/fowg/ Flames of War General: That's all Volks

Going by the army lists from the Beasts of War bootcamp, the Leichte Feldhaubitze.

>Leichte Feldhaubitze

lewd...

Nukes are basically a "destroy everything on the table" weapon and really outside the scope of Team Yankee or Flames of War.

Although there was that one joke list from back before there were official Pacific lists.

>Observer Team - 5pts
>B-29 Superfortress with Atomic Bomb - 1495pts

...

>What's the big release this year for you guys?
All this fucking plastic. With PSC's T-55 being way up there. A BRDM kit that's finally not assy, and I think I heard something about plastic hummers and btrs in a future release?

>A BRDM kit that's finally not assy
We're getting plastic BRDMs?

>What's the big release this year for you guys?
Plastic Mid-war british (yes, I also hope for plastic M4A1s from Battlefront, as well as Stuarts).

For the guys who asked about plastic Leos:

>Anyone seen BRDM series vehicles from BF yet ? Keen to get my hands on them.

>M Arvin Sneck Please PSC go for it!

>Timothy Harris It depends on how well the T55 does for us. If so next up will be a Leopard 1 with variants. We're still cautious in regards to moderns.

Resin ones, but they're good. And only need a couple anyhoo.

How'd they compete with skytrex?

Does anyone feel like most of the example camo stuff in TY tends towards the yellowed/sepia tone? I noticed it with the T-72s first that looked almost brown, but the gelboliv and BAOR also seem to follow the pattern.

How the fuck do I get the smoke launchers on the BMP2 turret?

+75 to make any tank into an E8, and with those rules? Try again.

>We're still cautious in regards to moderns.

People are singing their praises over merely announcing that they are making plastic T-55s, and they're saying that they're "still cautious" about making moderns?

That's either caution to the point of stupidity, or they're trying to not reveal too much at once.

I bet it's the latter. They control the buzz train by slowly feeding us information so the forums, fb pages,and tg are always talking about PSC and laughing at Battlefront for being stupid with their plastic releases.

I am sure the Puma (although a really nice kit) and the British recon plastic kits won't begin to touch the number of sales the multioption T-55 and Leo 1 will have.

I still have my fingers crossed for plastic valentines from PSC, so I can laugh at battlefront more for not making one. Their Lee and Crusader look nice, but I need the valentine in my life.

>What's the big release this year for you guys?
Italians getting some love, and a focus on Mid-War. I'm stoked at the prospect of plastic tanks for my Italians.

That's fucking amazing.

>I am sure the Puma (although a really nice kit) and the British recon plastic kits won't begin to touch the number of sales the multioption T-55 and Leo 1 will have.

Yeas, especially the Puma since BF will make it pretty pointless in the Recce-less V4.

How do you mean? Brits look green and black to me.

The green they use seems much lighter than the green I can find in pictures, though.

And yeah, I'm not looking forward to the removal of recce myself, either. Hitting on 7s isn't really a decent replacement for being able to take infantry down to 5+ to hit, which was often one of the only ways you could reliably get pins without a massive concentration of force playing infantry.

Whoops, didn't put in a picture.

That looks dark and olive-y to me, whereas in the books it looks almost muted pastel-y.

HEY YOU GUYS!!

i am gonna drop a straw poll, just to gauge the /fowtg/ community. it's a multi-answer poll (though some answers are obviously contradictory)

just give me your bloody-honest feedback! thanks!

strawpoll.me/12127794

So, for some upcoming NZ tournament, lists have to be 750 points Late War, no top armour two, must have three platoons, only missions are free for all and no retreat.
I think I came up with an idea

Berlin Kampfgruppe
Berlin Kampfgruppe HQ
Heer: 60 points

Volkssturm Platoon with MG08/15: 100 points
Hitlerjugend Platoon: 85 points
Hitlerjugend Platoon

Volkssturm MG Platoon: 65 points
Volkssturm Mortar Platoon: 70 points
Volkssturm Infantry Gun Platoon: 50 points

Bedbug Platoon: 65 points
3x Kleinpanzer Wanze

Luftwaffe Heavy Anti-Aircraft Gun Platoon
2x 8.8cm FlaK36s

Luftwaffe Heavy Anti-Aircraft Gun Platoon
2x 8.8cm FlaK36s

750 points
Nine Platoons.

Have I crossed some kind of line here? Have I gone completely insane?

US bias discount, of course, user.

Almost everyone who plays FoW at my FLGS has TANKS, but I have yet to play a game, nor have I ever seen anyone playing. I am pretty much shelving it until I get more terrain.

I may break it out as a board game, to share the hobby with people who aren't involved with it. It honestly seems a little simple. I am sure the experience gets better when you have a shit load of terrain for your board, but unlike X-Wing, Wings/Sails of Glory the movement isn't really that interesting, you just kind of do it.

You really have a hard-on for sending old men and children to their death, Virus. You will certainly have the biggest number advantage, but what happens if you need to assault an objective in free for all?

Curl up in a ball and cry. Or otherwise aim to kill the bastards by throwing both mobs of Hitlerjugend at them, use the mortars, 88s, Infantry guns, Machine Guns, and bedbugs to just saturate the them in fire. Eventually I'll roll sixes somewhere.

>not going all out on 8.8cm guns...

that new box set they threatened me with should be really good for Berlin.....

Plastic 8,8's is gonna be fab.

>Plastic 8,8

I've been tempted to play TANKS, but it would mean buying a bunch of tanks for a new army since Italians will probably never make an appearance.

Debated jumping in with Brits, or maybe Soviets so I could also use those tanks for my Finns in FoW.

I just bought a few Tanks to use for that game. It's hard to ignore the affordable price point. And I think it would get really fun with a bunch of tanks and terrain as well.

How do we fix Volksarmee?

besides sending Phill to a gulag of course

Increase East German To-Hit score to 4+ adjust prices accordingly, Bastion Missiles for T-55s, option for 23mm gun for their Hinds, and give Hammerhead to the BRDM-2 Missile carriers

I can finally make my Kriegsmarine last ditch defense force for LW.

Maybe we actually play it before declaring it hopelessly broken?

I love this thread to death, but the gloom and doom surrounding our discussion of Volksarmee and 4th Edition makes me wonder if you guys actually enjoy bitching about the game more than you enjoy playing it.

Personally I want to give Volksarmee a try. Maybe not with expensive as fuck resin T-55s, but certainly with PSC's plastics.

And V4 seems to be getting a lot of Team Yankee style changes. I'm honestly looking forward to trying it out. Team Yankee is a smoother, faster playing game. I'd love to see Flame of War play that fast and that smoothly.

yeah, I'm kinda disappointed in some design decisions, but i'm still looking forward to giving the T-72 panzerbattalion a try.

It's a shame they put in "unsanctioned" Japanese lists.

To think, one small oversight and we could've had TFG's bringing that to tournaments in the vain hope of just auto winning against a Japanese list in their first game.

Even though I am still building East Germans, I am disappointed that the East German play style is even spammier than the Soviets. Seems like Battlefront went out of their way to make everything as cheap/bad as possible. The BRDM gets no scout rule. The Spandrel gets no scout or hammerhead/swingfire rule despite it's description saying it only has to expose the top launcher. The T-55 is worse than it needs to be with slow firing and 4+ cross. Any suggestion to the contrary is met with Phil pulling some half-baked explanation out of his ass.

These are all my opinions, user. Personally I think the table is already crowded enough as it is. With the T-55AM and T-72M spam, I'll permanently switch to a larger table than 4'x6'.

I don't enjoy complaining, but the attitude Phil has is frustrating, as is hearing people talking about spamming T-55s. I think there is still some good. The Mechanized and T-72M companies should be fun to play.

I was hoping East Germans would have some units hit on a 4+ with higher point costs to reflect that, but that might be asking too much from battlefront. In that case I would settle for a 2-3 point T-55 that doesn't have slow firing and can cross at 3+ instead of the 1-2 point chaff tank. BRDM's should get scout. Spandrels should have scout or hammerhead. That's pretty much it.

Overall the East Germans should be a little more flexible despite their worse equipment. Improving vehicle stats even if it adds cost would help achieve that. Blobs of 10 slow firing, overloaded T-55AMs aren't particularly going to benefit from a 4+ skill.

TY is a fun fast playing game, but my games are lasting longer than v3 due to the number of things to kill and the morale rules. It's still fun to play, but I think concerns for how things translate to v4 are valid.

If they keep the morale rules, Italians might end up being a bit more resilient and Soviets will definitely be more resilient.

tfw i ordered plastic pumas before V4 spoilers came out

fuck man, now im gonna have a platoon of AT magnets that don't do the job i needed them too.

on the bright(?) side BF still have not processed the orders so... maybe i can cancel?

For sure. They just seem goofy sometimes. Let's say you have a small unit of 2 tiger or King Tiger tanks. One is hit by a fluke artillery shot and bails out. Now you have to test platoon morale, even though neither tank is destroyed. On the other hand a 28 stand strelkovy blob is going to fight until 3 stands remain without any penalties? Seems silly.

I may be getting ahead of myself though. Are we sure what morale is going to look like in v4?

I'm excited for v4, but Volks does just look like a shitty horde army of cannon fodder. I get why people are upset about that.

There's some stuff in v4 I'm still unsure about, but I'm always down for a nice streamlining and the core rules of TY seem quite good.

>strawpoll.me/12127794

I've played it once, with the local "historical" group nearby, which is essentially a sunday school group that uses wargames as a way to get kids to learn how to read and do math.

I found the game overly simplistic and kind of boring. X-Wing, the system it's based off, is excellent because movement is an art in and of itself. Doing the right move at the right time and knowing how to predict your opponent is one of the best parts of the game. In tanks however, movement feels a lot less important, and I found that it honestly just felt more like lining up and shooting, at best trying to make the most of upgrades and building a synergistic list. It wasn't bad, but as a guy who plays 8 different systems, I found it boring and lacking anything that really stood out. Movement pretty much boiled down to "do I move and try to get defense" or "Do I sit still and try to shoot better".

Personally I'll stick to FoW for tank battles, although we'll see if V4 changes that.

Also, what the hell is this I'm hearing about recce not mattering anymore in V4? What the fuck is the point of recon now if it can't remove gone to ground? Looking cool? Goddammit if they make my Luchs (based WWII ones) pointless I'm gonna be pissed.

So MW Hungarians. I want to do them so I can have two armies for each era(Finns and Italians in Early, Italians in Mid, Hungarians and Finns in Late), but I'm having a hard time of MW Hungarians. They have a whole two vehicles available to them that are pure Hungarian, and I'm a stickler for using your country's stuff.

However most of the German made stuff available to them isn't allies, but rather borrowed? Is it like Finns who just use stolen Soviet tanks?

Help me justify it beyond "they're better than the Toldi" because that shit doesn't matter to me.

Pretty much this. Buff the T-55s slightly, but keep the "export model" flavor mostly the same. Increase the morale/training/chance to hit stats but increase the point cost to compensate. This way, you're fielding quite a similar force to the soviets (in both size and composition) but retaining a distinct flavor.

Going the full spam route was just lazy.

As usual it's not "they're broken" so much as "they're a horde of chumps".

Hungarians straight up bought tanks from the Germans because their industry just couldn't keep up if I remember right. You also had the issue that even their most current designs were pretty outdated. Hell, even the dreaded assault pancake had rivets for fucks sake. RIVETS. IN 1944. So, they decided to call up their allies who had all sorts of successful tank designs and just bought those.

That said, the Germans charged the Hungarians out the ass for tanks apparently, given that the Hungarians apparently found it cheaper to just design their own version instead of buying Panthers for example.

This is why you see a lot of German made vehicles with Hungarian markings, especially Panzer IV's, StuG's, Hetzers, and various others. However, in other cases, the vehicles may still have German markings, especially Panthers and Tigers. These were supposedly bought new, but instead of shipping brand new tanks to the Hungarians, German units just sent old busted up tanks instead. This is why if you look up "Hungarian Tiger" you just see one with German markings.

Finally, If you bring a Marder variant and feel like going really obscure with your relevance, you could try converting up a couple of these. This is essentially the Marder idea the Germans had but using a Toldi chassis instead of a Panzer II or 38t. I'm pretty sure there's a Hungarian list or two with access to Marders in MW, but I might be wrong.

You can read a bit about it here. ftr.wot-news.com/2014/06/18/hungarian-marder-the-toldi-pancelvadasz-project/

The relationship the Hungarians had with the Germans is a pretty interesting one, and their use of the Germans equipment (and in some cases forced adoption of it, such as their rifles slowly being converted into Mausers youtube.com/watch?v=FVojDUEmfjs&t=615s ) is pretty fascinating.

and of course the obligatory "I'm not a historian, check your research before you consider me word of law". I'm just a guy going off memory and internet rumors. It's hard to find much info on the Hungarian army in English unfortunately.

Yes, it's because they've gone for more of a "scale effect", i.e. lighter colours, which generally looks better in 15mm, though you can go too far. However, the lack of any darker green shading on their Chieftains and the like means it is a bit too light, especially when directly contrasted with the black/dark grey camo.

If they have not sent you can probably cancel. Out of all the Recce units, Pumas will still be OK compared to most as they have a decent gun, at least on the 234/2 (5cm) and 234/4 (PaK40). So, they will still be useful as light harassment units, much better than the 2cm-armed versions and other armoured cars, etc., but their platoons will break really easily.

If the Eastern Front HG Panzerspah keep their morale re-roll, they'll be the way to go with mixed 234/1 (2cm) and 234/4 (PaK40): two cheap harassment platoons, then build in a ton of support.

Stupid TY morale rules.

It's not so much laziness, as just Phil's biased view of Asiatic no-skill hordes.

The colours just look wrong to me, so I've gone darker than they're typically painted.

>until 3 stands remain without any penalties? Seems silly.
Shh, you can't say Soviets have something nice in this thread.

That's not really accurate. They just did them very similar to Russians, with the gear worse. That lends itself easily to a horde tactic because T-55s in 1985. Unless you really wanted to have the Best Germans as being more skilled than the Soviets, which doesn't really hold up. It's the limits of the game system is all.

The Best Germans should be better than a Soviet Red Army Unit. On par with a Guards or Afgansty Unit. However Battlefront seems to be making it perfectly clear that Soviets cannot into 4+ To-Hit because "Muh Asiatic Hordes"

>What the fuck is the point of recon now if it can't remove gone to ground

All recon will get spearhead, widening your deployment zone. Hopefully recon will retain better ambush prevention... but it makes no difference in TY.

I run a West German list with 8 Luchs (the based Cold War version). It really helps me push my deployment up when I want to. The Luchs are actually really good, as they are cheap and can kill anything that isn't a tank. It even has a dinky AA mg you can shoot at helis in hopes you get lucky. They pretty much guarantee I would never win a tournament though, since Battlefront think the math is too hard to count a 1 point unit of Luchs differently than a 33 point unit of Leo 2's.

desu, in the latest WWPD podcast they only covered shooting and assault, no special or national rules, so I would wait, maybe recce still does it... who knows?

Less focus on horde, more a mid way between Soviets and Americans with options for reserve companies of modernised T-55s.

Welcome to Wehraboo/Ameraboo understanding of Soviet tactics.

Soviets have lots of nice things. Having a huge blob of conscripts that fight until nearly the last man is stupid.

And repeatedly we see things like the BRDM-2 and Spandrel not get rules to help them do their job without getting plastered by fire, because according to Phil soviet recon just drove forward until they were shot at then either retreated or attacked. Recon by force is historically accurate for these units, but in game terms it just leads to the Soviet recon getting pasted.

Same thing with the T-55 getting slow firing and a horrible cross rating. Even if the RoF of a T-55AM was less than a T-72, slow firing puts its rate of fire equal to an unstabilized self propelled artillery gun. Even if the added armor makes the tank heavier, 4+ cross (wheeled armored car cross) is worse than the stillbrew chieftains' (a tank noted for its unreliable engine) 3+ cross.

It's not just the 3+ to hit, the WARPAC gear is made worse for spam, and Soviets don't get certain special rules that similar NATO vehicles get when they would make sense.

so... phil is tragically maul and raped to death by the rare silverfern gorilla on his way to the office and you are put in charge of creating the next warpac nation.

what do you do?

how do you write them into the story?

what units do you give them and how are they costed?

what special rules do you give them?

I say fuck it and add Yugos
youtube.com/watch?v=YEAXIoBPhBQ

>bunker man

oh god im dying here.

Realistically speaking, who else on that side of the Iron Curtain would have been drawn into the fight, and how quickly?

Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, and who else?

We already have the Soviet Union and East Germany.

East Germany, Poland and Czechoslovakia were the big three.

Romania was basically in a state of diplomatic mutiny, the Hungarians were discouraged from rebuilding their army after their revolution, and while Bulgaria was actually one of the USSR's reliable allies they were too small to contribute in a meaningful way.

From what I've heard from people who grew up in Romania during the mid-80's, it supposedly had some of the best relations with the West out of all the formerly communist countries in Eastern Europe.

Well in LW you get stuff like Assault Pancakes, Nimrods and the Turan which are seemingly more distinctly Hunfarian.

It's just the Panzer IV and 38(t) availave in MW I'm having a hard time with. I don't being any German tanks in my Italian lists because I want my Italians to feel distinctly Italian, but then all the German tanks available to them are allies.

Damn it, Bovington!

Do you want Planet of the Apes? Because that's how you get Planet of the Apes!

Well that's the thing, those Panzer IV's and 38t's still have Hungarian crews and will have Hungarian paintschemes/markings.

Don't know if that changes anything for you, but I was cool with it.

I can work with that.

I was just worried the game was pulling a "just use German tanks, German tanks are teh bestest evah!"

Did the original Planet of the Apes ever explain the origin story?

I only know the backstory from the bad early 2000s reboot, and the new "Rise of / Dawn of" series.

Nah, nothing like that, just good old fashioned international arms dealing.

>Plastic 88's
battlefront and PSC ones on the way
yesss!

Is there a way to field a platoon of S35s outside of early war? The only places I see them they have to be mixed with other tanks.

Painted up some T-55s using anons technique from last thread. They look good and it was pretty fast!

>I have finally perfected my speedy T-72-painting method as black undercoat, cam olive green basecoat, black wash, russian uniform drybrush, canvas cover and gunmetal gun.

>gunmetal gun.

You're Zogged Mate. They're pretty much just command tanks for the Looted Panzer Platoon in Atlantik Wall.

Vallejo's gunmetal silver-black thing.

And yeah, that'd be my method! In the end I ended up painting the tracks with some grey-brown mixes and then drybrushing them steel since I'd gotten so much russian uniform on them all from drybrushing anyway, but if you can just leave them black it'd probably be even quicker. My current philosophy on them is that there's 15 of them so I want them done more than anything, but maybe when I come b ack to them.

The Russian Uniform is pretty close to a dust/mud color in my eyes so I just left them. I drybrushed the Vallejo Gunmetal over the tracks and called it good. Thanks for the method, it's nice and speedy.

Czechoslovakia cutting through Austria and making a move for the Low Countries.

Personally I feel Team Yankee is far too positive towards NATO in terms of successes, and kind of undermines the ability of the Warpac as an organisation. They had a lot of their own unique versions of Soviet equipment but suffered from the issue of half of their forces being conscripts.

When you guys sell/trade stuff, do you hit up this thread and give other anons first crack? I'm thinking about downsizing my (WW2) Americans to their humble Free French origins before pursuing additional armies, which means pawning lots of American armour.

The Czechs were aiming for Lyon.

There was some sort of LW Finland & Germans stationed in Finland list, 20 Armee if I'm not mistaken which gets all kinds of weird stuff such as Panzer Is, Anti -tank rifles and S35s in Late War

Also recon dogsleds i believe?

On the official briefing webpage in OP.

e-bay is probably your biggest market, though it costs more. You can always try elsewhere though.

I've sold through other forums like Dakka, but have also used eBay as well as even Facebook swap shops. Never tried flipping stuff on here though.

Honestly ebay is the only "safe" way to ensure you don't screwed while buying, but with selling it's a bit easier to try other methods since obviously the other guy has to poney up the money before you ship.

The S35 in that list are still 1/platoon.

How are the Kleinpanzers?

They look hilarious but I'm not quite certain how useful they'd be

65pts for 9x AT11 attacks is worth it. You're risking only getting to shoot every other round, but the kill you get from the first salvo ought to pay it off.

Dude, i have a small team of Murkans, Slavs, and Britbongs. And, if you wanted to play your own team, it's a max of 3-5 boosters, maybe a starter if you are very serious. that's 30-75 dollars. and i am generous.

games are 100 pts, and a Tiger / IS-85 is 33 pts. 1/3rd a list.

2 IS-2's / JagdPanthers w a lot of cards is a list.

Hungariboo, i agree with a lot of your points, but i am trying to get an unbiased judge of the game as the community responds, so i can't just flat out blare my agreement however, both me and a bud agree movement is overly simple, and that there should be more granularity in how fights work. also, just in case you really, really want to hear a gripe of mine, defense is hamstrung at max 6 dice, where a Super Pershing with Jailbird, Hyper-velocity, and Bloodthirsty Gunner at close range on a side shot gets 10 fucking dice, no drawbacks. the fuck, people?

I don't know how to make the other WARPAC interesting without being inconsistent with Volksarmee. The Poles and Czech are going to somehow have to be even spammier than the East Germans.

I think I would go rogue and develop North Korea. The Type 62 would be their frontline MBT with the T-55 as a supporting option. They will also get the M-1985 (PT-85) amphibious tank with an option to add Sagger missiles to some of the tanks.

For motorized units there would be BTR-60 or BMP-1 options. RPG-7s, Saggers, and Gremlins just like other Warpac forces.

The 122mm SP arty would be top armor 0. I would probably give them some kind of dismounted heavy mortar team. Maybe 120 mm mortars with a transport. They would also have the ZSU-57-2 which will have a gimped range (no radar). They would also have Hughes 500 helicopters with Sagger missiles and hunter killer. Some West German company sold North Korea 87 of the little birds. They would also have Su-7s for ground attack (with dumb bombs that use the small template and require you to be close like cluster munitions).

As far as points I have no clue where to start. The story would be easy. With the US occupied with the Soviets in Europe, the North Koreans see this as their best shot at taking over the south. The Soviets give what support they can in the form of old vehicles and fuel in the hopes of diverting some american resources from Germany.