Games by BattleFront
By Howard West
Photos By Rich Baier, and Michael Schwille
Videos By Donald Skovira
In the Greater Pittsburgh and Western PA area we have several groups of players that play Flames of War and Team Yankee at geographically dispersed stores and the players seldom get together other than for tournaments. So after reading about how other groups have run escalation leagues we decided to try a Team Yankee Escalation League here in Western PA.
By Tom Mullane
It’s been a long time since I’ve played a competitive game of Flames of War (FOW). The last major event I participated in was back in 2018 when I was competing in the MidWar Nationals. And I was less interested in winning than snagging that sweet custom objective (the Back to the Future Car).
After that, I drifted off to other games, and with the tournament and tabletop scene in much of my area vanishing, I tried to find other ways to spend my hobby time. Blood and Plunder, terrain building, and organizing my local gaming club with my high school students took up much of my time.
But then an opportunity presented itself. Pastor Pete Zerphy, competitive tournament player, kind soul, and man of many talents has been running an active series of events in Delmarva, DE.
Up until this past month, the stars didn’t align, and I never had the time off I needed to make the drive worth it. But this time, it coincided with the February break that teachers in NY get some time in the middle of the month. I dusted off my models and made the trip.
by Paolo Paglianti
Well, I’m really happy. I began to set up this tournament in early January, but the situation was not that good. In the end, despite the COVID and all limitations, we managed to gather 43 players (28 FOW, 14 Saga, and 1 reserve) under the same roof.
A full Sunday playing wargames, throwing dice, and blaming luck, and a lot of fun. This was probably the biggest FOW tournament in Italy since before the Pandemic. The Flames of War tourney was set in the Late War period, and a Saga tournament in the Age of Crusades. By the way, if you want to know how Saga works, you can check this article!
(A note: the Cornaredo Tournament was opened only to three-dose vaccinated people, and we wore masks all time. We just pulled them down for some photos).
By Howard West
My previous article Team Yankee COLD WAR Warrior Revisited the T-55 Tank focused on a Team Yankee player adding a 24-27 point 2nd or allied T-55 tank formation to an existing army list. With the “official” Team Yankee points reduced for this year’s US National events and with the changing META caused by the new NATO books as described in Tom Gall’s recent No Dice No Glory article on chasing the Team Yankee Meta.
Also, several of our upcoming local Team Yankee tournaments that I will be playing in have the following point levels: 110, 94, and 70. I thought this provided a good basis for a series of list-building discussions for Team Yankee on No Dice No Glory.
Ed and Tom start off their third year of Flames of War and Team Yankee podcast coverage for No Dice No Glory with Episode 24.
By Richard Steer
A lot of the focus on the upcoming North Africa release for Flames of War has been on the new units that have been added, and the historical units that haven’t been. This is understandable because as gamers we love having new toys to play with. One area that I haven’t seen much discussion about is the force charts in the book and the way that the source material for the compilation has been combined. In particular, the German support options have some subtle structural changes that are worth taking a closer look at.
By Howard West
With the “official” Team Yankee points reduced for this year’s US National events and with the changing META caused by the new NATO books as described in Tom Gall’s recent No Dice No Glory article on chasing the And since several other upcoming local tournaments have reduced point levels, in the following order 110, 94, and 70.
I wanted to see what a 2nd Warsaw Pact formation might look like and I started playing around with different formations and kept coming back to an old reliable T55/T54 Tank family. Team Yankee represents the T55/54 Family in 20 different tank and motorized infantry formations in 5 different books from the Soviets, East Germans, Czechs, Poles, Oil Wars(Syrians and Iraqis).
By Richard Steer
The North African campaign has always been the theatre of World War II that I have been most interested in, and specifically the British perspective of the conflict. This interest carried over into , with British forces in the Mediterranean has been my primary focus in the game.
To be honest, I was pretty disappointed with the first releases for FOW V4. Desert Rats and felt very lightweight compared to the previous lists for the African Campaign that we had been playing with, being the original North Africa compilation from 2009. That’s not to say that the V4 lists were bad. On the contrary, with the exception of the 17/25pdr anti-tank gun, Desert Rats was a reasonably historical representation of the most common British armored formations in Egypt and Libya in the middle of 1942. The British lists from Desert Rats were later expanded and re-released as Armoured Fist, which filled in many of the gaps, but the fact remained that the army lists had taken a step backward in detail and completeness under V4.
By Tom Burgess
When we first saw the Flames of War Version 4 Formations charts, we all wondered what the “Wildcard” box was meant for. Many of us speculated that perhaps that might have some future tie-in with “Mid-War Monsters” or some future rare/special units. Battlefront has been mum on the purpose “Wildcard” for over four years. With the release of the North Africa Mid-War Forces compilation, we know that this was an avenue to bring Mid-War Monsters back into the game.
But that’s not the only way the new North Africa Compilation will let you add for Mid-War Monsters. Battlefront also added new formations to utilize these beasts in their full glory. I think many of us expected to see Mid-War monsters to come back into the game at some point with Version 4, but I don’t think any of us expected to see new formations explicitly for these special units.
By Richard Steer
is the latest release for Flames of War, covering the US forces in Northwest Europe from September 1944 through to the end of the war, and includes a vast array of artillery options for players to choose from. This is the third post in a series that analyzes the cost-effectiveness of artillery units in FOW, with the previous articles covering the and German forces from the Bagration series of books.
