Flames of War

NDNG BattleVault Episode 21 – US Bugle Review

By Paolo “Nuts!” Paglianti

The Russian has the ISU-122; the British can count on a double M10 17 PDR Troop, and Germans – well – they have plenty of Tigers, Panthers, and the cheap Panzer IV/70. The only army missing AT 14, the punch any player needs to kill heavy tanks, is the American one. Well, until now!

After delays due to the Pandemic, we’re close to the Bulge American book publication. It will arrive in early November, but we at NoDiceNoGlory were lucky to get our hands on a preview copy. And American players will not be disappointed!

By James Copland

Mid-War Romanians are coming, soon! (October maybe) I will frame this review/preview with this nugget of knowledge. Bring more MGs to all your list building. Did you add and MG Platoon? Ok, now add another one. I have friends who will smile and friends who will shudder at this statement, but Romanians are going to be a terror in MW Flames of War. So sit back, relax, as best you can while I show you how this force is a better elite army than Germany or Brits… a better spam force than the Soviets or Italians/Americans and superior to their fellow MW Axis Minors.

By Richard Steer

provides Late-War German forces in with a wealth of list building options, including a wide variety of artillery units. Following on from last month’s article , it makes sense to subject the other side the same scrutiny.

To recap, the analysis a model that simulates each dice roll in the scenario being tested to find an outcome, then repeats that simulation thousands of times in order to find the likelihood of each particular outcome occurring. The targets are dug in Careful infantry teams, with five teams under the Artillery Template, or nine teams under a Salvo Template. The other assumptions are that the Spotting Team is the Formation Commander, and a +1 penalty is added for Ranging In on terrain.

By Richard Steer

Soviet artillery is quoted as being “the god of war”, so it is no surprise that there is a large array of artillery choices available in the  book for Flames of War. Being so spoiled for choice leaves players with some difficult list-building decisions. Mortars or guns? One big battery or two smaller ones? Which of the 8pt units is the best? Is Soviet artillery even worth spending any points on in the first place?

To test this, I built a model that simulates each dice roll in the scenario being tested to find an outcome, then repeats that simulation thousands of times in order to find the likelihood of each particular outcome occurring. The targets are dug in Careful infantry teams, with five teams under the Artillery Template, or nine teams under a Salvo Template. The other assumptions are that the Spotting Team is the Formation Commander, and a +1 penalty is added for Ranging In on terrain.

It is important to remember that dice can do strange thing, and the numbers may not line up with your experience. There are always going to be patches of good or bad luck, or that one in a thousand chance which could occur in a game, but knowing the most likely outcome does help you have realistic expectations that can assist with your planning for the game.

By Richard Steer

One of the features of the 4th Edition of Flames of War is that many of the missions require both the attacker and defender to take and hold Objectives. This is a challenge for infantry-based forces, as having your lead infantry platoons pinned down can easily cause your attack to stall. Fortunately for Late-War British Forces, the Canadians solved this problem in 1944 with the development of the Priest Kangaroo: the conversion of surplus self-propelled guns into armored personnel carriers. I won’t go into the history here, but a good summary can be found at MilArt.

By Richard Steer

Panzerschreck is an annual Flames of War tournament in New Zealand, hosted by the Manawatu Duellists club in the city of Palmerston North. It has the honor of being the longest-running FOW event on the NZ wargaming calendar, having first been held in 2001 when the game was still in open beta.

The format of the 2021 tournament was 160pt Late War doubles, with 2.5 hour rounds played on 8’x4′ tables. Teams were required to field a valid force with a minimum of one formation per player, with the points able to be split between players however they wanted.

By Tom Burgess

My good friend Ed and I have been playing the campaign for the last couple of months.  With our sixth game of the campaign we matched up for the River Crossing mission from the Bagration: Soviet book.  Ed had bought which would give us the special pieces we needed for this mission. We played at 105 points.

The River Crossing Mission is much like the No Retreat…with a wide river down the board center. To balance the attacker’s difficulty of having to force a river crossing, the defender does not have an ambush in this mission and instead of having immediate reserves, they are delayed.

By Tom Burgess

Bagration Axis-Allies, along with the Finns and Hungarians, brings the Romanians to Late War for Flames of War V4. As a wargamer who always prefers Red vs. Blue match-ups, the fact that the Romains fought for then against the Axis in World War 2 makes them very appealing to me.  The Romans lists are solid  with a lot of decent options. The Romanians seem to combine some of the best aspects of axis and allied armies into a force that can fight on either side.

Bagration Axis-Allies gives us three tank and one infantry formation to choose from. These are expanded by command cards options with an additional Pioneer, Cavalry Squadron, Mountain Rifle Company, and T-38 Tank Company formations. We end up with far more options and variations then we ever had from Version 3 for the Romanians.