"Played my first game of FoW in decades" Topic

So some of you may have seen my posts that I have decided to jump back into Flames of War as that is the popular game in the Dallas Texas area. Well besides 40K and X-Wing it would seem. Bolt Action seems to be big in Austin and San Antonio.

Anyway a recent Late War League got underway this month and I used participating in the League to get my Americans painted up and ready for battle. Today was my first game and due to luck, some skill and my opponents awful dice rolls a pulled out a win of 6-1. My opponent was a wonderful player and great guy to game with. We both had horrible rolls for most of the game then toward turn five and six the dice gods decided to favor me. Perhaps the best moment was when at point blank range a Panther tank had two of my Sherman M4A3s dead to rights and both should have been burning hulks. Instead the Panther only managed to cause a bail on one of the tanks.

I learned a lot about the game mechanics and it really is an easy game to learn and understand. Is it reflective of WW II tactics? Not so much, but it is a fun excuse to paint models, roll dice, and play with toy soldiers and enjoy good company. I cannot ask for much more than that.

FoW is waaaay to complicated to be a beer and pretzel game. Every time we tried to play I spent a lot of time with my nose buried in the rulebook.

However, I found "Hail of Fire"…much more to our liking. 5-6 pages of rules. Same basing as FoW, I use a FoW sourcebook for organization, and we get the same results.

link

PzGeneral, I like the easy straight forward idea of your rules. I'm thinking adding the the random initiative and hidden movement with some IABSM cards and you got it all covered in a easy convention type game.

FoW is complicated?
A simple minded guy like has no problems.

Part of what slows FoW down in my experience is the dreadful play aids. So I made Unit Cards like BattleFront now does for Team Yankee. Having all your stats in one place in an easy to read format helps.

It's not that difficult or complicated. It shows that a lot of current rules sets are so rules lite these days that it makes FoW look complicated.

I've found that it does, generally, give a fairly accurate result if you're fighting a historical based battle.

As I was playing I realized that the mechanics are pretty much common fair in one form or another of many game systems.

I am sure I will run up against the min max player in our league; however, I have resolved that I am here to have fun and if that type of player has to go that route then I will attempt to win with a balanced, robust force that is forgiving and allows me flexibility, but if someone has a min/maxed force that rolls over me in two turns I will still enjoy myself and congratulate him on his win. Plus I have noticed that the min/max player tends to go a one trick pony and that is a major liability.

My focus is bringing my A game in terms of how I paint and present the minis and making use of the mechanics to form my tactical plans as best I can. The fact we have specific scenarios dictated by which game we are playing and that we are only limited 1420 points , no front armor greater than 12 (No Jadgpanthers, King Tigers, Jadgtigers, Pershing IIs and many of the monster late war Russian tanks) and whether we are Allies or Axis means you can bring a different force for each battle. I know one player for our Allied side that has American, British and Russian forces. He plans to use all three during the league.

What edition of the rules were you playing?

The current edition which I guess is third??? I'm not sure that I see much difference in how it plays from previous editions. Then again is had been a long time since I played the original Flames of War and I barely got in a few games of second edition before I moved on to other WW II game systems.

AFAIK, 3rd edition is still the latest version.