Flames of War: Dead Gaem edition

MW is laughable. It looks *AWFUL*. Crusader spam? It looks atrocious to see 15mm tanks shoulder to shoulder.

MW also lacks a bunch of options and changes traditional FoW Orbats (Squatting old armies, lol).

Personally, I have stopped investing in the hobby because I cannot trust them. My trust for BF is on par with my trust for GW.

Cheers.

>call thread “Dead Gaem Edition”
>invite in all sorts of negativity
>turn joke into self-fulfilling prophecy

It’s like you all WANT to see it fail...

Valid points.

>Crusader spam? 15mm tanks shoulder to shoulder

Unfortunately people who have the cash can spam Stuarts or Crusaders. The scout tanks card is ridiculously broken and people have exploited it at tournaments. I hope Battlefront does more with the objective cards, where at a tourney you can play a card that gives you bonuses for destroying the same type of unit. The other issues is that apart from grants, brits don't have many other options.

>MW also lacks a bunch of options

I agree it's pretty tough waiting for them to slowly build up unit diversity. The books should have had all the previous options included, with plastic kits coming later. At least then more people would be playing.

The Brit release was pretty anemic. They will *eventually* get another book. For now you can run shermans as an American wildcard unit to add some variety. The italians should give the german lists a shot in the arm especially if you can run a spaghetti formation. The Americans seemed to have pretty decent list composition. Hopefully Battlefront has learned that the initial release was too anemic to gather enough support.

>My trust for BF is on par with my trust for GW.

It probably should be at this point. Both are very much driven by selling plastic these days. They are withholding units from the game until they can make a plastic kit to sell them. They are trying to box competitors out in this way. Players can see this behavior, and while I am looking forward to see V4 grow, this method of going about it leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

Some people just want to watch the Cheers burn.

In all serious user, the game will be okay even if we say mean things about it. Things are especially slow right now because we are between releases.

So, decided to snag the complete Team Yankee bookset from the handy links above, and perused Red Thunder.

Did these people take their research seriously? The things that they got correct were mostly impossible to get wrong, like the gun on a T-64.

>“Get ready!” he yelled as the BTR began to slow down. The brakes squealed loudly as the vehicle rocked to an abrupt halt, the rear hatches were thrown open - nobody thought climbing through the top hatches was a good
idea today - and the men fanned out to either side.
>BTR-60 has rear doors
they make models of the thing, it is pictured in the book itself, they know it does not have rear doors

>Meanwhile, the left would be cleared by
the 1st Motor Rifle Battalion supported
by the division’s 28th Independent Tank
Battalion.
>Independent Tank Battalion used for follow-up attack on initial defenses.
From what I have read (which could be wrong?) the indep. tank batt. was used for exploitation only. So using it the initial fights, which would leave it weakened, is completely against doctrine.

>The T-64 began development in 1954 when the three Soviet tank design bureaus began investigating new designs as replacements for the T-55 and T-62 tanks.
T-55 was designed 1957, entered production 1958, T-62 entered production 1961. The T-64 WAS intended to become the new Soviet main tank, while the T-62 was an interim solution that could be mass-produced quicker and cheaper. But saying that the T-64 was designed as a replacement to tanks that didn't exist yet is kinda...

>The SA-13 Gopher, called Strela-10 (Arrow‑10)
by its Russian crews...
This is mostly just a personal problem, but giving the equipment NATO reporting names and saying that the russian crews like to call it something else implies that the NATO name is the correct one, while the russians just gave it a nickname, I'd prefer if they just called it what it is, then give the NATO name as an alternative.
>The Strela-10, dubbed SA-13 by NATO...

>Did these people take their research seriously?

No they didn't. Research apparently consisted of listening to somebody's dad that served as a lower enlisted during the Cold War in a NATO army.

Not actually reading NATO let alone Soviet primary sources.

>BTR-60 has rear doors

This fluff was probably written for the BMP but changed when they used it in the release of the BTR.

>This is mostly just a personal problem, but giving the equipment NATO reporting names and saying that the russian crews like to call it something else implies that the NATO name is the correct one, while the russians just gave it a nickname

But user, NATO are the protagonists therefore everything is written from their perspective. /s

Pretty much. It's not dead, it's just dead on here.

It's a bad one today huh?

The last one got 16 posts before dying.

Phil, where is it?

TY isn't a game where you should be bogged down with minutia like transport helos.

P.S. We gave NATO Hueys.

Cheers

Today I learned from a copy of a general's round table on Veeky Forums:
>in the 60s, the Pact expected to traverse Europe in 3 weeks
>in the 80s, they expected their advance to collapse after 300km
>in the 60s, Pact expected a division to maintain itself without reinforcements for at least two days if not nuked
>in the 80s, the Pact expected to lose 40% of the average division by the end of the first day
>also 30% of the opposing airforces would be shot down in an extremely short span of time
>the USSR therefore decided there would be no war in the 80s and spent their time obsessing over how to curb stomp China

Yeah the high water mark for the WARPAC was the mid-70s. The US military was gutted after Vietnam and NATO was lagging technologically. Civvies didn't see INTERNATIONAL COMMUNISM as a huge imminent threat and as a result military budgets were getting slashed and bad ideas like an ATGM wall across Europe were being proposed.

However TY is officially set in a period where the WARPAC would still have had a good chance of taking West Germany. About 86/87 is where I set the tipping point for a conclusive NATO victory with a limited nuclear exchange.

Yeah, TY was intentionally set in the rough time period where there's something approaching parity between the forces. Shame that BF doesn't care to do things accurately from there.

But we can't have a game if the big bad Russia doesn't start it's big evil war for no good reason or benefit.
It's not like a game could be had if NATO went and invaded the east, no one would be able to enjoy such an obviously fictional setting.

Similarly, we can't have a game where the Soviets are in any way competent or well equipped compared to the west. Everyone knows that a commie tank is easily destroyed and struggles to scratch a capitalist tank, look at the AIWs! Thus they must be le horde.

>Obligatory Stalin quote from WW2 to justify how Sovs are depicted four decades later in WW3

>T-55 was designed 1957
Eeeeh... That's only somewhat accurate, the T-55's design lineage is a long meandering thing beginning in WW2. Things that will become the T-55 are visible in T-54 designs years earlier.

>Pretty much. It's not dead, it's just dead on here.
Speak for yourself, my group's going back to V3 on the rare occasions we play and Will at PSC's mentioned his 15mm sales have cratered compared to 20mm.

>Yeah the high water mark for the WARPAC was the mid-70s.
I don't think those numbers are entirely about degradation of PACT capability; as the arms race continued the exchange of casualties was going to get worse and worse as more advanced weapons were deployed. Widespread clusterboming/bomblet artillery wasn't as expected in 1962.

Yeah I was talking about the comparative advantage. NATO armies of the mid '70s were using tanks designed to fight the T-55 (if they were lucky) and would have been up against T-64s and T-72s.

>the T-55's design lineage is a long meandering thing beginning in WW2
You are correct, the T-55 is really just a product-improved T-54, which was a reworked T-44, which was a... etc

What I meant is that the design that was designated T-55 was created in 1957, then produced in 1958. I won't argue it borrowed heavily (read: almost entirely) from previous designs, but the name T-55 didn't exist until late '57.
Thus my point of it being silly to say that design teams in 1954 were investigating a replacement for a tank that didn't even have a design or even name yet.

Oh, well, that I'll happily drink to. BF's "lore" in Red Thunder was shit.

Come to /hwg/ and spam some memes. It'll be a laugh.

Not to mention the ATGM advantage that the PACT had. NATO was just entering ATGMs into widespread usage in the mid 70s while the PACT had the things everywhere already.

The soviets were popping their self-propelled howitzers off the assembly lines at full speed (cutting the advantage that NATO had), while the BM-21 rocket launchers had already been fully integrated into service.

AA units had ZSU-23-4, SA-9, SA-8, SA-7, and SA-6.
NATO had the VADS (optical-tracking? Really?), Chaparral, NIM-23 Hawk, AMX-13 DCA (only a handful), Gepard entering service, and various MANPADS.

And various other advantages on the ground in terms of plentiful, varied, and capable equipment.

Yeah can't forget the Sagger panic caused by the Yom Kippur war.

"lore" indeed.

I dread to think what horrors they put into the other nations' books. Maybe Stripes will have Americans designing the M1 Abrams in 1960s (b/c MBT-70 program).

So I just opened the Team Yankee PDF from the handy links above, to find that it is not the rule book for Battlefront's 2015 game, but some game from 1987. The rule books for the other games (FoW, GW, Nam, FoN) are there, but TY is replaced by some old SPI-esque game.

How can I look at grorious Amurica "lore" if there is no rule book?

I'll have something for you guys in a few hours after some touch ups. This will be the first bit of real crunch.

right here
youtube.com/watch?v=x2DZ9k7E690

ITALIANS NAOW

November is LW babby book, December and January are Stripes, February is Vietnam. Each of these products may be hideously delayed because BF. Italians may or may not appear by summer 2018.

Looking forward to it!

We have deemed that the warsaw pact forces do not really need a helo that carries heavy weapons and troops since Hinds already do that.

P.S. We are giving the Americans the M247 York to complement the M163 VADS. We are also giving them HMMWV, LAV and AAVP7 because they need diverse transport options.

cheers

The new soviet release for midwar is going to be a train wreck isn't it?

First, a basic outline of the UN forces and where they fit.
I know you are asking "Why is this handwritten?"
It's because the only program I could do this with on my computer would be paint and that would be dreadful to both look at and make. If anyone knows of a program I could download that would let me do this on the computer I would be eternally thankful if you told me of it.
I also would like to say sorry for my handwriting.

I've recently finished reading about the Commonwealth division and they were involved in many actions that would be perfect for company scale. It's a pity that Korea is so forgotten when it was such an interesting war.

I think BF could actually improve the popularity of the conflict with a decent spin off book as long as they didn't CHEERS the NK/Chinese too hard.

Secondly a breakdown of formations and force selection for the Commonwealth.

I know it's not much but my god work has been murder in the build up to Christmas (I work retail).

>I also would like to say sorry for my handwriting.
>handwriting is easily 10x as neat as mine
fuck

what are you expecting?

I've also decided on the ratings for the Commonwealth Nations

UK-CV
Canada-CT
Australia-FT
NZ-CT

I decided on making the UK a Veteran rating due to the soldiers having been involved in the ongoing Malayan Emergency and as such would have fresh combat experience under their belt.

For the same reason of involvement in Malaya I made the Australians Fearless and will admit this decision was partly based on wanting to have a rating diversity within the Commonwealth selection while also paying homage to the "fearless" attitude the Australian soldier has acquired over time.

The Canadians and New Zealand are CT as they have not participated in combat since WW2 and have no reason to have higher/lower morale than normal in my mind.

Feel free to add your input, I just wanted to let you guys know the thought process behind my choices.

Also yes that is a "Medical Support" option with possible helicopters. I was planing on making it an "All infantry teams within 3 inches of a medical support unit may re-roll failed saves against weapons with a firepower of 6+" But feel free to let me know how you would like to see it handled.

You must be rating the Americans RC then. Which DESU most of their units deserved that in the early part of the war.

>this time it's the US getting the CHEERS
MOMS GONNA FREAK

RC is probably unfair but the Commonwealth brigade literally could not keep up with the pace of US Army withdrawal once the Chinese counter-attacked. An American unit would dig in on the flank of the Commonwealth brigade and be gone before dawn of the next day.

The history of the Commonwealth brigades is interesting precisely because they did proper fighting withdrawals instead of just the "bug out" that US units favoured.

I'd also rate most Chinese units as veteran ;)

As a kiwi, I have to say that bothering to make a distinction between us and the Aussies is... well its nice, and get you brownie points with some, but you might as well not bother.

The Allied HQ during the war certainly didn't.

What the Kiwis round here THINK they're famous for is their engineering.
We have tales about making tanks from abandoned/borrowed/requisitioned american spare parts during gulf wars.
Supposedly NZ's commander was known as 'Ali Baba and his 40000 theives'.
Tales of going into American camps to steal supplies, loading trucks until an inspector comes by to ask what they're doing.
"Unloading supplies, sir." (they continue unloading till he leaves, then resume loading)

What we THINK we're famous for is hearts and minds, engineering wise. "When we leave a place, we leave it better. With running water, and road access and irrigation."

We don't get to decide what our reputation ACTUALLY is, but if Aussies are fearless, we're exactly the same and more efficiently managed due to reverse economy of scale.

As for not having participated in combat since WW2, we'd just like to say thanks a fucking bunch, NZ has participated in thousands, I mean thousands of conflicts, including every single fucking gulf incursion.

Mostly because DESPERATELY waving the 'we're totally a real nation flag' has been considered important political currency by every single prime minister in NZ history,
but it just goes to show nobody effing remembers us when we do.
Perhaps we should get into the war-crimes business. Its not like anyone would notice.

>For the same reason of involvement in Malaya I made the Australians Fearless and will admit this decision was partly based on wanting to have a rating diversity within the Commonwealth selection while also paying homage to the "fearless" attitude the Australian soldier has acquired over time.
>The Canadians and New Zealand are CT as they have not participated in combat since WW2 and have no reason to have higher/lower morale than normal in my mind.
New Zealand was also in Malaya, user-kun
Admittedly we were not fully involved until 1951
NZ's main contribution to the UN forces was a single artillery regiment - (16th Field Regiment RNZA) - but they performed really well and helped save the day at Kaypong
However you could get away with just using that as single unit, like the Turkish and Ethopian battalions, or even just include "NZ Arty" as a bonus option for Commonwealth forces where they can reroll a miss, or something

>As for not having participated in combat since WW2
I believe user was meaning the 1945-50 period

>Perhaps we should get into the war-crimes business. Its not like anyone would notice.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surafend_affair
and whatever NZSAS may or may not have gotten up to in Afghanistan which means torching a few villages

At the start of the war, South Korean army did not have AP and APHE rounds of 57mm M1 AT guns. Just before the war broke out, US military advisors ordered SK AT gun units to return AP and APHE rounds to ammunition depot.
There are no official documents US military advisor ordered returning AP and APHE rounds, but there are many memoirs of SK soldiers supporting this.
It also explains why T-34s are invulnerable against SK AT guns.
So I suggest if you handle SK units before Incheon landing their 57mm guns should have lower AT rating. Maybe 5 or lower number will be appropriate, they didn't penetrate side armor of t-34s at 100 yards.

If you are going to include medical support, I suggest seeing 'wounded' system of Tour of Duty book.

>As a kiwi, I have to say that bothering to make a distinction between us and the Aussies is... well its nice, and get you brownie points with some, but you might as well not bother.

I disagree, Kiwi artillery was some of the best during Korea and Vietnam, enough so that I felt that it earned it's place as a separate choice with special rules that will make it stand out.

>As for not having participated in combat since WW2, we'd just like to say thanks a fucking bunch, NZ has participated in thousands, I mean thousands of conflicts, including every single fucking gulf incursion.
>but it just goes to show nobody effing remembers us when we do.

The game I'm writing take place during the Korean war, 5 years after WW2...

Yes, I have seen reports of the South Korean AT being dreadful against North Korean armour, had no idea it was due to ammunition being recalled though so cheers for alerting me I will for sure look into it.

>If you are going to include medical support, I suggest seeing 'wounded' system of Tour of Duty book.

It was in the initial plan but I was worried it would bog down the game and so opted for the simple version above. Will definitely consider shifting it back if more people feel it's better the old way.

I don't think medevac rules are justified for normal scenarios where units are not cut off from LOC. Even in Tour of Duty they are more thematic than anything.

I arrived late to this discussion, sorry.
My attitude is more about me, not you.

I will really stress the 'a bunch of fucking thieves' thing for our modern army post 90's btw.

If you're racist you can note our higher than capita average presence of Maori recruits in our millitary, and note 'the brown girl from mars' in The Expanse as one of ours.

Seriously.
Thieving as a core principle, because our funding is worse than 3rd world tier.

>Thieving as a core principle, because our funding is worse than 3rd world tier.

Everyone does it. In the Korean war the British units would trade liquor rations to US supply units (The US forces were 'dry') to get machine guns, trucks, and other supplies. The Australians pulled the "just unloading the truck sir" trick more than once.

Oh also forgot to ask, What would you guys think of me introducing the Firebase rule from Tour of Duty? It would mean all artillery batteries are off map (unless it's a base attack scenario) but restricted to an on map spotter/command teams for firing.

I got a Panhardon for these armored cars. Too bad they couldn’t hit shit.

>It would mean all artillery batteries are off map (unless it's a base attack scenario) but restricted to an on map spotter/command teams for firing.
Honestly that's a much better approach than there is currently. If you want to expand it to account for proliferation of radios and such (like with US forces), increase the points cost to account for it being hard to properly take out.

I think it is better than having massive guns on table. That should be heavy and immobile gun batteries only, though. Short range artillery like like 4.2" mortar or 76mm zis were positioned very close to friendly position to assist them. They suffered many casualty when enemy makes breakthrough or infiltrates.

Koreanon, you have awesome fuckign handwriting! neat.
that is amazing! thank you!

what woudl be the best way modeling wise to make a Korean War / WWII Centurion? let's say i start w' the 'Nam version of the kit.

The design didn't change all that much for the Centurion. I suppose it would be a case of removing things like IR sensors and non period correct stowage MAYBE the bore evacuator too but that is not something i'd know about enough to commit to doing.

Well can't not pander to American and LW players.

I'm still bugged Americans for a North Africa release before Italians. I get they're more popular and will sell better right out the gate, but I'm still allowed to be irked.

>I get they're more popular and will sell better right out the gate
Also that they only needed one new plastic sprue (rest are the same as existing LW or MW sprues) and some resin/soft plastic minor units (easy to make). Italy is going to need several brand new plastic sprues, and because BF doesn't want to let ANYONE try and sip their moneydrink they're not releasing armies without most shit in plastic.

Shermans and Priests were both new.

Other than that, a lot of it was pre-existing from LW US plastics or MW Brit plastics.

It could be pushed out faster since there was less to physically produce to be ready for a US release compared to an Italian release.

So when is the next podcast taking place?

In reality BF should want to release the Mi-8 b/c having players buying another helo would
mean roughly double the soviet helo sales (so about two boxes per player).
Unless the operating principle is not to make money by selling plastic but instead to shit on soviet players. (or alternatively they simply were incapable of producing any more soviet sprues in time for Volks and Thunder)

(that alternative is not very believable though, since the Volks Armee got a total of three new kits (BRDM in 3 variants, BTR-60PB, and T-55AM2), Red Thunder got four new kits (T-64, Storm, 2S3, SA-8), while Americans are getting nine (9) new kits (Huey, Chaparral, Sergeant York, M60, AAVP7, Sheridan, HMMWV in 4 (5?) variants, and LAV in 3 variants))

(Also, selling the HMMWV and LAV as single kits with many options but selling the BRDM variants as their own boxes is just insulting)

I'd say the reality is that they have a limited number of production slots (especially plastic ones) and used that slot for the Americans because they thought it would sell better.

Recorded and is being Edited, so the answer becomes "Whenever Eagles has edited it."

as says, limited production of plastics. The Americans are getting more kits, but they don't need to make as much of those kits as they need to make of BTR-60s and T-55s.

Also that New Zealand didn't lose it's National Service for a while, new recruits will still have an acceptable level of training. Plus Veterans from WW2.

What does everyone think about the Armies of Late War preview?

Meh. I mean it’s just babbies first LW. Nothing too upsetting, nothing useful for me. Might be good for new player to easily get started, depending on what they buy.

Link?

I literally predicted the demise of BF when they released TY. I saw the splintering effect it had on an already small gaming community.

These games make their money by creating communities and corporate policy must identify creation of communities as a strategic goal. When you introducr a new era that is incompatible with the current kit, we see sub communities being formed which cannibalize the larger community.

I honestly feel like BF needs to take a "business 101" course at their local community college.

Armies of LW feels like it is half baked. Why move to MW force-org charts without updating points so that they are less broken?

Saw this on Facebook, apparently costs 4p per model. I think they'll be showing up in a lot of US lists.

Right... Just like people have been predicting the demise of Games Workshop for years, and yet that still hasn’t happened.

Even after all the outrage over Age of Sigmar.

Battlefront is fine. Version 4 has some legitimate issues, but it isn’t going to kill the company.

BF isn’t going to go the way of Spartan Games anytime soon.

V4's polarizing changes don't help either.

The last time I played FoW, Open Fire! was the current iterations of rules. Or at least, that mini rulebook was the rulebook we were all using, and you could get themed tokens on the website in a little tin with some themed dice too for your army.

What is the state of the game now?

The short answer is that back in April a new Edition of the game was released.

There are some people who actually like it, and some people who very vocally hate it.

It has some legitimate issues, but overall I’d say the new Edition is easier to learn and plays much smoother and more quickly.

Here’s the thing...

At least in my opinion, Team Yankee is the WH40K compared to Flames of War being WHFB.

Team Yankee has quickly become the far more popular game between the two, at least based on my local area.

And I think that BF needs to realize that.

I still love Flames of War, but much like Warhammer Fantasy was overtaken by 40K, FoW is being overtaken by Team Yankee.

How does everyone feel about playing with 6mm?

It is being worked on, but I will admit I’ve been busy with real life obligations.

As it stands, the episode is about half-way edited.

When it’s ready I’ll be posting here and on social media, as I always do, to let everyone know it has been released.

People do it, but the rules were clearly designed with 15mm scale in mind.

That was me by the way.

Not really. The ground scale is no where near 15mm. You can easily keep the same base sizes and use 6mm miniatures for a slightly more realistic dispersal of men and machines.

That amused me more than it should have.

But hey, new edition of Cold War Commander next year. Maybe I'll get some use of my Germans.

Does TY have the legs that WW2 has? Will the 100 point system an ATGM spam slowly kill off the game?

I personally don’t have any issues with the 100 point system. For 95% of the stuff in the game, I feel it works just fine. And the 5% that makes it feel a little bit off isn’t really all that game-breaking in my opinion.

As for ATGM spam, that is a far more serious issue if you ask me. Or even just spam in general.

Missile spam with the British, BMP spam and missile spam with the Russians, T-55 spam with the East Germans, etc.

Spam is a major issue, and there need to be better ways to counter it.

Or at the very least make it less attractive in the first place.

Because clearly the outrageous amounts of money someone needs to spend to do BMP spam or T-55 spam hasn’t been a big enough factor in preventing the spam.

>Because clearly the outrageous amounts of money someone needs to spend to do BMP spam or T-55 spam hasn’t been a big enough factor in preventing the spam.

A more cynical me would say that the high cost is what makes BF want to keep the spam in game.

A more cynical version of me would probably agree.

But I remember for the T-55s at least, Battlefront said on their forums that the staggering cost of spamming their resin T-55s would make it unlikely that we would see T-55 spam.

And then people purchased fucking 30 of the damn things.

And that was before the cheaper PSC version was even announced.

The reason I bring up the 100 point system, is that I feel it complicates any effort to adjust points to balance things. You don't have much wiggle room to adjust points, and you get weird things like the insane discount for small platoons of T-55s.

I think the comment was just some random forum derp and not a battlefront employee. I don't know if battlefront want to actively encourage spam in every case, but they certainly do nothing to dissuade people from doing it. And hey if it just so happens to be a shiny plastic kit...

The thing with Minimum Sized Units (or Multiple Small Units) of T-55s is something that actually gets discussed in the Panzerfunk episode I’m currently in the middle of editing.

I can’t help but think it is a unintentional rules exploit that certain players found and have been exploiting.

I personally don’t think 3-strong tank units are individually all that effective on their own, but when they’re are a lot of them, it still becomes difficult to effectively deal with them all.

Also, as far as plastic sales go, they probably do have a specific “break even” point in mind where they have to sell a certain number of kits for them to make back the money they spent producing the metal mold for the injection molding machine.

But I still think that it is a bit of a conspiracy theory to think that they’re actively encouraging spam in order to help pay for those expensive molds.

*shrug*

What in the rules is designed specifically for 15mm?

All of the distances seem horrendously short for 15mm (sub machine guns reaching about 5 man-lengths, cannons not reaching across a field that in scale is less than 100m long)

Volksarmee's only kits were the T-55AM2 and the infantry, the others were just Red Thunder kits they were able to accelerate. I guess it makes it look fairer to Warsaw Pact on paper to have 2 releases in a row, but it was really only one plus a barebones supplement release.

Now, according to rumor, there's ANZAC and France coming after Stripes, no sign of anything Warsaw Pact.