2014 · Zen River Games and Software
Flags of Valour is a toolkit system for war game enhancement. This particular release is Set 3, and deals with counters for the units of the Blitzkrieg years - namely France, Belgium, Netherlands, Poland and Norway.
FOV is a set of modules that extend the use of any counter based war game so that you can add both the often under-utilized practice of “Fog of War” OR that of higher level Intelligence Gathering and Logistics to virtually any simulation game. The game tool is also is used to represent hidden assets such as Ammunition Supply, Fuel, and other factors common to any Operational level command of your troops on a typical battlefield. It is in fact this Operational over-level that FOV uses to bring new strategies and tactics to most war games. The level of added realism this tool set provides is rarely found in conjunction with any other current game publication.
What the Flags of Valour systems all do is give players of wargames a way to remove most of your counters from the board at the start of any game, and replace them with national hidden placement counters. Meantime you have a hidden area where normal game counters are kept on LUC (Logistical Unit Cards) until enemy recon or proximity force the regular unit pieces to be placed on the board and revealed. This allows war games to start with a form of hidden movement and place that is traditionally thought of as “double blind” play. Except in this case you can do the double-blind with only one central board (unlike the awkward and messy way that most double blind games take up a lot of room and require two copies of a board or a game).
Depending on the particular FOV release, some provide for additional hidden rules such as Strongpoints, Air Strikes, Guerilla activity, Supply Lines, and more. Add on rules are completely optional, and are left to the discretionary use of the players using the system.
Each FOV release comes with 2-6 nation state counters. There are releases for many different eras available, but primarily the counter sets cover WW2 and Modern use. There are also the “125” series of FOV releases for use with Miniatures games. Those use larger placement counters and much larger LUC (Logistical Unit Cards) on which to place miniatures hidden off the board.
