15mm

By Tom Gall

Flames of War Great War has recently been re-released by Battlefront. Let’s take a 2023 look at the product line, what it offers, and what it takes to get started.

Great War takes Flames into the WWI period. Tanks are in their early infancy. Due to trench warfare, the mortar was refined and saw a great amount of use. The machine gun and light machine gun as infantry support weapons came into their own.

You might be thinking WWI was all trenches and mud, and certainly there was a whole bunch of that, but in 1918 especially as the front became more fluid, fighting both in and out of the trenches occurred and this game reflects that  Battlefront in my opinion really nailed the feeling of WWI in this variant of Flames of War, but only for 1918.

Nam, Fate of a Nation, and Great War are in many ways close cousins in that they’ve taken the core Flames of War rules and adapted them to each period to give you more fun gaming options.

By Tom Gall

If you like to play Flames of War you’re probably aware of what are the two modes of play, casual and competitive play. There is a fairly healthy tournament scene for Flames in the US, it’s been coming back since COVID.

Competitive play isn’t for everyone but it does make for a fun day of getting in a few games,  pitting your skills against other players, and as a result learning how to play better. Often people at tournaments talk about how to play better, make better lists, unit recommendations, painting suggestions, and so on.

By Jim Naughton

WILL THE REAL MILAN 2 PLEASE STAND UP?

A regrettable Team Yankee tendency to hand-wave the difficulty of introducing new systems in the middle of a come-as-you-are war has been reinforced by NATO FORCES, the latest offering in the World War III-Team Yankee universe.  The source of this is apparently customer pressure to jump into ‘90s technology to counter the appearance of Soviet ERA.  Where once tanks immune to defensive fire were the sole province of NATO players, now the Soviets had them too.

So Battlefront has introduced several upgraded missiles as retrofits to the existing lists.  The problem is that some of these missiles were the output of several years of research only made possible by the compromise of Soviet KONTAKT-1 technology following the end of the Cold War.  Others would require retrofit of surviving combat vehicles with new launchers, and the last would require missiles to be sent back to the United States to return a couple of months later – missiles that already were in critically short supply.

I want to clarify what actually existed in 1985, and show how unlikely these changes were.  Players with a historical bent can choose to have ‘mutual and balanced forces’ based on actual 1985 technology.

By Jim Naughton

THERE’S THE HIGHLAND DUTCH, AND THE LOWLAND DUTCH…The Dutch in NATO FORCES

For no specific reason, I was reminded of an old Pennsylvania drinking song when I first read the Dutch section of the NATO FORCES book. I was disappointed (but not surprised) when I saw the new book, which takes fantasy to a new level, postulating things that didn’t happen until the ‘90s (five to fifteen years after the Team Yankee notional date of 1985). And most couldn’t happen in 1985 even if Andropov sent Reagan a memo in January 1985, saying “War in August, you-all come.”

For example, Dutch Leopard 2A5. The Dutch get this beast at a slight discount compared to the West Germans. You could hypothesize that the clever West Germans could slap some prototype applique on their limited production of Leopard 2A4s and produce perhaps a company of ‘advanced’ tanks in 1985. But give them to the Dutch? Leopard 2 production was no more than five tanks a week for the life of the production run.

By Matty MacKenzie

It’s the dawn of a new era in warfare, weapon development, tactics, and clandestine operations are all the rage in the 1980’s. The Cold War is in full swing, the Russians have pushed into Europe.

Their first step is moving deeper into Europe via Eastern Germany. Encountering heavy resistance and Canadian forces, who are ready to push back against the onslaught of T-72 tanks, this is where the new NATO book from Battlefront’s Team Yankee picks up.

The book opens with a nicely laid-out index, that I believe has gotten better over the years and through the course of several games produced by Battlefront. Team Yankee NATO Forces gives each country an equal shake in this publication.

What you will find inside is a little over 150 pages of NATO formations from Canada, France, Netherlands, ANZAC forces, and finally, Belgians. Each one of them receives about thirty pages apiece for you to go through and pick from should you wish to field formations from the new NATO countries available.

By Tom Gall

The weekend of June 10-11th 2023 features the Team Yankee Masters Tournament at Family Time Games in Indianapolis Indiana. This is a special “by invitation” event where in order to qualify you must rank within the top 16 places on BattleRankings.net. It’s a fun affair that Battlefront has sponsored since its inception.

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 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.