Flames of War

 4^th Battle of Kharkov – August 1943

Mega-Game

by NDNG_Dane

The Huntsville Historical Gamers gathered in April to recreate the Soviet offensive that aimed to recapture Kharkov and destroy the German 4th Panzer Army.   The 4^th Battle of Kharkov was a series of battles between 3 and 23 August 1943, following the Battle of Kursk. After their defeat at Kursk, the Wehrmacht was clearly on the defensive, with the Soviets launching a massive offensive. The 4th Panzer Army conducted a fighting withdrawal to fighting positions around the city of Kharkov.

The Kharkov Mega-Game was the culminating engagement of our spring Ghost Panzer – Red Banner, Eastern Front Campaign.

If you play any games from Battlefront you will want to hear this episode. We have Pete Simunovich with us and he tell us about all the great new stuff coming from Battlefront. Loads of spoilers you cannot miss!
If you are interested in;
Flames of War Late War Release Schedule and what we can expect in them, Team Yankee in the 1960-70 Time-frame, Swedes and S-Tanks, T-80, M1A1, Apache, Bradley’s, Challengers, Chieftains, BMP-3s, Warriors, and some wild stuff from the 9th ID that was tested and never saw the field.
A lot of great stuff you just cannot miss!

On April 13th the Screaming Eagle put on a very special Firestorm Stalingrad day at D6 Games in Rochester Mn. Using the Stalingrad kit from Battlefront, players battled for the area around and in Stalingrad. In all, we had seven tables. Three of which were city tables, and four country tables.

Players were pledged to a side (Russian or German) and could bring a 109 point list for battles in the country and/or a 60 point list for battles in the city. I did make one allowance for Italians to be included, though, the Lancia was removed and replaced with another 88-platoon.

By Benny Christiansen

As FOW V4 was released, I still remember that surprise I felt when I found out just how mobile the game became. Mobile is a word that contains value based on your own point of view. In this case, I am thinking of the infantry and the amount of movement they made. In my V3 games infantry tend to stay stationary and in competitive situations, I would have a certain way I would deploy my infantry platoons to optimize my defensive position. After deployment, they would rarely – if ever – move.

Under V4 rules, my infantry will, in most of my games, be forced to move a lot. Under the V4 system, I see only benefits in moving them (in general). Standing still is an invitation for destruction. But such claims are easy to make and hard to prove. So I will try to make an example via a game I played recently.

By Benny Christiansen

Having played a few games with less than 50% win rate, I have decided to try and find a stronger list. One of the things that I have thought about earlier is the “Gun line”. Many of the lists in FOW MW are mobile and flexible. I find MW to be a game of mobility, but I have decided to test that requirement by making this Gun Line list.

By Ian Birdwell

After having all of my time the past few weeks eaten up by “real life” and “responsibilities”, I was finally able to take some time to head over to the club to play a game.

Challis, one of club members, has also been waylaid by the same things I have been and hadn’t had an opportunity to play his soviets since August of last year (Check out the battle report here ) we were fixing for a friendly throw down.

Given our mutual love for all things Eastern Front, we opted to throw down with 109 point forces from Red Banner and Desperate Defense (check out the release article here ).

By Benny Christiansen

One of the things I enjoy doing is to experiment. City Fight rules, found in the back of Enemy Of The Gates and Iron Cross books, were very interesting for me. I was preparing for a tournament at the time and thus did not have the time to pay much attention to them.

Going through the rules, I noted a few things before my first games.

First, smoke barrage seemed very effective. Filling a room with smoke seemed a good way to protect your assaulting units. Assaulting teams benefit from concealment and bulletproof cover when assaulting rooms, and with smoke, it could be potentially very, very difficult to stop an assault.

I really wanted to find out more about this, so I decided there and then, to make sure I would test a list that could fire smoke.

Rubble and Tree lines are suggested terrain features, and I have realized that in V4, I really love the infantry, and so I could see a chance to throw loads of infantry on the table and have fun.

D-Day is coming! In June (could be any another month?) Battlefront will publish army lists for the Normandy landings, effectively starting the Late WW2 period. After years fighting with “hit on 3+” and “test morale on 5+”, US troops will finally get much better, with tanks able to worry the German counterparts. For this reason, I began to assemble my new US army, with a mix of Mechanized infantry, Shermans, M3 halftracks, 105mm artillery, and M10s to punch enemy armour. But I also wanted a “personal” army, something really unique. Each tank with a different layout, each infantry base with a personal touch.

In this first half of the US Late Army painting guide, we will see how to customize your tanks (they can be German or Russian, obviously) with some tricks and advice to have flags, sandbags, and nets where you want.

The staff here at NDNG is so excited that is updating the Great War book for all of those like me who love all things Great War. As you have seen in our previous articles the new book is bigger and better than the previous version; all the rules are updated to the V4 standard and you have a lot of new forces to play with.

I had the honor of helping the crew at Battlefront put together this book and I want to share some of the amazing forces you can now play on your table. In this article, I will go over the changes to the French and American forces as well as introduce the Belgians to the fight.

Mega episode for a mega book! I am joined by Tom Gall and Austin Copeland to go over the entire Great War book for Flames of War. Almost two jammed packed hours of mud and blood to the green fields beyond.