Thoughts from the Balcony…
As many readers will have noticed, our group is big on playing Flames of War for our WWII games. Unlike a lot of groups (not all of course), we do not play tourney style play. Our focus is on historical battle flavored scenarios. Quite often, we will design our own scenarios, based on some historical writing. Other times, we will just play scenarios we find online. All of our games are multi-player per side. We find this style fun for our group. With the advent of V4, we have found that trying to play V3 scenarios with V4 rules, is problematic at best. Here are some thoughts on how players can tweak their games to make it more interesting:
Players need to think hard when trying to use V3 scenarios when playing V4 rules. There are enough changes in mechanics to make such scenarios very unbalanced in attack/defense games. Three things need to be considered:
- Table size. With movement being faster in the game, forces can get to objectives much faster. This means that either tables have to be larger, objectives need to be farther from the front (at lease 8″) or reserves need to arrive faster. We tend to enlarged the table for our game (we have the space), so that seems to work well.
- Template Artillery. Template artillery in V4 can be devastating for non-AFVs in V4. When you have fixed objectives and a defender, this is much worse. You either need to reduce the amount of artillery allowed in your scenario, do not allow the re-roll for repeat bombardment or have substantially more cover to allow infantry to move around. The current rules reulst in the defenders being forced to constantly shift their troops around to avoid some of the fire, but this only helps a little when you have an objective to hold (it is also very unrealistic). In attack defense historic scenarios, we feel the best move is not to allow the re-rolls for repeat bombardments (the other benefits are good enough).
- Scenario End. Many scenarios have an end requirement that just says the attacked has to be withing so many inches of an objective or defenders table side. In V4, it can be almost impossible for a defender to break an attacking force (just back up two of your shot up units and use everything else). This means that a game can go on forever, usually meaning the attacker with armor will win eventually against an infantry force if he is patient. This results in a very long and probably boring game (with a set outcome). As such, it is clear that all scenarios need to have a maximum number of turns for the attacker to achieve their victory. This puts some pressure on the players and keeps the game fun!
– Manteuffel