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God I miss this game. This and the battletech card game where a blast. My favourite deck of all time was a shadowlands dueling deck.

Hey I was one of those shadowland crab players had a non shadowland crab player we'd have some good games...jump over to full shadowlands deck in time of the void...

when's the ad on out

Many folks like 15mm over 6mm because of the model detail and ability to recognize things at game distances. But your typical FoW and Team Yankee game is just too big (in model count) to fit on 6’x4’. There is a simple solution, just reduce the model count. I don’t mean smaller points just fewer models. We play Team Yankee with one four-vehicle NATO platoon represented with one vehicle with four hit points. It still shoots X times, etc. Pact gets 2 models for a platoon or even a company. Same sort of thing with infantry. Drop team stands from platoons as makes sense. This opens the table up and makes it look much better. It also speeds play as fewer models to move and less LoS checking, etc. It is also a whole lot cheaper.

11:33 Oh, so it was WotC who ruined this incredible game. Why does that not surprise me.

You did it backwards. You're supposed to flip over the cards left to right. I guess because you're on the other side of the table, you got confused : )

1:37 according to the rules if you would pass over any part of another vehicle you cannot shoot. so the middle tanks can only shoot straight ahead at maybe a 30 degree angle left and right based of the measuring from where the gun meets the turret. so i like it when my opponent does this.

Flames of War is NOT a simulation of WW2 combat. It is a WW2 themed game.

I have been around since we developed the beta of FOW and the original V1. Its never been the rules persee in any of the version it as you suggest both the standard 6 x 4 tourney sized tables and/or player choice. The bext games IMO in 15mm were always had with 8 x 6 however I was always in the minority here in NZ. If people want to play with parking lots there has always been a simple solution to beat them at their own game of clumping tanks and that is air....nice lovely clumped targets with little top armour, versus a minimum investment in points for air support (that comment is based on V1 to 3 I have never chosen to play V4 before I get a tirade of response) is the solution. The other side of this the game was always designed to "get the toys on the table" hence why arty with ranges of kms is on the table. In the end of the day its a game and like every other game there are plusses and minuses and all wargamers have an opinion good or bad.

I am a war gamer from the 1970s.all I see here are JUICY ARTILLERY & AIR STRIKE TARGETS. Do modern rules not account for this?

Flames of War is a bad set of rules. It encourages people to play to those bad set of rules. So, you don't see anything like actual tactics. What you do get is really gamey strats centered around list building and rules exploits. I've seen some of these players in action and while they are good at the game they can't think their way out of a wet paper bag and would be completely lost in a more realistic or (heaven forbid) dynamic scenario.

I know of only 1 occurrence of this happening in real life. It happened in Northern Italy near the Eastern coast in 1944 by a Canadian formation of Shermans. They were attempting to overrun a position of Panthers. Once the M4s broke cover, they had a flood plain to cross. After this was rolling, hills were the Panthers in a reverse slope positions waited. The Canadians had losses on the approach, so it was decided to rush the Panthers and hit them on their side armour in a cavalry style charge line abreast. A witness to the charge remarked how they held a near perfect line, but sparks flew as their sides ground together. It was far worse than the charge of light brigade. Not a single M4 made it to the rolling hills. It was a foolish plan born from frustration. If they had followed doctrine by not using a frontal assault they may have displaced the Panthers. The Canadians simply used their tanks wrong and paid the full price it. There are some other historical examples of this. Such as the Scott Greys cavalry at Waterloo. After a successful charge of French infantry, they reformed and charged French guns in the distance. They got cut to pieces before they reached the guns. So it happens but extremely rarely for a good reason. One was born from desperation, and the other from being drunk with victory, both are judgement errors. No set of rules, including the rules of the road, can remove judgement errors. FoW V4 is no different. While it allows the player to line up their tanks like a Napoleonics formation or car parks as you call them. It also makes the entire line of tanks vulnerable as the tanks in the line do not block line of sight to the next tank in the line. While tanks on your side do block your line of sight. So what is going wrong? The simple answer is that many players don't know how to use tanks. They think they do but start using them as infantry while preferring not to use infantry at all if they can help it. Many gamers start with games like 40K or similar. These are infantry based games with a few vehicles. You tend to use the rules to win rather than effective combined arms tactics. New players often ask me what rules they do have to use to win? I get a confused look from them when I answer they need to use tactics rather than rules. These new players are only just discovering history and tend to have a Hollywood education to war. Don't get me wrong, this is perfectly fine. They arrive at this game completely green without much other than a keenness to play, and that's great. However when they start playing and learning as a group and in their hurry to play many key rules, such as line of sight, are not full enforced. This allows moving car parks to be successful. So I totally agree that it's not the rules. The problem is us. I've been playing since version 2 and the car park only appeared from V4. V4 and Team Yankee has also seen a sharp rise in the number of people playing the game, so their probably so grow pains there as well.

Line abrest increases each tank's line of sight allowing more shoots. This is not new to v4. For the same reason it happened in v3 Also, if artillery is less threatening, platoons/companies will be less worried about every vehicle being hit

but artillery is spaced apart . hmm. play in 2 / 6mm. or play chain of command with one tank and its fragile.

Former service men vs. gamers. I used to get negative feedback on my deployments, but grouping them together like they had a collective death wish always sat wrong with me. Then I learned the difference between wargaming (like in the Army) and war-gaming and that settled it.

FoW is too close to an arcade set of rules for me. Battlegroup is a better alternative if these rules annoy you. No command distance and no group moves for vehicles.

Yeah, no. FoW is just all about gamification.

Or,.. it could be FoW are ghastly rules. 😁. Or,.. the scale is not ideal. The only way I’ll play FoW is in 6mm with a minimum separation rule that compels played to not permit any AFV within 5cm of another AFV

I used to paint FOW for a living many years ago....i hated the athletics of this game. At the time i played my own rules (FOW miniatures)...it looked nothing like FOW games

i bought this game at dragoncon 1999, bought Vor: the maelstrom also, and another game whose name escapes me now, maybe ill see it further down your list. dont know what ever happened to the game, the minis for it though, ended up in a 40k chaos army as khorne worshipers lol, good times. got to see gwar play at dragon con too, as well as GMT.. Grand Moff Tarkin, bought their CD, cool band, cool con, good times. 4:50, the 'national guard soldiers', when Deamon blade when under, they sold the molds to mega miniatures, when mega minis converted to selling 15m and got rid of 28mm stock, i bought the master molds, and they are in storage in fairbanks alaska.

we still play this here in alaska... alaska gen-x wargaming club. the minis are mostly available from iron wind metals. we also do laser grenadiers, and twilight 2000 first edition. D10 / D100 rules. cool vid, liked and sub'd because of this vid. we converted all armies into vor armies, all the 40k in vor.

FOW is a rule system I stay well clear of

I’m a tanker, I can’t suspend my disbelief in the Flames of War/Team Yankee rule sets when I see tanks side skirt to side skirt like they’re parked in the motor pool. I don’t care about figure scale/table scale, it just looks silly.

IN miniature gaming there is almost always a disconnect between model/figure scale and terrain scale.

I love model tanks and tank wargames - and whenever I see people playing FoW at my local game shop I always think “why are they playing rank and flank”. It looks rubbish. Great video!

It's the nature of the turn limit. For a given tank you have 6 opportunities per game to fire. The nature of terrain and being unable to fire through your own models means you're often keyholing shots through gaps just bigger than the 3/4 inch limit, meaning you are often pressing up against each other to get shots through that. Every time a tank is unable to shoot due to blocked LOS it has lost 1/6 of its combat potential, or more. We often have plenty of concealing terrain to fit things through, between large wheat fields and long concealing stone wall lines and such, but getting those shots between buildings or between gaps in forests while avoiding firing through your own models gives you a very narrow range of legal firing positions. You've also got a lot of missions where you've only got an 8 inch deep zone to deploy in.

I play flames of war in 6mm

because the rules dont penalise you for being next to another vehicle like the real world would either for being a much bigger target, misses would likely hit adjacent vehicles, artillery etc should effect multiple units grouped together and the obvious dangers of being right next to another metal box full of explosives if it takes damage try "7 Days to the river Rhine" and see how quickly you learn to space out you vehicles !

Play FoW on a really big table with same sized forced you use on 4x6 tables - the game feels a lot different.

Yeah, I hear you. I see this a lot to crowd vehicles behind cover. I'll see tanks stacked every which way as close as they can get just to hide behind a house. I also agree on the chain of command. I think in V4 they went for simplicity to speed up gameplay.

There are some good constructs in the system but this is a Game of war and not a wargame and as such it really is not surprising it looks and plays way too reductively. It’s completion gaming. Military vehicles have prescribed distances and you are right its earlier systems were. far better by miles. Too much commercial emphasis behind the rules alas.

Mismatched ground to unit to model scale is also at fault here. I do not play Flames of War, but from what I understand, 1 model represents 1 vehicle. I again am not sure about the ground scale either, but I am guessing that every inch is at least 50 meters or so. In that ratio, a line of models touching is probably MORE spacious than many historical formations, since instead of being an inch wide (or whatever) a true-scale model would be 0.05 inches wide and the space between two "touching" models would actually be a comfortable 45 meters or so in true ground scale. Now if you see people playing Flames of War in 6mm, I bet you see less of that car-park happening. That said, who wants to paint 6mm models, so it is quite reasonable to prefer 15mm or larger. But if you play with larger scales like 15mm, the game should really use a proper unit scale. Take Command Decision, where 1 model represents 4 to 6 tanks (a platoon). In a typical battle, you may only have two or three tank models in total (representing a tank company, perhaps supporting an infantry battalion). With two or three 15mm model tanks on a large table, you don't find players putting them in physical contact very often.

I liked the Dark and read all 30 MWDA books and beyond. It's the contraversies of the last couple of years that have put me off. I'm so sick of 'The Message' being injected into everything, that is meant to be a distraction from everyday life.

The other part of the IP that also gets forgotten about is the original PC game from 2000 which was completely different from the later 2003 Xbox game. It's more of a hybrid arcade/flight sim game than the Xbox's pure arcade flight style and it features completely different plot / missions. This is the version that also later appeared as an arcade cabinet in 2002.

If they follow the usual pattern, the release of Early War it means FoW v5 is about 24 months or less away. This will mean back to Mid-War and the new army books. They have followed this pattern since v2, and I really hope not. I would like to play early war for a bit more than a few months before they change the points system for the armies again.

GOOD JOB!

Just found your channel because the OG GM shouted you out. Good vid. Unfortunately in America so many people cant budget & they are spending to much of income on renting a home, & have credit card debt thats at an all time high.

Just discovered your channel this morning. I always enjoy learning about older games or games I never knew about, so thank you. I gave you a shoutout and a subscribe this morning (ruclips.net/video/RR3hILhjbd0/видео.htmlsi=f3rEboU7JZen35CG)

me IM a massive L5R fan been playing the game since it first came out, now just played the LCG yesterday, and yep it really does not measure up to the original card game,

There is apparently a Discord Server now for this game, it video game counterparts, and the universe it created. Haven't joined it yet, because I am extremely picky about which servers I join. Sigh. And that I only got into the game via the video games.

Been hoping Leviathans will be popular enough that CGL might see good in taking another crack at the idea behind Crimson Skies, even if they want to run it within the Leviathans IP instead.

I played LBS ccg and was a big fan. I sold my whole collection years ago. Two things I was surprised you didn't cover. How DIFFERENT dueling is in this game vs L5R, and Story Cards! The alternate win condition, like the Rings in L5R.

We already had a Dark Age in Battletech. It was called 3025.

Wargames Atlantic are based in Florida. They were originally teamed up with Altera Industrial based in China and production was overseas but due to Covid they began production in the US, Florida. They do have warehouses in UK and Australia though which they ship from etc. I look forward to more product from them as this looks/plays great. Cool vid. Subscribed.

HUGE Wraith fan. I bought the book in High School or just after- circa 1999-2002; I don't recall for certain. However, it sounds like my fortune has been like yours; I never got to play, and only just got to actually run a game this year- 2024. Wraith is fantastic for role playing. I ran an 8 hour one-shot session featuring next to no combat. The players were able to carry the story along with they and their shadows providing the forward momentum. Yes, an extroverted player and/or a particularly aggressive Shadow can steal the spotlight, but it's up to the Storyteller to keep a hand on the leash. That said, the game is for the players, so in a way... Let them cook. Also like you, I'm not a Vampire guy. I can't get into the mindset of a Vampire (it sounds awful,) and I similarly have zero interest in Werewolf. Mage is fun, and I might want to take another stab at running it, but a story idea has never taken hold. Changling looks amazing, but I don't have the head or personality to run it. Hunter--not one of the more popular tertiary books--was also a fave back in the day. But Wraith... Oh, Wraith. That I got. I never went in for the 2nd edition focus on Stygia, though also never had 1st ed for contast. To me, Wraith is a small game; it's close to the ground. It's personal. I can conceive of a larger group- my session had four players, but a signle or two person game might be the sweet spot. Intimate stories about emotions so strong that you cannot move on after death. It's a safe place to explore your fears, your regrets, maybe even your hopes, lost loves, "if only's". Whether aspirational, cathartic, or cautionary, Wraith to me is what pen and paper roleplaying is about. As Nick Cave sang: Just remember, death is not the end.

yep I highly agree with you I have the complete set of LBS was a fan when I first bought it back in 98 to 2000. and yes it differs starkly from L5R, simliar play and I felt LBR was a harder play. Still enjoyed it though and a good CCG game.

Great information as always, thank you.

Because of this MechWarrior was DYING and has been since MWO when MW5 came out it was great and helped but now that MW5 Clans is out it has SAVED the franchise imo because the dumbass dark age crap and that garbage all totally just was a nothing burger idea with no comprehension of what would happen afterwards, dark age should be taken out entirely

When there is inconsistency, there are lies. What if the story you were told about dark age was merely propaganda and something darker was going on? That would be a cool snag for the franchise.

looks cook. hope they reprint it.