Fistful of Tows 3 Battle Report - Soviet Union vs West Germany, 1987.

Hello there!

Today I got a game in of Fistful of Tows 3 with Jason. We played in 3mm, which saved Jason lugging down his 6mm Soviets. The game was fairly short notice so neither of us had time to go over the rules beforehand and this was only our second game, so we kept it simple. No airstrikes or helicopters (or tactical nukes for that matter...). I'd hazard that we still made mistakes as it's a reasonably complex ruleset, but we definitely a lot, particularly how terrain effects the game. This will be a short one as the game was called after three turns (FFT3 is usually in the region lf a 10-12 turn game).

The table. I decided to make the table fairly heavily wooded and hilly. Yes, my forests and bridges are not scaled to 3mm, I know...

German panzergrenadiers defending the town with a Luchs screen. Leopard IIs are pushing down the road.

Two Leopard II battalions. The Germans were all rated average for this game.

German recon pushes up on the left

The Soviet right - four battalions of T-80Us! These were terrible troops, rated marginal

The Soviet right. Fair rated T-72B1s

Turn 1, German tanks occupy the left while the T-80U regiment pushes over the ridge. Initial casualties for the Soviets are light.

The main engagement on turn 2. The opening NATO salvos find their mark but the short range of the Soviets along with their numbers will count.

NATO right takes up overwatch positions. These would prove to be too far forward and would allow the T-72s to bring their numbers to bear.

Turn 3. The Panzers have all been eliminated, leaving just the village garrisons. Ouch.

The Soviets had plenty of tanks left...

Overall Thoughts

We learnt a couple of things this game. Use of terrain is essential, NATO needs to keep their standoff to avoid being overwhelmed. Effective use of terrain to screen an advance allowed the Soviet tanks to get their shorter range guns into range without taking early casualties. Setting a table in FFT3 is clearly an important element in achieving a good game.

The basic processes of how to resolve shooting, etc in FFT3 are reasonably complex. Jason and I both agreed that going for a more beer and pretzels orientated, easy to play game would be a better option when just looking to play for a couple of hours on a Sunday afternoon. That said, the game has huge potential. I view it as kind of a tool box where you can build your own game. There's rules for basically anything you could want to do from engineering to chemical warfare. We talked about the prospect of a huge, 1 or even 2 day game played on a 12x6 table with multiple players and objectives to play. Different phases of the battle could be modelled with house rules to allow bases and units that failed quality checks to reconstitute and re-enter the battle. I think this kind of well-planned, deep game is where FFT3 would come into its own. Hopefully more to come! Thanks for reading. :)