FoW – The best 5 Rules PDF’s
4 Minute Read
Jun 20 2014
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Hi everyone I’m Coxer from Breakthrough Assault, one of the best things about FoW is that battlefront release Free PDF’s for the game. Take a look!
These are complete and game ‘legal’ army lists for use. And some of them are pretty damn good! In this article I’m going to look at 5 which I think are worth considering, whether it’s from a tournament point of view or just damn interesting.
Citizen Soldiers
This is a beast of a PDF at almost 50 pages in length. It’s set at the Normandy landings, and covers 10 US Infantry Divisions (including a reluctant trained option for those of you who love a hoard of infantry!) as well as the independent tank company. Like the US infantry lists in ‘Overlord’ it has very similar force organisation charts but, but there are differences in a few of them, but probably more interesting are the different options to replace the US national rule ‘Truscott Trott’; these include the 80th divisions trained artillery hitting as veterans, and the 8th being able to night attack. It’s a brilliant and hefty PDF and gives US players a myriad of new options for their US infantry forces.
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| An example of the organisation chart from ‘citizen soldiers’ |
Panzers to the Meuse
I personally think that this is probably the most competitive PDF there is of all the free ones. It describes German forces in the Ardennes, and covers 4 different divisions as well as having options for tank, mechanised and motorised infantry. The reason it’s so competitive has been due to the ‘push to the meuse’ rule – this has the effect that if there is a Gepanzerte Aufklärungs Platoon supporting a Panzer or Aufklärungsscwadron company then they ‘auto attack’ not a bad thing in my world but also get a ‘spearhead’ move before turn one – making this a very aggressive list in the right hands, coupled with brilliant support available this list hits all the right points.
Norwegians 1940
I love this PDF not because it is particularly competitive, but it is beautifully designed to go with ‘Firestorm Norway’a recreation of the invasion of Norway. It’s in many way’s FoW at it’s best, the options you have are the options that were there, the rules of the force are characterful and reflect the troops equipment like Ski’s and a lack of grenades. It is fantastically researched and includes bits on modelling and painting Norwegians as well as a handy list of which Norwegian guns are which model.
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| Finn’s or Norwegians in the snow |
Finn’s in the Lapin Sota
Again a slightly unusual PDF, this covers Finnish forces from the armistice with the Russians in September 1944 to the end of the war – fighting their former allies the Germans. Whilst there are some inconsistencies as very little fighting took place it’s a fantastically researched and effective little PDF, and come with another PDF on the late war Finnish warriors. The lists you can make from this book can also be really effective with one of the infantry lists getting the options to be supported by both T34/85’s and Panzer 4’s. I think this PDF really shows how despite all the intelligence briefings in the books there are still forces which are particular and unusual which can not be covered in the books, and that’s why we get a lot of these PDF’s.
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| It was only from this i discovered Brazil was involved in WW2 |
Kampfgruppe Kersher – snapshot army
This is another very different type of PDF, it covers one unit over the period of around a month in 1945. It is so specific and is really designed for more of the narrative type of play. It really shows the extreme that FoW can be used for to represent a specific unit at a specific time and still have a decent game with it.
I hope this shows the wide variety of free lists available to players getting into FoW, from highly competitive lists to ones designed for a narrative campaign. There are many others available and would love to hear which are your favourites and why.
Author: Coxer
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