"Getting back into FOW" Topic

I made the decision to return because I thought V3 was an OK set of rules for scenario & campaign work. I missed the uniformity that everyone was pretty much reading off the same sheet of music, so to speak. You could go just about anywhere, from Singapore east to Serbia and people were playing the same set of rules. FOW (what ever you may say about them) did do a great service in promotion historical war gaming to a younger generation. Now------I find division, version 3? Version 4? Army books no longer pertinent maybe? I'm dreadfully worried, and this new soft-ish plastic is awful. Yes, keep going ahead with hard plastic vehicles and guns, but for the love of St Micheal, St Gregory and the holy Russian church, keep making 'people' out of metal alloys! Please!
And version 4-
WHY?

Version 4 is a move to appeal to the tournament playing circuit & simplify the game. It drifts further away from historical accuracy for the sake of a game that is faster moving & doesn't require a lot of "going to the books" to look up stats & special rules since they're printed on the cards.

In making this transition, though, it appears a lot of the rules for more limited actions in the game have fallen through the cracks. (ambiguities on using flamethrowers, how spotters work & transports, for example). Since I don't play v4, I don't know if it's the way the rule is written, interpreted or used, but I see it on the FOW boards regularly:

If you're looking for a universal rule system that everybody plays, then you're going to have to adapt to v4 since it seems the established store-based groups are all going with it. I'm staying with v3, along with a lot of other players who prefer it, but my hunch is that the v3 hold-outs are off in our own corners of the world doing the historical thing. So you'll have to go beating through the underbrush to turn some up.

Wizbangs, that's a damn shame. V3 was just fine. And I really don't dig tournament scene. Rather do the campaign systems. Wonder how this will effect Arab-Israeli and Great War?

V3 for this rabbit too as tourney play has no appeal at all. Soon the V4 errata length will equal the entire V4 MW rule set… it grows and grows. As for the GW and AI…. drifting in the wind with Vietnam era till they somehow rewrite the V4 rules to satisfy the EW and LW gamers, the rest of historical nationalities in MW gamers, and quell the defections to other rule sets.

V4 is not the "monster" everyone seems to be making of. We played it several times already at the club and we thought it was somehow more fluid and overall slightly more enjoyable than the previous version.

We are actually planning to be playing it soon again.

As for the simplification and "historicity", it is a welcomed move as we never thought it was real historical in the first place but rather trying hard on a system that anyway lacks the granularity.

FOW goes back to what it is at the core, a game, without trying to pretend anymore to be a fix for "historical" gamers (that for the most pragmatic ones went quickly to other suitable set of rules).

V4 refocuses on the gaming aspect rather than the fringe hardcore FOW historical players. In short, FOW is not, neither has been, suited to be on the "realistic" side of wargaming. It is all about gaming with a WWII flavor and they eventually realise that it is where they will expand their market… how surprising 102 marketing: don't go for the customers who are trying to "push the enveloppe".

X-Wing is not complicated neither "realistic" but it has plenty of Star Wars flavor and it's fun hence very popular. BF took notice, it is not a big mystery.

I'm dreadfully worried, and this new soft-ish plastic is awful. Yes, keep going ahead with hard plastic vehicles and guns, but for the love of St Micheal, St Gregory and the holy Russian church, keep making 'people' out of metal alloys! Please!

I'm actually a fan of the new plastics. I purchased two motor platoons for the 8th Army and I like the little things. Lots of nice detail. I miss the heft of metal, but these little fellers are rather snazzy looking.

link

I can't wait to paint mine up. I'm waiting for school to let out so I can put in the time.

V4 is vastly easier to teach. And I think it is more fun to play. Give it a chance: getting new players is the only way our hobby can stay relevant.

It suffers because the stat cards, which the game is obviously designed for, don't exist for all our existing armies. I made templates (over on WWPD forum), but it is time-consuming to make the cards. One of many possible summer projects: Stat at least two of my LW armies.

This being said their new plastic figures are not really nice in my view. Their hard plastic was way better.

As for the simplification and "historicity", it is a welcomed move as we never thought it was real historical in the first place but rather trying hard on a system that anyway lacks the granularity.

FOW goes back to what it is at the core, a game, without trying to pretend anymore to be a fix for "historical" gamers (that for the most pragmatic ones went quickly to other suitable set of rules).

V4 refocuses on the gaming aspect rather than the fringe hardcore FOW historical players. In short, FOW is not, neither has been, suited to be on the "realistic" side of wargaming. It is all about gaming with a WWII flavor and they eventually realise that it is where they will expand their market… how surprising 102 marketing: don't go for the customers who are trying to "push the enveloppe".

That certainly seems the direction that BF is going in, that being said the deletion of units is still unusual because they've been there since V1 – so I don't know that I would call this "refocusing" because this "streamlined" direction with vastly simplified force orgs has never been a feature of the game… More of a total reboot than "refocus."

… that and there are still a lot of "hardcore" historical players in FoW… or at least there were… remains to be seen if driving them off completely will be good for business…

Repaint has spoken more wisdom re FOW than that contained in thousands of preceding posts.

Its a brillant piece of marketing designed to exploit a popular period with rules that can actually be played by the average gamer. Flavor replaces simulation mechanics. A fun game is more important than history. For some of us of course a nicely done historical simulation of WWII style combat is "fun" but most "simulations" of WWII have drowned in their own minutia hence opening the market up to FOW style play.

I do fundamentally disagree that you cannot have both a fun game and an adequate simulation. Due to its sequence of play and weird multi-ground scales you can't do this with FOW but it can be done (and has).

FOW has a large player base so its often conform or not play – hence its marketing power. I did have the pleasant experience of running Combat Command at a Con last weekend and finding many players already knew how to play – always hope then to build up an alternative player base.

Thomas J. Thomas
Fame and Glory Games