Newsletter NO.3 STOP PRESS!! STOP PRESS!! STOP PRESS!!

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1 Newsletter NO.3 STOP PRESS!! STOP PRESS!! STOP PRESS!! Only this week left to register for the Australian Nationals! Go to Keep an eye on the Cancon Landing Page on the Battlefront website and the forum for updated information. Battlefront Visitors to Cancon We are pleased to announce that we ll host some senior Battlefront staff Peter Simonuvich (Chairman) and John Matthews (Global GM). We ll again see Phil Yates at Cancon playing in Joel Williams campaign. Make sure you find some time for a chat and introduce yourselves. Panzer Angriff Podcast As part of the Masterclass series, the Panzer Angriff crew will be running a live podcast of the classes. All those attending will receive a Diesel n Dust d6 and FREE Coke! Look for Ben, David and Scott on conclusion of the day s festivities on Saturday and Sunday. Tournament Schedule and Activities Friday 22 Jan 16 Saturday 23 Jan 16 Sunday 24 Jan 16 Monday 25 Jan Australian War Memorial Technology Annex Tour, Mitchell 0830 Registration 0830 Doors Open 0830 Doors Open 0900 Round Round Round Round Round Round 8 From 1830 Welcome Function George Harcourt Inn, Gold Creek 1530 Round Show Parade 1800 Master Class Round Night Flames 1800 Master Class Night Flames 1515 Prize Ceremony

2 What makes a good FOW table? With Scott McManus There is no denying that one of the draw points of FOW is the beautiful 3D terrain that is the hallmark of competitions and home play. Some are homemade and some pre-purchased and often pre-painted. In a Tournament, games must usually be completed in 2.5 hours. So the tables where everything is slow going or bog tests and skill tests, like city tables, Woods tables, snow tables, Bocage tables, marsh tables etc should be avoided. This is not to say that some those types of terrain should not be present, just not whole tables of it. The constant slow movement for vehicles, constant bog/skill checks and lack of firing lanes can make games time out, as well as severely disadvantage certain armies in certain matchups. At the other end of the spectrum of bad tables are tables that are billiard tables. Tables with little or no cover for infantry and no Line of sight blocking terrain. This makes infantry forces that have to move or attack, essentially dead, and it allows armies with long range Anti Tank weapons to dominate the whole table. Its more often we see the tables at the billiard table end of the spectrum at comps, mainly due to lack of terrain to cover all tables. What elements make a good table? A good table should provide significant challenges to one or both parties, but not be so challenging that a player feels he has lost by table. A table should have good avenues of travel for Wheeled, Tracked and Foot forces. With Terrain providing cover between movement bounds as well as terrain that provides protection either by bullet proof cover, lanes of fire blocking or added protection in assaults (like bog tests for vehicles) A good table does not need to be symmetrical, but it should give some advantages and some negatives to different forces in different missions.

3 A good table has multiple routes and crossings through or around difficult terrain areas like a river A good table will avoid too much high ground on sides and edges of tables that can see everything on the table. A good table has been designed that considers the likely missions to be played, and is not a lost by table, table for certain missions/force match ups. A good table is thematic, that is the table might be snow themed table, or a woodsy table or a European farm land table with some Bocage. The terrain arrangement should also make sense from a real world perspective. A good table will provide one or more terrain features to fight for or to be critical in controlling the battle field. Most company level actions in WWII usually feature a terrain feature. A cross roads, a village, a farm complex, a town, a stone bridge or ford, an airfield a factory etc. A good table, the terrain should be selfexplanatory to the players. If in doubt provide a laminated A4 Map with instructions on how you want your table to be used. Good tables will throw out rewards for players, like roads for extra movement for wheeled and half tracked, but also provide some extra slow going terrain to make the roads a critical feature for those players. Airfields, desert forts and Normandy bunker complexes look impressive and are great for scenario play, but tend not to be too great for completion play as they overly favour one player over the other, they should be used sparingly. WYSWIG: The rules say, the game is WYSIWIG, Phil is always the first to say...well get down and tell me what you see But hills and elevations can cause issues, where players might play WYSIWIG, but not hills, due to vertical exaggeration. So it can cause some consternation. Can units see across the slope? Or do the hills have a vertical wall of invisibility

4 parallel to their Base? Woods are often taken to be unable to be seen over, and buildings are often a good scale, but most mountains and hills in FOW are lower than a 15mm building, otherwise the models slide on off. So again make it clear on your tables if your hills are just speed humps and provide some concealment or they should be considered higher and provide total concealment for models behind. Tree lines can be modelled very differently by different players, some are just a line of single tree models and others are on a base that looks more like area terrain. A legend is again good if your provided elevations are ambiguous. The following are a bunch of tables I have played on over the years at different events (and in play testing, during play testing pictures of the tables and deployments are provided with AARs so the developers can see how different terrain can affect the game). Not every table is great, but none of them are horrors. Most are balanced, i.e. terrain that is helpful to infantry or tank armies, and not too open and don t provide a Loss by table. All of them are essentially the bare minimum required. Removal of one terrain piece would make the tables almost billiard tables, most could stand to have one to three extra pieces of terrain. The following blog has a similar attitude to balanced tables and is another opinion on what makes a good table. Contact your local committee member with any questions, or if you d like to be involved in organising future Australian Nationals; grab us any time during the event or send an .

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