Getting Great at FoW - Part 3

Mastering FoW - Hi everyone, I thought I would display my arrogance finally and talk about being 'great' at FoW. Am I 'great'? No, am I better than I was this time last year definitely - and over the course of the tournaments and games I've played I've developed a few insights into getting really good at this game. The areas I think you need to master are 'lists' , 'rules' and 'Implementation'. So here's another trio of articles exploring these.

Implementation - so what do I mean by this? Well I'm going to sound like a broken record, but you need to play games. But I'm going to change this slightly, you have got to play games out of your comfort zone. What do I mean by that? Well I do not think to be really good you can play the same way repetitively. 

Sometimes it's a simple as trying out all the missions - a lot of newer players seem to play only free for all - the need to move in this game I think is one of the key skills. There is a lot of skill required to play your army so that it takes a beating but still complete your objectives - even more so if you do this without taking too many casualties. I was impressed, in this regard by Jersey during our last game at the MW one day event. I inflicted huge casualties on his force, but with the exception of his pioneers he did not lose a platoon! It was getting very close to the wire that I may lose 6-1 before I finally broke a couple more platoons to take the objectives.

The other thing which is important to try is attacking and defending. Whether it's with infantry or tanks at some point you will need to do both. When I started playing I was almost always attacking with my Brit Para's, I got good at it too - defending though I wasn't great at (partly that's my temperament playing games) but without playing my army defensively I would not get better at doing it. 

The final bit about implementation is about organising the 'concert' of your forces. None of your models operate in a vacuum - they interact with all the other parts of the force. You need to work out how to get that interplay of infantry, armour, recon, artillery, smoke to work together. And it's trial and error, knowing when to commit your forces, knowing when to disengage - when to sacrifice and when to take the bait. You can only get this from game time. 

I hope that helps, I currently enjoy my pedestal as the top member of the Blog rankings wise (14!). Without good opponents I wouldn't be there, without a little luck I wouldn't be there - and without failing and learning from it, I wouldn't be there.