Slitherine

Good morning

I'd like to learn to play FoG but I'm having a tough time getting someone to show me how to play (my schedule doesn't help matters). Could this computer game be used as a teaching tool so I could learn to play the miniatures game??

Regards

LIG

It will teach you many aspects but not the fine details of the tabletop game. You'll learn which troops types are good against what as combat is directly copied. You'll also learn about morale and cohesion. You'll learn about movement distances and ranges. You wont learn about how to position your troops exactly as it is hex based comapred to free positioning in the tabletop game and there are other tabletop features related to this that you wont learn. It woudl definitely give you a starting point.

So as a test of strategy for a solo wargamer with very few miniature armies would this give similar results to the table game.

Yes, not exact but similar. Elephants will beat the same troops and lose to the same troop as on the tabletop. We have better tracking of attrition than the tableop so it is less erratic, more steady.

Playing the TT game helps on the PC. The other way round should help a lot with getting up to speed on overall strategy and troop type interactions and tactics (do pay attention to the troop stats and have the combat results set to print out what is going on). Playing a bunch of games on the PC should help bring you up to speed in this key area - start with historical deployments and then try free deployment as it teaches you more.

When you feel you have a sense of this, have an experienced player coach you on the TT mechanics in a Roman/Carthaginian TT game and you shoulid pick those up very quickly and have the tactical background. The TT rules do have a different and more interactive sequence of play, as well as affording a great deal more control in terms of tactical precision and finesse than a hex grid allows, but I think the PC game still works as a decent trainer for the miniatures one.