BattleFront Games

By Tom Richards, Scott Grasse and Christian Sorenson

Firestorm – Sicily is a new mid-war Firestorm campaign that allows gamers to recreate Operation Husky as either Axis (Italian or German) or Allied (British or American) forces.

In the traditional format, Firestorm – Sicily is played as a series of linked battles that are resolved by playing Flames of War games.  The outcomes of the battles affect the larger campaign map and allow players to re-determine the outcome of one of the most critically important operations of WWII.  With the material posted here on NDNG Firestorm – Sicily can be run with your local group or can be played as an online campaign.

 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.

By Matt Varnish

Hey everyone, as I mentioned in the podcast and on my Syrians article, Battlefront neglected to show off the cool Syrian paint schemes and left newer players high and dry in terms of cool pictures.   I am here to fix that.   We will look at building a killer HQ tank with ERA armour blocks, then general painting of vehicles and the 3 main schemes, then infantry at the end.   All paints are Vallejo unless otherwise noted.   Yalla, let’s go!

Starting with the standard plastic T-55, I added side skirts, the modern HMG and some old Mine plows I had left over from the T-72s. Used the flat front hull, not the up-armoured one.

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!

By Mitch Reed

When we got the preview copy of the Oil War book from I was very interested in the possibility of playing a small IDF force so I can get the Pereh anti-tank platoon on the table, This unit has the ability to shoot anything on the table without needing line of site and uses a new special rule called NLOS.

Besides trying to get this unit on the table I also wondered what this model would look like, since it is a missile shooting platform that was disguised as a tank. The Pereh was in use secretly for over 25 years and was finally declassified in 2015 before being pulled from service in 2017.

My first attempt to make a small IDF force from Oil War used a small formation of Magach 6 tanks backed up by the Pereh platoon, so when I was sent these boxes to review I was excited to get the chance to try this force out on a table as bring you my review of these two new releases.

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.

After taking March off the guys are back to talk all about the new book for Team Yankee; Oil Wars.

Part of what we do here at NDNG is to bring excitement into our hobby and reach out to the community to get them to enjoy all the great games we play. Part of this is holding demo games whenever possible and I recently had the opportunity to hold a demo of the new Great War book at in Ashburn Va.

Holding a demo at this store seems fitting, my first taste of was playing FOW-1918 at a convention hosted by the owner of Huzzah Chris Huhn almost ten years ago. I asked Chris, who is a huge Great War fan if I can hold a demo at his store and he quickly found me some space at his store.