"FoW Haters" Topic

There is no doubt that fow is a ww2 game. The force structures alone ensure it.

There is also no doubt that in bits of the table and in chunks of the gameplay, it can look and can play like ww2.

the feeling to some people that it doesn't do it very consistantly can only be addressed by the design of the game., which is under the single and total control of the designer and no one else, unless you believe he is influenced by some other party, like marketing campaigns or alien pods.

Since I am fairly sure Alien pods is pretty low on probability, it's the result of where the designer hangs his hat and markets that newest shiny bow.

All of us can lap up any of the resultant product we want.

Which is no way even close to be what a actual World War II battle would look like.

Oh and as to the 24 figure unit Cohort in a Ancient Battle is like Napoleonics when you use either 20-1, 30-1 or 50-1.

So one figure is actually far more men than one.

I use 30-1 for my 15mm Napoleonics so a 24 figure Battalion is actually Battalion that is around 720 men.

I am still struggling to understand how a Napoleonic or Ancients game where one figure represents tens or hundreds of men can ever look like a real battle.

Yes solid lines of tanks look wrong but so does a 'Legion' made up of a couple of hundred figures.

All non skirmish games have to compromise somewhere. With a skirmish you can use 1-1 ground scale and one model represents one man or vehicle.

Napoleonics and Ancients games compromise on what one figure represents. Flames of War compromises on the figure and ground scale.

It has been said many many times on this and other sites as well as in this thread that the solid line of tanks in FoW is not actually fender to fender in reality but is more likely than not deployed at a density similar to those that happened in some of the really big battles of WWII.

In the same way that 24 figures in a single rank represent a battalion of 720 men in 6 companies deployed in 2 ranks in a Napoleonic game looks nothing like a 'real' battalion.

Every game has to have compromises. You may not like the ones FoW has chosen to use but other people find that 24 figure infantry battalion is an equally bad compromise.

Thats a good point jameshammyhamilton. I think people just have an easier time supending thier disbelief when they look at a 24 figure battalion. But its no different than compromising ground scale.

Some of the arguments about Battlefront is price of figs. I admit, $13 USD a blister is steep, and that's not for larger vehicles or infantry/gun packs. But who actually pays full retail? Before Carl of Miniatures of Chesapeake's unfortunate passing, he'd give me 20% off any order I emailed and picked up at one of the HMGS East conventions. He'd give me up to 40% off stuff he was looking to get rid of. That brought it down to a more reasonable level.

The new plastics are $45 USD a box, but in reality they can commonly be found for $35 USD shipped. That's about $7 USD a vehicle for high quality plastics. Zvezda runs about $4 USD-$5 a model, and last I checked PSC in 15mm is going for about $26 USD-28 a box for 5 vehicles so that makes them about $5.50 USD a tank.

Old Glory, without the army card, wants $24 USD for a group of 3. That's $8 USD a vehicle for metal. In my experience, the quality can be pretty hit or miss. I've had some great casts, and I've had some poor casts.

Another company I really like was Forged in Battle. Best resin sculpts I've ever seen, high enough quality that I didn't even mind the built in bases. They have some fun figs including 1940 Scots in kilts for Dunkirk, 1946 and 1947 vehicles, and very early war or 1930s vehicles that are more difficult to find. The only problem is they're about as expensive as BF's old resin prices, about $35 USD right now on ebay for 4 resin/metal vehicles.

I'm fairly cheap when it comes to buying. Con flea markets where I get 50% off is where I spend my money. I do have a mix of manufacturers. Mostly BF and PSC with a smattering of OG and FIB thrown in.

The one thing I can say about BF is that when I have a problem with parts or damaged vehicles from being banged up in blisters, I send them an email and I have a replacement part in 3 days. The customer service is excellent.

Now, that is the figures. That is not the books/rules. They seem to go about 6 years or so between rule changes, which is okay. Its 1 book. However, what they've gone and done with Flames of War Digital has really gone and lit a fire under my ass. Not only is it an Apple store only product, meaning I'd have to buy an Apple product to actually use it instead of my Samsung, but they're holding back lists from actual physical books and selling them online only. They're also way more expensive than Easy Army ever was.

THIS IS NOT OKAY. If I buy a book I expect not to have to then go online and make micro transactions to fill out all the lists for it. This isn't some free to play video game.

I've both read the rules to Flames and played in many games including tournaments. While I applaud many of its features – at least a stab at playability, no need for an umpire, and some way to balance games, it has many flaws.

The "hater" problem arises because when anyone offers even a mild balanced critic of the game they are dismissed by the faithful as a "hater". Its not a tag anyone applies to themselves. Its just a handle to apply to anyone with a different point a few about the mechanics in order to dismiss their opinion without the need for logic.

As to looks DBM does indeed look a great deal like a medieval battle – with battle lines etc. (OK you have to fudge figure scale but the overall look is very good). As battle commences the lines begin to disinegrate – but that is again conforming closely to our best guess as to what should be happening.

TomT

OMG, 09MAY2015 to 06AUG2015 and still going?

Sigh…

I like the models and the company, but I don't like the rules. So I am a half and half.

Initial Disclaimer

I dislike FoW rules intensely, as I do Bolt Action. I find them to be in part too simplistic and in part too complex … usually they're too complex in areas of Chrome that could have been left comfortably abstracted.

My preferred set of WW2 rules is Command Decision in any of its incarnations and I have all 4 editions and almost everything else produced for it. In short, it works for me, it provides the right "feel" of WW2 combat at the battalion-Brigade level for me

End of Disclaimer

I want to address a couple of points that seem to have been somewhat overlooked. Firstly the term I used above "feel"

Yes, it's a subjective term, but we all have it, and the very subjectivity of the term is what generates the plethora of rules systems which we have.

For me, a game will feel wrong if, to use one of the examples cited above, as a battlegroup/kampfgruppe/battalion commander the game requires me to roll dice to discover whether or not Private MacAuslan, J has lost his entrenching tool, again, and is perforce required to dig in using his mess tin. All I need to know in that role is "has 18 platoon dug in successfully?" This is what I referred to as chrome earlier.

Likewise, are men and vehicles scaled at the same rate? If a stand represents a section, then one model tank should represent a section of 2 or 3. When you have varying scale reductions the game becomes distorted in both the visual and mental sense. It then, to me, feels wrong.

The other point I want to address is the "Tank park" issue. IMNSHO this is not an artefact of the rules, whatever rules are being used. Rather, it's an artefact of poor scenario design. the example cited earlier is a perfect example of this … a Cold War Soviet Tank Battalion, scaled at 1:1 simply takes up too much space on the board. Scaled down to Soviet Platoon level, it would be roughly 10 vehicles … probably still too many from my POV

However, the *rules* are not to blame for this, the blame lies squarely on the scenario as written

Do I wander around sledging FoW, BA, BKG or Spearhead players? Nope. Do I play those games? No.

Simple, really