BattleFront Games

By Howard West

The premise behind is a miniatures wargame from Battlefront Miniatures is to be able to re-fight the battles of the Cold War that did not really happen. If you define the Cold War that did not happen as armed conflict between the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact Allies versus the NATO countries of Western Europe and the United States and Canada. Then the Cold War did not happen. The 1980s and into the early 1990s it was not a peaceful time, as various armed conflicts existed thru out the time frame of the Team Yankee Rule set. With Version 2 of Team Yankee 15 countries armed forces are represented covering some of the major countries of the Middle East, Soviet Union and the three largest Warsaw Pact Allies, and the six larger countries NATO.

Many of the 15 countries covered under Team Yankee V2 participated in the following wars or armed conflicts: The 1982 War in Lebanon, The Iran and Iraq War, The Soviet Afghan War, The Falklands War, The First Persian Gulf War. Some of the wars that occurred before the 1980s are also covered by Battle Front Miniatures in their and rules sets. So at the minimum the time frame covered by Team Yankee was at least pretty warm if not hot.

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.

NDNG BattleVault Episode 20 – Battlefront Production Shutdown
00:00:00 – Intro
00:00:42 – Recent Ops – Ed and Tom cover recent FoW and TY event results and winning lists
00:33:56 – Special guest John Mathews, Battlefront Miniatures Global Sale Manager, joins Tom and Ed explain the impacts of the current production shutdown
01:11:38 – Rules Ed Forgot and Tom Butchered
01:23:03 – Upcoming US Flames of War and Team Yankee Events

By Howard West

On January 22nd, 2021  was published on No Dice No Glory the premise behind the article was the question: can a person who plays a miniatures war game use some basic data collection to keep track of your performance in tournament play and over a time period improve your tournament results based on previous tournament games?

The original article had data from 50 tournament games from the summer of 2018 thru August 2020, V2 adds 34 more tournament games thru August 2021.

So what is new in V2?

When was published on in January 2021, I received quite a few comments and e-mails asking me did I have data on the types of Tank Teams encountered and what types of Air Units where players using. I have added charts for both Tank and Air Units that players used. I also added the new missions from the Team Yankee Extended Missions Matrix that I have played.

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 Howard West

Team Yankee 2021 Masters was held at located on 8796 Michigan Rd, Indianapolis, IN 46268 on June 26th and 27th, 2021. Family Time Games is a really nice gaming store and has a nice stock of both Flames of War and Team Yankee products. They also stock many other Boardgames, RPG’s, Miniatures, Cards, and other Gaming supplies. Stop and visit the store if you are in the greater Indianapolis area.

Team Yankee Masters is an invitation-only event hosted by each year in June for the top sixteen players as ranked by Battle Rankings in the United States and Canada.  The rankings are based on players placements in various Team Yankee Tournaments across the country during that years season. The Team Yankee tournament season runs from May 1st previous year to April 31 of the current year.  Formal invitations where mailed out to the qualifiers in early May. The 2021 Team Yankee Masters Tournament was sponsored by , Family Time Games, and

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.

NDNG BattleVault Episode 19 – US Team Yankee Masters 2021 List Review