Slitherine

Hi all
Just wondering what you think of MINI FOG?
Here would be my suggestions for 15mm mini FOG

300 point armies ? Maybe as low as 200 ?
1 General for free who is a TC
3x2 foot table ?
Half BG sizes (rounded up )
Half BG minimums

example armies

Medieval French
1 TC ( free)
4 Knights
4 Knights
4 Brigans
6 Voulgiers
6 Xbows

Sassanids
1 TC ( free)
4 Cataphracts
4 Cataphracts
1 Elephant
8 HF spearmen
4 Light Horse
4 Lights Horse
4 LF arhers

Keith, sorry for being dense here, what are you trying to achieve here? Is this equivalent to DBA, condensed DBR, or DBM200 (formats that I must state my prejudice against)? I think that what Hammy has organised for B'ham this weekend of 650 Points on a 5'x3' in 2.5 hours using the standard rules is mini enough for most tastes.

Keith wrote:... Just wondering what you think of MINI FOG? ...

timmy1 wrote:Keith, sorry for being dense here, what are you trying to achieve here? ...

I for my part would be greatly interested in an established variant of FOG that wouldn't need much over 25 elements per side - indeed thinking DBA+ or DBMM100/200

timmy1 wrote:Keith, sorry for being dense here, what are you trying to achieve here? Is this equivalent to DBA, condensed DBR, or DBM200 (formats that I must state my prejudice against)? I think that what Hammy has organised for B'ham this weekend of 650 Points on a 5'x3' in 2.5 hours using the standard rules is mini enough for most tastes.

I'm not really trying to achieve anything or commit any heresy , it's just an idea , I was wondering what people thought and if anyone had any ideas.
I think it could be OK for a quick game taking less than an hour to complete ?
I find games like DBA very bland , just wondering if you can scale FOG down for a quick play set and keep the detail of and feel of a FOG game ?


I'd much prefer a 600- 800 point game , but just wondering....

Sorry if it seemed that I thought you were suggesting a heresy, not my intent at all. Thanks for the explaination. Makes sense. I will leave others to express ideas as to the validity as not my specialism.

My opinion: The system is fairly scalable and works for as few units as you like - a company of knights and a party of crossbowmen led by a feudal lord engaging several mobs of revolting peasants, for example. The only issue is the size of the battlefield, but the battlefield being too wide is less of an issue (and more realistic) than the issue with large points totals of it being too small.

Mike

I've played a 450 pt game, all minima/maxima are halved (rounding up). No more than 2 commanders.
It was a little faster and easy to carry in a small box. Didn't affect playability at all.

Perhaps 350-450 might be a good "demo" size, to help learn the rules quicker. The more games you can squeeze in, the more people you can teach.

I think Mini FOG is an excellent idea (especially as my elements are 90mm wide!)
I suppose it would make warband armies a bit more nippy if they were going around in BGs of 4 or 6. Would Romans work with 2 element BGs?

It is a nice idea for me. I cannot paint fast enough to get to 800 points. But I am still trying.

fukateesays wrote:I think Mini FOG is an excellent idea (especially as my elements are 90mm wide!)
I suppose it would make warband armies a bit more nippy if they were going around in BGs of 4 or 6. Would Romans work with 2 element BGs?

Yeah , well I was thinking that a small BG of 2 bases would be very fragile , but then again the reduction of dice being thrown over all by the small BG's fighting , it might be OK ?
I think it's worth trying out , but I'm off for an 800 point game tomorrow night

I'll try and give a small game a go soon.

I think there is a place for a really small FoG, it would be good to set it so it would fit on the type of tables you get in games shops for card games which are often only 2' deep I think. I am not sure how well the game would work with 1" MUs on a 2' deep table though.

I have not played less than 600 points (using starter armies) but there is scope for smaller forces. It is just table size and the MU size that needs to be looked at IMO.

Suggestion for Mini FoG:

1. 300 points, FC is free (extra cost for IC or second commander, no refund for taking TC).

2. Normal MUs

3. Minimum 2x2 table but 3x2 to be used if at all possible. Halve mounted numbers for initiatve modifiers. 2 Ambush markers per side. Camp size should be 80x80 and deployed touching baseline.

4. DEPLOYMENT AND INITIAL MOVEMENT: To keep the right distance between the armies:
For a 2 foot across table:
Troops are assumed to deploy off table and march on in their first move. Deploy them on the base edge in their off table formations not more than 10MU deep, not counting Skirmishers who may be in front. Skirmishers move first on Turn 1 and are assumed to start their move from up to 3 MU in from the board edge behind them and non-skirmishers measure their march in from the board edge behind them, those in front moving first and those behind adding the distance behind the front line of the non-skirmishers in front of them. Some troops may not be able to come on the board for a few moves, but any not using their full move (taking into account reductions for wheels, troops and terrain) to get on the board are placed aside and thereafter roll each turn as flank marching at their entry point.

For a wider table, adjust the deployment rules to maintain an 18 MU separation between where Skirmishers start their first move and a 24 MU separation between where others start their first move.

BGS: For categories (defined by the min/max boxes on the right side of the list, not the individual line options) with a maximum of less than 24 you may have one BG maximum and for maximums greater than 21 you may have up to 2.

For troop categories or line-item types with minimums, the total Maxima and Minima are each halved, then maxima if not a multiple of the maximum BG size are rounded up to the next multiple of maximum BG size and minima if not a multiple of the minimum BG size are rounded down to the next lowest multiple of minimum BG size (zero is not a multiple!).

EXAMPLE: For 4-6/BG troops a range of 20-36 would round to 8-18, for 6-8 troops the same range would round to 6-24. For 4-6 with a 4-20 range it would round to 4-12. For 6-8 with a range of 6-24 it would round to 6-16.

I don't know what to do with terrain choices - halve compulsories, roll for who places it, halve distances in placement adjustments, halve the number of voluntary selections and limit all terrain to small pieces? No coasts or rivers.

----> [EDITED] Terrain: Halve MUs for terrain size and placement rules. Halve maximums on optionals, rounding up. Compulsories apply, plus 1 selection on 24MUx24MU table, 1-2 selections on 24MU-30MU x 36 MU table.

We actually had a mini Fog tournament already.

3 rounds
400 pints
3x2 board
2 hours.
Mix and max for number of bases 1/2. So BGs stay the same size, the number of BGs go down.
Generals 1/2
We took all terrain and deployment and set it to 2/3rds.

I posted the info somewhere on this forum over a 1 month back.

400 pints in 3 rounds - thats over 100 pints a round. Bloody hell.

It was a sunday Ian, we have strange drinking laws around Northern Va.

Although it felt like we had 400 pints ysterday when the sushi bar next door had some Saki diaster that soaked into the game store's carpet.

iainmcneil wrote:400 pints in 3 rounds - thats over 100 pints a round. Bloody hell.

Considerable even by your standards eh?

Does anyone know if there is a chance that we might see an official condensed scale variant for FoG? If one were published I might manage to get at least half a dozen people interested in playing but without I haven't a chance. We are all dyed int' wool DBA'ers here and it would just about kill us to paint more than 20-24 elements a year.

It's a shame there wasn't a page spare to put in a condensed version as I like the game, just don't have the time, space or patience to play a 650 point game.

They are busy on other books and I don't think there will be an official true mini-FoG since they don't want to put out less than a quality product and it would take a lot of work to get it exactly right, without a compelling market. You can take some ideas from here or not and make your own version.

To use DBA-ish size armies, you could just scale everything down Armati style so single stands represent say 4 actual bases and all actual distances are halved. My Ilkhanid Mongol army is thus exactly 12 bases plus commanders. This involves some tracking and has other limitations such as BG sizing and smaller commander bases, but would be immediately playable - though not any faster to play.

EvilBob wrote:Does anyone know if there is a chance that we might see an official condensed scale variant for FoG? If one were published I might manage to get at least half a dozen people interested in playing but without I haven't a chance. We are all dyed int' wool DBA'ers here and it would just about kill us to paint more than 20-24 elements a year.

It's a shame there wasn't a page spare to put in a condensed version as I like the game, just don't have the time, space or patience to play a 650 point game.

I have looked at ways to streamline FoG but it is harder than you might think. Base removal and cohesion combine to give the subtelties of the combat system and if you reduce the number of bases then you really have to lose base removal at the very least. It would certainly be more than a page of rules and so far I have failed to get the essence of FoG into a more condensed package.

While I can see that people who really only have DBA armies are not going to be able to scale up to even 600 point FoG games I fear that less than 400 points a side would simply not be FoG. I hope to be proved wrong as there are a fair number of DBA plyers out there even though there don't seem to be thant many in the UK.

hammy wrote:

EvilBob wrote:Does anyone know if there is a chance that we might see an official condensed scale variant for FoG? If one were published I might manage to get at least half a dozen people interested in playing but without I haven't a chance. We are all dyed int' wool DBA'ers here and it would just about kill us to paint more than 20-24 elements a year.

It's a shame there wasn't a page spare to put in a condensed version as I like the game, just don't have the time, space or patience to play a 650 point game.

I have looked at ways to streamline FoG but it is harder than you might think. Base removal and cohesion combine to give the subtelties of the combat system and if you reduce the number of bases then you really have to lose base removal at the very least. It would certainly be more than a page of rules and so far I have failed to get the essence of FoG into a more condensed package.

While I can see that people who really only have DBA armies are not going to be able to scale up to even 600 point FoG games I fear that less than 400 points a side would simply not be FoG. I hope to be proved wrong as there are a fair number of DBA plyers out there even though there don't seem to be thant many in the UK.

There seem to be a lot of DBA players here in the Pacific Northwest corner of the U.S. Apparently the U.K. is a different matter? Was the bigger battle-esque DBM more popular than its smaller progenitor then?

It would seem very hard to boil FoG down to DBA-esque scales, IMHO.