Flames of War

by Dennis ‘Matt Varnish’ Campbell,

photos by me and James Smith

On the first weekend of November 2019, we had an event, the first Upper Canada Regionals, in Kingston ON (on the NY State border) for Late War 100pts.   It was held at Royal Military College (our version of Westpoint) and put on by Ryan Sullivan and his gang.    It was a good time, but more importantly, we were able to guinea-pig a new iteration on the Battle Planner, as below document and matrix:

Playing with a friend at home Blue vs Red is good. Meeting with lots of players at the local club for a tournament or a day-long huge game is even better. Playing a part in a world global campaign is really the next level of our hobby.

Battlefront and OnTableTop (yes, the guys we formerly know as Beasts of War) created the D-Day Global Campaign, a cross-media system to allow any player, any club and any tournament to be part of a six weeks D-Day campaign.

I recently returned to playing in tournaments of one of the first miniatures games I got into,, and I now have a new appreciation for the game. I wanted to share this rejuvenation with you.

Why did I leave the tournament scenes? It wasn’t that I walked away from the game, I still played FOW socially, ran tournaments for both FOW and Team Yankee (TY). As many of you know I still covered the game here on NDNG.  I just walked away from competitive play for a while. My hiatus came about because I saw some things I didn’t like about the tournament scene.

A month or so ago, when the D-Days books first came out, I wanted to bring a friend who hadn’t played FOW into the scene, and a tournament at a new Local Game Store (LGS) seemed like a perfect opportunity. But, would the tourney scene be a positive experience for a new to FOW player? Or, would the hardened, competitive attitudes of some of the players prove to give him a negative experience?

The new Late War books sparkled lots of interest here in Italy: old players from V3 dusted their armies buried at home and began to play back, while Mid War veterans found a reason to expand their  WW2 legions. on NDNG, the new “balance” with tank costs almost halved creates a more mobile metagame, with lots of armoured vehicles going around on the wargaming table.

As a result, we’re going to have . The first one happened on October 6th and saw almost 20 players coming from all Northern Italy (and one from Switzerland!), while we are already accepting entries for the second one, on December 15th (99 points Late War Tournament).

An army marches on its stomach: Napoleon Bonaparte was right, but speaking of our games, we should misquote to “our armies march on their rectangular bases”. There is nothing more disappointing in seeing a well-painted army on poorly rendered bases – I’ve seen with my eyes tournament armies with their infantry merely stuck to the brown Battefront bases!

Basing your miniatures is not that difficult. First of all, you need a plan. For example, all my Flames of War Mid armies and my Team Yankee lists have two infantry platoons, as I really like to play with massed infantry. For this reason, I try to base the two units with a different “landscape”, so I can tell them apart at a glance, even when they assault the same target and mix up. For example, my US Armoured infantry platoon 1 is mounted on “urban” bases, while Platoon 2 is on “rural” ones.

By Chris Jackson

I think the Italians are one of the most fun nationalities to play in Flames of War. The light tanks, the so-called “medium” M14/41s, and all that glorious, glorious infantry. Awesome artillery, good support options and plenty of hulls, and even more bodies to throw at your enemy or just place in their way.

Paracadutisti are the best the Italians have to offer. There is no check on the 8 Million Bayonets table for these guys. They simply take the best ratings available.

By Tom Burgess

Fallschirmjägers are the second army I did for Flames of War some ten years ago. Since then they have been one of my most played forces. Though I have not been above running them as Grenadiers in Mid-War, now we can officially play them as a Mid-War Version 4 force option.  The new Death From Above books adds Fallschirmjägers to our Africa, Sicily, and even East Front  Mid-War Version 4 battlefield where they certainly are characterful and truly elite units.

By Benny Christiansen

The long wait is over!  Airborne forces in MW has arrived!  Along with it, we get the Rangers formation. I will share my thoughts and considerations with you in this article, as well as making the providing lists with the forces I would like to test.

It surprised me to read that the idea of an airborne force was inspired by Soviet Airborne forces and further focus came from the German Fallschirmstruppens success. I was not aware of any Soviet Airborne forces that had managed anything, so the history in the book once again provided me with new information and insight into the history of airborne envelopment.

By Paolo Paglianti

After years of Mid-War tournaments, finally we have some change.  Thanks to the books Battlefront published this summer we can play Late War with full V4 rules and point system.  Since I like to play with Allied forces, Mid War tournaments have always been on the “stay low” profile: with too many Tigers and Ferdies around (in Italy we saw the infamous list with 5 Ferdinands and the Italian L6 ally), Mid War US and British forces constantly faced tanks they can’t beat head to head, almost invulnerable armour that can only be avoided.  In Late War, as we foresaw, things are going to change.