Overrun by russians: FOW v WFB

Recently dusted off my Flames of war mid-war Italians to have a game against russians and had a great time playing. This set me to thinking about which particular aspects that I enjoy so much in the FOW rules and if any of these would or could be reflected in the up-coming warhammer fantasy rule changes.

Yes I know that they are very different games looking at very different types of battle, but at the end of the day they are both turn based wargames, one v one played out in a couple of hours. Understanding makes one game good might be of use when thinking about what you want to see in rule changes to another.

 So I got to thinking about what I so liked about the gameplay for Flames of war.

• Missions that are interesting, very well balanced and make any battle interesting

every game of WFB that I have played, for as long as I can remember have been straight across the table meetings. I know pretty much what my tactics will be (dependent upon opponent only).

•  Variable starting lineups.

depending upon the mission, FOW requires you to start many times with only half of your troops on the table. This can make unit choice very interesting.

• scenery rules that actually make the arrangement of scenery important

FOW requires half of the table to be covered in scenery, and the scale of the game makes this very important. With WFB the scenery only appears to have a minor effect.

• Realistic models

Not a lot to say here, they are two games trying to achieve different things. I have no problems whatsoever with GWs figure range. Lets face it the only reason I started playing was because I love painting the figures so.

I'm not trying to say that WFB is a bad game. Its not, in fact its a great game that has kept my interest for many years. The core rules don't need much tinkering to make them perfect. I just wish that there was a little more variety between games.

 If you want to know what happened in the game. I didn't protect my guns enough and was overrun by the masses of Russian infantry. My anti-infantry tanks were taken out far too easily by a late arriving platoon of Russian tanks.