Infantry Attacks: Flames of War at Remember December 2025

By Richard Steer

Every year, our wargaming club in Upper Hutt, New Zealand, runs a one-day tournament for club members at the final meeting of the year. Named Remember December, this event commemorates club member Nick Garden, who passed away in 2015. The 2025 edition of the event was held on 13 December, playing Flames of War.

Remember December often has a themed format or unusual list restrictions, and this year was no exception, The format used was 55-points Late War, with infantry formations only. In addition, your force could not include more than one tank unit, a maximum of four vehicles, and a maximum Front Armor of 7. Three 1.5-hour rounds were to be played using the Extended Battle Plans mission selector, and each player had to use each stance once during the event.

Building a List

There are three questions I try to answer when building a list.

1. Do I have at least three units that can cross the table and take an objective?
2. What are my Reserves going to be?
3. How am I going to stop tanks?

To answer the first question with an infantry list, I wanted to build around a formation with Rally 3+. After hunting through the options on Forces I settled the Beach Defenders from D-Day: German with the 352nd Infantry Division command card. The infantry in this formation are Confident Aggressive Green, with Assault 4+, Rally 3+, and Last Stand 5+, which felt like a good compromise for fitting a decent number of units into a small points limit. To the minimum of two platoons I added Panzerfausts to provide local anti-tank defence, and pairs of HMGs to increase my anti-infantry firepower.

A platoon of StuGs provided my armored support: 23-points for four fitted the list restrictions nicely and met the minimum 22-pts Reserves with a single mobile unit.

The Force was rounded out with units of infantry support weapons. Here I was limited by the models I had available, and settled on pairs of 8cm mortars, 7.5cm infantry guns, and 7.5cm PaK40 anti-tank guns, to provide a range of indirect fire and anti-tank options.

Taken together I felt this met my three goals nicely: the two infantry platoons and the StuGs could take an objective, my Reserves were clear, and five out of seven units had anti-tank capabilities.

Round 1

Game 1 was against club president Tom Leamy and his Finns. I chose to Manoeuvre, he chose to Defend, and the resulting mission was Escape. As the Attacker, I started with my entire Force on the table, with Tom’s reserves of three Sturmis and his infantry HQ to arrive from behind me.

My plan was to push one infantry platoon with infantry gun support into a group of buildings in the center of the board, while the other platoon and the StuGs pushed hard and fast around them to the weakly-defended left objective. My anti-tank guns were set up to provide at least some discouragement for when the Finnish Sturmis arrived from Reserve.

The plan worked well for a couple of turns. The Finns quickly ambushed on my left with four HMGs, but some incredible rolling saw me pass 16 out of 17 infantry saves. My luck didn’t hold, losing eight teams across the two Grenadier Platoons the following turn to a combination of HMG and mortar fire. This gutted my infantry, forcing the StuGs to press on without infantry support.

The StuGs overran the ambushing HMGs with a quick assault, and then pushed on to the objective, held by a pair of 5cm PaK38s. Meanwhile, with my infantry out of the picture, the Finns were scrambling their own infantry across to the left from the secure right objective, and their reserves arrived to overrun the mortars and anti-tank guns in my backfield.

The StuGs had no option but to assault the PaK38s to clear the objective, but were unsuccessful due to their poor Side Armor and Assault stats. The arrival of the Finnish infantry onto the objective spelled the end of the game, securing them the win at the end of their Turn 6, for the loss of just the HMG Platoon and a final score of 8-1.

Round 2

Game 2 was against Ric Tolley and his British Paras. Having used my Manoeuvre stance, I had the choice of attacking or defending, and chose Defend. Ric attacked, and the resulting mission was Hold the Pocket.

I set up in the centre, with one Grenadier Platoon on each objective, the PaK40s in ambush, and the StuGs in reserve. Ric placed two Para Platoons on my left, with two Cromwells and a Firefly on my right front, along with four 3-inch mortars and four 6-pounder anti-tank guns on my extreme right.

The British Paras pushed through the woods on my left and into the village, before pivoting through the buildings towards the objective, with support from the tanks that had moved into a nearby wood.

Meanwhile the mortars and 6pdrs sustained a bombardment of my troops deployed on the front objective. I was feeling pretty happy at this point: the British line of advance meant they would take a number of turns to put pressure on the objective, and my StuGs had arrived quickly from Reserve. I brought these onto the table on my left flank, in a position to threaten the infantry attack from positions that were well out of range of the British anti-tank guns.

The British attack went very well. They quickly started clearing the buildings at the cost of a few stands from artillery and machine-gun fire. Buildings are really hard to defend in V4 due to the impact they have on defensive fire lines of sight, and my forward Grenadier platoon had little choice but to give ground while trying to inflict as many casualties on the attackers as possible. In this they were successful, exiting the buildings weakened by still in Good Spirits, while each Para team lost was a significant reduction in the British fighting strength.

With the British tanks moving closer in support, my PaK40s ambushed them at short range, while I also engaged them with the StuGs at long range, with the goal of knocking out the Firefly. My shooting over the next few turns wasn’t terrible, scoring several 6s to hit, but my Firepower tests were poor, only managing to achieve Bailed Out results. I was now losing several defending teams a turn to sustained mortar and 6pdr fire.

On my Turn 6, my StuGs finally knocked out the Firefly that had been holding them in check. The equation for victory was now simple: drive the Paras outside of 8″ of the front objective. The buildings that had been so helpful to the British attack were now their undoing. Machine-gun fire from the StuGs and the Grenadiers’ HMGs pinned them down, and being over-extended across multiple buildings they were unable to develop sufficient defensive fire to stop a sharp counter-assault by my second Grenadier Platoon on my Turn 7, that cleared the objective and secured a 6-3 win.

Round 3

Game 3 was against Simon Avery and his Battle Weary US Rifles. My last available stance was Attack, as was Simon’s, and we played Collision. This was my most intense game of the event, and unfortunately, I forgot to take many photos.

The mission forces both players to push forward hard and fast, and this produced a fantastic game. The Americans got the first turn, and moved their infantry towards the buildings in the middle of the table. I countered with my own infantry, and was successful in pushing the two Rifle Platoons back out into the streets. What I couldn’t do anything about was an HMG Platoon in a central building. I didn’t realize the significance of this position until much later in the game, and from there they would dominate the game right up until the end.

My StuGs pushed around the extreme right flank, and assaulted their way onto the objective. The Americans countered with an infantry assault that cleared the objective and extended the game, and started knocking out StuGs with their four 76mm Shermans.

The poor motivation of the Battle Weary Rifles was now really hurting them, struggling to Rally and being stuck in the open streets, unable to withdraw to safety as this would have handed me the objectives. Meanwhile, the American HMGs in the center continued to dump buckets of dice into my own infantry, gradually whittling them away.

By Turn 6 both sides were utterly broken. The Germans had their HQ and three Grenadier teams in one building, plus the support weapons in their backfield. The US had four HMGs and their company commander, and four Shermans.

With time nearly expired, and for the first time in the whole event, my PaK40s stepped up. The US Company Commander was in line of sight, gone to ground and at long range. Four shots needing 7s scored one hit, and the commander failed his save, breaking the US formation for a 6-3 win.

Reflections

The event was won by Chris Pooch with a Ranger Company from Bulge: American, achieving three 8-1 wins.

With hindsight, what would I have done differently? I don’t think I would change much. My experience confirmed that prioritizing infantry with a good Rally stat when building my list was the right decision. Chris’ list took this concept to the extreme with his Rally 2+ Rangers.

My main mistake of the day was in the final game, when I didn’t realize during deployment how important the central building would be, and placed both objectives in spots that could be covered by the HMGs that would end up occupying it. Having done that, I should have done more to deal with the HMGs early in the game. Apart from that, I was pretty happy with how I played and how the list ran.

To me, the event confirmed that Version 4 of Flames of War is an excellent infantry game if you can create the right setting, and the format here was absolutely spot on.

The game size at 55-points was low enough to not overload the tables and allow most games to finish within the 1.5-hour time limit. The requirement to use each stance once prevented you from playing with a defensive mindset in every game. The restriction on the number of armored vehicles you could field gave infantry the space to get up and attack without being swamped with large numbers of vehicle MG shots. In this context, mortars, machine-guns, and assaults became key.

Overall, Remember December 2025 was an incredibly enjoyable event, being a refreshing change from the usual tank-dominated competitive meta, and the perfect way to close out the gaming year.