"Flames of War - worth getting?" Topic

Why is there this attitude that FoW suffers from lots of ahistorical matchups ? (more than any other game). At my new club, I saw a game of FoW going on and arranged a game for the next week, my Strelk vs a combined Brit and American force. We had fun, we got on. No probs. Yes it was ahistorical, but then so are many Ancients games (Romans vs Vikings, Huns vs Crusaders etc) and no one makes an issue of them.

You can play FoW using historical scenarios and it will play about as good as any fast play system. Its not a great system but its not that bad either. It is an enjoyable game.

Many of the comments of detractors are concerning rules taken out of context because they dont have much (if any) experience playing the game. Lack of opportunity fire for example. One point where I think FoW is better than some other games is how tough it is to dislodge dug in infantry. In most other games it is too easy IMO. Yet they are easily wiped out when caught moving in the open. One point I dont like about FoW is on-board artillery, but that is easily fixed by simply allowing the arty to remain offboard (as in the "Across the Volga" rule in the Stalingrad book)

If someone is not using tactics (or you dont need them to beat your opponent) then thats a player problem not a game problem.

Whats the problem with rolling lots of dice? It evens out the extreme results (you are less likely to get the min or max result). When you are rolling 1d10 for example, you have a 1 in 10 chance of getting the minimum or maximum result.

As far as needing tons of miniatures, I needed more to play Battlefront:WWII (by fire and fury, a fine game).

I dont really read the historical background in FoW (since I read WWII history from other sources), but isnt it better to have new players join into WWII gaming without having to study history first? Maybe playing the game will encourage them to start studying WWII history, especially if steered in the right direction rather than being ridiculed….

Most of the TO&Es are pretty accurate. I remember researching the compositions of various units for another game, its nice to have the information readily available.

But the biggest difference between FoW and other WWII games is that you can actually find a group to play FoW with.

We only play historical matchups, because all of us (well all but one)have at least one axis and one allied army. THe exception is tournaments, but in that case there is no practical way to avoid it.

There is absolutely no requirement to play a non-historical matchup in FoW, no more than in any other rules system for miniatures. We just do it anyway, as 'what-if' scenarios, etc and to simplify tourneys and, mainly, so that people can actually use their figures. Yup, that's right – many people only have a single painted army. And even if they have a couple, WW2 armies tend to be very time specific and so one persons '42 panzers can really play against '45 soviet tank armies, etc. So the fact that it is a miniatures game forces non-historical matchups, just like every other 15mm company level WW2 game.

So there is no point in talking about non-historical FoW like it's something unique to FoW as opposed to any other historical miniatures game. Why bother?

Kolja

There is absolutely no requirement to play a non-historical matchup in FoW, any more than in any other rules system for miniatures. We just do it anyway, as 'what-if' scenarios, etc and to simplify tourneys and, mainly, so that people can actually use their figures. Yup, that's right – many people only have a single painted army. And even if they have a couple, WW2 armies tend to be very time specific and so one persons '42 panzers can't really play against '45 soviet tank armies, etc. So the fact that it is a miniatures game forces non-historical matchups, just like every other 15mm company level WW2 game.

So there is no point in talking about non-historical FoW like it's something unique to FoW as opposed to any other historical miniatures game. Why bother?

Kolja

…why bother to say "a T-34 could easily kill an M10 in FoW"? Surely it can do that in any rules set?

It's true that you can play non-historical with any rules set (I've said that before). I think the problem is the Fow tournament-directed approach seems to positively encourage it.

So the fact that it is a miniatures game forces non-historical matchups, just like every other 15mm company level WW2 game.

You don't have to do non-historical matchups if you don't want to. With any set of rules. No one can force you to do it. Just say no, or go out a get yourself an opposing force for use in emergencies.

But as Geoff says the FoW marketing machine seems to actively encourage it and FoW players seem to indulge in it a lot more than the players of any other WWII system I've ever come across.

In the past decade I've seen many different WWII rules being played at the South East Scotland Wargames Club. Off the top of my head I can remember PBI 2, Nuts, Battlefront WWII, Spearhead, WRG, Battlegroup Panzergrenadier, IABSM, Command Decision, Axis and Allies Miniatures and Blitzkreig Commander all being played. Interestingly I am not aware of anyone ever playing FoW.

In all this time I've never seen anyone fight a blue on blue WWII game. Neither can I remember any jarring clashes such as 1940 on one side vs 1945 on the other.

Even the competition gamers seem to be able to avoid going blue on blue.

Of course this perversion is not confined to FoW gamers and Ancients tournament gamers continue to refight such historical events the Aztec invasion of Japan at regular intervals.

I know didly squat about these rules but all this heat and smoke is intriguing me.

I would like to praise Polecat's contribution above for a cool, reasoned look at some aspects of the game. Could someone point me in the direction of a dispassionate, independent review of the whole system along these lines?

I'd like to know what all the fuss is about?

"..So the fact that it is a miniatures game forces non-historical matchups, just like every other 15mm company level WW2 game…"

I find it very hard to follow this line of reasoning.

I think Derek has summed up what I was going to say rather well, however I've been playing WW2 minis games for over 30 years, and I have never, ever played the type of non-historical matchups you see in FOW games. I might have played games which were badly researched, or with stuff which was badly assembled or badly painted, or even have made mistakes (Stug IIIg in the desert, woops) but the idea of putting up a 1940 force against a 1945 one, or even worse, troops from the same side, is so utterly bizarre that it would never enter my head to do it.

"any jarring clashes such as 1940 on one side vs 1945 on the other"

This is not possible with FOW… and I have nothing against what if scenario as one of my favorite game is World in Flames.

<q This is not possible with FOW

But battles between troops from the same side, even the same army, are rather common are they not?

"But battles between troops from the same side, even the same army, are rather common are they not?"

That depends on the players, not the rules. There's nothing to prevent you from fighting battles between allies with FOW. Just like there's nothing preventing anyone from doing that with any other set of rules.

This hardly started with FOW, it's been going on for years.

I blame the rise of tournaments, and the whole tournament mindset. Since you don't know ahead of time who your opponent will be, you run the risk of non tradational opponents fighting each other. Now, the whole tournament mindset has filtered down to casual gaming at the local game stores.

In my experience this was never common in WWII gaming until FoW showed up and based their marketing model around tournaments.

Before taht in aften happened in Ancients but not in WWII.

Again, it's not the rules, it's the tournament enrironment.

Once the WWII genre began to see widespread tournament use this was bound to happen. I don't think it matters what rules are used.

Unless tournament organizers disallow non historical opponents this will happen, of course, doing this makes scheduling opponents a nightmare.

Personally I'd rather just play a casual game amongst friends.

While the rise in tournys is probably contributing to not-so-historical matchups between opponents. I think the bigger reason is the large amount of people that the game is drawing into WW2 gamming in general. Lots of these people, including me, have only been playing a few years and have yet to collect multiple armies for different years and theaters.

So if you show up to the club or game night at the local store with your 1943 soviets and all the german players are already well into a game and there is just an american player left waiting. Will you decide to go home, watch the other games, or just have a fun not-so-historical match?

Some may very well Prefer not to play that night and that is their business. but many have come for a game, and not a wasted trip.

I like the FOW system in general and the 15mm scale and the models it sells. I just feel that they have a "very, very" tight stranglehold on thier customers. More power to their corporate asperations, but i have stopped buying them.

At first i felt they were great, no research necessary, neatly packaged figs ready to paint, no thought necessary. Now i've discovered, by thier own admission, the rules were written to sell the models. OK. Now they definantaly seem to be in the rulebook business as well. I began to feel gouged, unless i only bought the occasional rulebook (and not the five a year which they are pumping out, which is entirely possible). But the rulebooks are full of errors that affect play, and they are hot and cold about errata.
Don't even try to have a discussion on their message boards.

I've moved to BKC for my WWII fix. I've yet to play a game, but i'm painting furiously at the moment.

Well, I started out in the 40k world (hold the rotten tomatoes, folks), but I enjoy playing Flames of War. The challenge with any historical system is how the players deal with non-historical opponents.

I can grab the FoW (or the 40k, or the Warmachine/Hordes), drive down to the FLGS, and play a pickup game. With the different books (like North Africa, Ostfront, or Festung Europa), as long as the force I picked out is from the same book as the force my opponent picked out, the result will be pretty well balanced (in terms of effectiveness/points). It's when you cross books in the new set that you're in trouble, and get really weird results. Until I bought the FE book, I wasn't going to play against anyone picking an army out of it with my Italians (who have VERY variable unit quality. Some platoons may be absolutely outstanding, and their next-door neighbors may be unable to pour urine out of a boot with instructions written on the heel). Yes, the balance changed that much (tanks became much cheaper in FE, while infantry didn't change much).

Some of the Battlefront TO&Es seem to be more based on what was actually available, instead of what the KSTN (or other historical paperwork) says is supposed to be there (there's a distinct lack of SdKfz251/17 flak-tracks in the PanzerGrenadier companies, for example, that is evidently historically accurate, but is contrary to what the KSTN says should be there), but I haven't done enough research to say for sure. That's my just something I've noticed in current project, but I'm sure that there's another bit of fun working my direction, what with using the FoW ruleset for Weird War 2 forces.

Mock one of my choices for playing FoW over any other system all you like, but the number of people playing does matter to me. While I'm working on having 2, naturally opposing, forces in every game I play, it's nice to be able to show up for a pickup game and just *play* without having to pre-arrange an opponent or army (or both). I'd rather meet new people than continue to play the same guys over and over again.

From:

link

"The official records first list the /17 in October 1944. 11 are available on the eastern front. In November there are 15."

So given the timeframe of FE (January-August 44), I wouldn't expect to see the SdKfz 251/17 until a later supplement. But if I wanted to use it, I would just use the stats for the SdKfz 10/5 and suck up the lack of armor.

Allen

"…and suck up the lack of armor."

Disregard: that's what the "upgrade to armoured half-tracks" option is for! By not specifying the vehicles in the *armored* light antiaircraft platoon, BF allows for some of the earlier variants.

Allen

Well,

In September, I helped organize and run a local FoW tournament. We choose to when possible match allies vs. Axis. I have heard this is a nightmare. We just put everyone's name in a two hats. One axis, one ally. We had 7 axis, 5 allies. So each round of the tournament, 1 person had to play nonhistorical.

We threw in another curve and had only winners play other winners. If there was an odd number of winners, then the person with the next highest points played the winner.

This lessened the chance for an easy draw for one person over another.

We also had a different sportsmanship scoring than BF uses and we did painting and history scores different as well.

We do not like the hidden tournament scoring of ones opponents and thought that this encouraged poor sportsmanship and the purposeful tanking of other peoples scores.

So we had the painting and history scores done by independent judges not knowing which force belonged to which player.

Then for sportsmanship we had open scoring immediately at the end of the game. Either 1-3-5. A score of 1 or 5 had to be approved by a judge. So no tanking your opponent with a low score just to give you a better chance to win.

In the end we only had two of 18 games in the tournament non historic. The winner of the tournament won all of his games and 2nd had two wins and a draw, while third had two wins and a loss. Overall winner was best general, 2nd in painting/history and 4th in sportsmanship.

So contray to normal tournaments we did our best to make it fun, open, Axis vs. Allies, Winner vs. Winner. It worked out and we hope to have another tournament over Christmas and possibly another Qualifier but held by our club instead of the LGS sometime in the spring.

Not very many of us have moved full blown into LW, yet. I probably will never buy a LW force. I will merely use my MW troops and get more of them.

FoW is a quick, fast and very playable table top WWII game that has a large enough player base that you can generally find it being played in your area. Other rules systems are just not available in every area.

BF is a business first and foremost and must make money to survive and continue to bring us good models and books. I myself am looking forward to EW the most.

I just finished putting together 20 BMW/Sidecar combinations for my EW/MW Aufklarungs and I bought 5 pz 38T's to add to my EW/MW panzer company and as support to my pzgrens and aufk's.

Every company is in the business of making money. The BF format has followed closely the GW format. I personally do not like the fact that some members of the FoW community are doing everything in their power to make the game into a Tournament only type of system. I will fight this and continue to fight this as long as I still play.

FoW is good enough to be used in lots of different ways. Tournament play is the most restrictive and least fun way to play the game.

Chris

I think one of the problems with claiming that 'x' or 'y' seems far more prevalent with FOW is that until FOW came along you could barely go to more than one club and find anyone playing the same rule set, if any WWII at all in some cases. That is not the case now and I dare say that if 'Tin Pot Nobody Plays Me' (TPNPS) rules ever achieved such a degree of market penetration these abuses (in a game involving toy soldiers!) would surface just as much.

Empgamer wrote:

I dare say that if 'Tin Pot Nobody Plays Me' (TPNPS) rules ever achieved such a degree of market penetration these abuses (in a game involving toy soldiers!) would surface just as much.

I disagree. I think the phenomenon has got a lot to do with the decisions taken to actively market FoW as a competition game.

As far as I'm aware no other producer of WWII rules, TPNPS or otherwise, has ever gone down that particular road.

Dougal said

'Now i've discovered, by thier own admission, the rules were written to sell the models'

That is interesting when did they say that? I presume you are referring to the decision to place artillery units on the table top?

Believe it or not Battlefront isn't actually a Corporation. They are a private company run by a dozen or so Kiwis in Auckland. AFAIK they have not needed to go public in order to grow, which means they have no shareholders and hence no CEO forcing bad decisions on them in order to turn a quartely profit.

The constant comparison between Battlefront and GW is valid given the similar marketing model BF have adopted. However the driving force behind BF is not to 'make money for shareholders' as is the case for GW. Phil is a very passionate wargamer and I honestly beleive he is simply trying to make the best game he can. If he makes a whole packet of money on the way then good on him, we only have ourselves to blame for buying their products :)

Remember you don't need to buy any BF miniatures to play FoW, even at 'official' BF tournaments. You also don't NEED to buy any more than the rulebook + 1 book per army. If you had an old book then the material to update them is available free as a download.

In my opinion BF behave in a totally different manner to an 'evil empire'. I have yet to see any reason why they do not deserve my money.

Cheers,

Ben

@JungleRhino

I found the following from this link
link
Phil at Battlefront wrote:
"Which brings me te Battlefront and Flames Of War! The guys in Battlefront save Warhammer Panzer Battles and asked me to write them a game to help them sell their cool miniatures. Dallas had already bought a bunch of their neat 15mm stuff (I had 20mm plastics!) and had been nagging me for a year to write a game for them, so what could I do but accept!

Three years later Flames Of War is what you see and I'm still working on it!"
Pretty cut and dry to me. (spelling mistakes are his, i make enough of my own)

"Believe it or not Battlefront isn't actually a Corporation."
Oh, I believe it. I believe I mention "corporate aspirations" in my post. Which I believe they have.

PS
Check out the link before to long, before it gets sanitized BF style.

Interesting, did you notice the post by Matt?

"Today I run Battlefront. I run it the way I know best, which to a large degree is GW influenced, not remarkable given I spent many happy years working in the UK with GW. I look at the efforts our design team puts into making the hobby (specifically the WW2 hobby) accessible to new gamers today and I'm really pleased with the results. We still need to get better and smarter, Flames of War and Battlefront certainly are not perfect, but its pretty good for a young company making its first efforts. It's nice to see other companies playing catch-up and GW raising the bar.

GW comparisons make me laugh & make me cry. What is marketing? One definition is to make it easy and desirable for people to buy your product. Hmmm, not rocket science, surely thats a smart thing for a business to do? I take consolation from the fact that as we make FoW more accessible, easier to buy and get into, we will get more and more people expressing their GW 'marketing paranoia' little realizing that the successful 'marketing' they are concerned with is the very thing that enabled them to find FoW in the first place. Marketing schmarketing. Wargaming is fun & its easy if you have help readily available and willingly given.

Anyway, I'm rambling. Enjoy your posts, enjoy FoW, your painting & enjoy whatever other gaming you do. Remember, always give us feedback. We need it! But trust us to be rational human beings and expect us to occasionally have views that differ from yours."

Indeed you are correct, Battlefront asked Phil to write them a ruleset in order to sell with their miniatures (ie. GW shop style marketing). Though it makes perfect business sense really, and I'm not sure why this is considered a bad thing? I mean what is the actual problem with marrying a ruleset and a miniatures company?

The only negative experience I've had so far with Battlefront has been their neglect to publish any corrections for FE. Regarding sanitisation of their message boards I cannot really comment as I have never had any of my posts 'sanitised'. But then again I have seen some extremely rude and confrontational threads closed (undestandably). Actually I tell a lie, a thread I posted in did get deleted once but that was in the off topic portion of the forums. I was drunk at the time I posted and was admittedly being extremely insensitive – so totally understandable :)

Interesting how you can change a sentence with the word "with".

@Dugal wrote:

"Phil at Battlefront wrote:
"Which brings me te Battlefront and Flames Of War! The guys in Battlefront save Warhammer Panzer Battles and asked me to write them a game to help them sell their cool miniatures."

I think you'll find that the intent of that paragraph was not to explain how they found a way to force more people to part with their hard earned cash. The intent is to say that Battlefront were aware that they didn't have a "full package" without having a set of rules to support their very successful line of models.

Having said that I'm sure that some decisions (having artillery on table for example) were dictated somewhat by the desire to have more cool models, but I don't think it's an evil plot to have us part with more cash.

I have played FOW and CD TOB andhave found both fun to play. Fow games that that I have played that have a historical basis and forces have about the same results as history and I have enjoyed this type of play.

Competition games on the other hand are not my cup of tea and having played a few find them realy tiring. So to each their own.

If you are in the US go to a convention and test several rules out.

Absolutely. Any set of rules popular enough to be adopted as a tournament set will inevitably see ahistorical contests as the heats progress unless players are directed as to what forces will consist of at certain levels. That's not in my view a 'fault' of the rules or the designers or indeed the players. Not my cup of tea either but as I enjoy play I will go to the tourneys. The other benefit as has been pointed out many times is the numbers of players you can find to game locally with popular rules.

Main problem for me is that at times people can be very narrow minded and seem unable to accept that people who play something other than their pet TPNPM set of rules (people other than the other 6 who play those rules world wide) they need to be riducled. Simple fact is if TPNPM ever achieved such popularity the tournament play would inevitably lead to ahistorical match ups with those too, little that can be REALISTICALLY done to prevent it. But of course, some of those people also moan because THEY aren't playing a game with toy soldiers, THEY are real generals and commanders who do all that historical strategy and tactics stuff. They're dead good they are :-)

LOL

Any ruleset that brings in new blood to the hobby is a good thing.

Have to agree with VT, and indeed with many of the less rabid posters. FoW is a fun game and currently seems to be the main game around. As one of the few WW2 gamers in our club I was pleasantly surprised to see the non WW2 crowd suddenly pushing panzers around, and though it is not my WW2 rules of choice, it has been a while since I could casually turn up at the club with an army and get a game.

Yes the marketing is worrying – min spend of £40.00 GBP on rules and a single army book before you think about the actual models, but then again, very few games are cheap today
Ken

Still havn't played the rules, but now have a copy of Ostfront – the 'codex' for the mid-war Eastern Front. I'm impressed. Comprehensive listings for Germans, Finns, Italians, Hungarians, Rumanians and Soviets. That's six nations, or a fiver apiece.

And it's nicely put together, fairly easy to use and comes with a painting guide at the back.

So, it's pricey, but for £30.00 GBP it'll get used a lot. I mean, £30.00 GBP is only six cinema tickets, and it'll keep me occupied for more than 12 hours I expect.

BTW – love the fact Italians and Rumanians get random morale. That just appeals to me.

Incidentally – first off, if you're worried about blue-on-blue just make sure someone has an Italian or Rumanian army as these can historically fight either side.

And what's wrong with tankers' bailing out and getitng back in again. I've read many crews decided to do their dmaage assessment from the nearest ditch, which seems eminently sensible to me. After all, if you've been totally caught with your pants down, chances are the second shell will be on its way whilst you're still trying to find the target.

A group of us play FOW once or twice a month. No tournaments, historical OB's generally and we have an enjoyable evening of fun gaming. The game plays quickly and overall the rules yield, for us, a good time. Yes there are some issues (notably no opportunity fire and tank assaults can get a bit wierd) but in our experience, all rules have some warts to go with things they do well.

The store we patronize seems to have done well with FOW and they do seem to have converted a number of the younger gamers from 40K/WHFB/War Machine stuff to historicals, which bodes well for the future. All in all it is just a rules set but one which has done better than most in bringing the successful elements of the GW style model into historical gaming and for that, I give BF kudos.

why is it that there seems to be a band of gamers of a certain age that don't like anything glossy and possibly making a decent profit? Martin at Peter Pig makes rules that accompany his figures yet doesn't get slagged off, is this because, no slight intended, they appear to be amateurish and on the cheaper end of presentation, the moment they went semi glossy and with what I'd call a realistic pricetag they get criticized too? This hobby does appear to penalize anyone thats successful and doesn't fit with the "got to buy rules,figures etc for a tenner" approach.
FOW has been great for me, and retailers, I can now go up and down the country and game something other than 40k which was the previous stable.

nelly114 wrote:

why is it that there seems to be a band of gamers of a certain age that don't like anything glossy and possibly making a decent profit?

There is possibly an element of that somewhere out there, but I don't think that's where most of the FoW criticism comes from.

There are people like me who are quite happy about wargames companies making a profit (it's what they're there for after all) and who will gladly pay the going rate for well produced set of rules but who don't like the FoW rules for a whole range of other reasons. Then there's things about their marketing model that are open to criticism.

FOW has been great for me, and retailers, I can now go up and down the country and game something other than 40k which was the previous stable.

I would suggest that the ubiquity of FoW comes at a heavy price – dumbed down rules and World War II as a cartoon. You might as well play 40K (which I do on occasion).

It doesn't have to be like that.

Martin at Peter Pig makes rules that accompany his figures yet doesn't get slagged off

Oh yes they do. :-)

Took a big slagging when he brought out the new version of PBI II. Particularly from crusty old gits who felt that version 1 was quite good enough thank you.

Sounds familiar.

Yeah, I'm actually a HUGE fan of PBI II because some of my regular gaming partners won't play other games for a variety of reasons. Add that to how quick it is to set up and play (meaning more games, more chances for me to lose ;-)), and I am happy with them.

So I was a little surprised that some of the people whose opinions I trust were like "what rubbish". But I guess it's all about perspective. I didn't like OO from the first time I played it, but some people think it's the best ruleset ever.

But yeah, PBI II took some kicking.

Don.

OO?

Operation Overlord. We rushed out to snag the box set when it first came out, and I don't know why, but I hated the ruleset. It's not really all that bad, but after our first game, I was done with it.

Been considering trying it again, just because. I've got a gaming partner that thought it was the coolest game ever, and would love the chance to play it again. He's got the Kursk and Airborne add-ons, might be worth trying one of them.

Don.

"…they appear to be amateurish and on the cheaper end of presentation, the moment they went semi glossy and with what I'd call a realistic pricetag they get criticized too?"

I have not criticized PBI II publicly. I will simply say that I will accept a degree of typos and misspellings in a product that could have been run off a mimeograph machine (younger viewers will need to visit a library to understand the reference).

When you go "glossy" and charge a commensurate price, you need to employ a competent proofreader, or expect your customers to feel ripped off.

Allen

…you need to employ a competent proofreader, or expect your customers to feel ripped off

From Chris' comments, it sounds as though BF are using proof-readers, but not properly implementing the amendments that are returned. However technical errors are something else and down to the original writers (not, as someone tried to imply, down to the printers making changes!)

Geoff

Geoff,

Some of my corrections can be quite esoteric and merely semantics to some. Yet, I try to make sure that what I am proofreading makes sense and whenever possible use the least confusing wording so rules lawyers and power gamers will not abuse it as much.

I found that BF over the last six months have just been coming in under the wire in the last seconds on most of their publications. So I am sure that last second changes and corrections were probably the biggest culprits rather than lack of proofreading.

Hopefully, we will do better in the future. I am still a volunteer for BF, but never know if or when I will be seeing work from them as I am not in the loop for time frames.

Chris

I think that we, as an industry, are a lot less forgiving than we used to be. I believe that we're right to be less forgiving, as I have told owners of other print-based hobby businesses (RPG games), this is not rocket science, I write (well… for a few more weeks anyway) for a magazine that goes out virtually error-free every two weeks.

But go pull out one of your early 90s Wargame manuals. It may feel like an old friend, but it's an old friend that doesn't quite speak the same language as you and is full of holes. Before 90s vintage are generally worse. If we were to judge the industry by how far it has come, we would definitely say "things are going just fine, just fine."

That's why you don't see me complaining about simple typos and such unless they're endemic. The industry overall is improving at a pretty good rate, if I can read and understand, I'll bite my tongue about the typos.

With all of that said, Allen you mentioned PBI problems to me, but I don't see so many errors in PBI II – maybe I should re-read it? We use it a lot, and only the reversed table jumps out at me as a glaring error (not an error, an inconvenience. The table works, you just have to forget that all the other tables in the book do it differently).

Don.

PBI II (v1) was riddled with sloppy writing and ambiguities.
For the first few months it was out it seemed that no two groups were playing it the same way. Then we had the "Thoughts of Chairman Fred" on the RFCM Yahoo group, which cleared things up a bit.

I've not actually played or read PBI II (v2) yet, though I bought it as soon as it came out, so I don't know what it's like. It's hard to imagine it could be even half as bad as v1.

But I don't really get upset at Martin and co for this for a number of reasons. All the RFCM rules I've ever bought have been like this to some extent so I know waht to expect, their rules don't cost a huge amount of money, they're usually great fun to play and they've always got some really interesting ideas and innovative mechanisms in them.

FoW fails completely on the last two points, their rules and supplements are not cheap and the rules are not even slightly innovative.

I agree with Allen, at FoW prices I expect to see well written, playtested and properly proofread rules as well as a goodly amount of eye candy.

I'm used to the traditional RFCM rules, and accept them as amateur efforts (finish-wise) in the 90s (or earlier!) style you mention, Don.

But I'll pull it down off the bookshelf where it has sat since the first "Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh!!!" day of disappointment, and let's see…

No, I can't. There are just two many simple typos, spelling errors, and misusages, starting with "WW2" on the cover. Many of the errors are with foreign words and designations, e.g. "Katushka", "Hannomag", "Henshel", "Boher", "Soluthurn", "Falschimjaeger", "Panzerschrecke", "Stug", "Brumbar", "Stuka zu Fus", "Geweer". I'll stop now…

Are these important? Consider that half the punters are likely to be unfamiliar with the correct spelling. If you don't get it right for them, how well will they do searching for references or pictures?

When a gaming publication costs $37, it should not contain simple spelling, punctuation, and other errors which can be easily checked. For foreign words, it's simple: check with someone who is familiar with them. Find someone who knows that General "Slim" was not a nickname. Use capital letters where they ought to be used, and don't use them where they ought not. Learn the rules for using apostrophes correctly. Be consistent with designators, at least; preferably, write them the way the users did. RPG1? No. RPG 1? No. RPG-1? Yes.

Use a typesetter or layout person who can spot glitches in the submitted text. Don't include extra spaces in lines if you don't justify the paragraph. The layout person should also be able to spot things like "The M36 was an up gunned M10 in may ways." He should also be able to identify inconsistencies: "Panzerschreck" or "Panzerscrecke"?

Finally, after having subject-matter experts cast their eyes on the details, and after having an editor check the basics, and after having the typesetter check while laying out the product, it's time for a neutral set of eyes to look over the final layout and spot all these things that crept through. They WILL creep through. You check, and check, and check again.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh!!!

Allen

That is how professionals do it in the publishing business. Unfortunately, most of the gaming companies think Spell Check and an off the shelf publishing program is enough to get them by.

BF could do themselves a huge favor by actually hiring a professional Editor to have the final say on every one of their publications.

Chris

" I'll stop now…"

Yes Allen, please do stop as it is becoming painful for me. ;)

Both sides of the debate have their valid points. Most of the folks here backed up their opinion with some kind of reasoning. I cannot take a one sentence comment without any explanation seriously. In my opinion, that may be more of a knee jerk reaction than a carefully thought out one. HINT: If you want to be taken seriously, explain your opinion. A one sentence comment with no reasoning does not contribute to the discussion.

Is FOW the ultimate rules set for WW2? No. Some would swear by CD, Rapid Fire, OO or Spearhead as being the rules set of choice.

Does FOW deliver a relatively quick game with a WW2 flavor? I think so. Could it be tweaked to make some cool improvements on mechanics? Sure. I enjoy playing it and I am curious about CD4 (Oh I mean CD:TOB). There can be no denying that FOW has helped WW2 miniatures gaming. Credit must be given where it is due.

Typos and other oopsies: It happens. We are all human and make mistakes (unless there is someone in TMP land who can claim perfection). However, I do not appreciate multiple typos and glaring inaccuracies that have to be fixed after I pay thirty, forty or fifty dollars (US) for a publication. That makes me feel like I have bought an inferior product.

Regards,

Marc