"Tank Parking Lot?" Topic

Flames of War is often criticized for being a tank parking lot game. Is this inherent to the design of the army lists and the game?

What are people's experiences of actually playing the game? Is every battle side by side tanks, or are mixed arms battle more common and enjoyable?

I have seen action reports on line that certainly feature lines of tanks rumbling across the table, and the current Fate of a Nation AIW lists certainly seem to encourage tanks. While certainly some battle were tank fests, others were not. How well does FOW support non-tank focused games?

> Is this inherent to the design of the army lists and the game?

Yes

No, preponderance of tanks is not inherent to the game. There are mechanized and infantry companies or "armies" among other options.

The game is lots of fun. The best games I've had were with the Cassino campaign, with very small infantry companies.

FOW supports the different kinds of companies very well. It depends on the gamer how it will be used (or abused). Ultimately, it is up to the end user.

As an outside observer, this phenomena does seem to occur from time to time. I suspect it is from taking a tank heavy army list. It does not seem to happen in every game I've observed but it does happen at least a little.

I only played FoW a few times back when 1st edition came out, I had an Italian infantry force, one of our group was doing Russian infantry (the one game I played was against him, lots of artillery back and forth lol!) One guy was doing German mechanized infantry, and two were doing USA tank companies. No one ever finished their armies aside from myself, the Russian player at least for his assembled and based so we could play. A couple of months later they gave up on finishing the armies and went back to 40K.

So my *only* experience with FoW was boots vs. boots.

It's actually a function of "ground scale". The figures used are grossly outsized for the ground scale. It gives the illusion of crowding.

I have played FOW with 10/12mm tanks and the I think the overall look is better and the ranges feel more right. But having said that, the detail and modelling skills that some gamers put into their 15mm figures makes it hard to stick with 10mm/12mm.

Any game that has a complete tank battalion in 15mm as a regular army list choice on a 6x4 table is certainly encouraging the tank parking lot syndrome. It's by no means inevitable in FOW games, but is pretty inevitable in certain army lists.

not inevitable? LOL,oh LOL!
its nearly ALWAYS there. even on a 6x4 table you can spread out your tanks. but FOW players don't like side shots so the think they are being tactical genius's by parking side by side.
it looks retarded.

If the opponent of an armoured force does not have artillery or air then there is little in the game to discourage tanks next to each other. Air and artillery force tanks to spread out.

There is as has been pointed out a massive disjoint between the model scale and ground scale. The ground scale in FoW ranges from 1/500 or so to getting on for 1/2000 as ranges get longer. If you use 1/300th scale models and don't change any of the ranges the game looks better but even then if there are no air or artillery you will not be discouraged from packing vehicles closely together.

It is not a thing that afflicts just FoW, most other WWII games are the same, it is just that FoW is perhaps the one where players have the most vehicles on a table.

Figure base sizes are often used to manage the proximity of one unit or figure model from another to simulate the area they may have histrically required to fight or maneuver within. Requiring vehicles be mounted on bases of size large enough might fix the visual hub to hub perception but cause other problems with ground scale. Ground scale vs. figure scale has always been the cause much head scratching by game designers.

disagree 100% on the ground scale copout. there is 0 reason to NOT spread out.
FOW players go side by side "to game the game". i've played 1/285th micro armor on an 8x8 table and i've never seen that side by side garbage. and we had alot of tanks…

no, completely agree. I think you also need to hold Flames of War the game, ands it's players, accountable for the other insults to long term ww2 gamers namely the concepts of popularity and fun. There's nothing worse than going into a store or con and seeing that, and also seeing people who used to play fantasy/scifi getting into historicals. That disturbs me the most.

Hi McWong73. I am an ahistorical player who has come over from fantasy/scifi and I am not sure why that disturbs you. I may take some liberties with models or colors, but I certainly try to research and maintain the feel/flavor of the historical period I am gaming. Even in my abortive FoW effort, I wanted an infantry force even though my opponents were going to be a tank parking lot. I had my artillery and air support…

I think it is a combination of ground scale, telescoping range bands, and gaming the rules. I have seen non FOW players go hub-to-hub with their tanks, but not with the frequency that seems to happen in FOW. I think the army lists have something to do with it as well, and the cramming of too many vehicles on to too small of a table. I have seen numerous points players get into an arms race and double the size of their army while keeping their playing surface the same size.

I think McWong was being a little sarcastic.

Mr. Rabbit, that is called sarcasm.

Asking because I am trying to decide if I will like FOW enough to invest in armies for it. I have the rulebook and am leaning towards AIW and Great War as I find those periods more appealing than WW2

I was a reluctant convert, but I'm sold on it. I've played games from 500 to 6500 points. The more points, the greater the temptation to put a lot of armor on the table. But even then, if you face balanced arms it is usually a bad idea to clump up. In our last game I had to do it for a turn to get a platoon of 76mm Shermans both in range and on the flank of a Jadgtiger (playing the Remagen book)but they scattered next turn before the German 150s could rain death.

I think I use historic tactics most of the time and don't try to abuse the gimmick rules and I've been very successful.

Asking because I am trying to decide if I will like FOW enough to invest in armies for it.

You won't find the answer here. You'll figure that out if you are able to get in with a good group of gamers.

Good luck!

VB

BTW, been playing FoW for years and have had a great time with it. Rarely use more than one platoon of tanks, so seldom have bunching up issues. I wish my opponents would use more of these "parking lots!" My artillery and air support would be so much more effective then!

It's actually a function of "ground scale". The figures used are grossly outsized for the ground scale. It gives the illusion of crowding.

Pretty much.

Do the math on unit size. Mind that Flames of War ford not gave a strictly linear ground scale. Some call it "logarithmic".
If you line up 5 Shermans hub to hub they are actually 50 yards apart. However if you take 10 Shermsns hub to hub they are more than 100 yards apart.
So the hub to hub phenomenon is totally a function of the model to ground scale.

Have played dozens of games and have never seen a hub to hub game. But the friends I play with tend to use scenarios and bigger boards.

I can live with some of the tank armies being almost hub to hub on the table, it's not that common, but I do think it looks funny to me when I do see it.

However, what drives me crazy, is the requirement to have artillery models on the table! I mean in reality, unless these weapons were firing in direct fire mode, these weapons would be well behind the front line firing barrages in indirect mode. Can we say "stick it to the gamer" by making them buy models that so no real purpose being on the table. :-)

Still enjoy playing the game once in a while, however I haven't played it much lately, since most of my friends and moved on to different rules lately .

It's partly a matter of ground scale-vs-figure scale and it's partly a matter of generally too many tanks in most games, but there is another major factor that no one here seems to have mentioned: Good Tactics.

Good tactics--in any era--boils down to massing more fighting power at the point of contact than the enemy. If I can pit two platoons of tanks against one of the enemy's by massing my tanks 'hub-to-hub', then why wouldn't I do it?

Survivability is another factor. If I can fit my whole tank platoon behind that little clump of woods by going hub-to-hub rather than leave a couple of tanks out in plain sight of those enemy 88s by spreading them out, what am I going to do?

So if you look at a typical FoW game, you will see a clump of hub-to-hub tanks here and another clump over there. I've never seen a game with hub-to-hub tanks from one side of a six-foot table to the other.

Because of its "scale" FOW encourages the practice and tanks sweeping around the battle field in perfect lines. But it is not the only game I have seen with tanks maneuvering in a gamy as opposed to a historical manner!

It is generally down to the player. We had a game with a German SP gun sat on on side of a hill, covering a road. The allied player drove three Shermans over the hill at speed and in a line almost right up to the SP gun, before firing at point blank. A fairly gamey move, but something that happens when all the models are on the table in clear view.

Tally Ho!

I am a recent convert to FOW after avoiding it for years because of what the loose gamers & tournament players do with it. I shake my head at those parking lot games. However, if you do your historical due diligence you'll find infantry units still outnumbered armored units by at least 3 to 1 and if you maintain that ratio in planning your games you will avoid the hilarious parking lot syndrome. People who want to play the real deal will play with reasonable armies and you will also all use the same book (each choosing your armies from the Market Garden book, for example) so you don't have to deal with the Codex Creep that is also taking place with the tournament gamers. All armies within the same book are balanced. BTW, I also don't put the artillery support on the table unless it is some kind of overrun situation. If an opponent demands it I consider that an indicator of a "gamer" who is caught up in the mechanics of the game rather than some one looking to replay a historical battle.

I don't think the ground s ale is responsible , in fact that is a red herring.nThe cause of the axle to axle tanks is that the army lists allow one to deploy up to 30 tanks on a 6x4 table and that the rules make this concentration of tanks very very effective.
The rules alliw tanks to concentrate their shooting on one oppising platoon. So if you have a patoon of three pak 40s mixed in with an infantry platoon then ten T34s can concentrate on just the paks with 20 shots . Although the Russians get 'Hen and Chicks to hinder shooting on the move the Russian player just rushes to within close range. If his opponent opens up then that just makes him more visible and will do little damage to the Soviet unit. Once established in close range the massed tanks just slug it out because most defenders will have nowhere near the firepower to take them on. Russians are the main beneficiaries because their tanks are cheap, but it is as true for Italians and any other nation that can have lots on the table.bThe unrealistic advantage the Russians have is pkatoons of tenntanks and the fact that the quality of the crew firing makes no difference to the accuracy of the shot.bBF trumpet the fact that only the quality of the target jatters, but this is rubbish, poorly trained tank crews were terrible shots.
The other problem with massed tanks is their telepathy. A tank unit of ten rushes up to six houses in a line in two of which there are dug in a/T guns. Miraculously the tanks choose to shoot at only those houses with opponents in them. How is this telepathy managed.
Similarly the tanks can all shoot their macine guns at the right two houses. Now I can buy that the commander tells his tankers to drive up to the row of hoyses and pkaster them, but not that he somehow can command them to the exact target.
The problem is compounded in that when you shoot twenty cannon or 40 macine gun shots the mathematics are that getting hits is certainty and this certainty is increased by having more tanks shoot. So okayers are incentivised to run ten or twenty tanks together around the table picking out an enemy pkatoon and devastating it each time.
The morale rules enhance this effect. A friend tried Russians with pkatoons of five tanks. He found winning difficult. He upped the number to ten tanks per pkatoon and was invincible because the pkatoons, particularly being fearless and with commander are very hard to shift even if you get one to breaking point.
Its not an uncommon defect in rules. Mediaeval armies in rules where bows have lonf ranges can suffer from the same problem, with longbowmen destroying a unit each turn. However, WW2 is particularly susceptible as tanks get far more shots and can move around easily to concentrate fire.
If BF altered the rules or rather lists to make tank armies take a propirtion of infantry and artillery it would sort the problem.

I have seen every bit as many Battlefront WW II, Mein Panzer, Force on Force, Tomorrow's War, and now Bolt Action games with parking lots of tanks being played. As with FoW it has NOTHING to do with the game and everything to do with players wanting to put as many of their toys on the table as possible. The simple fact is that NO WW II game played on a 4 x 6 or 8 table should ever have more than a tank or two on the table. But where's the fun in that?

Claiming it is just a Flames of War problem is patently absurd. You just see it more with that game because so many more are playing it than any other system.

Looking at the Fate of a Nation army lists, I see that I can field a list legal 1000 pt army consisting of 51 T-34/85M tanks. Measuring one of my models shows that such a formation shoulder to shoulder will actually be wider than a six foot table!

It will also generate an expected 67! Hits per turn of shooting. Quantity has a quality all its own.

We're I faced with such a horde the last thing I would want to do is line up shoulder to shoulder opposite. Why give him more targets than you absolutely have to?

Of course such formations also bring those psychic tank commanders into play again. I will be that as much as possible players will concentrate fire on the same platoons where ever possible. Even if the tanks are deployed in a mixed formation, the shots will be taken against Platoon A, then Platoon B… Somehow the tank gunners will know which tanks are in which platoons and which platoon has been selected for firing this turn.

Of course this is a common fault of any wargame. Firing decisions are not at all simultaneous and blind to what other units are targeting. Try playing a game where an outsider is brought in to declare firing for one unit,nthey someone else is brought in to declare firing for the next unit, etc, then all firing is resolved. How many targets received overkill? How many were not shot at all? It especially mixes things up if the designated shooters are given only what is visible on the tabletop to make their decisions, no extra information such as army lists, or which vehicles moved together as a platoon.

I do not like the thought of 51 tanks in a row across the table top. But, if I am going to use the army lists provided to play a 1000 point game I have to accept that it is legal under the lists. I can offset this to some extent by playing only historically researched scenarios, but the Valley of Tears in the Golan Heights, 1973 was a situation that featured very much two broad lines of tanks coming at each other. I can't even fully fault the army lists. I get 51 tanks by taking the cheapest tanks and nothing else, not necessarily the best way to choose an army, and certainly not historical.

The opposite end of this list game is an Israeli list legal army with five tanks also at 1000 points. Sho't HQ, platoon of 2 Sho't, platoon 2 Magach 3, HQ and Platoon Command tanks equipped with searchlights. Five tanks is hardly a parking lot.

I think it is a combination of ground scale, telescoping range bands, and gaming the rules.

Let's start with the Ground Scale/mini scale issue. SMGs (and pistols) shoot 4" in FoW, and SMG real-world effective range is 50m. Two Shermans hub-to-hub are therefore about 12.5m apart (~1" center to center), while two big Cats or Soviet KV/IS will be nearly 25m apart (~2" center to center).

It's obviously been too long since I've played, because I don't remember vehicle hulls blocking line of sight. I certainly don't remember play it that they did, only flaming wrecks blocked LOS.

I'm sure there's a bit of gaming the rules just because of how armor arcs are determined. You actively need to be behind the front fenders to actually get a shot on Side Armor in Flames of War.

I have seen non FOW players go hub-to-hub with their tanks, but not with the frequency that seems to happen in FOW. I think the army lists have something to do with it as well, and the cramming of too many vehicles on to too small of a table.

That is definitely a problem. I'm slowly working on a Soviet Engineer-Sapper Battalion, and I don't think I can/should be playing that force on a 4x6 table. I mean, I have ~35 infantry stands, the usual dozen artillery pieces, and at least 10 tanks. That's a LOT of stuff to fit on the table.

I have seen numerous points players get into an arms race and double the size of their army while keeping their playing surface the same size.

That would be a problem regardless of game system.

McWong, that one went straight through to the 'keeper…

Vehicle hulls do not block LOS in Flames of War, they do prevent friendly troops firing through them but enemy can fire past/through your teams if they want.

Destroyed vehicles provide concealement to any fire that has to be traced through the wrecked vehicle.

My honest recomendation is to check out the other games being played. Then think about how your friends or play group would handle it. I thought I had joined a very nice group of casual players… no tank parks, etc… then one and another.. and another got into tourney play… the pendulum swung very fast into teh "win" mentality and gaming the system… legally that is.

It is definitely a game issue… scale is important and, well.. a fractured range scale like that will lead to those issues.

The thing is this…. it can be justified and be visually pleasing if you went to a smaller scale… there are many ways to handle it, but to pick on FoW or single them out alone is not fair. It really comes down to who you play with and how you and they play….

I still lose most of my games as I systematically get shot up by tank parks… and can only return fire with one tank if I am lucky because of being spread out, but I do so enjoy the game. FoW is a great rule set and the only issue I have ever had is the "short" scaled ranges.

Try hub to hub when facing that dreaded on board artillery with a high AT and firepower bombardment. Try it with an opponent with similarly good air power.
The first time I tried an air strike with a rather vanilla P-40 I killed 4 PzIII tanks and bailed 2. That uncrowded them in a hurry. Even if it was just by putting gaps in the formation.

This topic comes up at least once a month. This one is a bit late.

Winston, Sorry, but hardly anyone takes planes to a competition. That's because they are expensive, only occasionally useful and easily negated.

I once lost five crowded Italian tanks to an airstrike, but that is a once in a blue moon situation. Mostly the planes miss , or do not come on the table or come on with one plane and have to re roll hits. Or the opponent has AA capability which gets 12 shots at the planes. Your average Russian tank horde just cracks across the table, T34s being amazingly fast and then sits within 16 inches of the opponent, blithely unavailable as a target.

I do worry about air if I field a Tiger so it creeps from woods to buildings because that forces the pilot to acquire it and I have 385 points tied up in that baby.
As to artillery. Well first you have to acquire the tanks then you have to hit them, then you have an anti tank of three and he has a defence of one and then you bail him, but he is Fearless Conscript so he gets straight back in.
I have planes for every army ….I like planes, they are a pretty addition to the game, but competitively they suck.

If you are trying to take out tanks with AT 3 artillery you are doing it wrong.

The weakest template that you really should bother with against tanks is AT 4 FP 5+ for 25pdrs and most forces managed better than that.

As for air, yes it is random but when you wipe out a platoon of Panthers in one go it is all worth it.

HA Ha maybe it goes fir yor artillery Hammy that Bombardment A/T 4 and FP 5+ is the minimum, but there are plenty of guns around with rather worse figures.

A commander who puts three Panthers into the space of one template deserves it.nBut then he will be very rarely punished!

I just would not bother bombarding tanks with 75mm artillery or nebelwerfers and even 120mm mortars are more firing on a wing and a prayer than any real hope of hurting a tank.

If your opponent has no medium or heavy artillery and no air then there really is very little in the game to discourage packing tanks together.

But a company of Soviet T-34s 10 tanks strong advancing as a block are still actually covering a frontage of roughly 200m and a depth of 100m. Would the game be better if you had a single tank on a base 10cm square to represent each platoon or company? IMO no.

4.2" or 120mm mortars are kinda the bare minimum for on-table tank-stonking. 25pdrs and 105s are also a bare minimum.

122mm or bigger is much better for controlling tank bunching.

"I don't think the ground scale is responsible , in fact that is a red herring"

or is it a double bluff?

As a well known former TMPer once said, the situation ocurrs because Fow range scales are not in proportion with each other and that means you cannot have a consistant deployment scale. Just because you can put your tanks base to base in all games doesnt mean they are all the same.

Winston, Sorry, but hardly anyone takes planes to a competition. That's because they are expensive, only occasionally useful and easily negated.

This is the first time conventions have been mentioned on this thread. Already you are talking about an artificial environment. And you are complaining about hub to hub tanks in an equal points battle?
I never play in competitions.

Parking lots also arise from failure of opponents in taking enough artillery and air. Lose a couple of platoons of armor to death from above/over the hills beyond and suddenly the fact you can spread each vehicle out 6 or even 8 inches apart from the next in its unit comes into play.

Do you know what spending points on airplanes does ? If the possibility exists that you MIGHT have good air, it forces him to spend points on otherwise useless AA guns.
So points cancel out. So then use your planes anyway and knowing the die rolling I have they may get through. Use it every turn. If they get through and he has bunched his tanks up…. Gloat.
One may as well complain that Matildas or 88s are expensive.
Points spent by the opponent to counter what you MIGHT have?
If you do not buy air you deserve to have tanks bunched against you.

Useless AA……well not really Winston. It depends a lot on the period that you are playing in and who the opponent is. Equipping US tanks with 50 cals is generally well worth it aside from their use as A A. Lorry or half track mounted AA following up expensive tanks is also useful , especially for shooting up defending infantry,
Dug in with defending infantry French EW 20mm and 25mm AA is almost as good as Machine Guns at stopping infantry assaults and much more useful than MGs at stopping tanks. One of the French companies can have both 20s and 25s.
As to stopping tank bunching with air… well mayhap Winston has a Faustian pact , but it seldom works for me. The very first time that I met a Russian tank horde advancing shoulder to shoulder across the board. i was deploying Stukas. I got two strikes in before they got close enough to my defenders to negate air. I killed a couple of tanks and bailed four I think over the two goes. The bailees got straight back in apqrt from one who took two goes. Its being Fearless , you see, it means bailing is not the threat that it is to Brits or Yanks or Italians. Germans generally have protected ammo so they bail back in easily.

I play Finns, what are tanks?

Oh, those big noisy metal things everybody else have.

My Strelkovy can go edge to edge on a 6x4 on 1500 points

I don't play competitive games, we normally run linked scenarios, they tend to be interesting.

Bunching up of tanks is simply a product of players applying the age old tactic of concentration of force. As only template weapons punish bunching up and you get a lot of advantages in concentration of firepower and for assaults there is no reason NOT to bunch up in many games.

A simple change you might wish to try out would be for the distance between teams to be used to determine the to-hit number rather then the target's skill rating itself. That way your veteran tanks can still be hard to hit spread out but if they go hub to hub they are going to be as easy to hit as conscripts.

Oh God, not this again. Is this a trolling thing going on? Make the (dubious) claim, stir up the anti-FoW crowd and then wait for the FoW fans to make the counter claim. This happens every month and it's boring. People don't even need to ask the question fresh anymore: Just scroll down the thread topics on this board and read back all the comments.

For the umpteenth, and hopefully last time:

IT IS NOT THE GAME…IT IS THE PLAYERS.

I've seen games of Panzergrenadier, WRG 1925-1950, Firefly, TAC and scores of other home brewed games where tank parking lots can be seen.

You see, what happens is that a lot of WW2 gamers like their tanks…a little too much sometimes. They want to field lots of them. When you get to 15mm and 10mm scales, you can have loads in your collection. Then they go and put their toys on a table too small to accommodate them comfortably.

You can spot the novices and those who don't care much for the history because they like to go all in with a frontal attack of tanks and start bunching them up as they try to negotiate the terrain on said-too small tables. Once you've blatted such a big mass target with area weapons, they soon disperse.

I challenge anyone to find the bit in the FoW rulebook that advocates wall to wall tanks. It's not there, it's not built into the game. It's the tactics of the players which has been misattributed to the game.

So, are we done now? I hope to God we are!

Agree with ubercommando – parking lots are mostly a side effect of player style, and rarely lists or irregular table sizes.

I'm guilty of being a treadhead and using lists with lots of tanks (EW Mittlere Panzers and M/LW Soviet Tankovy). I've only rarely had tank bunching and it's usually because the TO had smaller table sizes, which were disasterous to my army. FOW is NOT a game that ENCOURAGES tank bunching and will often penalize the player for doing so.

As far as Air Support – I like it because of it's inaccuracy and unreliability. In most cases, it's a fairly realistic representation of the limitations of air strikes and it makes for fun games. But then, I play to have fun, not to win. YMMV