"What broke FOW 4.0?" Topic

I don't really play Flames of War, but it's not because I dislike it or anything- it's just that I have so many other games I play. I do play Team Yankee when I get the time, and enjoy it. I have played a few demos of FOW, and enjoyed them, but not enough to steal me away from the other games I play.

I often see people say that 4.0 broke FOW or that they really prefer 3. I also hear that there are far less local games in their area being run and have personally seen less FOW played at shows.As someone who doesn't know the nuances, can you tell me specifically why 4.0 is seen so widely as inferior to 3.0? Or at least for you?

If you simply hate FOW and want to chime in with ‘FOW sucks in all versions' then this thread isn't for you. I'm trying to understand the issues that have driven away fans of the game.

And another question- if a 5.0 fixed these issues, would you see yourself returning to FOW as a player? Or is it too late and you've simply moved on?

I thank you for your responses.

Interesting. I don't play FOW, but it has now been around for what – 10+ years? Nearly 15? Despite the extensive offering of infantry and vehicles, the 'oooo, shiny' factor is starting to wear off and I think people get tired of spending money on rules rewrites that don't actually improve the game. While some rules rewrites fix errors or typos in previous editions, or smooth play in some areas, rules changes that don't improve game play are eventually viewed by players as the company just trying to 'take more of my money,' Especially nowadays when rules cost $50 USD and up, plus having to buy all the supplements PLUS the figures in order to play. I've also seen companies/authors ruin rules by trying to change or otherwise 'improve' established systems.

Not to mention, but rules sets only last so long before people start drifting to other sets. Even in just the last 15 or 20 years, I can't tell you how many sets of rules were the 'rules to end all rules' that a few years later (sometimes less) were cast aside for the latest and greatest. It's part of the hobby. ASL is about the only hard-core wargame I've seen truly last, and even it is considered a niche market with limited print runs on the sets.

Just my thoughts as I read your post – can't give you specifics on FOW in particular.

4.0 didn't break anything. The fact is all games hit a point at which they become less popular and the audience moves on to the new thing. That's what's happening to FOW.

Thanks for your thoughtful response, Sundance. However it's not the type of response I'm looking for. I want to know from players of FOW 3- the fans who really enjoyed 3 but stopped playing at 4 what about the change specifically made them stop playing.

As a fellow non-player, I can speculate, and agree with your premise in general- but I want to know specifics from the players themselves.

Is it as Neli states that they simply got tired of it, or were their concrete changes that drove fans away?

I didn't want to reinvest in all the books plus I really didn't want to invest in the cards. Most of the players had just gone through a 2-3 year period of massive collecting. There was a ton of releases including codexes (oops, I mean books) right before they announced they were going to re-release the game in a new rules version and format.

Cards are evil. Turned it into a collectible card game where I would need (ok, want) to know what was out there and possible.

I still have everything and will play if someone hosts a game. V3 or V4.

The biggest turn offs for me were :

1) Removing a lot of units from the game , I paid for those vehicles , guns and figures , so would still like to use them .

2) List building , when the rules author says its OK to have Panthers in North Africa (that's in the LFTF iirc),that's a BIG put off . Also allowing any mix of units from different books in one list .

I couldn't be bothered to get into yet another version; V3 seemed okay as it was.

Cards are evil. Turned it into a collectible card game

The funny thing is, the company name, Battlefront, came from a set of WW2 rules by Rich Hasenauer, which featured data cards for each type of stand/unit (and a picture of the appropriate Battlefront miniature). So they've gone and re-invented the wheel.

link

Plus, the new plastic figures and models remind me of playing WW2 with Airfix figures and Roco minitanks when I was a kid, so they really have gone retro.

A lot of players were already dropping away in version 3.5 with all the inaccuracies and play balance issues. Ver 4 just put a stake in it with the dumbing downing down of the history and the requirement to buy every rule book and army list again, plus the new cards. And it was even more imbalanced, allowing multiple companies of tanks so you could field something like 75 Stuart tanks vs a poor infantry company.

Version 4.0, as far as I can tell, seemed to want to address 3 issues. (1) Make the rule book shorter and (2) make the games shorter for tournaments. (3) Make it consistent with Team Yankee.

One thing I noticed is that they simply cut out a lot of explanatory verbiage. Now in 4.0 I find lots more gray area, so go back to 3.0 anyway. So the rule book is smaller, but not actually better.

The morale rules have been hugely weakened so armies fight "to almost the last man" rather than at 50% as in V3. I don't know why they didn't just get rid of them all together and go with "if you're down to one unit, it runs away" and save the die roll and counting.

In the end I still play (my variant) but I have not moved to 4.0. I like 3 and I don't play tournaments. I have played a few games of Team Yankee, but they play SO fast they are like the old joke about Chinese food: you play a game and 30 minutes later you're hungry again. Just last week I played TY. We played two games in 3 hours at 100 points. Silly fun, but not very satisfying.

A note on the cards: Back when it was still 2.0 I made cards myself, having been inspired by Battlefront rules. I even uploaded a bunch to the FoW forums and made them available as a download. Even had permission to use FoW's artwork:

link

But after experimenting, I found the cards were a pain and in the end I went with a QRS/roster combo where the stats you need for each phase are on the actual QRS:

link

I've played FoW since version 1, and enjoyed it's strengths and weaknesses. But V.4. made so many changes it's virtually a new game, and it's become even more gamey….

I've played multiple games of V.4., but I just can't get into it. I'm sticking to V.3.

If you want a Team Yankee game, I'm there. While it may be FOW v4.0, it's fine, I have new toys and a new game that entertains me. I'm not relearning anything or changing anything since it started fresh. I played tons of FOW V3, but I've done about 4 games of V4 and can't get motivated to play any more of it. Yeah, it's largely the same game but I don't like it.

Why? Already mentioned above are most of the reasons. Seemed like they wanted a quicker game and so they took out a lot of the chrome and made it more consistent. 80% of the little exceptions are gone (but not all!) On paper I thought it was a good idea. In practice I miss the rules I spent years applying, and they didn't zap all of them so it's hit or miss what rules to use. Those rules are still there on the cards, though, see below. I find it frustrating rather than smoother.

I have a whole shelf of the V3 army books, which are now obsolete. I bought one v4 book and I regret it, didn't have the units I thought it would and many figures I bought are not not in the game. Not buying more, too bad. Got hold of a few pdfs of the new books, and I find it silly, they just changed the points and cut some figures and it's the same stuff, and the rules for the units are not even complete in the books. See cards.

Cards. Neat idea to speed play and a quick reference, but it turns out they put a lot of the rules for each unit on the card and not in the army books, so you need cards and books. Also, now you buy special rules cards for a few points. These are the odd rules they took out of the rule book. They are not in the rule book, so see them you have to buy the cards. Plus it's harder for me to reference with a bunch of cards instead of a page or two in the rule book, especially if I don't have your card set. So the game didn't really change, it just got screwed with and you have to buy stuff. I know that's the business model but I'm not interested in it and in the end it's just clunky.

Morale rules. Everyone fights to the last man. Might as well not bother with them and it feels very wrong.

Figures. Many units which they are not going to bother making in plastic are not going to be in the game anymore. I have many of them, I want to use them, so why play a game that zaps some of my figures?

Overall, when I play V4 it's okay, but I find it annoying that the rules sort of changed, the cards are important and you need to buy them, and the army books are different but didn't need to be. So I can't get motivated to do it any more.

@Extra Crispy

Next month V2 TY is out , it will be brought fully in line with the V4 FOW rules .

Oh no! Now TY will be hosed too!

From a strictly mathematics and economics view, if one has bought the same rules 3 times, would you want to do it again for a 4th time?

Seems to me logic would dictate against that in many/most cases.

I was sorta sticking my toe in the water--buying and basing troops as I found them cheap--when I realized that I wasn't just going to be out for rules and army books, but for theater books--and that I could never get it altogether right, because I wanted to do French in the Levant and the Maghreb, and I couldn't get all the necessary rules and books in the same edition. So I didn't give up on the project, but I gave up on FOW. Can't say for sure that was between V3 and V4, though. Could have been one of the earlier transitions. Franchise rules seem prone to that sort of thing.

I've played v.2-4. 4e made changes that I by and large feel improved play. The numbers of tournament players have been slowly declining for years as have the number of tournaments. Natural erosion as others have noted. One does NOT need to buy every book and set of cards. It is flawed still, what rules aren't? But it has easily outlasted all other comers like Bolt Action and Chain of Command in our region.

V4 didn't break FOW as much as it broke players of V3's wallets by introducing a new set of books and cards for them to buy. While they're not forced to buy anything V4, they felt left out because they're no longer playing the "latest and greatest" version.

And then there's the relearning required and new army lists that force gamers to restructure their existing armies. Planned obsolescence is never popular, whether we're talking about 40K or FOW. So "greed" and corporations' continuous need to make big profits are what broke our favorite games. It's a never ending cycle.

Looking back at the several posts found on the FOW message board (early 2017 period) covering this very subject… worth a look back in the message board to see the "advancement of V4" and the failure to expand their player base back to former size (V3 days). I note the V4 European GT was cancelled too recently.

I found my old post copied below. Still rings true with me and a great group of V3 players still active out here in So Calif. Played a great set of "Raid missions" on three different tables yesterday, including using the Desert fort model on one table. The nearby outnumbered V4 players just wondered about the great terrain, the miniatures and the group size of seven players using V3 rules…… actually version 3.2 as we have house rules.

***********
V3 for the rabbit. Played FOW since 2004

V4 as mentioned above is gone too far to ease the game play.

The current released lists are questionable at best, and a poor relation to the available pile of lists in V3. Will take years to cover the basic theaters of war releasing a "list or region" once a quarter. I would have retained the lists of V4 with all the teams/platoons unchanged and configured the V4 rules to them.

Points is a joke for two thirds of the game (EW/LW).

The FAQ file is growing larger, and larger, with basic ruling everyday.

Weird rules….. rifles taking out bunkers, moving snipers, planes cannot hit or cause damage, artillery wipes out dug in teams…. how WWII unit survived those heavy bombardments and still fought???, tanks hull machine guns rear firing… flamethrowers work best in defensive fire but cannot hit enemy teams dug in, how large is bombardment template with 4 rocket launchers, with 6?….there are dozens and dozen more to list…the simplified rules keep giving pause to this V4.

Infantry movements…. out running tanks. 16". 18". 20"….funny to see and read AAR reports of V4 games posted to the internet. Jeep movements, if I heard or read correct, cross the table on road in one move? Blitz move and fire…. with that heavy cannon. Games scenario over before defenders reserves arrive on the tabletop due to the speed of the units.

As for cards…. I made my own to identify the components of a platoon, basic stats etc. Not needed for play unless a new player needs the help. Also makes process for pickup easy with a photo of the actual models making up the platoon to return to storage box… which has the same photo in zonal storage compartments. But to use cards to enlarge the unit or platoon availability…. that is just cheap when the lists should have covered the same, in the released books. Now cards to cause "events" in scenarios…. maybe. But TO's will ban.

Tournaments will grow smaller after V3 events die out in coming year. Only V4 will be promoted….the stores cannot promote the older V3 and BF will only cover V4 events. So all the players staying with V3 just stay home…. with their smaller club games.

New V4 players, if they can see the older V3 games, will feel jealous of the larger established V3 collections and scenic boards. Will they convert to V3?… hard without some of the dropped teams in platoons painted and availability of books / MRB in future.

In short time… BF will no longer support V3 questions on their forums. No rule questions answered by staff. It will come down to house rules… a sort of V3.1. The game will, in time, play differently in different regions. Any form of National event would become history for V3.

The big problem…. the V3 vs. V4 schism in the active FOW player ranks, in the established clubs, in the small groups, at the gaming store.

Good luck BF. Hope all have their games, in V3 and V4, locally, regional and national. But history tells of a similar time… in the ancients gaming world. Now, ancients is so scattered under different rules the ability to game locally is questionable and small scale at best. Rarely does ancients have regional events. National event possible.. as the smaller number of players using that rule set collect to make a mass of gamers at national level. But for regional…. iffy. Will the same happen to FOW as now there are two versions of FOW?

All the other new WWII rules sets former FOW players are looking into. If one or two key members in a group change out…. the group or gaming cell dies away. Seen it happen within my own gaming group, sure to happen in others.

Next month V2 TY is out , it will be brought fully in line with the V4 FOW rules

I thought it's not due until sometime in 2020, starting with the British (with Challenger 1 MBT's) and moving on to GW1 with M1A1's and Apaches?

Last FoW game I played was with the V1 rules. They still seem to work OK if you play on a big table.

From a strictly mathematics and economics view, if one has bought the same rules 3 times, would you want to do it again for a 4th time?

I hear you, but people do it all the time. I know guys who've been playing Warhammer since 2nd edition, and bought them all. Ditto most GW products. There's a thread today on "Blitzkrieg Commander v4." Most of the Lardy games are in 2nd or 3rd editions and still popular. Black Powder is in its 2nd edition. Napoleon's Battles went to 4 editions, each one a little less popular than the one before it. I lost count of the versions of "Empire." Six, I think?

Just saying: gamers don't seem put off by the notion.

Since ASL was mentioned and rules creep too. ASL has had just one "new" edition since it was released in 1985 and even that version is just a clean up of some rules issues. The idea that you have to have a new version of the rules every so often is a crock of…

FoW might still be "the" game somehwere but every store I've gone to that used to sell miniatures for the game either do not do so any longer OR the inventory is much reduced to sell BA miniatures. I don't really care much for either FoW or BA so no dog in that fight.

There used to be four hobby shops where I could get a FoW game any Saturday. Now there is one and they play a myriad of other games. V4 essentially took the hard core players and overnight obsoleted all their armies. I had 60 different boxes of FoW
Covering from Poland 1939 to Bulge 1944 and everything in between. And whamo one day its all obsolete. Sure you could redo your lists archive some stuff buy new stuff to fill in the gaps. Which is just what THEY wanted. Fugget Bout It! To a man every one I knew ditched FoW. Some play other WWII rules. Most have moved to ADLG. FoW doesn't even run tournaments at many cons anymore. Yup THEY killed it. And their former fans are so fed up I don't think THEY could do anything to save it.

Cheers!

Just found out my local shop has given up on it. It was the only historical miniatures game they stocked troops for, and had a decent selection. Now they're selling off what they have, but no restocks or orders of any sort. I couldn't even buy dice through them on a special order. That appears to be a thoroughly burned bridge.

Garth, you say "gamers" aren't put off. I think perhaps "some gamers" aren't put off? Or "not all gamers are put off?" Because it looks as though a number of us have hit our limit.

Garth, you say "gamers" aren't put off. I think perhaps "some gamers" aren't put off? Or "not all gamers are put off?" Because it looks as though a number of us have hit our limit.

On all games or just on FOW? What I see is: if it's a game they like, people have no problem with the publisher doing a 2nd or 3rd or whatever edition. If it's a game they don't play any more or don't like, then it's outrageous that the publisher is doing yet another edition.

It certainly seems like the huge majority of games go into multiple editions. If gamers have really reached their limits on that, then the publishers wouldn't keep doing it.

This year on the southern USA convention circuit. No independent games. No games at all at three shows. Different rules at several. Only 1 FOW tournament. A serious drop over last year. Team Yankee, no games and sales were limited though several guys said they played it at home.

I have played one game of V4. The rules are OK, although morale is broken -- big platoons fight to the death.

The issue for me is the new lists and books and points.
- the existing 3 feet of books I own have been invalidated.
- when I buy a book, I also need to buy cards to get options that could have been printed in the books on a couple of extra pages.
- the points are broken -- light tanks are cheaper than infantry. A tank horde of 50+ tanks is a possible list
- the lists are broken -- they have no flavour.
- they have dropped support for vehicles I already own from battlefront

I have a ton of WWII. And V3 still works and is fun.

What could battlefront do to fix this:
- publish a few large volumes for each period with the new points, including lists and rules that represent specific formations. There should be nothing on cards that isnt in the books. In effect, republish the old compilations with new points. E.g., republish a revised version of North Africa with the commonwealth lists etc. While at it include a historical scenario or two.
- Fix the morale rules. And artillery killing dug in troops.

I note the V4 European GT was cancelled too recently.

Yes with just over a week to go ,as only 7 tickets had been sold

I thought it's not due until sometime in 2020, starting with the British (with Challenger 1 MBT's) and moving on to GW1 with M1A1's and Apaches ?

It was meant to be out last month , maybe it got moved to Dec as they think everyone will have the Christmas spirit and won't moan ? This is out in Dec also .

I quite liked FOW 1-3 (tho I felt 3 was a little silly) and I never bought a huge set of books for any edition…Afrika/North Africa, and Blitzkrieg and Hellfire and Back iirc. but when 4th rolled out nobody in the area seemed interestd in getting all their books again, so there didnt seem much point in getting it myself.

My ww2 stuff has sat unused ever since.

I think the other FOW players in the group are playing Battlegroup Kursk or something. Tried it myself once but didn't fancy it.

I bought most of the V4 books but I haven't played it, and don't know anyone in my area who does. It looks like they reduced the unit points costs for the math-challenged gamers. V4 just feels like a shell of its former self, IMO, with the allowable formations gutted down to the bare minimum. They apparently thought that they were doing a smart thing with V4, but it seems to have seriously back-fired on them.

I've seen FOW V4 played quite a lot at local tournaments and pick-up games by a local FB FOW club in SoCal. Most of the players transitioned from V3.

Not as much TY, 'Nam, FOAN or Great War being played though.

I've only started playing FoW but from talking to people, it's the fact v4 seems to have gone further into the "let's imitate Games Workshop" realm by removing units they don't have current models for (despite, you know, those models being available elsewhere and not exactly the sort of thing you can have a monopoly on) and sort of throwing historical accuracy to the wind in favor of a streamlined set of rules for competitive tournaments where you don't care what was available, just that the rules let you take it. The moment I saw someone post a list that was like 30 Puma armored cars because "it was most efficient" I threw up a little in my mouth. I must have missed the day my History class talked about how the Germans overwhelmed the Russians with Pumas…

Now I also heard v3 was bad with this, so I can't say if v4 "broke" it or not, but that's my impression.

-Wayne

V3 needed fixing. Special rules and the number of army books got out of control. V4 has reigned all that in. The majority of game mechanics are the same. Cards are brilliant. Morale is a bit different but you get used to it. There are a bunch of butt hurt v3 players out there which I can understand because I was a butt hurt v1 player who has had to endure three upgrades now. But I'm still playing. V4 started in early 2017 and gamers are still whinging at the end of 2019? Really?

You said it WB.

I gave up on it over a decade ago. My Italians got more expensive in points in some areas and nothing improved. Having ditched GW products not too long before that, I could see this was headed in the same direction. My stuff FOW went up for sale in 2007 and I didn't regret it.

It was fun, but not sustainable. I got to play a demo of version 4 and it was clearly different, but not better. I suppose if one wanted to hang on to their collection long enough, Battle Front will create yet another edition and maybe that will suit some people.

Having been through numerous editions of Warhammer and 40k before ditching that in 2005, this is a predictable situation. At least with historical figures, they can easily be used for some other rules. Finding another rule set for those of you with existing collections would be advisable.

FoWs demise is sad because 15mm is a great WWII scale and I have tons of it lying around still. I actually came up with my own rules to play with them and get some ROI on my investment and painting time. Some people have also switched to Spearhead or some of the other rules available which I'm not going to list here as they have been covered in many prior TMP threads.

Although a "What Rules Do You Use Now Instead Of FoW" might be an interesting topic for TMP.

You should try some new rules! WWII in 15mm is too great a scale and period to let your minis collect dust! Cheers!

V4 started in early 2017 and gamers are still whinging at the end of 2019 ?

If you look on BF's FB group its V4 players moaning , not bitter and twisted old V3 players .

What I think is interesting though, and again I am enjoying v4 but never played FoW before, there doesn't seem to be that many 15mm WW2 games in the same scale as FoW. Most of the others in the same "domain" as FoW seem to be built for individually based models but obviously allow using multiple based models like in FoW for cross-compatibility, but there doesn't seem to be a real equivalent game to FoW without the GW-Lite approach.

-Wayne

I don't get this whole "my models are now obsolete" thing. Can someone please explain how a 15mm tank for a WWII game gets obsolete because of rule changes in one ruleset. You still have the 15mm tank and a choice of either older editions of the game or other games that use 15mm tanks.

I saw the same thing when GW ditched Warhammer Fantasy. I bet a lot of them wished they had kept their miniatures and switched to Kings of War or whatever.

Wayniac my Combat Action Command (CAC) rules were designed to use my massive collection of FoW minis based as is. They are much more "intense" than FoW so do not resemble anything GW ish My Website has a free pdf download CAC LITE (link on site Home Page) so you can check them out without spending any money. You can use FoW Briefings and Lists from ANY version. One of the fun things we used to do was play a scenario from FoW twice, once using FoW v3 rules and once using VAC rules. Amazingly different gaming experience. Try LITE and see if you like it. Enjoy!

actionsrules.com

I played V3 – owning the majority, if not all of the books – and never transferred to V4. My local group had no interest in learning a new game, spending new money, when we had a perfectly working version on hand. From what I learned of V4, that decision was not unsound. I certainly spend less money with Battlefront since V4.

I came to FOW just as V2 was going to V3 – got my free rules that time and again with V4 so don't know where the angst about having to 'buy' new rules is coming from…

I come to wargaming from the history perspective not the competition perspective so did not have a large overhead of arcane nifty special rules down pat for V3, so lost nothing there. At our club – Wollongong Wargamers, SE Australia, we regularly play V4, probably more often than TY, myabe cos we have a Firestorm Kursk Campaign on the go. One particular FOW veteran and keen competitor has no real problems with V4 either. I find it slightly quicker and love using the cards.

Just my personal experience!

Suspect the main culprit is player burnout, as noted above. I'm not a fan of v4 by any stretch, but I had moved on prior to the release.

28mm Fanatik. That picture you posted is of 1/72 scale tanks. I doubt they are playing FOW. If ur gunna meme choose the right picture.

28mm Fanatik. That picture you posted is of 1/72 scale tanks. I doubt they are playing FOW. If ur gunna meme choose the right picture.

I wish I can take credit for creating that meme. I googled it years ago and thought it was funny but true.

As for 1/72, I'm sure there are heretics among us who play FOW in that scale. Heck, there are people who play it in "my" scale: link

I play FOW V3 in 1/72 or 20mm… Heretic reporting in. :-))

And also with a group of 15mm player too. As for the V4 dicussion. We all stayed with V3 and house rules… Currently on V3.2

6mm Facebook group. Also, one for Team Yankee.

I fell away with the switch over to plastic miniatures as much as the rules dumbing down. I could somewhat justify the expense if I was getting metal. Now, I might as well just collect old Roco tanks.

To answer the question:

Battlefront, the play test groups, and especially the Author!

Have no fear though as a morale check suggests that Version 5 will be released in 2021!