BattleFront Games

by Dennis ‘Matt Varnish’ Campbell

“GOOOOOOOOD Morning, VIET-NAM!”

With the upcoming re-release of ‘Nam by Battlefront, Scott Roach and I decided it was high time to break out our ‘Nam armies.    We had painted up our forces this winter for the Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge, but we realised we just didn’t have enough jungle.  We had some of the ‘Nam jungle and paddies, but nowhere near enough.

We gathered up everything we had and one Saturday just laid out the drill, hot glue gun, and MDF and made a heap of jungle bases.  Once covered in AK ‘Jungle Earth’ we just added a bit of ground clutter and away we go. I think we still need a bit more, but this will be fine for our first game. We decided to (loosely) play the opening days of the Battle of Binh Ba.

By Richard Steer

Trains are great. I’m sure I’m not alone in saying that I’ve loved trains for as long as I can remember. It’s no surprise, therefore, that when Flames of War allows you to stick a giant anti-aircraft gun onto the back of a railway wagon, I’m going to jump at the opportunity.

To this end, I recently purchased four 10.5cm FlaK39 Railway Cars to add to my Late-War German collection. Unfortunately, there are no assembly instructions either included with the kit or on the web, so I’ve written up the assembly process I used in the hope that it will help others.

By Richard Steer

“Does anyone have any Wespes that I can borrow?” The request was posted by a friend on one of our local group chats ahead of a Late-War Flames of War tournament last year. Once the accusations of “meta chasing” died down, it led to a conversation about the role and effectiveness of artillery in the game.

As someone who primarily plays British forces, my contribution to the discussion was that while the Late-War British lists have a lot of artillery options, only mortars and AVREs offer good value. The British towed artillery piece, the 25pdr, is only Firepower 4+ and is expensive due to being Fearless Veteran. Where the Germans and Americans have cost-effective three-gun units of self-propelled artillery, the British Priest and Sexton troops are units of four, again being Fearless Veteran.

To cap it off, it’s not easy to make use of that Veteran skill because most British Formation Commanders are only rated as Trained. Almost everything that the 25pdr should be able to do in the game can be done more effectively by Crocodiles.

The 25pdr field gun played an immense role in British and Commonwealth actions throughout the war, and it’s a shame that they don’t see the table more often. To do my bit to help correct this, I challenged myself to build a British list that goes all-in on artillery.

By Jim Naughton

Just when you thought it was safe to use or ignore my original treatise on Warsaw Pact artillery, BF introduced new toys. With the introduction of Red Dawn there are two new indirect fire systems – the 2S9 Nona self-propelled gun-mortar and the BM-37 82mm Mortar.

Previously NDNG has published three articles explaining Warsaw PACT artillery: TOS-UP Part 1, TOS-UP Part 2, and TOS-UP Part 3.  I will draw a few insights from previous for comparison but I’m not going to repeat the information. Part I identified the artillery available in Team Yankee and gave the statistics.  The next section furnishes data on the two new weapons.

The 2S9 NONA (Noveysheye Orudiye Nazemnoy Artillerii or Newest Ordnance of the Ground Artillery) was introduced in 1981 to replace towed mortars in rapidly expanding Air Assault forces as well as the towed guns of the Air Assault Divisions.  The NONA began showing up in Motor Rifle Regiments in the late 1980s as production continued.  A variant was built into the BTR-80 and towed versions exist for mountain fighting, and for airmobile infantry units (which have little organic transport).  Battlefront represents the 2S9 baseline, built into the BTR-D hull.

The BF model is sold separately from the generic BTR-D package (which features infantry carrier, BTR-ZD, and BTR-RD variants) and represents an essential component of a ‘pure’ VDV force.  The NONA populates the niche in VDV units that would be filled by the 2S1 Carnation and is also available as a support choice in the same niche of the Support Section of the Force Diagram occupied by the Carnation.

By Michael Rafferty

“Enjoy the war, for the peace will be savage,” was a dark joke in the German Army during the last days of World War II. Now the walls are closing in and the Soviets are nearing Berlin. Germany is throwing every last man, woman, and child at them in a vain effort to stem the tide. With the Berlin German book, Battlefront has given us the last remnants of the German war machine that once held dominion over Europe.

By Richard Steer

One of the most enjoyable parts of the current Flames of War release cycle has been the new plastic kits that Battlefront has developed. A number of new kits have been released for Bulge: British, including a box that covers the Sexton self-propelled gun, the Ram tank, and the Ram Kangaroo armored personnel carrier. I have a bit of a soft spot for the Kangaroo, so I recently picked up the box in order to add some to my Late-War British.

The box can build four vehicles, and contains two sprues per vehicle. The first sprue has all of the components needed to build a Sexton, specifically the Sexton Mk II.

By Howard West

The original Team Yankee Analytics was published on January 22nd, 2021 Team Yankee Analytics V2 was published on August 13, 2021, and Team Yankee Analytics V3 was published on July 2022.

The base premise behind these articles was to answer the question: can a person who plays a miniatures war game use some basic data collection to keep track of their performance in tournament play, over a specific period to improve tournament results based on previous tournament games?

By Richard Steer

The Late-War era of Flames of War V4 is rapidly drawing to a close with the upcoming release of Berlin: Soviet. This book picks up where the Bagration series left off and represents the Red Army in its campaigns in Europe in 1945 leading to the final destruction of Nazi Germany.

The pattern that V4 has followed has been to support each book with the release of new plastic kits. Berlin is no exception, with the main new plastic kit being the lend-lease M4A2 Sherman.

By Jim Naughton

Introduction

A frequently asked question on Team Yankee (TY) forums is what ADA systems are best.  This article tries to answer that question for the Warsaw Pact.

The release of World War III: Warsaw PACT https://www.flamesofwar.com/hobby.aspx?art_id=7455 added the M53/59 Praga anti-aircraft vehicle to the Czech army and corrected the omission of SA-8 Gecko from Volksarmee.