FoW Army Selection: Motivation and Training Ratings Explained
Hello FoWarriors; today’s article will address what seems like a trivial subject, but can have complex implications: motivation and training ratings.
Most of us know what motivation and training levels are, and what the possibilities are. A unit’s Motivation is either Reluctant, Confident, or Fearless (overstatements in each case; it’s more like Super Scared, Pretty Scared, and Almost Not Scared), and that determines how brave they are and how willingly they do things they consider to be dangerous to themselves. Training is a unit’s proficiency in the technical tasks of soldiering, and varies from Conscript to Trained to Veteran. Better-trained troops are more likely to hit in assault, more likely to dig in, more likely to get through the most difficult terrain, and harder to shoot. But again, we know this – what I want to discuss today is how this knowledge helps us make decisions when choosing a force.
Of course, the point system comes into play when talking about ratings also. All other things being equal, I’m sure we’d all like our troops to be well-trained and Almost Not Scared; however, you pay more points for a unit each time their ratings take a step up either the Motivation or Training ladder. This is how Flames of War balances unequal troops against each other: better troops cost more, so you can have fewer of them. Therefore, one motivation and training combination is not “better” than another in Flames of War, because the point system is balanced and works; we must choose according to our taste. So, that’s our first tidbit of useful info in force choice – Veterans and Fearless troops (especially both) are more expensive; there will be less to buy and less to paint, but the force will be small. If your chief priority for a Flames of War force is to cover the table in models, try and find a force that’s rated relatively poorly in both areas, but especially in skill as it costs more.
Another nontrivial implication of the motivation/training ratings is that Veteran forces are better defenders than attackers. This is not to say that they can’t attack, but the chief advantage of Veteran status is forcing the opponent to need 6’s to hit when you are Concealed and Gone to Ground (for infantry) or Concealed and at Long Range (for 32″+ range tanks and guns). Of course, other forces can defend very well too (ever tried to dig out a Soviet Strelkovy?), but if you really like manning the trenches and doing a lot with a little, Veterans are for you.
Different team types rely on Motivation to different extents. Motivation is most critical to infantry, then next to assault tanks, then to guns and lastly to gun tanks. This is because infantry are constantly being called upon to make Motivation tests to unpin and Motivation tests to counterattack in assault. Assault tanks (like, say, American Stuarts) must counterattack but needn’t roll to unpin, and guns need to unpin but generally are uninterested in assault. Gun tanks (like, say, German Elefants) can’t be pinned and wouldn’t be caught dead in an assault. Therefore, if you know you like a ton of antitank guns or heavy armor, you may want to look to Motivation ratings when it’s time to save some points. (This is why RV armor is so popular).
These ratings also effect shooting in a nontrivial way. Of course the higher you go up the skill scale, the less vulnerable your forces will be to enemy shooting. However, the less skilled your troops are, the better your direct-fire shooting is. Now, I’m not saying that Conscript teams are better shots than Veteran ones, but I am saying that they’re exactly as good and cost half as much! This means that Trained forces can usually shoot Veterans off the board; Conscripts can do the same to Trained, if they can get all their teams in range of the given target! Now, you might think that the best shooters of all would be a Reluctant Conscript company, but this doesn’t quite follow; pinning is a reality in FoW and it greatly reduces a force’s shooting effectiveness if they can’t unpin.
One caveat of the skill ratings is that Conscript artillery’s usefulness is questionable. Because artillery is the one instance in the FoW rules where a team uses its own skill to roll to hit rather than the skill of its target, Conscript bombardments are hitting on 6s an awful lot of the time. If you love the King of Battle, Trained is a better rating.
Technically speaking, the most durable team in FoW is a Reluctant Conscript infantry team; he gets the same 3+ save everyone else does, and costs much less. However, assuming that you as a player actually care about losing platoons (some scoring systems emphasize it), then it’s good to remember that durability through training is strong but brittle; durability through motivation is less ideal but reliable. To show you what I mean, let’s evaluate a CV unit and an FT unit (they cost almost the same) side by side. The CV unit can’t count on sticking around if it has to take a Morale check, so its plan is usually just not to take the casualties. The FT unit is more likely to lose combat power faster and have to take the check, but also more likely to pass it and keep fighting. In short, units with good training are initially hard but vanish when the going gets tough; units with good motivation are initially softer but more consistent as they lose stands.
So to wrap up, let’s take a look at the possible ratings and see what each type of force is predisposed to. Of course, these are just generalizations and may not be accurate in specific cases (Soviets break most of the rules, for example).
FV forces cannot afford to have only one playstyle; if they’re using their Veteran status to the utmost (ie keeping their heads down) they’re not using their Fearlessness and vice versa. An every-game-is-new approach is required to play these forces, but there’s not much they can’t at least attempt to do.
They will pretty much categorically lose shooting matches. At all but the very highest points levels, FV forces will be missing some part of the combined-arms whole because it just wasn’t enough of a priority for the player (usually they are missing 1-2 of AAA, artillery, or recon, AND air).
CV forces are perhaps the most frequently encountered in Flames of War, being the commonest rating for German and British forces of all types. They are very happy to be defending. Often they can afford all the support they need, but with no redundancy.
RV forces want to win quickly. They love to defend and hate to attack because unpinning is so difficult for them. When they do attack, they like to do it as quickly as possible, because they have more up-front power than any other Veteran force (being cheaper), but lose it quickly in a prolonged fight because they have trouble with Morale checks. When the game comes down to assault, RV forces will try to assemble as many teams as possible for the first Charge into Contact, because they can’t bank on there being a second one. To that end they usually have about as much support as a CV company, but more or larger combat elements!
FT forces make up most of the game’s premier assault troops, from Soviet Red Guards to the American First Special Service Force. FT is an ideal rating for an assault nut because so many of the points spent on Veterancy go towards Veterans’ ability to defend statically, which does not interest assault nuts. On the other hand, Conscripts are too easy to pin in Defensive Fire, which every assault nut must face. These forces often have more support than CV companies, but not by much.
CT forces are the game’s bog standard troops – German infantry without experience, American infantry with some experience, British infantry with some experience, and your average Late War Soviet trooper are all CT. They are very powerful shooters (arguably the game’s best) because their units are relatively inexpensive, but their artillery can still hit (see above); likewise, they are likely to unpin, but aren’t paying for the Fearlessness that really only is worth it in assault. CT is the highest rating combination that really starts to get some helpful redundancy going in the support elements.
RT forces are relatively few and far-between. Their chief strength is toughness – they’re as cheap as you get without being hit on a 2+. They can’t unpin or assault well, but their first shooting volleys are often fearsome, and the real trouble with them is that you just can’t kill them fast enough to win the game! These forces often have massive amounts of support, usually devoted to helping their combat elements arrive intact in case they have to attack.
Conscript forces are so rare in Flames of War that it’s hardly worth discussing them as a generality. Basically, you have Soviet Conscripts and Other Conscripts. Other Conscripts win by shooting and sheer durability; a mere 6 dice of Defensive Fire can pin them, so they don’t often find themselves in assaults unless the other player has come to them. Soviet Conscripts have two very notable ways of breaking the rules (Quality of Quantity and Centralized Control), and are very poorly armed to boot, and so function as an assault force despite being rated this way.
Lastly, it’s worth noting that some forces’ ratings can be deceptive in certain ways. For example, the RV Sperrverband is really Reluctant for unpinning and morale checks, but Fearless for counterattacking and Tank Terror. They are probably more like playing an assaulty CV company than playing the RV company they technically are. Likewise, Soviet Udarny Strelkovy are an FT force that hits in assault as if it were Veteran.
I hope this has been a helpful guide to what to expect on the tabletop and helps you assemble your forces; it’s certainly been slightly more in-depth than I intended.
