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.

I am sure many of you are like me and find little free time available to roll some dice with friends. The term “quick game” is a misleading statement and we often feel that games that play quickly lack the details we like and may feel like an “arcade game”.

While I could have picked a ton of games to talk about here, I decided to focus on two new titles I just added to my collection; What a Tanker from Too Fat Lardies and an older title called Gunfighter’s Ball from Knuckleduster. I selected these games because they have a low model count, have easy to learn rules, can have more than two players and can be quickly played in less than 90 minutes.

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.

By John Stafford

Images by the author, or from  (Image above: Napoleonics in 6mm: fictional battle of Pilzn)

In 2010, Mitch Reed introduced me to the  line of games published by Avalanche Press (AP). Their tactical approach to World War 2 filled a longstanding desire for something better than Advanced Squad Leader and Panzer Leader/Blitz by Avalon Hill. I began acquiring titles and reading the postings on their website. Shortly thereafter I began posting ideas for areas not covered by the Panzer Grenadier rules, such as logistics impacts on fighting (low fuel or ammo).

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 Troy A. Hill

Images from Warlord Games, or by the author

Well, I took the plunge recently into a new game system. Gamer-Crack got hold of me again.

I’ve been looking for a new WWII system for a while, and I was hesitant to go back to a 28mm system after abandoning Warhammer Fantasy (WHFB) during its dark-era.

But, I wanted to find a system that would come equipped with a fairly stable player base in my part of the world (Southern California). Outside of Flames of War (FOW), is the next most popular WWII miniatures game. And it has a tournament scene. Double Win for that.

The first game I played, hosted by a few of our HMGS-PSW gents,  included a “objective” of Col. Klink and Sgt. Schultz. Seems those two had gotten lost near the Eastern Front. The Soviets were tasked with capturing or killing them. The German players had to recover them. That led to many poor attempts at German accents for quotable Hogan’s Heroes lines – I know NOTHink! – being tossed about like a live hand-grenade.

I always wanted to get a game table to play Flames of War or the countless board games I have but they were so darn expensive. Along came a man named Berky with his . The idea behind the Game Toppers, that you can take something that looks like a game table but without the actual legs part. Something that is portable, and easy to store away in between game sessions.

For me, the draw of the Game Topper was that you can have a table where the dice don’t fall off the table because the table is actually inside the sides a set of rails. Also, I wanted to have a cup holder right at the table.

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.