Today Mark takes a look at the new Fog of War mission and its accompanying mission cards.
The Fog of War
Flames of War and Team Yankee are objective based games (with the caveat of the new annihilation mission in V4). By that I mean that everything is about capturing that scenic or flat objective by being uncontested within 4 inches of it. Have a think back to your games and the valiant assaults to push onto that objective and the nail biting counter attacks to take it back. I remember at ETC, desperately feeding the final objective in fighting withdrawal until the game ended. Happy times indeed…
So what are these new Fog of War cards that we have heard about, and are we about to go ‘all 40K’? Well lets take a look.
In short Fog of War is a new mission for FOW and TY (You can play this with any game system). You can choose to play it, but you don’t have to. Its not replacing anything just adding a new option. With the mission comes the dynamic Fog of War obj cards. As you complete these objectives you gain points until you reach the agreed limit (BF recommend starting with 8). For example your 1st Obj may be to take and hold a building, maybe its a vital building offering fields of fire, then perhaps you need to kill a specific unit or scout out set points using your recce forces. In all there are 15 varied objectives
Personally I am relieved, I was worried when i heard rumours that these objs would be added to the existing missions. I am really pleased that its separate, thus allowing us to have the missions we know and love and a couple of new dynamic ones. BF have given us a tool set for a different style of mission and for me options are always good.
How do you play it?
Well rather than explain the mission rules lets show them,
As you can see you can use the free for all or dust-up deployment but put down no objectives on the table. There are different ways to split the cards. You can either share a pack for a really random game or pick 10 of 15 to form your own pack, perhaps tailored to your force. This means as a tank only force you wont have to deal with an objective to take and hold a building for example. However it has to be said doing a random draw really encourage a mixed force approach.
Some of the objectives can be claimed by either side so it becomes a real fight of that area and some are hidden so the enemy has to guess what you are up too. I can see this adding a lot of tension and surprise to your games.
The Objectives
Here are is a small sample of the Obj cards to give you an idea of what to expect. The full pack contains 15.
Some of the cards are removed when completed and some remain active. Looking through the set its obvious that this mission plays to an army with manoeuvrability something that we have already seen is essential in FOW V4 and Team Yankee. You need to take ground and be ready to react to what cards you and the opponent put down.
Going forward
I know there has been some discussion about this on the various FOW FB pages and forums and there are certainly different points of view, but I do think as gamers we have a habit of thinking the sky is falling, but honestly it isn’t! The key thing is that the mission and objective cards is just an option; its one mission which you are free to play or to not. At £4 a pack its cheap enough to be a purchase that you wont really notice and will potentially get hours of fun out of. If you don’t like it then little has been lost.
It will be interesting to see how the tournament scene views this mission. On the one hand, it is very random so some players and TOs may not favour it. However on the flip side, it will encourage armies that can react and promote aggressive (not literally!) play which are good things to have. Potentially it could be a great mission to finish a 5 game weekend and for me will be more welcome than straight free for all , which, certainly in V3 could be a bit of a stalemate. But time will tell….
Breakthrough Assault will be featuring some batreps for Fog of War in the coming weeks, in MW, LW and Team Yankee to see how well it plays out.
I’d never allow them in a tournament. For beer and pretzels fine. I think the time and investment from bf would have been better spent on new lists. They maybe good beer glass mats 🙂
Cool stuff IMHO.
Only troops with scout ability, so much for not taking “not really too effective” recon, and all lists can’t even have one.