Flames of War

With so many days at home in this pandemic, I painted a lot of “old lead” (and plastic) have in my reserve. One of the projects I was lingering is a WW2 desert Italian army for . The infantry was already done, so I focused on tanks, armored vehicles, trucks, wheeled guns, and some planes. The entire army in a single go: I started to paint it deployed on my table for each step, and I discovered it was a natural “timelapse”. Here are the photos, with some tricks on painting the WW2 tanks!

With Red Devils book coming out end of May, we have almost all paratrooper lists for the MID period in – we just miss the Blue Berets from USSR. Time to see how the Airborne troops improve their original army, and which one adds the most to the original roster.

By Tom Burgess

One of my major projects of 2019 was to complete an all plastic German East Front Mid-War army. I chose to focus on Gepanzert Panzer Grenadiers. To do this I had two boxes of Battlefront’s ‘s and two Boxes of Plastic Soldier Company’s ‘s. So I thought this provided a nice opportunity to review and compare what these two companies offer for the same model.

Both companies provide the SdKfz-251/C in unit boxes of five vehicles. The Plastic Soldier Company (PSC) boxed set cost $29.99 (US) with crews/passengers but only the machinegun armed transport option and no decals.

Battlefront (BF) box set cost $45.99 (US) and comes with parts to build all five models as the transport (with or without 3.7cm anti-tank gun), the 7.5cm short assault gun, or the 8cm armored mortar version. The BF set also the proprietary unit cards, for use in Flames of War, as well as a sheet of waterslide decals.

 

Editorial Comment: We all know it will be a while before Battlefront gets around to updating every force and list to it’s Version 4 format. Far too often we see players lament that their forces are not “officially” represented in the rules yet. But in may cases, as Clive shows us with his ideas for Late War Romanians, there are many suitable analogs that, with a little thought, can let  player break out his waiting models and get in great gaming action. Even in “official” events, players could take Clive’s suggestions to expand their gaming opportunities with models they have now.

By Clive Henrick,

During the late war period, the Romanian army is far less than what it was at Stalingrad, but it can still mount a defense and with support do local counter-attacks. It’s more of a defense army at its heart with dogged defenders, good at counter-attacks, but not one that you would normally think off to clear the table of the enemy.

Even without a Late War Romanian 4th edition book, the flavor of the Romanian forces can still be captured in Late War Flames of War by using a combination of German D-Day book and the German D-Day Command Cards.

By Tom Burgess

My good friend Ed and I were very excited to acquire last month’s release of the 21st Panzer Division expansion books/cards for the D-Day Germans in Flames of War Version 4. We both have a lot of 21st Panzer Division kit in our collections, but only Ed had any of it done.  So I rolled out my new US Sheman Company so we could get in a game with the new hotness.

By Preston Jacob

We all get into wargaming for one reason or another. Maybe you have a certain interest in a historical era, you enjoy the ruleset of the game, or maybe you just like how the models can be painted. For me, I got into wargaming on a lost bet.

by Matt Varnish

Here we go, myself and fellow No Dice No Glory contributor Scott ‘Obsidian23’ Roach, get in a game using the new British D-Day book. As always, the video of the game is linked at the end of the article.

We actually debated using the special D-Day missions in the book but they were either on 4ft by 4ft tables or Airlanding, so we opted to use the normal Battle Planner.. and wound up with Free-For-All. We WERE using the new Bocage rules, however, Bocage Hedgerows are Tall Terrain and provide Bulletproof Cover to gun and infantry teams shot through them. Looking at the above table Scott laid out, you can see that Line of Sight would be an issue for things like Achilles, 88s and Panthers.

D-Day +2, Monty’s forces have pushed past the beachheads and are heading towards Caen.   In their way lies a German Recon Coy sitting in an outskirt called Herouville-St-Clair.

The British army has landed on D-Day shores, and we finally got our nerdy hands on the new D-Day book. Mitch did , while Tom M. went for . In this article, we’ll look after four 100 points lists you can now do with the new D-Day book, expanding the Fortress Europe basic list we all used in the last months.

By Preston Jacob

 

“We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender!” – Prime Minister Winston Churchill.

That speech rings no truer than with all the new units you can find in the new Flames of War D:Day British book. For any British player who felt they may have been cheated with the small list and force selection from Fortress Europe, worry no more. There are over 100 pages in this new book and brings the British fully into late war. Whether you’re an infantry or armored player, you’ll find everything you could want from the Normandy campaign and will be able to drive the Germans back to the Fatherland by Christmas.

In this special bonus edition of the BattleVault podcast Tom is joined by No Dice No Glory teammates Austin Copeland and Preston Jacob. The boys go all fan-boy and gush incoherently about all the goodness the upcoming D-Day British book and card release for Flames of War.  In case you can’t tell….they are very excited about the release.