There's something rotten in the State of ...

Well, Denmark! :)

The local flames of war community has an idea of how the game from NZ should be played, and ask the Global Community for clarification. Friendly Global Community clarifies.

Does it end here?

You can't really trust that the way the games been played for a decade or two has been right, can you?

Then you get supplied a reply to Canadien Local Group who asked this in 2012 by Blake from BF, and is this enough?

So, in order to fix this, the Single Point of Co(mmand)ntact, Phil needs to chip in to satisfy the suspicious Danes.

[quote]
Posted By Phil at Battlefront on 09 Oct 2014 09:44 AM
[quote] 
 Posted By xxxxx on 06 Oct 2014 05:33 AM 
 Well as the topic says. Can they? On page 241 it says "Any German platoon, with a Platoon Command team may attempt a Stormtroopers move in its assault step". Warriors are not platoons and so can't have platoon command teams, but can they do it anyway?[/quote] 
 By the same logic, they can't move either, or be shot at. 
  
 Warriors are platoons in their own right when they haven't joined another platoon, so yes they can make Stormtroopers moves 

 Cheers
[/quote]

The amount of frustration and futile tries to help it took, was nothing than astounding. Also quite a few replied that rule-hunting at this level, is one main reason they don't want to go to tournaments outside their own neighborhood.

Next time, people, just send mail to Phil, and wait for an answer, you'll save a lot of time for everyone, including you.

Kind regards,

Mikko

Fow bloggers of Finland Unite and take over!

We have now 3 active bloggers here, 1 not so active :). Collaboration is good for heart and makes more stuff to any readers we have here. Anyone who wants to put there ideas, minis, AAR's or whatever that is about FOW or similar is welcomed here.

Basically, everyone, you don't need to be Finn to post here.

Kind regards,
Mikko 'Vonrichtofen' Hellemaa

Battlefront Forums - or how I stopped worrying and started to love the trolls.

Got to be ill in the head to enjoy the BF forums nowadays, but if there is a slight chance that it's the forum that the Phil, Wayne and the rest hear best, it's also the way to get your issues to seen.


So, why it's horrible:

Well, first and foremost, the usual suspects:

Geezers

The great old ones, who have a scores to settle from beta version of V1 days. The people who know why and how the game should be played. These guys are usually nice for new players, though. they are little bit like ents, some are nice and friendly, other ones have forgot how to speak to people ;)

The Good

There are quite a few good guys in the forum, you have LES who helps everyone with their lists, and also does community service for BF by letting them know if there are issues in pdfs or books.

There's Wild Bill, who seems to be terribly concerned about not having opponents in future. There's lot of people who are really interested about the history, the painting and all sorts of things on the hobby side.

The Bad

Some guys just have to defend their own, even it means there is nothing to defend. I've seen this in my WOW days, when they finally made everybody the same, after whining enough.

New bloods - Rangers

These I've identified as the die-hard fans, who attack anybody who ask something without buying the books first. Also, if you say anything bad about design, the wolves will be there. Quite often, these guys at least play the game, which they tend to know better than anybody else.

New bloods - The guys who knows everything

The other side of gaming, young folks, who haven't played the game ever, but read from the forums that Panther is useless, and will happily let  everybody know that in Army lists forum, while letting the OP know his idiot while doing it.

As to where I myself fit, is not for me to say, I like the game, but to be honest, if I knew I'm never going to another tournament, I'd  probably move to some other game. But as killed by Trolls, never!

Late War US conspiracy..

The Forums at BF have been quite livid with few quite prominent Fow tournament players sharing their thoughts about US supremacy in FOW Late War. The other side is the usual suspects and quite many disciples I'd guess. I, myself believe in skill at the game, but really don't like the idea of big templates of doom, delivered with pin point accuracy. This will make maneuvering more difficult than it is already and make not moving better choice usually.

The pro-artillery people say that other folks should build their lists versus artillery... So what could be best versus Arty park? Well, unless they nerf it, NGFS with heavy cruiser support should be good. Night attack is very good to have versus those as well, so go British?

Guess a Puma horde might be a plausible option as well, or maybe another US list, with Artillery and 11 platoons? Oh, what fun the tournament would be with only templates? And maybe Allies only. i really think that somebody should do Open tournament book of lists for FOW, in the end, although it being historical game, the nations are nothing but 'races' in a fantasy setting.

Fow is not the first choice for most people, and if new player faces too many 'not-fun' lists when trying it, I don't think it will get a second chance.

As to the omnipotence of US lists, I think it's still, we, the gamers, and our skill, that means more. Still, somebody like Bill Wilcox and Steve from UK should be heard when the competitive game is talked about. These dudes play all the nations, and play them well, not just one.

It was a late, late war, and the weather wasn't too nice either. Of RT King Tigers and Optimized Americans.

With later BF books the Germany's diminishing war machine is in the process of getting the crap kicked out of it in the historical view, at least. Game-wise this might lead into strange phenomenon of more and better equipment for less motivated/experienced troops. Something like 11 RT King Tigers won't be fun to attack with any tank force, nor will it itself attack too well any infantry, but let's say you can add 4 PZIVJ's with riders to it?

American troopers will probably be RV's as well, possibly with CV infantry to make it the best combination ever.  The question here is what the hell will the Soviets do in that scenario?

Even now you have to built for combined force that can dig out infantry, attack forts, has enough rof for tank hordes and comfortably deals with couple of heavy tanks, surviving the NGFS while at it. Gonna be another kind of list that can also face 6+ super heavy tanks on top.

Location Change - Moving is hell... Nothing to do with Fow

Well, now I can safely say I've lived in all kinds of accommodations, barring igloo. We just moved after living in a wooden house built post-war for almost 3 years. The owning a house really opened a new world to a city-dweller. I still think it's the optimal form of living if you don't consider your own time really expensive...

I've done my share of gardening, branch-cutting, mole-hunting, mouse-trapping, cutting down trees and the myriad stuff that the interior of an old house needs to be done in order to keep rolling... I even changed the windows of the thing before we sold it. The last three years were also snowfall records here in Finland...

Selling a house in the economic climate of today is another thing I don't really like, especially a fringe-of-city one, still we managed to get that done, so might be getting more gaming done in the near future.

Our sons have aged from 5-3-  to 7-5-2 years old during the stint to the country-side, and happy to move to apartment in the capital, as they tend to sense the emotions of the parents. Funny enough, now we've got beach less than 500 m from the house, not to mention the public transportation, the shops and social life :) As in the small town we got rumors, cars and petty politics..

It's quite heart-warming when your neighbors are really sad to see you go, never imagined myself as the good neighbor type...

The Forum - Church of the One Truth

I really have problems with the facts people let's us know when talking about tactics or lists in certain forum nowadays, Like, never take short Fj platoon, you could have Grenadiers if you take that... What? Take pioneers, you really need them. What? Oh, you play those silly blue on blues... I think really competitive peoples are on one side, and the loud peoples on the other side.

I'm at a point where I think I'll stop posting, as I used to loathe the blizzard forums cookie-cutter way of talking, the Flames of War is complicated game enough, with lot of Xs on the battle,

• The Terrain - Snow, Night, Mud, all make things happen
• The Opponent - Sure, if you play the same guys with same lists over and over, this is not mod..
• The Time - again, if you have a limit, it might change your thinking about 5+ platoons with 10 teams each?
• The possible case of having to move the forces.
• The Meta - This one is huge. 

Enough of rant, will stay as lurker for the time being, and concentrate on wwpd and few national forums, guess I can share my insights here as well :)

Any decent player....

When posting list ideas to the Forums, you quite often get replies along the lines of :

- Any decent player will just smoke it
- Any decent player will just ignore it and kill the squishy platoons
- Any decent player will destroy that list

And so on, well I sincerely believe that if you play a lot, you get better, and when the people who play a lot, play against other people who play a lot, these perceptions might apply.

However, any decent player hasn't played against every decent lists frequently, and so needs to adapt when they meet something different. If everybody would play the 'Cookie-cutter' builds, there would be even more truth to the matter, still, Murphy's laws do apply here as well:

Fearless - Isn't
5 rolls in DF equals 5 hits
Smoke it: Smoke needs to range-in, need to remember to do it first (even decent players forget stuff)
Ignore it: I'm sure somebody said the same thing about Hitler
Dice are fickle