Flames of War

By Richard Steer

Flames of War began its Late-War Journey in June 2019 with the publication of Fortress Europe, bringing V4 into the 1944-45 era. Subsequent releases have seen Late-War develop with books covering the Normandy and Bagration campaigns, and most recently the Ardennes.

Throughout the last three years, however, there has been something missing. You can argue about their historical significance. You can make jokes about them breaking down, running out of fuel, and being unable to cross bridges. But one thing is certain: in the Tiger II, Jagdtiger, and Jagdpanther, Bulge: German contains some of the most anticipated additions to V4.

Do they live up to expectations? Let’s take a closer look at how these vehicles have been represented in the game.

By Howard West

No Dice No Glory has received advance copies of the next force book for the V4 Flames of War(FOW) Bulge German Book from Battlefront Miniatures.

I was asked to do a comparison of the Flames of War V3 Ardennes Offensive vs the new V4 Bulge German Book. and at the same time introduce the new Bulge German Book to our Flames of War followers on NO Dice No Glory.

This will be the first of several articles that will be done by the NoDiceNoGlory Team. The next article will be about “The Big Cats”

By Richard Steer

Tokens play an important role in Flames of War by marking the status of your units. The tokens in the Battlefront Gaming Sets are nice, but they do detract from the visual appeal of the game, particularly after the lengths we go to painting our miniatures in historical colors and creating realistic terrain for them to fight over.

The FOW token sets include four Foxholes markers, with the intention being that one marker is used per dug in unit. At times it is beneficial to have foxhole markers for each team, particularly when teams consolidate during the Assault step, so I am making myself a bunch of them.

By Richard Steer

The Flames of War army boxes are a great value. They are big boxes packed full of plastic sprues and are the ideal way to either start a new army or reinforce an existing one, at a significant price discount. The new British Crusader Armoured Squadron boxed set for North Africa is no exception. Containing 21 sprues and retailing for US$110, it compares very well to the usual price for a normal unit box.

While the Crusader Armoured Squadron box contains a lot of plastic for your money and a wide variety of models, a closer look at its contents reveals that it is an awkward combination of units. The default army list that is provided with the box is a legal force totaling 93 points, but game-wise it is not a great list.

by Tom Gall

Over the past few years, Battlefront has released several Ace campaign packs. These cover Bloody Omaha, Race for Minsk, and Battle of the Bulge. Each campaign pack retails for approximately $20 and includes a set of playing card sized decks which gives you all you need to run a ladder campaign with missions, rewards, side missions, and a collection of Ace Ability cards.

Recently at D6 Games in Rochester Minnesota, we hosted a Flames of War Late War tournament built around the Battle of the Bulge Aces campaign. This article is going to cover how it worked and served to make the tournament one that will be remembered and talked about for a long time.

For each round of the tournament (there were 3 rounds) we made use of the episodes of the campaign. This set the tone as well as picked the mission and who was attacking. The first episode in the Bulge Aces campaign has the Axis on the attack with Breakthrough as the mission. Further each episode sets forth a set of rewards depending on the outcome. For round one, both players receive a Tier 1 reward.

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 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 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.