Flames Of War: SeerK's First Look

Sometimes its nice to branch out and take the edge off a bit when you suddenly find yourself immersed in one particular thing. In this case its 40K. Despite building an Adepticon GT army and plotting a Eldar Strike force for combat patrol I am having the hobby blahs. So I decided to try something different. Inquisitor Vogrin is on a 40K hiatus and despite being a Pressganger and playing lots of War Machine wanted to try out a little Flames Of War.

So we split a Flames Of War Boxed set, the open fire one, and read through the rules so that the following Saturday we would throw down. I started with historical war games back in the day before I started playing Battletech and Warhammer 40K. I have been wanting to try Flames Of War ever since Old School Terminator gave a good review of it after trying it. I loved Epic 40K and its previous version Space Marine so mass combat games have always appealed to me. OST compared it to Epic. That was the thing that pushed me over. An investment of $35 was not bad as well.

So I split a box and took the Germans. For those of you unfamiliar with Flames Of War, it is a large scale world war two game. The miniatures are in 1/100 scale. The infantry is on bases with 4 or 5 soldiers to one base. These individual bases make up infantry teams. The teams are grouped into platoons. Each platoon is typically 6 infantry bases and 1 smaller 3 man command team. Tanks are typically in platoons of 1 to 5. A collection of platoons is a company. Games are typically played on the company level. Typical games are 1500 points. There is a force organization chart to help you assemble your army. The whole army building portion was pretty easy as its very 40K like in its execution.

The starter box Inquisitor Vogrin and I split had about 810 points of Germans in it. After looking at the Adepticon events for Flames of War I saw that the late war tournaments were 1000 points. SO basically adding another platoon of something will put you at an entry level tournament point level.

The game plays with the same basic turn sequence that 40K has. You have movement, shooting and an assault phase. Everything, ranges and such, are measured in both English standard and metric. All the unit entries in the books list both. Epic and Battlefleet Gothic, for those of you who played those GW games, both used metric, IE centimeters, to measure everything so this again brought up some nostalgia and some familiarity.

Units do not have a ballistic skill or a stat line though in the 40K sense though. Every unit has a skill rating. This skill rating is used to determine how hard it is to hit the unit. So the die roll needed to hit a unit is based on the target units skill level. Units can be Conscripts, Trained or Veteran in skill level. They also have a morale rating of Reluctant, Confident and Fearless. This helps determine command range as well as the die roll needed for morale checks from casualties and to activate skills and such.

Cover adds difficulty to hit targets as does movement and range. Vogrin and I had a very long drawn out fire fight between our platoons in cover. The difficulty to hit and damage was high. Vogrin broke the stalemate by over running my position in an assault. I have to say assaults are very deadly and to the point. I lost one of my infantry platoons to the assault. Meanwhile my anti tank gun teams and Stug tanks were making short work of the Sherman tanks Vogrin were bringing up on my flank.

I have to say after playing on game I am impressed by the rules set. I am also impressed by how concise they are. Nothing is really left to question. A thing that is often lacking in many of Gw's games. You will be seeing Flames of War articles now and again. This is a good change of pace for me. I started out with historicals and Battle Tech. Apparently though according to Samsquatch Monster and The Judge I am now officially an old man. Oh well had to happen eventually.

Well next time We will be in 2013. Its been a weird year to say the least. A new edition and a new chaos codex. Rumors abound about what the future holds for my beloved Eldar. I guess we shall see.

Have a happy New Year all. I will be partying in Ann Arbor with my Rogue Trader crew. Two words. Battle Shots!

Until Next Year.....

Blood Runs, Anger Rises, Death Wakes, War Calls!!!!!!!!!!!!!

DEATH TO THE FALSE EMPORER!!!!!!!!!!