Playing with the cats – Flames of War Bulge Germans on the tabletop

By Tom Gall

With the release of the Battle of the Bulge German forces by Battlefront, the German player is granted a luxurious set of choices for new units to play with for version 4 of Flames of War. This article is about putting together a Volksgrenadier formation with the addition of some of the fun thematic late war German super weapons and playing it against Americans on the tabletop. What works well? What doesn’t?

Art de la Guerre, Ancients in 15mm: Persians

“So I entered an ADLG tournament the other day…….”

 

 

by Dennis ‘Matt Varnish’ Campbell

 

What better way to get my 15mm Persian army painted than to randomly enter a local tournament!  Art de La Guerre (ADLG) is an ancients ruleset from France that has more figures than DBA and covers a WIDE timespan, roughly from a few thousand BC up to about the Renaissance period.  See Paolo’s interview with the Author here:

A Rock and a Hard Place: Making Foxhole Markers for FOW

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.

Flames of War The Return of the Experimentals

By Chris Masucci

Having been out of the Flames of War scene for about ten years now, I was disappointed to find that many of the figures that I remember from years past have long disappeared from Battlefront’s catalog. Being a big fan of the Dieselpunk, alternate WW2, and “Weird War” styles, one of the biggest casualties for me was Battlefront’s collection of what were dubbed “Mid War Monsters”.

This series introduced several experimental or obscure vehicles to Flames of War in its mid-war theaters. The mid-war monsters included everything from little-used but produced vehicles such as the Boarhound and Italian P40, to things that never left the drawing board.

Mixing Ace Campaigns with Flames of War Tournaments

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.

Greek and Persian: the new kickstarter from 3D Breed to print-at-home your Battle of Marathon army

By Paolo Paglianti
Oops, 3D Breed did it again! After a couple of successful kickstarters about World War 2 and one about Ancient world, the Spanish STL producer just launched a new Kickstarter focused on Greek and Persian army. The previous “ancient” Kickstarter spanned from Republican to Imperial Roman age, so now we travel back in time to the Thermopylae and Marathon battles, when the Achemind Persians tried to invade Greek and were stopped by the Hoplites from Athens, Sparta, Thebes and other Cities form “Magna Grecia”.

A Survey of WWII Rulesets Part 2

Editor’s note: this story was originally published September 2020, and is presented again for your enjoyment.

By Tom Gall

There are a good number of quality WWII rulesets in existence, let’s explore some of these rules, point out what their strong/weak points are and compare what might draw you to one over the other.

The rulesets considered in this article are : (FOW) by Battlefront, by Too Fat Lardies, by Warlord, by Plastic Soldier Company.

Each of these rules is generally company level actions with support, for the most part, feature individual models, and focus on the WWII era. All are D6 based. All have extra material that offer campaign experiences, lists, and flavor to feel like you’re been given command with a battle to win. All are either point costed and/or have a list building system which makes it easier to put together a game.

This week, we’ll look at two of the four: Bolt Action and Chain of Command. The other two systems will follow were published here.

Team Yankee COLD WAR Warriors Revisited Part 2 the T-62, T-62M and the T-72M

By Howard West

Background

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.

Red Coats in the Wilderness – a review

By Tom Gall

Looking for a 15mm-25mm ruleset for 18th Century warfare? has recently published their new rules Red Coats in the Wilderness. In this article, we’re going to have a look at the rules and what they have to offer.

If you are like me and enjoy horse and musket or have a deep curiosity about gaming out actions especially on the North American continent dating roughly between the Seven Years War to the War of 1812 this is a ruleset to look into. As written the rules cater to the French and Indian War, however as played Revolutionary War, and War of 1812 actions work very well with the system.

This time period and location demand a set of rules which models company and battalion level games which are different in scale as compared to the large-scale battles that were happening in Europe at the time.  These smaller battles are what Red Coats in the Wilderness is tuned for.

Scale

The rules include charts for both 15mm and 25/28mm, and movement in inches or centimeters. A single figure represents 10 men and an artillery casting is representing one or two guns.

Each inch on the battlefield is approximately 15 yards and each turn roughly equals 10 minutes of modeled action.

Batrep : Bulge US Armor vs Bagration German Panzer IV/70s

By Tom Gall

The new Bulge American book by Battlefront offers new exciting armors lists to play. How do they fair on the tabletop against other lists?

In this batrep we’ll look at an amped up Sherman list with Jumbos, Easy 8s, 76s along with a Super Pershing against a German Panzer IV/70 list from the recently released Bagration German List. 100 points, lots of armor, a great match up and tabletop test.