Force on Force

[Heisler]

Got to play my first Force on Force game last night and thoroughly enjoyed it. My Taliban melted like snow against the withering firepower of the British Paratroopers but they held on long enough to inflict a few casualties and contest the final objective. For a picture AAR you can visit my blog: http://wargamesandrailroads.blogspot.com/2012/04/force-on-force-british-paras-vs-talaban.html

[sethohman]

I would love to play. Cannot get anyone around here to commit, though. There are some very nice modern warfare models out there.

[Heisler]

We have 6 or so club members that are committed to playing at this point all with at least platoon size forces being worked on. The British are the easiest as the Army, Marines and Paratroopers all wear the same basic uniform. You can only tell them apart on the table when someone uses a figure wearing a beret rather than a helmet. There are several USMC and US Army players along with a couple doing Cold War Era British (BOAR) and Soviets. Everyone has committed to painting at least some insurgents plus Iraqi regulars. Insurgents tend to die in droves and typically receive reinforcements every turn so you need a lot of them.

[matsumoto]

Even though my buds and i are looking forward to 1:285 scale combat this summer, i have had about 150 african militia 15mm laying around for about 2 years...

and my bud impulse-bought some 15mm SAS Assault because they looked damn cool.

we may just have to break out a few side games of Africa Coast Rebellion...Force -on-force style.

 

Droves you say? sounds about right...but would that be ordinary droves of dead or the epic body pile you can pose on drove?

 

=)

[Heisler]

Well, my last game I would be going with the epic pile of dead taliban. They do seem to keep right on coming though.

[MikeD]

I would love to play. Cannot get anyone around here to commit, though.

 

Maybe I just come from an different gaming "culture" but I didn't see the need for anyone else to "commit" to FOF to get it started. "Pick Up" games, like WHFB, 40K and even FOW seem to have gotten everyone locked into the idea that you have to collect one "force" and play against the "force" your friend collected. Although I think the publishers of FOF have relased some experimental points rules for the game, its not primarily a points based game. In my experience with scenario based historical games, its much more common for one person to collect everthing that is needed (miniatures for both "sides") and invite your friends to play the game you have set up.

 

With FOF I would pick a campaign theater you are interested in (say, Afghanistan), collect the figures and get your buddies playing with your stuff. It does not take all that many figures to do (maybe a dozen regulars and 20-30 irregulars. In any case probably less than the number for one WHFB army), and 20mm historics are much less expensive each than GW figures, too. If the game catches their interest, maybe you can then divide up the theaters and have one person collect all the figures to game each setting (Iraq, Africa, Cold War Europe, Vietnam).

 

Just something to think about.