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I've been looking to start FOW for a long while now but there's still some things that confuse me.

1. If I pick my force from say, the Market Garden book, will I only be allowed to play against other forces in that book or am I allowed to play against any book as long as it's from the same period? I can see some problems may arise from having a force that's dressed for summer against one that's all in greatcoats or something.

2. Two forces have picked my attention: American or British paratroopers. What are the similarities/differences between these?

1) Forces can be from any book, and as long as they are both the same period they should be decently balanced (some older books are gonna have trouble, but that's it). Only thing stopping you there is people wanting a more historical looking game so the greatcoat vs. summer uniform thing.

2) Sorry, I don't run Para's so I can't tell you...

I think generally the British paras are considered slightly better (at least they are in my club) due to special rules perhaps, but I don't play them. I'm a 101st Airborne kinda guy!

Generally paras are a pain in the arse for German players to shift, they're very good on the defensive and pretty decent on attack too. You can consider them to be tank hunters in comparison to bog standard infantry due to improved tank assault rating.

The similarities between British and US paras is that they are all durable, fearless bad asses. US can be supported by a shed load of bazookas, plenty of machine guns and mortars. Not too sure about the brits I'm afraid!

The British para's in market garden are probably one of the best offensive infantry list in the game!

You have night fight to conceal you, tough fearless infantry. Great anti tank guns (the 6pdr in defensive fire is excellent) and the awesome 'air landing light battery with medium support'

This beauty is 8 guns, which when you shoot the are AT3 FP6 - but then you repeat bombard, the 'medium support' means they are then AT5 FP2+ and the British rules mean your opponent rerolls successful saves.

Not much survives that !

US para's are better defensively but not as good offensively in my opinion

You have 2 choices with British paras.

Brits, lot of infantry, very large engineer platoon, very light artillery support in the form of the M1A1. No armour, no heavy artillery, Recce options are included as are mortars. Pretty close to pure infantry. get access to a lot of 6 pounders (awesome) and 17 pounders (can kill most things, but have no HE) so always a risk.


Polish Paras.
Access to the lot, 25pounders, Sextons, 5.5" guns, Sherman tank support. Have most of the same things the Brit paras have. Very diverse and effective.


Americans (these vary from Nuts to Market Garden)

Market Garden, lot of infantry, backed up by British Armour and Artillery (heavy arty) won't use many USA special rules.

Nuts, my preference. Access to most of what makes America tick, Tank destroyers (Hellcats) light machine guns, mortars, medium, light and heavy artillery, tank platoons (very late war stuff) armoured platoons (half tracks) and an AOP.

Build the Nuts force and you can field the MG force easily, by swapping USA armour for anything from your Brit collection.

Other way around is not so easy.



Hope that covers the main differences, I need 6 and 17 pounders to make my brits viable, but have sizeable USA (easy company) and Polish para companies, I like them a lot.

I must admit I find the MG USA force a tad boring, the Nuts one is very varied. I also built my USA Paras from Glider rifle platoons (I know, shock horror) but it means I can run them as either by simply adding, or removing some teams, and swapping LMG's for HMG's, Variety as they say, is the spice of life

Nuts is the best choice and Glider Infantry are a better choice .you get extra zooks and 50 cals also you can have lite 105s up to 12 vs.8 75mm pack howitzers.also the Glider are rated confident veteran and are little cheaper vs. Fearless vet. .in my experience i prefer con/ vet vs Fear/vet. because they a re a litle chaper and you still need 4s to hit them. but for brit para i dont play them but everyone says that frosts list is just bad ass.

 Far Seer wrote:
I've been looking to start FOW for a long while now but there's still some things that confuse me.

1. If I pick my force from say, the Market Garden book, will I only be allowed to play against other forces in that book or am I allowed to play against any book as long as it's from the same period? I can see some problems may arise from having a force that's dressed for summer against one that's all in greatcoats or something.

2. Two forces have picked my attention: American or British paratroopers. What are the similarities/differences between these?

1. Late war armies are usable in any LW battle. Some people are really picky and dislike games "out of proper theater", but most people won't have an issue at all.

2. British and American paras are both elite fearless veteran forces designed to dig in and hold tight and stop anything from getting the objectives they are guarding. Combined with a decent selection of ATGs and support weapons they are VERY hard to dislodge once dug in somewhere important. The real difference between them are the support options available to them and the part of the war you play them from. In the Normandy books both forces are solid and can also get decent armored support from their own armies since after the initial drops behind the lines they were used more as elite infantry instead of jumping out of planes again and again. In the Market garden lists the British have no armored support because it never reached them in Arnham before they were finally overrun. The Americans had support from British armor during market garden through a number of the engagements. Another option for market garden are the Polish. They are the equivilent of the british paras at the time, but can actually get some amount of armored support. The real differences is that the americans also have the special easy company list and rules to simulate the "Band of Brothers" forces that everyone knows so well. This can add some special flavor to your forces if you like that series. I love Band of Brothers, but play british paras because I play british only across all 3 war periods to be consistent. In general the base british and US paras function very similary on the table top once in use.

I generally find that my paras do better without armored support, as the armor is usually not rated at the same fearless veteran level as the infantry and gives the opponent an easier target to kill ultimately. I generally find that once my paras and their PIAT teams and multiple platoons of 6pdr ATGs and HMGs dig into a solid position very little can affect them short of a full assault on their position. That is a bit tougher to do when also eating fire from all those ATGs and support weapons.

Skriker