FOW PRIMER: Starting Off Right
Today’s Flames of War Primer will help you with the Starting Step of your turn, but is no substitute for a balanced breakfast!
What is Flames of War Primer?
Before we get started, welcome to the first ever FoW Primer! This is a series of articles on basic tactical topics, both chosen by the author and requested by readers. They’re designed to help improve beginner-to-intermediate Flames of War play, focusing on tactical decisions and methods used in-game (as opposed to pre-game preparation). If you’re learning the rules, FoW Primers will help you understand how they work in context. If you know them already, FoW Primers will likely show you new ways to apply them.
The Starting Step
The Starting Step of each turn is basically a series of things done in a very strict order before you can start moving your men around. Some of them you have very little control over, such as Company Morale – if your company is in danger of breaking, you take the check, and the dice decide your fate. But do not let that fool you into thinking that the Starting Step, for all its rigidity, is a mere “bookkeeping:” phase of the turn; there are some important decisions to be made!
Check Company Morale & Check Victory Conditions
There is not much you can do about either of these in the Starting Step.
Reveal Ambushes
This is when a player must reveal any of his units using the Ambush mission special rule. Note that this comes before rolling for reserves! A common misconception is that a player may roll to see if he gets reserves and then decide where (or whether) to put his ambush – this is not the case.
Roll For Air Support & Nominate Target And Position Aircraft
Finally, here are some important Starting Step decisions. All the details of aircraft are outside the scope of this particular Primer, but for now the decision to make is: Are you willing to alter your plan to bomb something close to your own men?
As you may know, aircraft in Flames of War are waved off if they are within 16″ of friendlies when making an attack. However, the 16″ distance is checked at the time the aircraft attack (the end of Shooting), NOT when they are placed, in the Starting step. So, when placing them, if you really think it’s worth it, you can attack something inside the minimum “safety distance” with the intent of moving your troops away during the Movement step. A very successful tournament player recently described to me the practice of using Panzers as bait for enemy AT assets, then retreating and bombing them!
Roll for Reserves
Obviously you can’t control when you will get your reserves, but you can pick what you get after seeing how many dice come up 5+. The thing to remember here is that while you roll for reserves in the Starting Step, you don’t have to move them onto the board until the Movement step – but you still have to choose at what point on the legal table edges each platoon will arrive, and place the Platoon Command team there as a reminder for yourself in the Movement Step.
This means that if your rear areas are crowded and you can’t position your reserves where you want right away you’re free to move other troops out of the way first to make room for them. There’s no rule saying your reserves have to move before on-board troops.
Rally Pinned Down Platoons & Remount Bailed Out Vehicles
This part of the Starting Step is very critical – here, you get to try and repair the psychological damage done to your force by the enemy in previous turns. While the dice and your troops’ ratings will decide things, you do have a certain amount of control over the proceedings in the form of your CiC (and any Higher Command teams), who will allow you to reroll failed Motivation checks for 1 platoon. The key choice is, which one?
In Flames of War, you do not have to decide which platoon your officers will assist in the Starting Step until after you’ve failed a roll. At that point, you must either attach the officer and re-roll the check, or move on. So, while it’s never really possible to “waste” an officer by attaching him to a platoon that doesn’t need the help, some platoons might need it more than others!
If you have officers in range to assist 2 or more of your platoons, primarily consider your plan for the upcoming turn. Some units may be more vital to it than others. If the enemy is hiding in woods, your pinned Infantry unit is probably more important than your pair of bailed tanks. If you always make unpin/unbog rolls in order of most to least important, you can always commit your reroll(s) to the first failure with confidence.
Secondarily, consider the severity of the effect the unit is under, and its implications. 3 bailed T-34s of 10 sitting on a hill crest blasting away at a distance is not nearly as dangerous a situation as 1 bailed Panther of 3 within 10″ of the enemy lines.
Free Bogged Down Vehicles & Remove Smoke Markers
No real tactical subtleties here; just better hope you brought that recovery vehicle!
That about does it for the Starting Step. In the future FoW Primer will cover the other Steps of a turn, and much more – suggestions for topics are highly encouraged!
