"Field of Glory 3 Miniature Rules Review for Wargamer.com" Topic

My review of Field of Glory III for the table top (and its not too long, so please read :) ).

link

Ciao, Colonel Bill

Now that was an excellent review. Thank you very much.

I wish I could have had these rules when I played FoG with my San Diego group back in 2009-2011. My Visigoths would have had a chance vs. Mike's Late Imperial Romans. :(

Col. Bill: can I quote you?
"However, if you are now using Field of Glory for your ancient and medieval tournament play, I would strongly, VERY strongly, recommend you take the plunge and grab this newest edition"

But why? Your review tends to downplay the changes. I'm not a tournament gamer, so I only have to fit in with my pals. We don't tend to build "super armies" so have always included average & poor troops.

I can't see the #3 rules as being significant enough to warrant a change (BTW we're #1 rules with some #2 rule changes grafted on).

If I've missed something, could you please spell it out?

It appears that the organisers/umpires of the UK tournament scene for FoG intend to move to v3 from the early part of next year onwards, so if you wish to partake in "tournament play" in the UK, unless you want to organise your own v2 events, adopting v3 will probably be more "mandatory" than "recommended" by the middle of 2018.

Will be interesting to see what happens in France and Germany, where there had been talk on forums of some reluctance to adopt the new version

ochoin,

Obviously each group is different, so while you and your lads may not build ancient panzer divisions, evidently others do.

Overall, however, this thing is kinda like a Napoleonic Grand Battery. All the small changes scattered within the book hither, thither and yon separately many not be significant, but when taken together they could have a much greater impact than the sum of each.

And they seem to be all over the place, so I certainly had no way to collect and speak to them all within my editor's guidelines. Another one is movement allowances for example. In the 2008 edition for Open/Uneven/Rough/Difficult terrain the movement rate for Heavy Foot was 3/2/2/1. Now its 3 or 4*/3/2/2. *When 5 MUs away from the enemy, or 3 MUs away from skirmishers.

Lumped together, my analysis indicated an overall substantial change to game dynamics and results.

Again, these rules really need a change summary sheet, as do other games when upgrading editions. I had some tips about the changes, but I also scoured the book for details and other modifications, and it was not an easy thing.

Ciao, Colonel Bill
ageofeagles.com

One other thing. I have the 2008 edition, so while a move from 2d to 3d may not be quite as bad, from 1st to 3d could be traumatizing. Evidently a lot of folks have stuck to the 2008 edition.

Colonel Bill
wargamer.com

Thanks for the reply, Col. Bill.
I'll need to think about it.

At our club FOGAM is the most widely used set for Ancients and medieval games with about a dozen fairly regular players. Most of them are unaware there is a V3 and nobody I spoke to seems that keen to change.
I followed the changes closely as they were being discussed on the forum and, simply put, if you want a faster, bloodier game this is for you. I am not a tournament player and quite happy to spend 3-4 hours playing a friendly so I will stick with V2.

I'm not a tournament player, but having rules that allow a battle to be completed relatively quickly is an advantage with my busy schedule.

Our group played a lot of FoG 1 & 2, but then moved on first to ADLG and recently yo Mortem et Gloriam (MeG). We all seem to like MeG better than we ever liked FoG, but I might be tempted to give FoG 3 a try . Were it not for the need to buy 13 new army book at +/- $15 USD a throw. That's sufficient disincentive to leave well enough alone.

Very nice review, Col. Bill. It was helpful.

The army books have been reduced down to 3. Most lists are being reworked as the points changed for superior and elite troops.

For a once popular rules set there is very little discussion of V3 in the old FoG forum, or anyplace else that I am aware of.

I think they should have limited themselves to one book of the main lists, and put the rest up as free PDFs. I doubt if they are going to make much money on the lists.

I agree with Hans. In my group, we mostly play historical scenarios with multiple people playing on each side. FoG v2 is great for us. No need to buy another set of rules, and especially no need to buy three more army list books. Never bought ADLG or MeG either. Also, I usually buy rules because I get interested in the them from reading posts about games using the rules. I haven't seen much discussion about FoG v3. The only rule set that has caught my attention outside of FoG v2 is Triumph.