnt effective as it may appear in media etc. Most casualties in war are from artillery and other support weapons. So when a platoon of rifle men fire on an enemy target and only kill one base, it means they may have killed 1-2 men and wounded a couple more. They arent from that base in particular but overall you reduced the enemy platoons fighting capabilities by one stands worth.

You will find ranged attacks are vital especially if you are on the defensive. They are vital for the same reasons they are in real life. To pin and push back the enemy. But shooting is hard when there are hills, bushes, craters and so on everywhere, hence why shooting isnt overly effective until closer ranges where there is little between the 2 parties shooting.

Not being able to hit the enemy is pretty cool i thought. The amount of fire fights that are just soldiers being shot at, not knowing where the shots are coming from and just firing back is huge. Most of the time they are just firing where they are told to fire, because its pretty hard to see the enemy most of time. Its a big game of cat and mouse. I think FoW captures it pretty well.

Dont use many tanks, early war so tanks arent used in mass really.

Bullet proof cover enhances the game. I cant imagine how hard it would be to fire my rifle at enemy soldiers who are dug in fox holes deep into a forest firing back at me. Its only natural that its so hard to do enough damage to actually reduce enemy fire power. Bullet proof is there as an extra layer of cover, not literal bullet proof cover. They are well prepared firing positions. You may be able to shoot through a tree, but you cant just shoot every tree in the forest in case there is a german behind it. You gotta see him first. Then actually hit the tree while being shot at.

All in all, the shooting phase is pretty accurate with some abstractions in my opinion. When your artillery opens up on an exposed unit rushing across open grass, you will see them suffer for it. Or when heavy machine guns rack the forest and wither the enemy down (because they probably have the RoF to actually shoot through most of the trees) the enemy will suffer for it.

Just like a real battle, you have to pit your men against the enemy in the most favorable circumstance. If you flank dug in and concealed infantry next turn you are forcing them to move loosing their dug in and reducing RoF so next turn if you have a turkey shoot.

So my advice would be to look at the rules and see why they are there. You will be surprised (with some abstraction, as its a wargame) how accurate it can be. I dont play late war though, it looks a bit like a mess to me. So my advice is to go early or mid war.

Another thing is that the basic infantrymen is effective when the whole force works with him. Use your aircraft, machine guns, arty and so on in unison with the infantrymen. He will do well when he has back up.

Do you have the rule book yet?

A couple of Battlegroup links... plenty more if you want them.


Game forum,

http://www.guildwargamers.com/phpBB3/viewforum.php?f=303&sid=48fa413cd2cdbbc81fe715b44043e590


Facebook groups...

https://www.facebook.com/groups/237995539700701/

https://www.facebook.com/ironfistpublishing

Video with Warwick showing game...

http://www.modeldads.co.uk/Life-at-the-Front/wordpress/the-day-mr-warwick-kinrade-came-round-for-tea/

Our website with some good blog links,

http://ironfistpublishing.com/

 darkness screamer wrote:
Rapid Fire basically let's you field larger forces and in my opinion is very much easier to play. Also note you can base your models so you can play RF and FOW as long as you bend the rules a bit. Rapid Fire has no strict basing rules.

Check, got it.

 Ghaz wrote:
Lately of the FOW forums the arguments have been just the opposite, that the Americans with all of their Jumbos, Easy Eights and Pershings are too good and the Germans are being left behind

I see why [Late War] gets so unbalanced then, introducing models that only saw brief or minimal service in very low numbers as if they were widespread is bound to have some kind of negative effect.

 Swastakowey wrote:
I advise early war personally.

My interest is mostly North Africa and the Russian Front in the early years of WW2, and then the various Arab-Israeli armored conflicts.

 Swastakowey wrote:
I don't know if you have played 40k, but if you have you will notice that you will roll a huge amount less over all during a game.

Nope, never had any interest in it at all. I also gave up on any of the current Heavy Gear games, as the vocal folks won't stop getting them turned into "mecha melee" instead of letting the setting be it's own sci-fi thing or going off to play settings actually intended to be mecha-oriented.

 Swastakowey wrote:
In reality [...] So my advice would be to look at the rules and see why they are there. You will be surprised (with some abstraction, as its a wargame) how accurate it can be.
Another thing is that the basic infantrymen is effective when the whole force works with him. Use your aircraft, machine guns, arty and so on in unison with the infantrymen. He will do well when he has back up.

OK. I've served, and been into military history for about the past ~25 or so years. I've noticed quite a few wargame settings usually fail even a minimal reality check.

 Swastakowey wrote:
Do you have the rule book yet?

I had picked up one of the big hardcover rulebooks and Tropic Lightning last Fall to add to my rules references for other projects, and downloaded some of the PDF lists from the FoW site and a few blogs I found.

Big P wrote:
A couple of Battlegroup links... plenty more if you want them.

Nice, thanks.

Late war is really only as unbalanced as the players make it.

Well if game play is the primary goal, the only thing you can really do is try it. See if the pros outweigh the cons. If you have paper or cardboard handy just cut them out to the correct base sizes and right what each base is. No need to buy into it.

Wouldnt take too long to set it up on the computer and printing it to cut.

 Swastakowey wrote:
Well if game play is the primary goal, the only thing you can really do is try it. See if the pros outweigh the cons. If you have paper or cardboard handy just cut them out to the correct base sizes and right what each base is. No need to buy into it.

Wouldnt take too long to set it up on the computer and printing it to cut.

Failing that ,drop in on a local wargaming event and join in a game

see why [Late War] gets so unbalanced then, introducing models that only saw brief or minimal service in very low numbers as if they were widespread is bound to have some kind of negative effect.

This hasn't been a big thing with Late War yet... aside from the Sturmtiger. But that's not a particularly powerful beast. And the lists that can use it are fairly limited. All of the American stuff mentioned above was stuff that was in wide distribution by the end of 1944 except for the Pershing.

Pershings have just barely been released for FoW, and I expect that a lot of them will show up initially. Whether they'll continue to be popular is anyone's guess. But you can't really blame American players for wanting to experiment with a big tank.



More limited production stuff will probably start to show up as more of the Late Late War books get released. But up until now it hasn't really been a big issue.

My interest is mostly North Africa and the Russian Front in the early years of WW2, and then the various Arab-Israeli armored conflicts.

Battlefront has also released a version of Flames of War for the Six Day War. It was published in a small booklet in Wargames Illustrated, and unfortunately due to the size, only contains Armor lists for the three primary nations (i.e. Israel, UAR, Jordan). You can probably find the rules for download on the FoW website.

In reality shooting isnt effective as it may appear in media etc. Most casualties in war are from artillery and other support weapons. So when a platoon of rifle men fire on an enemy target and only kill one base, it means they may have killed 1-2 men and wounded a couple more. They arent from that base in particular but overall you reduced the enemy platoons fighting capabilities by one stands worth.

My group has also come to the understanding that failing to hit with Direct Fire might mean that the firing team never even saw the target. They looked for it, but they weren't able to pick it out of whatever cover it was using. Ergo no shots were fired.

Still means the "firing" team is no longer Gone to Ground, though...

Eumerin wrote:
More limited production stuff will probably start to show up as more of the Late Late War books get released.

There really shouldn't be that many more Late War books though. There should be one more book at least to cover the British (Operation Plunder/Varsity) and maybe a book to cover the final battles inside Germany itself.

You're probably right.

And come to think of it, how much more "limited production" stuff is there potentially? The Comet and Archer were available in numbers, iirc. The Centurion and the JS3 missed the war. The Maus never saw combat. I'm sure the last three will get a release and stats at some point (probably as a "What if?" type of product, similar to the less than successful Mid-War Monsters release), but not as part of the "End of the War" book series.

I'm not sure what other hypable items might still be missing.

The Archer was released in the Market Garden book as an option for the Canadians. They've already released the model for the Archer as well.

The real question is have you ever seen one used?

Since tank destroyers need to move and shoot and Awkward Layout prevents that, you'll only see Archers in historically accurate lists.

How does Crossfire or Bolt Action stack up alongside FoW, Battlegroup, or Rapid Fire?

And am I just not seeing a North American venue to purchase a "mini" Battlegroup rulebook, or is there only UK/EU suppliers?

http://www.thewarstore.com/theplasticsoldiercompany15mmscale.html

But seem to be out of stock.

Big P wrote:
http://www.thewarstore.com/theplasticsoldiercompany15mmscale.html

But seem to be out of stock.

Big P you need to get on WiL about sending THE Warstore more products,He is always out and he never recieves enough product.It took me 2 months to get my German weapons set from because of stock issues and it was a Pre order.

Well its not down to Will...


He can only send product when people order it.

Big P wrote:
Well its not down to Will...


He can only send product when people order it. [/quote

So now i get it.
no wonder i order my PSC models from NWS online.

I haven't played Bolt Action, but it's reasonably popular at my local store right now. There were a lot of people playing it when it launched. Then it went mostly dead (though a few people kept playing it). And now it's popular again. Make of that what you will.

In comparison, Flames of War has had a dedicated group for quite a while now. They also had a D-Day event over the weekend, and it might be continuing tonight (I can't recall how long they were going to be running it).