Slitherine

Well, I took the plunge.

I have called my local gaming supply store, and ordered the hardcover book of rules. It won't come in for a week or two.

My basic question is that will the book have sufficient content to allow me to understand this gaming system better, and to make me a better player?

I am a LITTLE hesitant to start purchasing the army book lists......but are the planned PC expansions' content/army lists going to be compatible with specific army list books?

It would seem to be logical if each expansion would follow closely the content of each available book...books that I would cheerfully purchase just for the background material.

I did it the other way around, started with the TT version & then moved to the PC version. When it comes you can pretty much skip the section on movement & manuever as the PC version handled that for us pretty well.
However I think reading the impact, shooting, melee, combat & BG deterioration sections do help with understanding the game better.

Plus it's a beautifully illustrated book IMO!

DennisS wrote:My basic question is that will the book have sufficient content to allow me to understand this gaming system better, and to make me a better player?

Yes, as mentioned above - the online help file is OK but I think reading out what is supposed to happen on the table gives context. There are some differences from the tabletop game.

I am a LITTLE hesitant to start purchasing the army book lists......but are the planned PC expansions' content/army lists going to be compatible with specific army list books?

It would seem to be logical if each expansion would follow closely the content of each available book...books that I would cheerfully purchase just for the background material.

That is what they've said they are doing and have done with Rise of Rome. I assume the expansion lets you build armies based on the same army lists, making this a decent trainer for the table version. If so, it's certainly a lot easier to flip through the books.

I think it may come down to personnel preference re the army books - do you like reading them & working out armies with pen & paper from the books or do you just want to use what I hope will be an easy PC version to quickly do the maths.

I fall into the first category & am a sucker for an army list book or two - but then I do like the pictures. Wonder if they'll do for I can colour in!

petergarnett wrote:I think it may come down to personnel preference re the army books - do you like reading them & working out armies with pen & paper from the books or do you just want to use what I hope will be an easy PC version to quickly do the maths.

I fall into the first category & am a sucker for an army list book or two - but then I do like the pictures. Wonder if they'll do for I can colour in!

I am an old WRG ruleset 7 guy. At this moment, I am looking at an Army Lists book, 1420 - 1700, by George Gush, dated March, 1984. I plan on re-reading The Roman War Machine, by John Peddie here in the near future. I have had it for about 15 years, and I suspect that this will be an excellent source of material to help build a Roman army.

For me, there isn't anything more fun than to spend extra to make LI up to MI, one point each. My start in gaming was with Tactics II, longer ago than I would care to admit...but my first love has always been miniatures.

I am rather looking for an excuse to purchase every army list in existence for FoG...and if the PC gaming system provides the requirement, then count me in!

I have already completed a five page, fine print analysis on the units available for this PC game. The mean deviation for combat results is high enough to ensure that no one single unit is more favored than another...although the superior quality Roman MF and HF are pretty impressive.

For anyone interested in stats there are a vast number of helper programs and quick reference sheets available through teh tabletop area of teh site. While nto a direct match they are pretty close in many areas.

Lists will not be 100% matched to the army list books but we're around the 95-99% mark. Some of the more obscure option combinations just would be too much qwork to program to make them worth while.

I date back to WRG 5th edition & have collected army lists from many TT rule sets incl FoG. However for ease I'm also looking forward to the PC version.