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> Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 11:49 PM, Bill Brush <bbrush@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 9:55 PM, Indy <indy.kochte@gmail.com> wrote:
Yes, this is true, even amongst those with more open minds to things. Just the
ones with more open minds are willing to look at the change, not write it off
wholesale without giving it any consideration.
> >>
Well, granted, the guys who do FoW came from the GW pastures, but I think
they've done a good job at creating a historical game that plays well
w/out
getting mired down in the complexities that many other historical games
embrace. There are many books, but not as many as you might think. Yes, they
have a "codex" of sorts, but you need an army book for the army(ies) you want
to field. You need to know what goes into them. They broke the war up into
three phases and balanced things accordingly (insomuch as you can
point-balance to begin with). In this current edition (2nd; there has
only been this one update to the rules, and it really makes them play better)
there are only two "codexes" for the mid-war (1942-1943) period - one to
cover all the armies in North Africa and Italy, and the other to cover the
forces that battled on the East Front. When they introduced Late War, they
made ONE "codex" with everyone's army force in it from Jan 1944 through Aug
1944, except for the specialized Allied paras. They got their own book. And
all books after this have been *theme* focused, not so "codex"-y. I.e.,
you are not at all required to purchase every theme book that comes out. You
don't play paras? Don't buy the para book! Very simple. :-)
If you total up all the books, yes, there are a fair few, but I think you do
the game an injustice and a disservice to do a direct compare to GW/40K.
Yes, there are aspects of GW/40K in the game, but it is *not* GW/40K
WWII style. And yes, there are still some problems with the rules (no
overwatch or reaction fire, HMG teams for some reason can't move and shoot at
a reduced rate of fire, unlike everyone else), but I think the strengths (fast
play, reasonable results) outweigh the drawbacks for a WWII game.
Oh, and yes, there are special rules for each army. Yeah, that's
40K-ish,
BUT, I think it gives each army its own flavor, allows it to "do" certain
things that other armies may not or did not do. But, YMMV on this. But many
games do have "special rules" for their various forces/armies, even if
they
don't *say* so specifically. For example, look at the NAC and FSE - the
NAC
don't use salvo missiles, for example, and the FSE don't use p-torps -
this is kinda a special rule in FT. Yes, it's not a restrictive special rule,
but more of an unspoken one amongst the players of FT. And yes, there will be
exceptions, but for the *most* part, players won't put p-torps on FSE
ships, and salvo missiles on NAC.
Anyway, I'd not write it off so quickly. You liked FT. It's a good,
fast-playing starship combat game that doesn't get bogged down in a tome
of rules and ruleslawyering that, say, SFB does. I liked SFB quite a bit
before I found FT. I would still like to play the occasional SFB game, but the
ruleslawyers daunt me and I just can't pick it back up again. :-/ So I
stick to FT, and use my SFB ships in that system. :-)
> >I have heard many people cry
I've found FoW to be a refreshing game system for historicals on a number of
levels. First, it plays fast and well. It gives you the opportunity to field
reasonable forces that faced each other (you can do the one-off with
non-historical forces if you'd like, but I prefer not to and restrict
90% of
my FoW games to historical match-ups). You can do specific scenarios
that happened in history with historical forces. Hey, I don't see the problem
with FoW here! :-)
As far as the people who cry 'cheese', I've seen it in FT, as well, as have
you. If you can put filters on, ignore them, or heck don't even play with
them, but find the good people to play with, you can play any game that
"cheese!" is cried in. With few exceptions to game systems, ofttimes I found
the cheese-criers do so out of ignorance of how to deal with a
particular thing or situation, not out of any genuine "cheese" exploited in
the rules.
So, I'd personally say *try* FoW at some point before writing it off
wholesale. You *might* be surprised. Or you may decide you were right,
depending on the attitude you take to the game. <shrug> Again, YMMV, but you
should at leave give a game system a fair shake before chucking it away.
Mk
Indy wrote on 07/29/2008 05:55:19 AM:
***HUGE snippage***
> I've found FoW to be a refreshing game system for historicals on a
> them, but find the good people to play with, you can play any game
> thing or situation, not out of any genuine "cheese" exploited in the
First, the appropriate warning: I'm not a FoW player, and I don't even play
one on TV. I probably won't ever play, either.
There was a rather large FoW occurrence at the store over the weekend; opposed
amphibious landing against cliff face backed beach...
As there were a few anomalies, such as the presence of King Tigers, it was
referred as Cedar Rapids Beach.
I did notice a bit of rolling of eyes at that one, and I don't recall
paratroopers showing up to directly support the landings as historical either,
but I have to say the eye rolling seemed good natured, and a good time was had
by all. The game players DID include some GW fanboys, but several I've never
seen playing 40K or Fantasy.
IF I ever did play, it'd be with 2nd Ed Axis and Allies Miniatures, but that
would take folks with an open mind set, and there ARE a few around.
On a personal note: Bill, if you ever took offense at something I said, I
apologize. I can imagine calling 'cheese' to the designs you described, and
have been concerned by a few folks trying to milk every ounce of benefit out
of small quirks in the rules, but never thought that of you, and any comments
of 'fromage' would have been an attempt at what I referred to above as 'good
natured' teasing on a very reasonable design strategy.
If you ever wish to try out your ships again, I still have 'em. Let me know
when and where. While I've blocked out Wednesday nights at the store as
'Fleet' night, for A&A War at Sea, Full Thrust, SFB/Fed Commander,
what-have-you, I'll bring your ships wherever, if I can so schedule,
with matching SSD's for the ESU.
You'll have to come up with your own for the Narn... ;->=
The_Beast
> On Tue, Jul 29, 2008 at 9:15 AM, Doug Evans <devans@nebraska.edu> wrote:
> On a personal note: Bill, if you ever took offense at something I
No apology necessary Doug, it wasn't you. I can't even really be said to be
offended by the reaction, as I said it was pretty much inevitable and
expected.
Regardless, the statute of limitations on being annoyed by something that
happened over a game has long since run out, and I've moved on. As I said in
another thread, life is too short.
Bill
> On Tue, Jul 29, 2008 at 5:55 AM, Indy <indy.kochte@gmail.com> wrote:
This is off topic, but at least it's miniatures... but _how_
ahistorical is FoW? My 9 year old wants to play a WW2 miniatures game. I've
been looking for rules, focusing on tactical games because at his age it's
easier for him to think of a tank shooting another tank rather than a tank
platoon shooting another tank platoon. Yet the game we play the most is
abstract and he doesn't have a problem with that, so I'm obviously worrying
about something I don't need to worry about.
I keep hearing FoW come up, which might be a next logical step. We'd be
playing in 6mm, not 15mm.
I'm interested in a game that's fast paced but not too terribly ahistorical.
As a point of reference, we both enjoy playing Memoir '44. We have the entire
set of supplements. (In fact, I started out being easy on him, but now if I'm
easy on him I can't win! The last game we played I wasn't ruthless, but I
wasn't easy on him either and he still won.)
It doesn't concern me if the game is too terribly popular. If there are
miniatures gamers, other than GW (and those are few and far between) where we
live we haven't found any. It will just be the two of us, and maybe a friend
and his son from work.
> On Tue, Jul 29, 2008 at 5:55 AM, Indy <indy.kochte@gmail.com> wrote:
> So, I'd personally say *try* FoW at some point before writing it off
I'm sure it's a fine game. If it wasn't it wouldn't be doing as well as it is.
I don't think it is going to be the one that lures me out
of my semi-retirement from tabletop gaming for reasons that have
nothing to do with whether or not it is a good historical system.
All game related items aside it has almost no attraction to me because
of the cost (significant when you're a single-income, married father
of two [yes it is possible even in this day and age]); the time investment
required (many hours to paint, and more hours to actually arrange to the
game); and finally the scale (I prefer a smaller scale for armor battles since
it at least creates the potential for maneuver).
It is an unfortunate truth that minis just don't work for me as a hobby right
now. Maybe some day that will change.
Bill
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> Tue, Jul 29, 2008 at 10:15 AM, Doug Evans <devans@nebraska.edu> wrote:
> Indy wrote on 07/29/2008 05:55:19 AM:
Fair 'nuff! (you sure you don't play one on tv? I could have swore I saw last
week an
episode of... ;-)
> There was a rather large FoW occurrence at the store over the weekend;
Guess it's their group. My group is gearing up for doing a D-Day thing
in two weeks. I'm playing my Ranger list for the beach landing (dropping all
support that was not present at Pont du Hoc) in the morning, then playing a
German force (still trying to figure which one) in the bocages in the
afternoon. I'll not be fielding KTs, or even Tigers. I might squeeze in a
trio of panzers for my opponent to blow up, though. :-)
> IF I ever did play, it'd be with 2nd Ed Axis and Allies Miniatures,
And most of the guys i play with would have very little issue with that. In
fact, when one guy started playing with us, all he had were 20mm vehicles.
That was....3 years ago now? He's since purchased his whole army in 15mm. And
not everyone who has the 15mm vehicles gets the BF brand. A handful use other
manufacturers. I'm in the Tuffley Universe on this: play the game, use
the minis you want. :-)
Mk
> On Tue, Jul 29, 2008 at 10:52 AM, Bill Brush <bbrush@gmail.com> wrote:
One of these days I'm going to have to finish my SG2 board game conversion.
The only outlay in cost is coloured card stock that you print some (black and
white) counters onto.
If you can afford a little bit of money (in the $40 to $70 range) there are a
couple of games out there with plastic miniatures that don't need painting. I
play Memoir '44 with my 9 year old; that's a lot of fun, and it has miniatures
(not painted, but it doesn't detract from the game). I hear good things about
Tide of Iron, but that's more
expensive (though, checking on eBay, not _that_ much more
expensive...)
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Tue, Jul 29, 2008 at 11:48 AM, Allan Goodall <agoodall@hyperbear.com>wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 29, 2008 at 5:55 AM, Indy <indy.kochte@gmail.com> wrote:
Welllllll, it allows for you to do US vs Soviet matchups if you really want. I
personally don't. You can tailor your forces to be historical matches with
relative ease. I tend to find the battles we play to give fairly good results.
We choose a time period, a theater, a battle or section of a battle, and then
choose a mission that best fits that battle and have at it. Many of the
missions I think would be easily translatable to SG:AC when
that's been more fleshed out. :-) I'm looking forward to putting a NAC
or UNSC force on the table facing down a surly ESU or FSE company.
> My 9 year old wants to play a WW2 miniatures game.
Probably. :-) FoW does units fire at platoons type of combat resolve.
Thus you could have a platoon of four tanks facing a couple of AT guns and a
few tanks. You could designate X number of tanks from your platoon to engage
the AT guns while the rest fire at the tanks. Which unit in a platoon gets hit
is somewhat at the discretion of the defending player, given some rules
guidelines for this.
The one thing you, Allan, will probably like to ultimately have is
overwatch. I know that some groups have house-ruled overwatch into their
games. My group hasn't, and has been happy with how it all plays out
currently.
> I keep hearing FoW come up, which might be a next logical step. We'd
Actually, I have recently started considering adding that scale to my
repetoire as well. :-) Going through my random assortment of 6mm WWII
vehicles the other day, I'm not THAT far off for replicating some of the
armies I currently have in FoW, and can easily now field a Soviet Tankovya
battalion if I'd like (I have seven Sov armored vehicles in FoW
currently -
three of them are "captured" T-34s for my 10.PzD)
> I'm interested in a game that's fast paced but not too terribly
A friend of mine was at Historicon this past weekend (actually a lot of my
gaming group was; I was one of the few who didn't go). He mentioned this:
"I also played a WWII skirmish game which was a lot of fun, with a simple set
of rules, and another popular WWII 15mm game with a more complex set of rules
than FoW. Funny thing is, the complexity did very little to change the outcome
of the battle. Lots of order chits cluttering up the table and cross
referencing charts to get the same results as if it had been done FoW style,
except it took about 2x as long. While it was enjoyable, I'm with Les on
sticking w/FoW for 15mm WWII."
> It doesn't concern me if the game is too terribly popular. If there
While BF would *like* you to use their minis, they are *not* saying you *have*
to use their minis. They recognize that this imposes an unhealthy restriction
on the gaming population that a large subgroup would rail against. They do
ask, though, that if any photos of games are posted to their forum, that the
majority of the minis be BF minis (well, it *is* their
forum, after all ;-) ). Otherwise, you can play with whatever minis
you'd
like. :-)
Mk
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> Tue, Jul 29, 2008 at 11:52 AM, Bill Brush <bbrush@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 29, 2008 at 5:55 AM, Indy <indy.kochte@gmail.com> wrote:
Another upside to FoW - it *is* doing two other things I forgot to
mention:
1) pulling GW/40K players away from "40K is the only game there is"
mentality, and 2) expanding for many potential players an avenue of getting
into historical
gaming w/out dealing with daunting levels of charts, calculations, etc
etc. I know there are other WWII game systems that have dispensed with
numerous charts, etc, but they haven't gotten the spotlight that FoW grabbed.
> I don't think it is going to be the one that lures me out
Fair 'nuff. :-)
> All game related items aside it has almost no attraction to me because
I understand and can't help you on most of these, but scale, heck, just
change the scale! :-) As I mentioned in my reply to Allan, I'm
considering starting a few FoW armies in 6mm and I think I can get a couple of
the guys in my group to go along with it.
> It is an unfortunate truth that minis just don't work for me as a
When your kids get older, they can afford them for you. :-)
Mk