I just bought the starter box, as well as the North Africa/Mediterranean book. These will be Christmas gifts for my dad.
He's a massive military buff, and has been doing military scale modelling for... decades. He's really good too. 1:100 scale will be a bit smaller than he's used to, but I think he will like it. This seems like the best way to cross his hobbies/interests (WWII, models) with my own (also like WWII, models, and gaming). Is that all I need to get started? Is mid-war going to really limit who I can play with? Can I be thinking about buying models that work for both Mid-War and Late-War?
With any luck, the end result will be me and my pops rolling dice and blowing up each other's (beautiful) tanks in the Casserine Pass/Monte Cassina/Solerno, etc. And heck, maybe at some point we'll "move forward" to Normandy, Market Garden, maybe even the Eastern Front.
Talk to me about game balance. Are the rules designed such that historically accurate (ish) forces can be successful? Are there "power builds," or are most choices fairly legitimate?
Or is it more like Warmahordes, where most choices can be made to work, within the proper list?
What should we expect to pay for a "full sized" army? What are some solid purchases early on which would fit into a variety of builds? We now have three Shermans and 2 Stug(?) Assault guns, so, yeah.
I'm going to wait to see what my dad wants to play. He may not be comfortable playing "Ze Germans" and if so I'll take the Krauts. I've always felt like Rommel was one of the more sympathetic Germans anyways. Poor bastard. Wrong place at the wrong time.
Anyways, if my dad does take Ze Germans (again, Rommel is pretty appealing) then I will be hard pressed to decide between the Brits and the Americans. Playing the Big Red One would be pretty bad-ass, but then again so would the Desert Rats or even the 9th Australian or the Highlanders.
Too many damned options, which is a good feeling.
Basically... talk to me about Flames of War. The good, the bad and the ugly.
