"What would you change in Flames of War?" Topic

Now, now, you haters… We have already had a Poll on what is bad about FoW. So, you have already been served.

First off, I would drop the "Bailed out" rule. I would instead use a "Suppressed" rule, which would use EXACTLY the same rules, but would instead use the words "suppressed" instead of "bailed out". Imagine how much more sense it would make!
Logically, "bailed out" tank crews should be pinned infantry, and just as vulnerable.

How would you change it?

Don't just say "Add opportunity fire" or "forbid hub to hub tanks". EXACTLY HOW would you implement that, within the spirit of the rules as played now?
Merely grafting on "superior" rules will not work. You must do it in the context of the games AS PLAYED.

If you are just going to bitch and moan that the game sucks and can't be improved, that is a pointless comment and not helpful.

Make the off board artillery rule applicable in all games.

Having the artillery models on the board has always bothered me. (Just come up with a simple counter artillery rule is necessary).

Prep Fire, Defensive Fire, Mines, Off Board Artillery, Command and Control, Simultaneous movement and Realistic Battle objectives.

I'd make the artillery template round.

My biggest suggestion would be to allow artillery to target a spot on the table and not just a visible team.

I don't play FOW but have a simple solution for hub-to-hub tanks. When you miss a shot at an enemy tank and another is within 1" you can take another shot the same turn with the same weapon. Watch people spread out pronto.

Off board artillery and aircraft rules are the biggest thing I would change.

Bede19025 is right, not only dose it make no sense to place the artillery on the board, considering the range differences between indirect fire weapons vs direct fire weapons. With minor changes you could use most of the existing rules and do away with the models. As it is artillery and transport models, just add unnecessary clutter to the table, and increasing the real world cost to players for fielding a army.

Another "cost saver" would be to re-writer the aircraft rules, so you only need one model on the table. It would be cheaper, reduce clutter, and speed play to use 1 aircraft model to represent the air strike and just reduce it's attack value,as it takes hits, instead of removing a model for each hit.

Keep in mind I am a engineer by training, and have been doing project management for the last fifteen years, so I have a built in bias to things that is not clean, efficient and inexpensive!

FoW rules are a marketing tool to see models. On board artillery and multiple air craft result in more sales.

FoW is a set of rules designed to play a game Unless you are in "official"tournaments house rules can be added to make changes. Kyote's individual scenarios and visaogames "1 inch" rules are perfect examples. IMHO FoW is a good rules system it's mechanics are basically sound and it has done a lot to re popularize WW2 gaming.

ML

I'd get rid of some of the pre-measuring, only allowing it in the fire phase. It really slows the games down for me. We don't really use the scenarios from the books. If we use artillery it is often an objective in the game more so than being a gaming piece, although sometimes it is both.

I would add overwatch – a unit can chose to hold fire until the opponent's turn. Then, fire as the opportunity presents itself. If no opportunity, that unit doesn't get to fire that turn.

I might also change the I-Go-You-Go to an initiative-based decision.

Wyatt

Artillery
As mentioned above, off board as standard.
Preplanned bombardments

Tanks/SPG
Make being 'hull down' worthwhile. Currently +1 to hit which doesn't reflect the use of hull down very well. Scrap the +1 and give the tanks a saving throw of 3+
Closed top SPGs can not take up hull down positions on hills

US tank destroyers
Make the carbine teams independent teams

Snipers
Enemy teams must pass a skill check to take any action against them. If they fail this check then they are pinned.

As stated above using interupting fire. A platoon that interupts would only be able to either move or fire with the 1 shot only penalty next turn.
this would mean that not all platoons would wish to interrupt.

A platoon could also opt for overwatch in its own turn, allowing it to fire at full when interupting in the opp turn, when on overwatch no move or fire is allowed. until unit fires it also coumts as gone to ground.

When firing at a platoon that has some units in cover but not all the firer could opt to fire at those in open only. when doing this he would need a lower score but can only hit those in open, even if he has more hits than units to aim at.

My group did play it a couple of times using order cards which by also making it simultaneous also removed the i go you go issue.

Also had set ambushes(marked on a map or as told to an umpire) which meant if the enemy did not go anywhere near where the ambush was set up it was wasted.

Some of these are really good suggestions…

I may well add a few of them for "house rules"…

But the game is still fun as written and I agree that its done a great deal for the period and hobby too…

James

Make the heavier tanks a little less invulnerable to stop the arms race.

Let go of the fixation with points values and include real scenarios to get people thinking in the right direction.
Guidelines for making such would also be very nice.

A lot of these proposed changes would slow the game down substantially (overwatch, etc.), would add extra complexity (special hull down rules) or would remove the ability to play "pick up" games ("real world" objectives, scenario play--which of course does exist in their historically based scenarios).

FOW is what it is; a relatively low complexity WW2 game that is well and clearly written and a lot of fun to play.

It does what is promises to do and all the griping that it's unrealistic, too simple, to this or too that is completely besides the point.

Played one game with alternating activations of platoons. If you got air for the turn they would count as one of your platoon activations. It was actually a lot of fun. I enjoyed the decision making aspect of 'do I activate this platoon to sieze some advantage or activate that platoon to protect them from an attack, do I use my air now or wait and see if a juicier target moves into the open, etc.' It also seemed to almost incorporate, without intending to, a sort of 'overwatch' aspect in that you could sometimes delay activating a platoon until a target for them was exposed. Would definately be willing to play it again that way.

dont think you get it Bede.
Somebody is asking for ideas to enhance their particular game. nobodies griping about the game here only suggesting enhancements as you did !

every gamer has their own ideas on how a game should be played or has something that they would wish to change, thats the way gamers are.

certainly I dont see anything as besides the point !

Personally I dont like flames of war as it stands, I make my own adjustments as I have mentioned and to me it plays as more of the game as I like, playing with other gamers who with similar ideas have some good, fun games.

I do realise too that you have your own opinion as to the game but I think it is a little unfair to dismiss other peoples ideas out of hand.

There are a lot of small things I would like to see changed and some dramatic changes but I believe all of these would make the game into something it isn't. So in the spirit of keeping the essential game the same:

- I would move all artillery off-board, as mentioned, it can work exactly the same and introduce some counter-artillery if the opponent also have off-board arty. Seeing artillery on the table bothers me even more than the tank parking lot.

- Just include a simple rule that all tanks have to maintain a minimum of 1" distance from one another to avoid collisions.

- Get rid of heroes, midwar monsters and trim down the special rules to about 1/2 of what they are now.

Hooters girls with free wings and beer at Nationals.

Two modifications our group are experimenting with:

- HMG's have always been rare on the table. We are experimenting with making the "Gun Team" save for Man-Packed gun teams a 4+ save (basically, given to Mortars and HMG team) to give them a SLIGHTly better survival chance. We aren't trying it out yet, but I am also considering trying a rule that HMG teams ALWAYS start the game dug-in….

- The second affliction is that tranports are seldom used in our game, but we like to see them on the table… We are adjusting the transport rules to allow teams to disembark at the END of the transport move (but get no further movement), not just at the beginning.

dont think you get it Bede.

No, I don't think you get it.

The original premise was:

EXACTLY HOW would you implement that, within the spirit of the rules as played now? Merely grafting on "superior" rules will not work. You must do it in the context of the games AS PLAYED.

Most of the suggestions about overwatch, changed turn sequencing, etc. would change the game "AS PLAYED"

HMG's have always been rare on the table. We are experimenting with making the "Gun Team" save for Man-Packed gun teams a 4+ save (basically, given to Mortars and HMG team) to give them a SLIGHTly better survival chance. We aren't trying it out yet, but I am also considering trying a rule that HMG teams ALWAYS start the game dug-in….

That's a good suggestion.

- The second affliction is that tranports are seldom used in our game, but we like to see them on the table… We are adjusting the transport rules to allow teams to disembark at the END of the transport move (but get no further movement), not just at the beginning.

Not only aren't the trucks useful, they're actually a liability given the platoon half strength rules.

I'd lump this in with off-board artillery. I don't think trucks belong on the table in the "scale" of the game. Troops would have debarked from their trucks somewhere off the board and hoofed it up into fighting position. So while the truck models are neat looking (like the artillery models) they just don't belong there.

I wonder if folks would still complain about artillery on the tabletop if 1/285th scale miniatures were used. Well, it's FOW so there will always bs some complainers, but you know what I mean.

Personally, I prefer games that include arty miniatures, even if those are located on a table edge or adjacent table. I like miniatures. I can play boardgames (or computer games) if I want to abstract those elements, but it's nice to have the physical asset for a number of reasons.

Apart from the aesthetic of having minis, given the effect artillery has on the battlefield, it's irritating to have substantial casualties (or interdiction effects) essentially caused by a stat line in a manual and a die roll rather than an on-table asset.

You can say it's money-grubbing on the part of Battlefront, but Dirtside II (and others) do the same thing and it's hard to accuse Jon Tuffley of money-grubbing. :)

The same goes for air assets.

"More minis" is rarely a bad thing.

"Dirtside II (and others) do the same thing"

When your "artillery" is bouncing energy bolts off the atmosphere (or something) against over-the-horizon targets--but they're still on the table--FoW doesn't look quite so odd, does it?

Allen

AFV within 1 inch of allied armour take impact damage on a certain roll.That way you can still take the chance but get possible damage when driving too close for combat.

other wise a fun game despite some of the above cmments including my gripe.

28mm. Bam.

"AFV within 1 inch of allied armour take impact damage on a certain roll.That way you can still take the chance but get possible damage when driving too close for combat"

Surely a rule that the AFV commander is sacked for a complete lack of standard AFV SOPs?

Would some of the comments above be tempered by the size of table? If a 12 x 6 table were used end to end then some transport would probably be useful?

Tally Ho!

Make it +1 easier for a unit to dig in each turn it attempts to.

Have a standard off board artillery option.

Enable artliiery to target any seen piece of ground.

Running tanks keep at least 1/2" between them.

Personally, apart from the original suggestion about changing 'bailed out' to 'suppressed', I wouldn't change a thing.

I just love having arty on the table, and the whole shoot again at an AFV target within an inch business shows a lack of understanding that you dont' enagage an AFV in FOW, you engage a platoon of AFV's….

But if hub to hub AFV are a problem, and personally I havent seen any apart from the publicity shots, then maybe print the command distances in larger font so that commenters who rarely play the game, or have only played it once, WILL ACTUALLY READ THEM…

"…and the whole shoot again at an AFV target within an inch business shows a lack of understanding that you dont' enagage an AFV in FOW, you engage a platoon of AFV's….

But if hub to hub AFV are a problem, and personally I havent seen any apart from the publicity shots, then maybe print the command distances in larger font so that commenters who rarely play the game, or have only played it once, WILL ACTUALLY READ THEM…"

I don't think he misunderstands, whether or not you agree with the idea, his suggestion of re-rolling a miss if there is another vehicle within 1" is a valid addition to the rules.

Personally, I have seen hub to hub tanks more than a few times. I like the idea of the re-roll, however I think simply stating that vehicles must maintain a 1" gap is clean and honestly probably wouldn't be questioned. At that point I wish it could say 2", but then I think you'd have more people asking "why" their vehicles need to stay 2" apart.

Just say vehicles must end their movement with at least 1" between all vehicles and leave it at that. An exception would be made for recovery vehicles.

As for increasing the type size of command distances, I'm not sure I understand the implied benefit of that.

I also, just generally want to mention that I personally like the "telescoping scale" of Flames of War that allows things like on bard arty and transports, etc. I think the concept is quite clever and i enjoy the approach.

-B

Just include a simple rule that all tanks have to maintain a minimum of 1" distance from one another to avoid collisions.

FOW tanks are already an 1" apart, thanks to it being a 15mm game. Put 1/300 miniatures in their place (still far too large to ground scale) and see what I mean.

If you want to make tanks be at least 2" apart (i.e. a clear inch between them) then you are the ones being unhistorical. Tanks platoons did not usually feel the need to stretch over 200 yards, especially the ones without radios.

You can't actually crowd tanks enough in FoW for some realistic situations (say trying to get four tanks into a small village and still fire forwards).

Stop fretting about the look of hub to hub and work out how far apart they must actually be from centre to centre.

I played with Culin Hedgerow cutters today.
The rules REQUIRE the non-Culin tank to be "adjacent" to the Culin tank to benefit from the hedgerow-transiting super-powers. I interpret that to mean "hub to hub".

As we play it, tanks have no "zone of control". Stuarts can shoot through a line of Panthers that are "hub to hub", pivot and shoot the Panthers in the ass. With stabilizers.
At least, that's the way our "expert" interprets things. So do the others who have gone down the Turnpike to play in tournaments with those more versed than I. It just occurs to me that this would be a dandy place for Opportunity Fire, particularly in the side.

BTW, this is a rather Orwellian interpretation, on the grounds of "that which is not forbidden is compulsory".
I have yet to see it tried. I have been assured that is not only legal, but common.

I would also like to drop the 16" rule for waving off air attacks.
I would allow closer attacks, but add a way to simulate blue on blue friendly fire.
Ask Lt. General Leslie McNair about friendly fire.

Artillery fire can be blue on blue… Why not air?

BTW, I personally have never had an issue with I Go You Go. It has never bothered me the way it does some people.

Wow , some great suggestions and ideas here. What would I change, let me check my list….JK. I enjoy the game as it is, but do have some issues with a few rules here and there.

One of my biggest is I just do not understand why a team with a Panzerfaust, usually fired by one person, cannot fire said weapon if it moved. But a bazooka/panzerschreak team, requireing a loader and gunner, can move and fire in the same turn.

We have also played around with a +4 save for LMG/HMG teams, and still treated them as gun teams.

I do not care for, but wil play them, the usual "my 1500 points vs. your 1500 points" type games.

But for something alittle different, I have "convereted" some scenarios from ASL and COMBAT COMMANDER so you basically get the smaller INFANTRY COMPANY in play without getting every type of support you would get from battilion and/or division assests. PLUS, you have actual objectives to take and /or deny.

I bet there were Company commanders during WWII that wanted such support all the time, and for each company.

The game is what it is; it is a game…. it does have good points/bad points, just like anyother game out there. ;-)

Baggy81, We've done simiar. We've played a lot of "600-point" games, limiting choices to combat platoons plus weapons platoons. These games have been some of our most enjoyable FOW expereinces.

I have been advocating for many years that armored vehicles (tanks) should be pinned exactly like any other unit in the game. Now before you start screaming that it's absurd for tanks to be pinned by small arms fire and machine guns, let me add that my proposed change would call for tanks to only be pinned by things that can actually hurt them. So, the rule would read: "A tank platoon is pinned if it is forced to take 5 saving throws from direct fire or one saving throw from indirect fire during a single fire phase". SAVING THROWS, not hits (I am assuming that armored vehicles are not forced to take saving throws when there is no chance at all the weapon can penetrate or bail). In fact, all you have to do is change the whole pinning rule (for everything) to read Saving Throws rather than hits and there you have it. It's actually a simplification of the existing rule since every type of unit is treated the same way.

As for why I want this change, well, it bugs me that the game makes tank crewmen so much braver than anyone else. If anyone else is put in a situation where they are under heavy enemy fire and to advance would mean almost certain death, they become pinned and won't advance unless rallied. But the tanks? Hey, it doesn't matter that their buddies are brewing up all around them, Onward! Onward! They'll keep going until they finally fail a morale check for casualties or are wiped out entirely. It's all or nothing for tanks. And this just is not realistic. Often tanks would be halted by heavy defensive fire and be forced to fall back. This is especially true for artillery. Artillery was the infantry's primary defense against armor. I have read literally hundreds of acocunts of infantry calling in arty on attacking armor and driving them back even though not a single tank was hurt. In game terms this works perfectly with my suggested change. Artillery hits a tank platoon and pins it. Next turn if the tanks make their motivation test they can continue to advance. if not, they have the choice of either staying put (and getting hit by a repeat bombardment) or falling back.

If you are complaining about seeing "hub to hub" tanks, it might be more due to the fact that you did not take any artillery support. If you take artillery or air, you'll find that your opponent will do as best he can to spread out to minimize targets caught under the template. If you did not take a template weapon unit/air, well then you just yielded to your opponent that ability to run "hub to hub" without consequence.

It's not a new rule that's needed here, just better balanced forces used in the first place.

Opportunity Fire – Bear with me this will be long.

For years I refused to play FoW due to the "apparent" omission of opportunity fire. After returning from on overseas deployment and having some extra cash on my hand I figured "What the heck? My friends have been trying to get me to play this FoW game, I've got the extra cash, the figures do look great, so why not do a single force just to be sociable?" Thus I bought one of the old "1500 Army" box sets, the rule book, and "Afrika" army book. Figured I was off to the races with all I'd ever need for what I intended to get out of FoW.

Once my force was painted up and I started getting in games I found that I was having an incredible amount fun and felt the games were coming out relatively "realistic" enough even without the "missing" opportunity fire for which had put me off about FoW for so long. I started to ask myself why I was not missing "opportunity fire" and if the sheer gaming enjoyment I was experiencing was simply making the "accuracy" aspect of having some sort of opportunity fire irrelevant for me?

After much reflection I came to the determination that opportunity fire is in fact largely incorporated in to the execution of game play in FoW. It's not perfect, but your's and your opponent's actions/moves will determine if you get opportunity fire effects. In an I-Go-U-Go system it's really not possible to look at a single player's turn/sequence to make a determination on how a combat action transpired. You have to take sum of both players' turns and make sense of them together to determine if outcome was realistic enough.

So if I move my tank platoon into the open, and you come around the corner with yours and shoot at me in your turn, should I be complaining that I did not get a chance to fire at you first? Not necessarily so. It's a meeting type situation and the dice will determine who actually got the upper hand in the end. If we both have vets and each have four tanks in our platoon and you roll in with four shots, you expect 2 hits. Even if those both result in destruction of tanks, I'm still shooting back with 4 shots in my next turn with the same odds to hit/kill. So we expect this "meeting engagement" will be determined largely based of off luck when equal forces face off.

So what do I do when I want to set up a "opportunity" fire situation. I simply have my tank platoon "go to ground" in my turn. That way when you advance into my "kill zone" yes you'll have the first shots, but they will be at +2 to hit a D6 which is steep and in my following turn I will have much more shots able to come back at you with. Odds are my setting up a "ground to ground" unit over-watching my "kill zone" will result in the opportunity effects that I am looking for.

I know what you're thinking…"But there still is a chance that those 4 attacking tanks could come in and get 3 or 4 kills on my platoon thus breaking the gone to ground platoon before it even get to shoot." True. BUT not necessarily unrealistic. If you think your troops are always doing what you want them to do and are always on their game, then you'd be sadly mistaken. 20+ years of active duty in the combat arms, trough two wars and may NTC rotations, has more than shown me that folly.

So in summary:

1) If your unit is not "Gone to Ground" than to me you have no argument about the lack of "opportunity fire" in FoW. Get "Gone to ground" and you'll get most of what you are looking for in the way of opportunity fire.

2) Even if you are "Gone to Ground" you may, on occasion, loose out to a unit that rolls in to your "kill zone" and gets the "jump" on you. It happens, but it's low probability and not necessarily unrealistic when it does happen. Deal with it and drive on.

About the only thing I'd change is requiring plotted ambushes. The rest of it is OK as-is.

That said, changing 'bailed out' to suppressed would be a very quick change (but a bit intensive for the editors to accomplish!).

Make it in 76th/72nd scale. I ain't gonna buy a 15mikemike Army when I have one in my scales.
Weaselhoffen.

1) Smoke allowed to target any location, not just enemy stands.

2) Man pack weapons save on 3+ (or 4+ if you prefer). Also treat them all the same with regard to moving and shooting. (as they are now, some can move and shoot, some can't, some save as inf, some as guns, etc. Quite a mess.)

3) Air can attack within the 16" of friends, but if they miss, roll to attack the nearest friendly unit.

4)Replace bailed with "buttoned up." This will be like pinned for armored vehicles, so they drop to 1 ROF if stationary and cannot shoot and move. Cannot move toward enemy visible. (Or must make morale test to do so.) Cannot shoot any external or pintal weapons.

5) FOs should always count as dug in, concealed and gone to ground. (They are too easy to target and kill as they move into position.)

6) Early war Poles should get 40mm Bofors AA guns! (grin)

the owners and the management of the company?

ok to be serious,

1) in mid war the Russians are only allowed one forward observer.

2) all the german forces need to be pared back to reality a bit.

3) some players need to be taught not to cheat and get upset when they are beaten by girl with an All female Russian infantry and artillery army with no tanks (tanks are for sissies)

Hmm..

A few thoughts from various discussions we've had in group.

1. Agreed – make offboard artillery rules the rule, rather than the exception.

2. Get rid of the "cartoonish" special rules, such as allowing Americans to fire with their gyrostabilizers on the move (they rarely, if ever, used them), the British "battleship column" rule (which they abandoned very early on as being impractical), the Soviet "Hens and Chicks" rule, etc.

3. Account for track shots and meaningful non-penetrative damage. This is a significant problem, and does not account for the number of times when supposedly inferior weapons penetrated or disabled superior armor. This could be accomplished, perhaps by allowing veteran crews to gain a bonus for their "AP" number, or allowing for the possibility of a vehicle having to be abandoned after a non-penetrative hit.

4. Re-assessment of armor values/penetration formulas. Ie: a T-28E with 50mm of front plate just shouldn't be an AV 4 just because it's an early war tank.

5. Re-evaluation of Soviet lists, which are too large and represent an (incorrect) assumption that Soviet forces always outnumbered their opponents to a large degree. On that same token, full incorporation of the various Cavalry lists for the Hungarians, Italians, etc.

6. Allow the use of "obsolete" armor in later war scenarios (I see that the Hungarians are allowed CV35s in 1944/45 now, which is a good start, now let's see some Germans with Chars, Italians with S-35s, etc.); on the same note, allow for more realistic use of captured armor and equipment (ie: allowing some lists to use this, even in small numbers, would make for an interesting game.)

7. Better research sources, no more "absolute statements" based upon wikipedia, opinion, or the lack/surplus of a certain miniature and the desire to play down its role/sell more of it. Doesn't mean the game has to be ultra detailed, but it does mean that some lists might get better, while others might get worse.

8. Finally, I agree with the young lady above; the evaluation of German forces needs to be seriously re-assessed. No more "SS automatically equals Elite" type stuff, no more "resurrecting the dead," etc. (And on that note, can we -please- pick some German heroes, other than Rommel, who weren't poster boys for the SS? Still waiting for Kurt Knispel.)

Make it in 76th/72nd scale. I ain't gonna buy a 15mikemike Army when I have one in my scales.
Weaselhoffen.

Whats stopping you? I've been doing it for years – just double the measurements….

And some local players have done it in 10mm and reduced the measurement to cm rather than inches. They played on the same sized table, however. It changed the game in that on-board artillery seemed much more reasonable and truck-borne infantry had a real roll.

"some players need to be taught not to cheat and get upset when they are beaten by girl with an All female Russian infantry and artillery army with no tanks (tanks are for sissies)"

AWESOME….. Didn't think of an army lists such as that.

"tanks are for sissies"…. love it.

I play mainly infantry myself, ie: US Para's and Rangers, Finnish, FJ and British Para's are my favorite.

I totally agree with Aurelian; track shots wound be great. Bring on the Panthers and Tigers… immobilize them, smoke'em and assault them… then have a shot of Brandy afterwards ;-)

Add a rule that if your AT equals the armor your trying to pentrate, but cannot due to being equal; there should be a chance for a possible immobilization/bail/suppression. Example: my AT of 9 vs your front armor of a 9. If hit, that crew is going to be quite concerned.

OPPORTUNITY FIRE- well in a way the game mechanics has it (as mentioned before), as long as your opponent is moving toward you. But when they move lateral across you front from cover to cover (maybe with a road inbetween) troops and/or MG's just sit there and watch… so much for covering the road with a MG team :-(.

My thoughts for now…. stil enjoy the game, especially small unit actions.

"OPPORTUNITY FIRE- well in a way the game mechanics has it (as mentioned before), as long as your opponent is moving toward you. But when they move lateral across you front from cover to cover (maybe with a road inbetween) troops and/or MG's just sit there and watch… so much for covering the road with a MG team :-(."

Good point. I would make it "illegal" to move into and out of an enemy unit's LOS in the same turn. Probally including stormtrooper moves as well. No problem though using Stormtrooper and Tip & Run to leave enemy LOS if you did not move in that turn.