Flames of War

[Norade]

I'm looking to get into FoW and I'm wondering who here plays and what they have to say about the system?

[weemadando]

I played it a bit. Would still but don't have time.

Games are fairly quick and the rules are nice and concise along with being very thorough. It's only been once or twice that I've seen a rules dispute crop up and that's normally because someone hasn't seen the other army's special rules before.

Models are cheap compared to GW and many armies can be fielded for less than 200.

[Norade]

Yeah, though it seems that EW which I like the idea of is more expensive than other periods for lack of models. Of well, compared to 40k; $400 at full retail is still cheap for a full 1,500 point list.

[Slacker]

Early War is primarily expensive because Battlefront is still getting production going with it, and there isn't as much in terms of other model lines available for a lot of the stuff out there for it. Give it another year or so and things should be cheaper.

Gameplay wise it's grossly similar to Warhammer 40K. It's in the fine details that the differences really shine through. The game really gets the small stuff right-I can't count the number of times something's come up in a Flames game and it's just been resolved in a more natural fashion than in Warhammer. One thing you'll appreciate is there's really no 'codex creep' between books-generally all of the books in a given time period are balanced with one another, with only a handful of lists that are better or worse than average, and even then it's nowhere near to the degree of what one sees in 40K.

I play British primarily, and army wise there's a lot of interchangeability between mid and late war. Stuff generally gets cheaper in late war and you can take more of it-IE, a platoon of Shermans that might cost you 400 points in mid-War Italy goes down to around 250 in a Normandy list. My Brits basically just add more stuff transitioning from mid to late War.

Dollar wise, go with either infantry or tank armies-the only really brutal army dollar wise are mechanized armies, because of the cost of the transports on top of the infantry inside. There are also a pretty wide array of other 15mm WW2 models available that one can use in the game, and nobody cares if you use them in the game. Companies are also starting to come out with plastic 15mm tanks, which is really pretty amazing, especially as they're generally going to be cheaper than the resin/metal hybrid kits Battlefront uses.

[weemadando]

I've got a big fallschirmjager force (unpainted) and a big assault gun force that I purchased and is still in blisters that I built under PK rules prior to the newer editions which have separate structures for STuG forces.

I should probably just sell it all on as I haven't played in years.