Flames of War: IT'S SHIT! SHIIIIIIIT!!! edition

Basically all Transports are gone. So that's not an exclusively British thing.

there better be a rule where motorized units get to shoot way the fuck up the table on turn one, or something. at least give them a sort of rapid deploy, you know....
something that at least says "hey, we drove here"

>Eagles, m8. Get some hills.

I need to attempt to build some.

Although terrain making is not my strong suit...

Hey anons, can you tell me about this game? All that I know is that it's set in WWII and it's about tanks, correct?

WW2 Combined Arms. Artillery, Airpower, Infantry, Recon and Tanks combined.

Sometimes touted as WW2: The Movie: The Game. Covers all of the major powers and almost all of the minor powers. Almost every major battle is represented now, and lists range from "Games Workshop Grade pick your own force" to "This is the exact company that held this sector at this exact time."

Huh, interesting. How easy and cheap/expensive is it to get into and are there any starter sets? I'm currently building a 40k army, but I've always had a love for historical stuff.

Scrotumbogglingly cheaper than 40k. If you're wanting to start, grab a V3 mini rulebook soon so that you can grab a free V4 rulebook on the eleventh.

If you want to get started pretty quickly find a chum and buy the Open Fire boxset if you can find one still. Split up the Germans and the Allied forces between you. If it's just you, get Patton's Eagles if you're inclined to playing Americans, or Rommel's Wolves if you're a filthy Wehraboo.
If you want to play Soviets or British don't buy either of the starter boxes instead spend the money productively and use it to blat yourself in the face with.

I'm nowhere near finished with my 40k stuff right now, so I can't see me buying them soon, but I'll keep this in mind. A shame the Open Fire boxes aren't available anymore, that sounds like something I'd buy myself anyways, get a feel for the starting sides, y'know what I mean?

Do you know if there'll be any new box like that anytime soon?

And what's so bad about the British and Soviet army boxes? They seem decent enough, though without knowing the rules I can't say myself.

From what I like merely aesthetically, US or Germany is what I want. Mostly Panthers versus Shermans, since both are wonderful looking tanks.

Also, how come only some of the stuff is plastic? Is the rest metal or something else?

We're moving to V4 soon, so there's a starter box promised for Mid War, but as for Late or Early, no clue.
The British and Soviet boxes make very specific army lists both regarded as sub-par by the community. At least with the German and American boxes you get some pieces that you can effectively build an army with.
Mostly because at this scale you can get a lot more detail out of Metal, and produce them more easily than you can do in Plastic.
The vast majority of Infantry, Guns and tanks are all Metal/Resin kits, Tanks are mostly Resin/Metal Mixed Media kits but some have plastic assets for them. Also because Battlefront are still new to the Plastic Game.

Ah, alright then. I honestly prefer plastic over metal or resin, but I'll take what I can get. What's the most popular setting? I'm going to hazard a guess and say either mid or late war?

Depends on region, but due to their larger support it's usually been Early or Late War. Early war is fun because you get crazy shit like French Tanks and T-35s and Panzer IVs that can fire bombardments and Armoured Trains that are actually effective and armoured.

Got it. Looking at the infantry models and I'm not too enamored with them. The tanks and vehicles look great but the infantry models look meh.

Finally added my photos of British Mortar Platoon to my post!

theflamescorner.blogspot.co.nz/2017/02/flames-of-war-british-mortar-platoon.html

Plastic vehicles are great but metal guns and infantry forever!

Also as for Tanks local meta (game store) I find that one heavy tank (Jagdpanther) and 4 lights (stugs) are nearly unbeatable

How do you all find groups to play with? I'm trying to find something reasonably close.

I think you're supposed to play with much more terrain than that

How is japan looking for V4? Seems its focusing on midwar so how do the current japan lists work with it.

Probably because you are playing on a wide open field. You need to throw some buildings on the table or a lot more hills or trees. Make it look more like a World of Tanks map.

There's only so much you can do at the scale. Though that also means painting 15mm is more forgiving the 28mm. You can get by with a base coat and painting a little extra color on a few details like webbing, boots, guns, and skin. While battlefront only offers a few infantry kits in plastic, the plastic soldier company offers some nice boxes of infantry (though you should check here before buying a box as some of the older ones have anemic looking dudes).

______

I also have a comment about mortars in V4. I don't think light or medium mortars should be able to dig infantry out of prepared positions using a long range bombardment. I think it made more sense for them to have better stats at short range where the teams could more accurately range in on individual foxholes/trenches. Even still the light mortar should be held at 5+ firepower which is consistent with teams with a 40mm grenade launcher in TY.

At least the 25pdrs have much longer range and better AT stats, but mortars are still much, much cheaper and a strong buy when you field at least 4.

I guess Japanese are nurfed, theur infantry become mindless running zombies rather than remoced from the table when they failed platoon morale or company morale check and they need to be less than 3 stands to be seishin in V4.

I shine a light in the sky that reads "Quantity has a Quality of its own" and Phil shows up at my house.

Hah, well seriously if no one seems to play it at your local FLGS you could try posting your area here or on one of the forums or FB groups for FoW. It's probably woefully out of date, but Battlefront had a FLGS listing for all the stores that stocked its products.

>I can count the number of times I've used the AT on the 25pdrs on one hand.
So you don't play two thirds of FoW, then?

Not in MW, which is where these stats, and COSTS are. I'd expect their points to change in LW or EW when they get revised.

Two questions for the group:
1. are therr any scans of the v4 LW books that are coming out in mar?
2. when v4 reveals itseld to be shit, what ruleset is the community going to move towards?

>a motor brigade without transports
Implying that you actually used the trucks.
>without portee
They have a better save though.
>tractors
Look at the movement values, though.
Also, implying that you ever moved 17 pounders around much.

Cheaper than 40k. You can't copyright WW2 stuff, so there's lots of companies to choose from. You could get most of a list for less than $200.

They're on the table that's where they drove to. They weren't using those trucks while in range and view of the enemy, for obvious reasons. Hence why they're almost never used in FoW.

Top of the page, and probably sticking with V3, if ANYONE actually sticks to their guns on that one. Remember how badly people were whining about TY?

The British and Soviet army boxes are bad, but both are easy to build without it. Plastic Soldier Company does some outstandingly priced boxes. 30-50 dollars for 5 tanks, and you need between 12-25 of them, depending on how spammy your list is.

>playing Phil's fukksarmee

Yeah my Volksarmee collecting died down fast after the book came out. I am going to wait and see what they do with Red Lightning.

Even my work on my West Germans has slowed down. I bought the full Aufklärungs deal with 2 boxes of Fuchs and a box of the extra PAH helicopters that have more or less been made unnecessary now that Panzertruppen lets you put down 3 Milans for every M113 Zug. Even still, I am not feeling especially motivated to switch my force over to Panzertruppen.

Who else is excited about v5?

Spain isnt adopting v4 as tournament standard.

v4 invalidates current lists. Platoon sizes reduced accross the board. Transporta removed. Command and staff teams for guns removed.

Shitty new morale rules.

LW v4 books will not recost current units whose utility will change with the new edition. The game will become an unplayable unbalanced mess until they do.

With so many wwii games out there and the shitty quality of BF miniatures compared to other 15mm manufacturers, i am flabbergasted that they are fucking with the rules. People only buy their miniatures because they like their rules. Once that changes, people will move fast. No one owns the IP to ww2.

WWPD is already starting work on v5. Say goodbye to a cohesive community. This horrible decision is going to result in a new community driven game. Just look at Pathfinder and Warhammer Fantasy Battles. Battlefront is doing the exact same; they are feeding the community trash that they dont want or need and not involving them in the revision process.

Fuck you Battlefront. I am moving to ASL. I spend about $200 a year on your hobby... not any more you retards.

Phil can sit on a tack. That fuck.

>shitty quality of BF miniatures
Whoa, PSC may be great value for money but BF minis are definitely better quality

Sounds like the same shit with the 40k scene when they change editions

>I am moving to ASL.
Fresh blood, fantastic! I don't know a player under 40. Clearly whatever happened to this game will be a boon to the rest of the historical wargaming community, if it prompts similar defections. Bring your 15mm army mens over to Crossfire too.

The complaint is about the revisions to LW stats that's coming with the V4 update book, which lack points changes. Talking about how it's different in MW or EW is entirely missing the point.

How are my uniforms?

...

Only when comparing plastics. Resin vs plastic, PSC wins easy.

>when they get revised.
So in 2 years if we are lucky.

On their forums? I may give it a look. I like a lot of the changes in V4, their are just a few sticking points. Anyway, I've always had fun with v3 and I don't mind to keep playing it.

Looks good! I like how easy the West German grenadiers are to paint. Small platoons and no camo.

Has there ever been a version shift that the community was collectively looking forward to?

PS: Is it cheaper to buy the 3rd version rule book now and exchange it, or just buy the 4th edition when it comes out?

Apples and oranges my friend.

But in an orange to orange comparison, it really comes down to personal taste.

Well, if you're looking for a 38(t), one has a very nice plastic model and the other has a not so nice resin model. Can't just limit it to a plastic vs plastic quality discussion when one side makes such a variety of plastic kits when the other makes resin for the same thing.

I'm seriously contemplating starting AoS now that V4 drops: the rules are simple, everything is new so it's all more or less on the same power level, they actually listen to the community, adjust points every 6 months or so based on tournament results and the models are great.

Obviously resin and metal are shit compared to plastic, but if you're after say, German infantry the poses are far better from BF than PSC.

Yes. True. I prefer plastics as well. Which is why I find it trollishly delicious that PSC is making plastic T-55s since BF dropped the ball on that.

But for a company relatively new to plastic production, Battlefront's stuff is on par, or even better than PSC's stuff.

kek

>contemplating starting AoS
Why would want to play something that's worse than V4

They get automatic battery-joining, at least.

They, like everything else, will just have get-you-by EW and LW revisions. Lists will be mostly the same but a lot of special rules will be changed, so expect wonkiness until they're updated.

Really depends on the kit. There's a world of difference between, say, their T-34s (some of the first models they made) and the more recent cruiser tanks. Infantry I think are probably the only place it's fair to say they do worse, given you need bases as well that usually makes them cost about the same.

>Platoon sizes reduced accross the board.
Again, lists are the exact same things for LW and EW. The good is they're the same lists, so if you've got a list it's still valid. The bad is all the rules are different now so the chances of them being accurately costed are low.

>Platoon sizes reduced accross the board.
Only German infantry lose a stand ad their pak38s, the other platoons are largely unaffected

The trend will be to reduce platoon sizes, going forward. This may not happen immediately, but it will happen upon rerelease of the books. I think this makes the game more accessible although it alienates the current customer base.

Fuck battlefront.

Their metal miniatures and resins are so shitty. They don't clean their moulds between casting - so some of my infantry figures have crazy contorted faces.

The only reason we buy BF miniatures is because we love the rules of FOW v3. If the rules change, the community can EASILY resurrect them. We can buy our minis from PSC, Command Decision, Skytrex, or Zvezda. There is no need to EVER buy another BF miniature again.

They're killing their own market. They clearly did not do a business estimate to calculate where their centre of gravity is - it sure as hell isnt their model making ability.

That's why their business plan going forward is limited releases with new plastic kits instead of the huge product range of so-so metal and resin kits. Sucks for anyone who bought a load of metal and resin kits like valentines because we don't know whether or not they will be included.

Honestly with how much traction TY seems to have I think MW will sell well. We aren't really the target audience anymore. Check on the TY groups on FB and see all the people posting pics of their toys they bought. Nice people and good hobbyists, but not the most historical crowd.

Battlefront is SO dumb.

They are taking Team Yankee's adequate success and attributing this to the rules. This is not accurate. There are two MUCH more likely sources for Team Yankee's adequate success. These are:

1. Cannibalization. As Team Yankee came out, there were no new significant Flames of War releases - most of the buzz and web attention went to promoting Team Yankee. This caused existing FoW players to buy Team Yankee instead of FoW, which reduced FoW sales accordingly.

2. The time period. Team Yankee's time period is very interesting but also very rare. There are a lof of current and ex-soldiers who are drawn to the kit that they themselves used. Again, this has nothing to do with the rules.

Battlefront is stupid for holding these rules up on a pedestal.

I know for a fact that V4 is going to kill my local community. There are about under a dozen to begin with. Half of these will embrace V4 and the other half will shun it. Again, Battlefront splinters its already small communities instead of uniting them.

Battlefront is stupid. I hate them.

Gloom and Doom and Dark Despair!

>This entire thread ever since 4th Edition was announced

Can we please all stop claiming that the sky is falling?

It's an Edition change. For a game. That we play with toy soldiers.

Get some perspective here people.

Everyone in my area was hype as fuck about TY. Then they played it a couple times and it died. Two or three of them still use it in 6mm though.

We play with toy soldiers and we really enjoy playing with toy soldiers. We don't want to have the community fractured and have our game changed.

There is no need for a drastic edition change. It's not going to sell more models. It's going to fracture the community.

Battlefront fucking lies to us left right and centre. From Day 1 they told us that Team Yankee would be a different set of rules in parallel to Flames of War. What the fuck is happening now?

You can't trust them. Don't buy their miniatures or get involved in their games because they have no loyalty to you - I have $600 of miniatures that are now unusable in MW. Thanks Battlefront, you disloyal fucks.

Even if I stick to V3 I'll still be buying BF models.

Why? Because nobody else makes shit for minor nations. Every company makes the same dozen or so kits(Sherman, Tiger, Panzer IV, T34 and so on), but how many of them make stuff for Italy, Romania, Hungary and so forth? PSC has ONE Italian kit, while BF makes fucking EVERYTHING.

Also BF stuff is easily available here in the U.S. while some of those other companies are not(and fuck paying international shipping costs if I don't have to).

>limited releases with new plastic kits
This would be nonsensical; plastic has high tooling and low unit costs. Resin is usually the thing you use for short-run stuff. Besides, they've said they prefer not to do plastic infantry, and given so far TY (which has really high volume infantry, especially soviet side) has been all metal I expect anything outside of starter kits is going to go back to metal infantry.

>Honestly with how much traction TY seems to have I think MW will sell well.
Really? Mid-war's the lowest point in pop culture, so far as I know. The desert's only really known in the UK and even then it's kind of niche, I know people who don't even know Italy was in the war, and as for the Eastern Front, I'll quote my group last night: "Nobody cares about the Eastern Front".

>how dare people have opinions on a game in the thread for discussing that game

>What the fuck is happening now?

They're taking a bloated overly complicated rule set that I don't think anyone in this thread ever really used 100% of and are reducing it to the essentials that are used in nearly every game.

They're taking good ideas from a smash hit success that they've had with another game and incorporating them into their new edition of Flames of War.

They're doing their best to make a game that is easily understood, easy to play, easy to teach, and easy to learn.

I applaud them.

FoW was damn near impossible to teach to new players.

I know, I've tried.

I think AoS is actually better
not joking
Like V4 it's a fantasy game but at least it has actual fantasy models :^)

Just play Saga

This seems to be a trend with BF's stuff; they make something decent but it doesn't have legs. TY was hype, then everyone got bored of NATO training exercises and went back to LW. Tanks came out, everyone gave it a go, and then in a couple of weeks everyone was just using them for FoW.

There's a tiny bit of interest in East Germany but that might just be the "if I'm playing TY I may as well just play TY", and I don't see where they can go from there for the warpac.

You *better* buy those minor nations QUICKLY. Battlefront has said that they are currently in the process of trimming down the amount of product they offer. I'd imagine that a lot of the back catalogue will disappear.

Oh... you LOVE their Italian minis? Well sucks to be you because they aren't going to be around for a long time.

What about Matildas and Valentines which should historically be part of the MW release? They are nowhere to be seen. Why? Because Fuck You, that's why. Battlefront hates its players.

There are people with huge MW armies that are now unplayable in the new rules.

How can Battlefront salvage this? They need to make it clear that Al Alamein is NOT V4 - it is a simplified, different game. Then, they can clean up V3 as V4Advanced and keep everyone happy. The same miniatures can be sold to both. Everyone wins.

Instead, Battlefront's strategy is to force everyone into the V4Basic game which alienates people with existing miniatures as well as those who really enjoy V3.

Don't get me wrong - there is a lot of V3 that can really use cleaning up. These are as follows:
-Arty is too effective vs tanks
-National special rules
-Assault rules

But it's making things stupid by removing transports, removing staff and command teams, changing morale rules to be retarded, and making platoon sizes smaller across the board.

Fuck you Battlefront. Your days are numbered.

> then everyone got bored of NATO training exercises and went back to LW.
Actually three quarters of the players here had Soviets. They then found they were not allowed to deploy in a sane fashion, and that both the assault and morale sections of the rulebook did not in fact exist for game purposes.
>what about line abreast?
Every time they removed enough terrain to facilitate that they also removed the movement phase. This is a very casual group who cared more about the appearances of the game than the crunch, and I have to admit from a distance it looked like they were playing Napoleonics still.

AoS has only recently been salvaged to being barely a game. Literally any other system is better unless your barometer is model expense or retarded unit balance. I would almost say 40k was better but every time I look at 40k it gets worse, so who knows.

>The trend will be to reduce platoon sizes, going forward.
Prove it.
Some platoons got bigger in V4, and were more versatile in size (being able to take 2, 3 or 4 instead of just 2 or 4)

>They then found they were not allowed to deploy in a sane fashion, and that both the assault and morale sections of the rulebook did not in fact exist for game purposes
What issues did you have with deployment and assault? Just tank car-parks?

Line abreast is a dumb fudge for the lack of daisy chains. I really don't know why they took them out. It ends up with horrible tank/infantry blobs, especially with the soviets.

The biggest thing I think that tipped everyone to NATO (aside from a bit of British bias from ex-army folks) was the fact that a NATO army is like £100 and gets you on the table in a few days, whereas a soviet tank army is at least six boxes of tanks/BMPs before you've ever considered support.

You know that when they say "trimming doan the amount of product" they mean not having 50 billion blisters and going more for box sets, right?

BF isn't just going to suddenly come out and say "Italians don't get AB41 armored cars anymore." I'm sure you'll say "But they took away Matildas!" to which I reply that they aren't there YET.

I support them cutting down on the bloat of their catalog. If it means I can find what I need faster then what's the problem? I'd rather buy a box set of M14/41s than buy 5 individual blisters at $12 a pop.

I admit the stuff we have so far for V4 is rather anemic and piddly, but hoky shit man you're making it out to be end the of the world as we know it.

Also taking off transports that do nothing after dropping their payload really doesn't change anything rules wise.

>What issues did you have with deployment and assault? Just tank car-parks?
I suspect the issue with assaults is that now only those teams within 4" at the start are part of the assault, instead of 8". Since there's still the 2" exclusion zone, this means there's only a third of the previous area for assaulting teams to be in. It's made assaults much harder to execute.

I can't 'prove it' until the new LW books come out (not the Mar releases) which likely won't happen until Dec at the absolute earliest.

Why do I think that platoon sizes will decrease across the board? A few reasons:
1. This is what happened in the MW V4 books.
2. This will make the new morale rules feasible (otherwise, it's darn near impossible to break a Strelk Coy).
3. A little birdie told me so...

And if you're wrong?

Will you leave us alone? Peacefully? Quietly?

Will you let us enjoy ourselves?

Yeah, not that guy but I saw that last night. Watching about six teams get into assault then having to roll 5+ to kill was baffling.

Yeah, I'm not sure why Sov infantry are 5+ instead of 4+ in assault. Their whole doctrine was basically overrun with marching fire and the AK was designed for automatic or single-shot fire at relatively close range.

I hope I'm wrong.

My big fear is V4 invalidating my current armies. That would really piss me off because I've spent so much time and energy on them. I see the writing on the wall with the removal of Gun command/staff teams and transports. I *just* finished painting some beautiful transports too, so I'm rightly pissed that they no longer get to play. I'm also concerned with ORBATs changing, which would mean that the armies that I want to field are no longer possible to be fielded. I like the quasi-historical ORBATs of V3. I don't want to see Platoons get smaller just for the sake of making the game appear 'simpler'.

To be honest, I really dont like the idea of orders. Those look so gamey and shitty. What I like about FoW is that it's like a Tactical Exercise Without Troops. I hate gamey-ism that takes away from the factors analysis. I feel like the 'orders' system will make the game feel much more 'gamey.'

A lot of the changes, which can be seen on WWPD at the following two links actually appear for the better.
forum.wwpd.net/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=20347
forum.wwpd.net/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=20398

Still, all of the improvement in the world won't keep me around if my hard-modelled armies are invalidated and the game moves away from being a Company Command Simulator.

The game never was a simulator.

It's based on history, and models out an approximation of how things might happen in a battle between two forces.

But at the end of the day, it's still a game. It has always had "gamey" elements.

It has always had an aspect of being more of a war movie than a war documentary.

I think the 4th Edition rules themselves seem like a needed change and update to the actual game play.

What I'm less certain about is the new Mid-War books, but I can't honestly speak to how good or bad they might be since I have not played any mid war games.

FoW V3 isn't entirely a "Combat Team Simulator" but it does require the same sort of factors and terrain analysis. I can see that being reduced by the imposition of 'movement orders' and cute 'special rules.'

If BF fucks this up, they are gone for good. This is their core customer baes.

I like most of the changes too. But the morale and coherency rules are being ported as well. I do not want to play a game where everything on the table deploys in a square and every fight is to the last man. Tank squares already convinced a lot of my friends to quit playing--there was too much emphasis on spam. They won't touch TY because it takes spam that shit to the next order of magnitude. They don't want the game screaming at them to take 300 BMPs or T-34s. They want a game that ACTIVELY punishes tanks clumping up, and buying a million of them.

I have to convince them to re-adopt a ruleset that died when 10 out of 12 players at a V2 tourney showed up with 30 tanks. That convinced everyone involved to stop, and the game slowly shrank from then on.

>This is what happened in the MW V4 books.
no where near as much as everyone is making it out to be, I just went through both books and the size changes are quite small. Just the loss of command teams/observers/transports.

>core customer baes
I thought BF loved their customers too.

Did you look at the infantry platoons?

Germans lost 2MG platoons and their AT guns but gain an HMG, Brits gain an MG team and lose 2 AT rifles. For the Germans losing the AT isn't too bad as you can attach guns from an AT platoon. It's just trading an 2MG teams for an HMG one, that is the problem.

Not trying to antagonize. Just questioning if the V3 crowd is the core customer base.

>Official TY Facebook Group: 2,830 members
>Unofficial TY FB Group: 1,781 members; 57 active posts

>Official FoW Group: 1,350 members; 45 active posts
>Unofficial FoW Group: 1,745 members;
>German Forces Flames of War: 1928 members
>Flames of War Swap Shop:1,927 members

Seems mixed to me that TY certainly has a large momentum. Not enough information for me to call it one way or the other. Just found that bit interesting.

I totally agree with you. TY has a lot of momentum. I don't believe this is because of a more fun ruleset.

I disagree that this is because it is a more fun game, or because of the rules. It has more momentum because:

1. Cannibalization. As Team Yankee came out, there were no new significant Flames of War releases - most of the buzz and web attention went to promoting Team Yankee. This caused existing FoW players to buy Team Yankee instead of FoW, which reduced FoW sales accordingly.

2. The time period. Team Yankee's time period is very interesting but also very rare. There are a lof of current and ex-soldiers who are drawn to the kit that they themselves used. Again, this has nothing to do with the rules.

I'm not FoW player and i waas drawn into Team yankee by the time period

From what I've read, yeah fuck-huge platoons(companies) don't break until down to their last scragglers... But breaking units and forcing company motivation is not the point behind v4. If all you do is build fuck-huge Strelk blobs and defend the fuck out of objectives, that'll only help you in defensive battles. Otherwise the best you can hope for is a draw.

WWPD has a nice write-up about the v4 changes.
The key thing they note is that if you go into trying to play it like v3, you're going to throw a bitch-fit. But if you go into it with the idea that it's a new game with the same models, the you'll enjoy it. Gone are the days of sitting dug-in and bombarding your opponent to glass.

Does hopping into North Africa for MidWar seem appealing to you if the rules are similar to Team Yankee?

i already play bolt action and love that game and find it hard to justify buying the same army twice.

but i do like the north africa aesthetics.

I read the WWPD article too. It was very good, unfortunately it is making my fears worse.

From the WWPD article:
"The key thing they note is that if you go into trying to play it like v3, you're going to throw a bitch-fit. But if you go into it with the idea that it's a new game with the same models, the you'll enjoy it."

The thing is that most of the community doesn't want a new game with the same models. There are a plethora of WW2 games out there (Battlegroup, IABSM, PBI, for example) because no one owns the IP to WW2 for obvious reasons. People *love* the V3 rules. So why abruptly change them? We don't want V4. We want a cleaned up V3 that plays like V3 and has a V3 feel.

This whole debacle has destroyed my faith in Battlefront. Sorry for sounding like a twelve-year old girl whose cat just ran away; but it's really frustrating.

Right but V3 wasn't V2 either, and I made that adjustment with very few issues.

The core mechanics are not changing.

You still move, shoot, and assault.

You still hit your targets based on their training.

You still have to capture or defend objectives, or force your opponent's army to fail morale.

None of the core game mechanics are changing.