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It's been a few weeks since 4th editions release. I'm curious about the effect 4th edition is having on your local group. Are lots of new players picking up the MW starter sets, are old players coming back, is your group staying with 3rd edition, is a player going to burn his models for youtube, etc?

In my case the majority of the local group have decided to stick with 3rd edition. Not because of any of the usual complaints about 4th edition but because they feel it's similarity to Team Yankee will confuse them with the little differences in the rules.

I've personally bought into 4th edition Brits and another player is planning on getting DAK so 4th edition has had a slight impact but the local scene is mostly still the same as it was.

Stick with v3 until BF releases real army lists. The starter is just a starter and the free EW / LW "conversion" books are lame. Instead of doing something for all v3 books they should have made a proper "forces" book.
The new rules are great, we will play them as soon as we get proper armies.

Have to say I've got little attraction to the new edition - the rules themselves seem ok, but don't seem to provide any actual benefit to using them in the limited selection of lists they have.

Early and Late war is a confused mess and should be ignored until they come out with lists where the lists and point values are for the same edition.

Agree on the way its the same as TY but different.. like TY 1.5, different enough to be confusing while similar enough to confuse easily..

Was tempting to get the DAK (I have EW DAK), but frankly until its clear whats going on I'm buying nothing.

Have asked now several times on the BF forum if these "command cards" that have been promised will come with a book as well - if they start just cards, and cards in boxes the game is something I'm losing all interest in. - Have yet to get an answer, even an unclear one - I get the impression this hasn't gone the way BF expected at all and they are in a muddle.


When V3 came out everyone jumped on it on day 1, here.. umm yeah..

 durecellrabbit wrote:
It's been a few weeks since 4th editions release. I'm curious about the effect 4th edition is having on your local group. Are lots of new players picking up the MW starter sets, are old players coming back, is your group staying with 3rd edition, is a player going to burn his models for youtube, etc?

Initially we were really excited and planning a MW Desert campaign for this summer. At this point that probably won't happen, as it may be a year or more before we have anything like a complete set of lists for the MW desert. There has been some talk of doing intro games to test the rules for LW, but not a huge groundswell of enthusiasm. I have not heard of any new players approaching our group, although I have not talked to our contact at the local game shop to see if any actual new players are buying the new stuff. Personally, I'm prepared to use the new rules, although honestly I am not seeing them as a huge improvement over the v3 rules.

I've personally bought into 4th edition Brits and another player is planning on getting DAK so 4th edition has had a slight impact but the local scene is mostly still the same as it was.

To me, the biggest impact is the new plastic kits. I've wanted to do a British Honey Squadron and a British Crusader Squadron for years but kept putting it off due to the cost of all those resin tanks. I'd be buying the new kits with or without the new rules. The German plastics are attractive too, and I may do a DAK Tank Company once I get my Honey's and Crusader's done.

I've played a test battle for Early, Late and Spanish Civil War with V4. Oddly it probably worked best for SCW.

There are a few rules I love, artillery and army building. Some I like, targeting specialists, and some I think are ok with some work, reserves, and command bubble. There's way too much that is a horrible mess though, chief amongst these is the morale rules and the wheeled vehicles rules. Throw in that I lose a bunch of models for no reason and I can't say I'm sold.

These games have been the only games of V4 at our chub that normally has a fairly active FoW following with at least one or two games a week going on.

I'm probably going back to V3. A shame because the artillery rules are rather good, much better than V3s. The rest of my club will probably go back to V3 or give up completely.

The morale rules do seem utterly pointless, the old ones worked reasonably well - scales nicely with unit sizes. Slight change by adding "in command" to the break point so models out of command are ignored (like a bailed tank) would have covered it.

Now you have units of two vehicles (very common in FoW) that are essentially useless through to stuff like Strelk hordes that are essentially unbreakable.

The changes to movement to make the game more 'fluid' will certainly manage that, infantry able to get 24" or more in two rounds of shooting...

Guessing they didn't play test that very much.


Seems to have lost a lot though, you have a lot less chance to impact your opponents turns by the removal of most of the penalties - e.g. double hits for double movement, if your opponent got away with doubling near you, shame on you, now you can't stop them and similar.

A lot seems to be change for the sake of change and when you look at the number of questions on the BF forum you begin to realise the 66% of the rulebook they have deleted perhaps had a function after all.


EW and LW won't be usable for years, stick with v3 for them, Eastern Front and the Soviets will break the morale rules and likely a lot more...


Utterly pointless, simply to try and flog more tank models.

Don't get me started on only being able to get cards in the boxes with models or the deletion of have the MW model range

leopard wrote:
Now you have units of two vehicles (very common in FoW) that are essentially useless through to stuff like Strelk hordes that are essentially unbreakable.

The thing with Strelk blobs is that even though they 'never' run away. they are also impossible to get into combat because the new QofQ rules are almost impossible to trigger (12 assaulting teams).

It's a pity to see it doesn't seem very popular. BF did say they had sold out their first run of new stuff so someone must be buying it. Or it could be selling on the strength of the new plastic kits.

I've gone and ordered a second hand copy of the v3 North Africa book so I can make my army backwards compatible if needed. It's going to be annoying trying to get all the missing command teams, etc as I pick up the new kits without them.

I agree that the new artillery rules are nice. I think TY could really benefit from the repeat bombard rules to make infantry reroll saves.

 George Spiggott wrote:

leopard wrote:
Now you have units of two vehicles (very common in FoW) that are essentially useless through to stuff like Strelk hordes that are essentially unbreakable.

The thing with Strelk blobs is that even though they 'never' run away. they are also impossible to get into combat because the new QofQ rules are almost impossible to trigger (12 assaulting teams).

Don't see the problem personally, you have an 8" tactical move, can't be closer than 2" to an enemy so if you bunch up you'll get two, maybe three ranks of bases that will be in assault range, if you are hitting more than four or five enemy teams you should get QoQ, don't think the assault will be much harder than it is now, pin your enemy and hope - if you leave them defensive fire you won't get in now.

issue is the specialists like flame throwers will be dead by the time you get there, but blocks of 40+ teams will be on you on T3 instead of T5.

meah


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 durecellrabbit wrote:
It's a pity to see it doesn't seem very popular. BF did say they had sold out their first run of new stuff so someone must be buying it. Or it could be selling on the strength of the new plastic kits.

I've gone and ordered a second hand copy of the v3 North Africa book so I can make my army backwards compatible if needed. It's going to be annoying trying to get all the missing command teams, etc as I pick up the new kits without them.

I agree that the new artillery rules are nice. I think TY could really benefit from the repeat bombard rules to make infantry reroll saves.

Just split and infantry blister onto small bases, job done for command teams really

Why do people want to play v4 the same as they did v3?
No need to assault, just clear with artillery.

leopard wrote:
Don't see the problem personally, you have an 8" tactical move, can't be closer than 2" to an enemy so if you bunch up you'll get two, maybe three ranks of bases that will be in assault range, if you are hitting more than four or five enemy teams you should get QoQ, don't think the assault will be much harder than it is now, pin your enemy and hope - if you leave them defensive fire you won't get in now.

issue is the specialists like flame throwers will be dead by the time you get there, but blocks of 40+ teams will be on you on T3 instead of T5.

meah

You may want to try playing it out. You can't charge three deep in the new rules and you need to get twelve bases into contact so your unit needs to be six wide and two deep. Because it has to get all of those bases into contact to trigger QofQ its incredibly easy for an opponent to deploy/selectively destroyl bases to spoil your charge.

 George Spiggott wrote:

leopard wrote:
Don't see the problem personally, you have an 8" tactical move, can't be closer than 2" to an enemy so if you bunch up you'll get two, maybe three ranks of bases that will be in assault range, if you are hitting more than four or five enemy teams you should get QoQ, don't think the assault will be much harder than it is now, pin your enemy and hope - if you leave them defensive fire you won't get in now.

issue is the specialists like flame throwers will be dead by the time you get there, but blocks of 40+ teams will be on you on T3 instead of T5.

meah

You may want to try playing it out. You can't charge three deep in the new rules and you need to get twelve bases into contact so your unit needs to be six wide and two deep. Because it has to get all of those bases into contact to trigger QofQ its incredibly easy for an opponent to deploy/selectively destroyl bases to spoil your charge.

Didn't say it would be easy, you set up for three ranks (under 2" deep if you include a few small based teams in the middle) then hope to have two left after defensive fire - its not easy getting Strelk to go in now - 10 hits under V3 is hardly difficult.

To be honest not expecting to use QoQ, don't use it now as the unit is seldom 15 teams strong by the time it gets over the board - you get them in by being careful how you assault to limit DF.

Its the typical conscript tactic really, use a bit of low cunning to tip the odds then hope the survivors are enough to do the job. Least if they fail they won't be breaking these days.


Looks somewhat academic to be honest, the 'command cards' are up for pre-order, no sign of a book to accompany them and I'm really not interested in playing a card game


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Lathor wrote:
Why do people want to play v4 the same as they did v3?
No need to assault, just clear with artillery.

Not wanting to play it exactly the same, but then I'm also not wanting to play Team Yankee in the 1940's.

Artillery is now a lot more effective against dug in infantry, and would certainly back up an infantry assault very well to thin the target out and by aiming to the rear slightly to avoid hitting friendly teams likely will be perfectly placed to pin the target for the assault.

leopard wrote:
Didn't say it would be easy, you set up for three ranks (under 2" deep if you include a few small based teams in the middle) then hope to have two left after defensive fire - its not easy getting Strelk to go in now - 10 hits under V3 is hardly difficult.

Defensive fire doesn't affect QofQ. QofQ triggers when you move into contact, before defensive fire.

Lol, no but DF is typically enough to bounce conscripts or trained troops, they are hardly difficult to hit. Found QoQ only marginally useful to be honest. Coupled with the threshold dropping a bit anyway you're not assaulting without support - likely as it should be really.

Truck is stopping the enemy rolling dice,

I'm hardly experienced enough for any profound insight, but wanted to chip in my two cents while our recent games were fresh in my mind.

Despite my apprehension, I sucked it up and bought both the DAK and DR boxes (I just really like 15mm tanks I think), and I'm very impressed with the plastic models. The cards are surprisingly nice and useful as well. Despite being twice the price of PSC, I'd consider more plastic kits from Battlefront even where their lines overlap.

Played a 65 points MW game over the weekend (two players per side to introduce to the rules) and it went well. Everyone seemed to enjoy it, but we've only had a little over a year of exposure to v3. The extra tank mobility is nice, as are the new artillery rules. I didn't find the new moral rules to be overly influential, although we kept forgetting to take LMS roles on the 88 platoon when it lost one of the two guns. In a later EW v4 game, I did find that I wanted the ability to combine platoons. I had two A10 tank platoons (3 each) that were down to a single tank and located within command distance of each other. It would be nice to have had the ability to combine them, but regardless, they both kept passing their LMS roles and never ran until they were both killed. I can't speak for Strelk blobs, but in that same game, a 10 tank platoon of Russian BT7s was not able to "break the game" despite dashing right into the face of the opponent (Russia lost). That said, in a previous game, two-tank platoons did show how vulnerable they are to the new moral rules. One bail, and both tanks booked it. A careful reorg using Formations should fix that issue.

Overall, I am more happy than not happy with the new rules. I do not see much of the doom and gloom as foreshadowed on the BF forums, but there are some points I'm not pleased with (plain confusion with the rules being the most prevalent). As we don't play tournaments, everything on our end can be solved with a beer (or five) and a healthy dose of house rules and interpretations.

Soviet tanks dashing right at you is seldom the problem, its them flooring it to get behind you on your weaker armour when your a humble panzer.

Issue used to be they would be moving a fair rate, but dare not generally risk doubling so you had a few turns to pop a couple then they are manageable - now they can dash with no penalty (not firing is not a penalty, they couldn't hit the sky never mind a tank while moving) so you get fewer shots at them.

I'm hoping when they get round to Eastern Front they sort this out.


The new rules "work" reasonably well, the problem isn't the rule book and the big Soviet hordes have been a problem to handle for a while (unless you tool up to handle them), the problem is as much how this has been released as anything.

For MW in the desert its ok, once you get past the anaemic lists, and if you don't mind a stream of paid for extra content after you bought the book to get the stuff that should have been in it but wasn't..

BF have said they want a tank v tank game, to sell tank models...


House rules over beer sounds very much the way forwards, I'm all for fudging rules to produce a better outcome where the rules make no sense in a given situation.

leopard wrote:
Soviet tanks dashing right at you is seldom the problem, its them flooring it to get behind you on your weaker armour when your a humble panzer.

I must reiterate that I don't have tons of experience in this area, but I still find attacking side armor rather difficult. V4 allowing tanks to rotate their body 90deg for free in the shooting phase negates a lot of swings to the flank unless you can do it in both directions (I've found that a 4ft board doesn't allow much in the way of maneuver). And in MW, fast dashing tanks (Stuarts and Crusaders) are easier to hit, so unless you have numbers or concealment to dash to, survivability looks bleak. I'm still trying to figure it all out, but this is just one example where my experiences contradict the doom and gloom I see on the interwebz. If I played a tournament, I'd expect to get stomped on, but friendly play doesn't seem to have the same issues.

leopard wrote:

For MW in the desert its ok, once you get past the anaemic lists, and if you don't mind a stream of paid for extra content after you bought the book to get the stuff that should have been in it but wasn't..

BF have said they want a tank v tank game, to sell tank models...

Good thing I like tanks! I was initially very disappointment with the previews for the MW army list books, but I think everything here is relative. For $20, I was happy with what was included in the books (I do care about more than just the unit stats, which are all over the internet for free). I would have a preferred a more inclusive book, and would have paid $50 or more for it. Because of that, I have no problem if I need to spend another $30 adding additional unit content. I don't expect anything for free, so as long as I don't feel ripped off (ahem, looking at you GW) I don't mind the paid DLC. Supply, demand, etc etc.

I've spent a lot of time with V4 and I've got a slightly different perspective. After about a dozen V4 games i am really liking it. The rules are solid and, on the whole, speed up gameplay. I think that V4 is a great rule set so far and that is from someone who considered V3 to be awesome.

Lists are another issue. MW is cool but with some glaring and sometimes baffling omissions. With upcoming additional cards and more releases I think it will balance out. that said good games can still be had

LW/MW conversion is solid IMHO. It's not perfect and some units perform better, some are worse.

On my channel we posted quite a bit of V4 coverage with honest reviews if you want to check it out.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPiObKGFR7NL9vv64G85GrM1RXPqETGbh

Buckaroo13 wrote:
I've spent a lot of time with V4 and I've got a slightly different perspective. After about a dozen V4 games i am really liking it. The rules are solid and, on the whole, speed up gameplay. I think that V4 is a great rule set so far and that is from someone who considered V3 to be awesome.

I was a very vocal critic of the v4 rules early on, based on the disjointed and incomplete information that Battlefront leaked out. As I learned more and finally got my hands on the actual rules and had a chance to run a couple of games I've become much more accepting. There are a few things I don't really care for (the trimming down of recce abilities, some of the new moral rules), but overall I'm pleased with it.

Lists are another issue. MW is cool but with some glaring and sometimes baffling omissions. With upcoming additional cards and more releases I think it will balance out. that said good games can still be had

This on the other hand, I'm still unhappy with. For MW the initial release of army books is embarrassing. Too few lists, too few options. The "command cards" promise to provide us with some of the missing material, but IMO it should have been in the books to start with.

LW/MW conversion is solid IMHO. It's not perfect and some units perform better, some are worse.

I can't agree here. The LW/EW lists are... playable but they have severe problems with improperly priced units now. Things like recce platoons and MG and bomb armed air support are for example very over priced. There are many other examples of things that are improperly priced now. These are problems that we will have to live with for at least the next two years, if not longer, until BF can get around to doing a proper revision of the LW and EW lists for the new rules.

Sounds like V4 might turn out quite nicely in the long run but it's going to be a pain waiting for the lists to get there.

In other news painting tank tracks is not fun. The brushes get messed trying to get into the gaps and I keep getting dark paint on the lighter hull. Any dreams of doing a lot of light tanks are now scuppered.

Command card stuff now on the BF site.

Gun-foot-aim-fire

Welcome to X-flames

I have to say I was not expecting secret one use only panzerknackers.

I see Tiger Aces have returned as a card (RoF 3 for Tigers) after BF stated on their forums that they wanted to remove Tiger Aces and make vanilla Tigers better ("more awesome" iirc).

So that turned out to be an er.. lie.

Snce I play Warmachine I don't think I'd have balked at card decks replacing army books. This neutered army books plus upgrade cards system however is a bad joke.

 durecellrabbit wrote:
I have to say I was not expecting secret one use only panzerknackers.

Will be a special card that lets you scrape the barrel more later I assume

leopard wrote:
Command card stuff now on the BF site.

Gun-foot-aim-fire

Welcome to X-flames

Unfortunately, after having come to terms with the new rules and grudgingly accepting the minimal MW army lists, this may be the straw that broke the camel's back. I've got no tolerance for this card game nonsense.

I don't mind cards per se, but this preview has left me disheartened and a bit conflicted with the approach. I was hoping for something more... historical and realistic. Maybe when WWPD puts up a full list of all the new cards, I'll realize it was all a bad dream.

I'll also miss my Tip and Run rule for the Portees, but hey... can't have everything.