Flames of War General: So it's come to this again edition

Reading the V4 desert rats book I notice machinegun barrages now have FP 6, allowing them to kill dug-in platoons. Is it just me or is it hilarious that they're going to be better at bombarding than shooting direct on guns?

>>Artillery actually capable of killing infantry/dug in vets not immortal
I feel like we're not playing the same game, since veteran infantry are so much worse to get rid of than they were before.

>Artillery actually capable of killing infantry/dug in vets not immortal
Considering you will never remove GTG, you get one observer period, the hit allocation rules regarding said observer, and the gimping of assault I have to disagree. Only played one game though.

i am gonna miss removal of GTG

No, this is how I feel after a couple of games. It's really easy to deflect assaults (especially since you get smoke once, so you've usually got one chance to make it count) and they're anemic when they do get in, and guns will win shootouts with tanks 9/10 times, so artillery's really the sole thing that's doing much killing of infantry, and even if it is, 4-6 "shots" isn't going to kill enough of an army to make a difference. The only time I've seen someone make headway was when the guy forgot to leave his CO overseeing the PaK platoon and got really unlucky with unpins for several turns.

How to fix V4/TY:
Conscript is hit on 1+
Trained is hit on 2+
Vet is hit on 3+
Need 8 hits normally to stop assault
Need 14 hits with 8+ teams in platoon
There, now things actually fucking HAPPEN with infantry, and Vet is not must-have like it is now.

Or they could have kept V3 recce so it doesn't turn into "dug in GtG infantry can only be dealt with by arty", but Vet is too good anyway so fuck it.

No offensive meant but that's fuckin' 'tarded mate.

So's vets atm. Impossible to kill unless they let you.

...

On a completely different topic, has anyone considered playing with a self-imposed rule of keeping all vehicles half an inch away from each other?

I try to do that anyway because it looks better.

Ah, so I'm not the only one, then.

>Conscript is hit on 1+
>a Japanese officer is fiddling with his nambu, which due to its shoddy design accidentally discharges a round
>a Russian conscript appears from nowhere and heroically dives underneath his barrel, taking the round in the chest

>Phil approves.

Cheers!

I agree on arty having killing power. It is really worth to put 300 points for artillery in 1750 points game if you want to play offensive.
For same points, artillery have really killing power against dug in guns and infantry when it is compared with tanks or infantry.
Vet artillery ranges on 3+(4+ if your target is within wood), and once ranged in teams under template are hit on their rating regardless of gtg or concealed.
I will take 6 tubes of medium mortars in every game If briefing permits, they are really good investment for its point.

Literally impossible if you're playing soviets.

>Vet artillery ranges on 3+(4+ if your target is within wood), and once ranged in teams under template are hit on their rating regardless of gtg or concealed.
Check the rules again; you roll at +1 if the template covers terrain, even if it's not trying to hit anything there. At least on our boards, that reads as "Artillery is always at +1 to hit".

I'd agree that going super heavy on artillery is basically the way to go, but I'm not convinced this is actually a good thing. Far from making arty spam less of a thing, it now seems even worse.

The nerf to breakthrough and bunker buster seems like a big deal too. Going from 5+ to hit to 6s, and from no save to 3+ rerolling successes is like 3/4 reduction in lethality off some napkin maths (half as many hits; 5/9 chance to fail save vs 9/9 chance

Same kinda deal with flammenwerfers. The change in effectiveness of cannons is juts enormous, too. For some reason they've made it so artillery is the only thing which has any real effectiveness against infantry.

Not really, as long as you play a decent list on a decent table. Sure, you won't be able to hide all 10 tanks behind the same little bit of forest, but it just looks so stupid when 10 tanks clump together behind three trees...

Hilariously it's also not going to make infantry move more, either, because you get 0.222 kills per hit if they're dug-in (assuming a 4+ gun, 0.296 on a 3+), vs a straight 0.333 kills per hit on something which isn't dug-in. Even if you are being barraged it's best to sit and take it.

So your rule is "Soviets shouldn't get concealment"? That's retarded.

TFW people are only now beginning to understand that Artillery in V4 is even more OP than in V3, just against Inf & Guns rather than tanks...

Which is exactly what the developers said they were trying to do.

Why does this seem like such a surprise to everyone?

Who needs artillery to be good against tanks when you have three Pak38 platoons with 3+ saves and AT 9

No, that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying 10 tanks (whether soviet or any other nation) shouldn't hide behind 3 trees.
i.e. split them up or, here's a miracle solution: make bigger forests.

/NVA/

You do realize that those three trees don't literally represent ONLY three trees, right?

You can have an area of woods with a fairly large footprint, but only a few trees so that you can actually place models inside of the woods.

>. I'm saying 10 tanks (whether soviet or any other nation) shouldn't hide behind 3 trees.
All those other nations that get ten-tank platoons?

>i.e. split them up or, here's a miracle solution: make bigger forests.
You can't split them up in v4 and the boards people have are the boards people have, nobody's going to make a 12" woodland just to satisfy your autism.

>Calling someone autistic for having a preference different to yours.
I wasn't imposing my opinion on anyone, simply stating it. But fuck you, anyway.

Not being able to split platoons up anymore really sucks, though. I wasn't aware of that...

I know what they represent, I was talking about what it looks like. Mechanically we could play the game without any trees at all, in the end.

Also, it's not just soviets who tend to clump everything tightly together. Almost everyone does so, whether with one platoon or two or even three, all hiding behind the same tiny forest or couple of houses.

In fact, with arty less deadly to tanks and only a single observer now I have a feeling this will happen even more often.

Can panzerfausts shoot when pinned in V4 Reading the rules suggests no.

I'm tempted top start being THAT GUY and come on this thread each day with something to the effect of

>Daily reminder that v4 is great and you should apologise to Phil

It runs faster while having more depth, there are fewer annoyances in the special rules, assault doesn't take weeks to resolve and everybody gets the chance to do cool stuff with their tanks

Most importantly the infantry>tanks>artillery>infantry, which is historical and shit, has been made key to the game, really encouraging a combined arms style of play!

The designer(s) have really thought about this version hard and how to get the feel of actual wwii tactics in a game that can be finished in a couple of hours

My army lists have gone from 6 or 4 platoons, with even numbers of tanks, always including the cheapest possible recon platoon... to something resembling a real wwii taskforce.

More importantly its fun! I bloody love v4

>which is historical and shit
Daily reminder that infantry took 1/10th the casualties when in defensive positions instead of in the open. V4 would have you believe it's 5/6ths normal casualties.

Fake history get out.

Volksarmee best Armee!

... wouldn't you happen to be the guy who's been posting NVA stuff in the Schwarzesmarken threads on /a/ for ages? If that's it, you must be the most regular poster I've seen of Veeky Forums kek.

>Not being able to split platoons up anymore really sucks, though. I wasn't aware of that...

Kinda; you're out of coherency if you're outside of a 6" bubble around the leader (8" for large infantry platoons). In short you can't have the thing where you've daisy-chained across a 2-4" gap between buildings, anymore; most likely the things behind the second bit of cover (or whatever) are out of command.

>In fact, with arty less deadly to tanks and only a single observer now I have a feeling this will happen even more often.
It does. You're much better off moving artillery up to direct fire, now, if you're facing all or mostly tanks.

>Schwarzesmarken
Hot commie waifu in TY when

>It runs faster while having more depth
"Spam tanks, have one arty platoon for infantry, and one infantry platoon for it you have to defend" is more depth?
>there are fewer annoyances in the special rules
At the cost of some being so utterly neutered that there's no point in including them at all. Oh, but the points don't change at all, because who gives a flying fuck about balance?
>assault doesn't take weeks to resolve
Because it's rarely worth it with a tiny ass number of teams going in and then getting ripped up by defensive fire over the three separate assaults the assault now takes.
>do cool stuff with their tanks
And nothing else. Welcome to V2 of TANKS, where there's an arty tax in case people want to use non-tank stuff.

>Most importantly the infantry>tanks>artillery>infantry, which is historical and shit, has been made key to the game, really encouraging a combined arms style of play!
So long as you don't care about flamethrowers (useless now), recce formations (even worse than they were in V3), Pioneers being pioneers, or really using anything but plain ass tanks, infantry, and arty. Of which only two (Tanks and arty) are utterly required now.

>The designer(s) have really thought about this version hard and how to get the feel of actual Hollywood tactics in a game that can be finished in a couple of hours
FIFY

>More importantly its fun! I bloody love v4
That's your opinion and you're allowed it, but my experiences with it have been the opposite. It's a very binary game, if infantry have to attack (50% of the time) they lose, if they get to defend they send some scouts to kill the enemy arty and then they win (or the scouts fail and the arty kills everything while the tanks sit there looking important and missing). It works fine for tank v tank with support, but nothing else. I'll be sticking with V3.

First counter-example I can think of: artillery is now good at doing something it was used extensively for, that's clearing fixed anti-tank gun emplacements.

Almost conversely anti-tank guns, especially dig-in ones are now buffed vs tanks.

While I'll agree its not perfect, the narrative is right.

Hell even computer mil-sims high on the autism spectrum like the Combat Mission series only attempt to replicate the tactics, rather than fully simulate them... and that thin churns numbers at a level of autism I rarely experience.

For a wargame on my kitchen table to even partially succeed at replicating historical applications, in under 2 hrs is great. Especially if I have fun while doing it

>It runs faster while having more depth,

Faster, yes. Deeper, not really.

>there are fewer annoyances in the special rules,
Replaced with annoyances in the tactics section.

>assault doesn't take weeks to resolve
Because it's useless (also seriously how were you taking weeks to resolve assault before? It's basically the same just way fewer stands get to join in the attack and you get fewer swings against the same amount of defensive fire and counterattack).

>everybody gets the chance to do cool stuff with their tanks
Before they're blapped out of existence by everyone's immortal AT-gun platoons.

>Most importantly the infantry>tanks>artillery>infantry, which is historical and shit, has been made key to the game, really encouraging a combined arms style of play!

The emerging style of play is "as few infantry as possible with the most AT guns and artillery as possible". Tanks get annihilated by pakfronts and artillery is there to deal with infantry or as backup AT guns in case the other guy didn't get the memo about tanks.

>More importantly its fun! I bloody love v4
"It's fun" is always a bad benchmark for quality. If you just want to have fun with friends beer exists and is cheaper.

I'm admittedly not seeing how you've gotten "tanks are dominant". As I said, my experience is you want as many AT guns and artillery platoons as possible.

Mostly because the locals don't have many AT guns (2 PaKs and 3 57mms between the 7 of them), and you need something to grab objectives. People have taken to spamming combat and weapons platoons to avoid formations leaving good spirits, so you tend to still need something to grab an objective. I'm sure if we actually had even a reasonable number of AT guns that we'd quickly end up where you are.

>stop liking what I don't like!

Yeah, 4rries and 3aboos both need to learn that the other side can in fact have fun with their ruleset, and that neither edition is the one true edition.

Oddly, I feel like I've made this exact same statement about a decade ago...

>the other side can in fact have fun with their ruleset
Nobody denied this. You can also have fun with a copy of Manos the Hands of Fate, but nobody says it's a good film.

This edition wars stuff is so 40K, we need to heat this up

>FoW sucks, we should all shift to "I Ain't Been Shot Mum"

We're finding UCs/Sdkfz 10s are filling this role; in both cases they tend to sit out of the way most of the game until the shooting war's been won then dash forward. The 10/4s have some effectiveness opening up on artillery but they're only FP 5+ and very fragile, so even then it tends to be later game.

We're seeing 4-5 gun teams per game, usually, plus one or two artillery. Going full retard and bringing all 12 guns of the british arty park might change things, but we also don't have anyone with that.

This is just correct though?

It's been about 6 years since the last FoW edition change.

Unless you're referring to D&D.

As for "The One True Edition", whether people like it or not, the official Battlefront-supported edition is V4.

You don't have to like it, and you don't have to play it, but all the future releases will be for V4.

At least until the release V5 in another 6 years or so.

Manos Hands of Fate is quite possibly the best episode of MST3K.

What's the Plastic Soldier Company's rule set, Battlefield Kursk or something like that?

The Asiatic hordes never made much use of cover. Their fearsome Commissars would have executed them for cowardice.

Cheers

>What's the Plastic Soldier Company's rule set, Battlefield Kursk or something like that?
Battlegroup * (where * = Kursk, Tobruk, Overlord, and whatever else they're covering). I think the ruleset is the same throughout, just different lists (which shouldn't be a problem for FoW players, though I'm not certain how compatible the different "eras" are).

I'm honestly considering giving it a try at least.

You're mistaking 40K and Fantasy.

Although thank god FoW V4 isn't anywhere near as much of a clusterfuck as Age of Sigmar.

What is the Flames of War equivalent of The 9th Age or Kings of War anyway?

None at the moment, though I expect we'll see one soon. I know our isolated group of locals is making a v3.5, taking some streamlining from 4 but also keeping bits as in 3.

What's more is LW Russians will get half the number of shots per base as one guy has the gun and one has the ammo.

But on the plus side you can use infantry platoons to clear mines!

You misunderstand me.

I'm not looking for an alternative to V4.

I'm just making a bad joke about alternatives to AoS that don't really have the same name recognition or playerbase.

Although the analogy kinda falls apart because AoS will always be popular because it's GW, even if the rules are complete crap.

>Although the analogy kinda falls apart because AoS will always be popular because it's GW, even if the rules are complete crap.
I'm not seeing a difference here.
>As for "The One True Edition", whether people like it or not, the official Battlefront-supported edition is V4.
>You don't have to like it, and you don't have to play it, but all the future releases will be for V4.
Official = must be done and is the only good, to some people. This is especially obvious with most of the bloggers, who mention not one problem with V4 while praising it like they got paid to review it (which desu many of them were).

>I'm not seeing a difference here.

Right. Because you are determined not to like Version 4.

Those of us that do like it are overjoyed about the changes that make for a faster playing and easier to teach to other people.

Version 3 was difficult as hell to try to teach to new players.

>praising it like they got paid to review it

Advanced copy of the rules, free review copies of stuff, etc.

It's not quite being paid, but nobody with any brains will risk their freebies and perks by biting the hand that feeds them.

>Those of us that do like it are overjoyed about the changes that make for a faster playing and easier to teach to other people.
Games are a real slog now. It's infantry arty park vs infantry arty park all over again. Maybe it's easier to teach but I personally don't feel like there's much in it. Hit allocation is simpler, maybe? I can't think of anything else.

>Going full retard and bringing all 12 guns of the british arty park might change things, but we also don't have anyone with that.
I've just realized I might be able to actually do that soon. Bit short on combat/weapons platoons, but when you just HAVE to put 24 gun teams on the field...

>Right. Because you are determined not to like Version 4.
I'm pointing out that people will always like the next edition BF puts out even if it's complete crap because it's official. That's true of most games, because brand loyalty is a thing.

To be clear we've been playing MW Desert, where there's only 12. We're well aware the V4 conversion's really wonky, so we're trying to make V4 work where it's been designed for it.

Honestly this might be why your games are become gunspam, I don't think other lists even let you have that many guns in EW/LW.

Fair, MW points are at least semi-balanced in the new edition. LW, 6pdrs are now a "grab as many as you can, all the time, forever" weapon. A flat 3+ save all the time and having three AT 11 shots is amazing when you're paying just 40 points for a FV one.

On the other hand, many EW/LW guns have higher RoF than the flat RoF 2 of MW guns. You need 12 guns to match 8 in other periods, which is much easier to get.

>you get one observer period

Even if people have multiple batteries?

Yep. In V4 all armies have exactly one observer, period.

Unless you're Americans, in which case every platoon leader is an observer, completely ruining any attempt of this observer choking to balance the US arty party that was complained about in V3...

Doesn't this screw with EW and LW points values, since those are factored in to price?

Its something I'd house rule.

Points for everything are fucked anyway if you use the V4 conversion. Look at stuff like 75mm/3" artillery vs mortars, now.

>Doesn't this screw with EW and LW points values, since those are factored in to price?
So does the changes to arty stats, the complete revamp of how recce works, the change in gun team durability, the neutering of Light Tanks, Smooth Ride, Cavalry, and Detroit's Finest, the killing of Mission tactics, and a lot of other shifts in V4.

Sadly, there's just too many books for BF to issue points errata for all of them. I can't blame them for not putting one out, the resulting document would be twice as big as the V3 rulebook. But because of just how MUCH things change, I personally go with V4 for MW, but stick with V3 for LW and EW.

Ahaha christ, you're right, I didn't think of that. I can't imagine how BTFO tank lists get coming up against 6pdr spam now.

>Sadly, there's just too many books for BF to issue points errata for all of them. I can't blame them for not putting one out, the resulting document would be twice as big as the V3 rulebook.
Oh, sure, I don't blame them for not recosting everything either.

I just wish they hadn't put it out as the official handover guide and gone with the "everything's still balanced" official line because it's really obviously not and morons keep insisting that it is.

Battlefront Squatted EW/LW

Hardly.

There are some balance shifts to figure out and adjust to.

But it's not like BF is having a race of Aliens knock-offs devour everything, and then act like EW and LW never existed in the first place.

Reading Afrikakorps Stukas are AT4; misprint?

The best thing about online shopping is it feels like you're getting a present.

Apparently not, they just decided that LW and EW didn't need proper balance.

Why is /pol/ tweeting about FoW?

I've seen a fair few shops in my time, that looks like an edit captain.

So with V4 morale, how does a unit like the recce patrol in work for morale? All tanks when mounted, but two infantry and a tank when the bikes are dismounted?

>zoom in and enhance

Ok, I see what you mean. It does seem like there is another picture the plastic KTs were shopped over.

I guess I just assumed it was some actual Nazi wannabe posting about our game.

Thankfully I've only ever ran into one in person, and he was quickly asked to never come back.

>Apparently not, they just decided that LW and EW didn't need proper balance.
Christ what the fuck?

A gross exaggeration from an upset troll.

Here's the original, "This is the future liberals want" edits has become a bit of a meme.

Anyway, I've got seven KTs now and I'm excited to run some garbage rating lists.

NB this guy is the Ranger for Scotland but he doesn't directly work for BF or anything.

Said the pot about the kettle

Living in southern england if the liberals want a future where people can actually sit down on trains I'm game.

I thought the Ranger program was abandoned a while ago...

>7 KTs

Even at Reluctant Trained, that still has to be about 200+ points per tank.

How do you fit in any support options for a 1500 point list?

>a woman(?) "manspreading"

TRIGGERED

Right? Like that's the joke that the twitter account user got totally triggered by people sitting on a train

Well, I already own one but had lost the turret so got six more to be able to run six. I then found the turret, of course, but it's only like £3.50. At RT it's 1290 for 6 or 1505 for 7, which still leaves some points at 1750 (what I'm expecting to play) for support. Bigger issue might be working out reserves, at 1750 you can have at most 4 RT King Tigers on the board.

But, yeah, six King Tigers is less about serious list building and more about being cheap enough to build a stupid army.

I won't lie, 6 RT KTs, especially using relatively cheap Zvezda models, is something I'm curious to try even if it is a bit of a dumb list.

I can finally post this.