BattleFront Games

By Benny Christiansen

Background:

Having had access to the Italian Avanti book for some time now, I have had some great fun with trying different things out. One choice keeps coming back to my lists, is the L6/40 Light Tank Platoon. It has a front of 3, which is very nice in MW. It also has Spearhead, making it possible to dash forward and establish a forward position in several missions. Scout makes it hard to hit. The only place where I really find it lacking is in the weaponry. I’m sure that is also the main reason why many players choose not to field them.

by R. Elliott “122nd NYVI” on the NDNG forum  

Recently I was commissioned to paint up my buddy, Marc Densmore’s, Team Yankee, US vehicle collection. The horde included 40, M113 variants, two, M577s and 13, M1 Abrams’ variants. A little research indicated that the pattern was factory applied, which meant that it was going to have to be consistent on every vehicle… This was going to be challenging.

Many of my fellow writers, due to distance or circumstance, will not be able to make the great summer gathering held by HMGS this July 12th through the 15th in Lancaster PA.I am, however, able to attend to, and I am excited to get in some days of intense gaming, catching up with friends, and seeing the sights.

I have been feverishly painting minis in preparation for the events. We will also provide some coverage from the event (on the road podcasting organized by Mitch Reed).  For those looking to find any No Dice No Glory folks to say hi to, this article will give you an idea of where to find me. So come by and say hello!

by Tom Burgess

With the release of the “Version 4” Fate of a Nation, my friend Charles Christy and I were excited to get our Arab and Israeli forces back on the table. We went with 75 points for the points level because my entire Israeli force only comes out to 73 points in the new book!

My force was based around an AMX-13 company. This force has to be the worst Israeli formation. The AMX-13 is a flimsy tank that was retired after the 1967 war and has no business facing Charles’ 1973 force.

The worst part is that the formation only includes a maximum of three AMX-13 platoons and nothing else! Each platoon of four tanks coast only 8 points and the HQ just 4 points for two tanks. A full formation cost only 28 point total, but with front armor 4 it won’t take much to get this formation into poor spirits.

We return for part 2 of the three-part series of Kampfgruppes in Flames of War. For this report, I take a Kampfgruppe into combat.

For this game, I played against Brian Sullivan. I was expecting to go against his Soviets, or for him to make a list from my Americans. Instead, he decided to pull out his Hungarians for a run.

We used the More Missions matrix.

I was attacking and Brian was defending for our scenario. We ended up with No Retreat for our mission.

By NDNG_Dane

Lieutenant Dan here,
This past weekend, I was able to get in my third ‘Nam game. This game had a completely different feel from our first two games. Again I faced off against Comrade Paul, Fearless leader of the Local Forces. We played the “Fire Base Assault” mission at 60+ points each.

We both changed up the standard force list a little bit. Comrade Paul took a Special Tasks Battalion with the support options for a PAVN Infantry Battalion. I took the TO&E authorized, New Zealand 105mm Battery, that fought as part of the US 173rd Airborne Brigade in Vietnam.

Today we are going over part one of a three-part series of Kampfgruppes (KG) in Flames of War.

The first thing you may be thinking to yourself if you played Flames of War in Version 3, is that the Kampfegruppe rule was taken out in Version 4.

I am actually referring to a little known, but very well written article that Battlefront put out when Desperate Measures was released. In that article, is a Random Kampfgruppe Generator.

The Kampfgruppe Generator is used to simulate what a German Commander might have faced when an operation got underway. He really didn’ know what he had till it was time to go into action.

For example, several of the tanks could have broken down on the way to battle. His company of Panzergrenadiers actually may be only Platoon size, or worse, squad size. Inits that existed in paper only. The Battalion of Panzers that were promised to him from reserve ends up being just too worn down Panthers.

By Robert Kelly

follow up to this article:  

The Canadian M113s had a unique and distinctive camouflage pattern. I might not be the best painter out there, but I always have the correct paint colours, cam patterns, and markings. I will now share my recipe so that you can make your Canadian M113s as accurate as possible using my simple air-brushing method (whether you have a quality airbrush or not and I don’t).
If you don’t have an airbrush, you can do the hand painted version using Vallejo paints (887 Brown Violet – also for uniforms, 830 Field Grey, and Matt Black with a bit of grey mixed in). These colours are a close match and we only started to airbrush our vehicles in the mid-80s anyway.

By NDNG_Dane

Lieutenant Dan here,

This past weekend, I was able to get in my second ‘Nam game.  This game had a completely different feel than our first game.  Again I faced off against Comrade Paul, Fearless leader of the Local Force Battalion.  We played the Up River mission at 65 points each.

Syria has been in the news quite a bit in the last few years, an area known for conflict and unrest continues to cover the front pages of newspapers. This isn’t about all the modern issues plaguing that area, today we look at Syrian forces from almost 50 years ago. In 1967, three Syrian divisions moved into an area known as the Purple Line. This line on a map served as the ceasefire line after the nations of Syria, Egypt and Jordan were defeated in 1967. Israel captured the entire region of the Golan Heights, a place where my dad actually deployed to on two separate occasions in the 1990’s. This ‘border’ is the official divisional line between Syria and Israel and is still monitored by the UN to ensure stability in the region.

You would have seen many wrecks like this one after this coordinated attack in 1973