"Creating balance in historical scenarios in FOW" Topic

Asking the FOW gamer hivemind for feedback/advice/experience in regards to creating historical scenarios for FOW.

I've had greatest success playing historical scenarios with specific army lists published for both sides. In these cases, a third party has spent the time to create FOW lists that approximate the forces present at a specific engagement.

In cases where I've created my own scenarios from history, I've tried to map out an appropriate amount of points and then left it to both sides to create a list from an appropriate book. I think a few recent issues have arisen where while the appropriate era's book was used, one side or the other uses the allotted points to field forces (often times armor) not present at the original battle.

Here's where the age old wargaming balance of history vs. game comes into play. While just using a generic mission is satisfying, I like the historical aspect.

Without forcing the other players to dump a bunch of reserach into units present at a battle, how do I provide proper historic balance? As a creator of a scenario and a player, I don't feel right handing over a list to my opponent and saying "you have to use this list" even if my list holds truer to history.

A couple ideas:

- Develop two historical lists and then flip a coin to see who plays which side.

- Develop two historical lists and then don't play, but serve as game referee.

- Create the scenario, name the book, name the points and then put historical guidelines around lists (ie, no air support, only certain models/numbers of tanks available, must have at two infantry platoons, etc.)

I often wish there were just big fat books of official historic battle scenarios for FOW…

I love doing the historic research on behalf of my fellow players, but I want to keep things fair and fun.

Thoughts from the more historically-minded FOW players?

Don't play FOW, but your first two suggestions work for me in any period.

I also don't play FoW but for all my games, I do the research and provide the figures. All the players do is play. That's just the way I was 'raised' in the hobby. The whole idea of creating an "army" as a player is foreign to me.

In your case I'd go with your option #3 and put some historical guidelines on things.

For example, if you are doing a scenario set during market garden, and the historical attacking force was an infantry company, then specify for your gamers that their list must be a list of XXXX points from a market garden infantry list. You can further say such things like, no warrior teams or no greater than limited air support.

We've found these kinds of things work well for our group. Quite often we also willingly ignore some of the list specific special rules. We usually use the national rules though.

For all the criticisms FoW gets, I haven't found any glaring errors in the campaign specific lists. Occasionally you'll see a platoon represented that consists of a vehicle type that was only represented by 50 or less examples, but those things are few, and were used historically just not in great numbers.

I like Battleground's many available scenarios for that level -- always jealous there's not more available for FOW, but I like how it plays.

I think it depends on your gamers, and you have touched on the difference between what I will call WWII gamers and FOW gamers. Do you want a historic scenario or do you want a points driven scenario? They are frequently not the same thing. I mentioned to a local FOW group that they might consider throwing out the points list and playing scenarios based on real OOB and they looked at me like I was a lunatic.

I think Dan's advice has some merit. You could also take some cards, write unit identifiers on them (infantry platoon, etc.), shuffle and draw. You could tailor this to the scenario or just use it for support units (you have two infantry platoons plus three random cards). If you want to keep points, you can say each card must represent a unit of 300-330 points, or something like that.

There is IMO nothing wrong with unbalanced games. You can even build a 'tournament' around unbalanced games.

I have not yet actually run an event using this idea but I am sure it will work.

1) Setup a number of games, balance is not required but each needs some way of determining performance. It could just be the in game scoring, it could be how many turns a side can hold out for or how many supply trucks get off the far edge of the table in N turns.

2) Run each game a number of times with different players each time.

3) Score each game based on the relative performance of players playing a given side in that game.

4) Combine the scores of several such games and you have a 'winner'

This format has been used for an Ancients competition in Finland where all the games were based on historical battles but in terms of points many of these battles were very one sided. It doesn't matter if a given side loses every game, what matters is the degree of defeat.

If one player is providing the scenario and both sides then simply allow the other player to choose which side they want to play.

For "unbalanced" scenarios set the victory conditions to make it harder to "win' with the stronger force (eg a shorter number of turns to achieve a result or requiring the stronger force to lose only a small number of units).

Our chief FoW scenario writer sets up a situation, and tells the sides how many pints they can have, and what type of companies.

After a few pints they won't be able to remember the situation anyway………….

I have been running Historical Scenarios using FOW for many years now and it works quite well. At Little Wars I have run:
Stalingrad on an 18'x6' table
Market Garden
Normandy; Sword Beach, Omaha Beach, Point Du Hoc, St Mere Eglise, & Def of Orne River Bridges
El Alemein
Peipers Charge as well as a few others. This year LZ Xray & a Golan Heights Game. None were balanced games. But designed to give players a game that would match their expectation of what the battle would be like. They have always done very well. We run most of our club games as Historically based games as well…but those we usually try to have balanced. Many years ago we ran a Normandy Based Campaign, each player started with 1500pts. But was allowed to add to that forced based on how well they did in each of the battles. You got the points for the vehicles/Gun teams/Inf teams that you killed in the battle. You used those points to replace your losses, upgrade forces, and could add 1 platoon to your force…depending on the losses you took and how many points available. You could also purchase victory points, the first player to get 50 victory points won

Most of the playing I do is not points vs points….
I get th emost enjoyment out of playing hgistoric scenarioes… balanced or not… I find that they play out very well and very historic…

There are 2 sides to that coin though… a lot of the players I do game with want to do "what if?" games… I am Ok with that too as replaying historic battles to see if you can change the results, however fun, can soemtimes be limiting…. so I throw in with a lot of "What if" games.. but they are not usually "create your own lists" they are logical situations that could have happened.

I don't balance scenarios based on forces, but balance them based on victory conditions. For example, I might have a scenario where the attacking side has 50% more points than the defending side, but they must take the objective in a set number of turns to win.

I also don't strictly adhere to army lists to create the OOB. I use them as guidelines, but will tweak them a bit to better fit the historical situation.

Finally, don't be afraid to use special rules to add flavor. Don't go nuts, as you run the risk of making things too complicated, but one or two simple things can make the situation more interesting. For example, in my Losheimergraben scenario (which has had one playtest and should get its second next week), the Germans can specify two targets for a bombardment before the game begins. It feels better than just giving them an artillery platoon.

The only downside to these things is that you have to do some playtesting to get the balance right. If its for your local group, and they don't mind it, it can be a lot of fun. My group had a very interesting discussion around the new scenario. I can see how other would want more control, though.

If you're playing straight historical scenarios (1:1 with the OOB), it's VERY likely that you will have a significant points mismatch. Set-piece assaults typically have the attackers outnumbering the defenders ~3:1, after all.

If you're making approximations to a historical scenario (NOT strictly following the OOB), you will need to either have a points system so you can skip most playtesting or you will need to playtest quite a bit.

Even if you're balancing via victory conditions, you really need to playtest a couple times and make sure that your victory conditions are achievable.

I don't balance scenarios based on forces, but balance them based on victory conditions. For example, I might have a scenario where the attacking side has 50% more points than the defending side, but they must take the objective in a set number of turns to win.

In our club's last big FoW historical battle based on Kursk, we had different victory conditions for each side. The Soviets were focused on destruction of the Panzer force, so only won VPs for knocking out German tank units. The German units were focused on holding ground so only won VPs for maintain control of various key objectives.

Our force ratio was nearly 2:1 Soviets:Germans. The game worked out very well. The "points" values of each force were useful tools for us to help gauge how to best balance each side's victory conditions.

In our refight it ended up being a very close game. The Soviets were literally a die roll (failed FP check on a Tiger I penetration) away from achieving a higher level of VPs than the Germans.

Erm, pretty much what everyone above have said! I'd add that the I-65 gaming group in America have some interesting scenario ideas, based around occupying key points on the battlefield instead of 2 objective markers.

I write a lot of historical FoW scenarios and I basically begin with reading about a battle, discovering what kind of forces were in action and coming up with OOBs that don't min-max but reflect the actual battle (if you can get actual OOBs, so much the better).

Maps from that era are harder to find, but I find Google Earth a very good tool. It works well as a template to work from and you can modify the more modern features for in keeping with WW2. Street view is fun as well and I used it to design a battle map for a Market-Garden game; it gives you an idea of the flatness of the terrain and the layout of towns.