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.

Battleground 1983 – A Review of Henry Turner’s New 3D Soviet Motostrelkovy Files

 

By Tom Burgess,

If you know me…you know I have been very excited about what 3D printing and how it is revolutionizing the wargaming hobby.  If not,  you can check out an article I wrote about it .  One of the things I said in that article that would revolutionize the miniature wargaming hobby would be independent miniature designers being able to offer products through venues like  Patreon and Kickstarter. One such independent designer who has been at it for quite a while with a good bit of success is Henry Turner. Henry, based in the UK, has done very will with is 1:600 sailing ship range, his 6/15mm American Civil War and 6/15mm Napoleonic Wars, and now a 10mm/15mm/28mm Modern “1983” Warsaw Pact line.

Battle Weary – US Rifles in Bulge American

By Tom Burgess

The new Bulge American Book gives us a new take on US Rifles in Version 4 Flames of War.  This new list represent the forces that had been heavily engaged in combat throughout much of 1944. These units had been relocated to the “quiet” Ardennes area for a chance to rest and recuperate. They had no idea that they were about to be at the front facing off against Hitler’s last major offensive to try to turn back the tide in the west.

Expecting easy duty, but ending up in the most intense sector, combined with the higher HQ confusion about what was going on, negatively affected these troops’ enthusiasm for the renewed battle against the German divisions. Thus the 2nd, 4th, and 28th Divisions have been offered in Bulge American as examples of “Battle Weary” units.

Misadventures with Home-Printed Decals

By Richard Steer

I am in the process of for my Late-War British. The Kangaroos were created in August 1944 by converting 72 Priest self-propelled guns belonging to the 3rd Canadian Division into armored personnel carriers. The converted Priests retained the markings of their original units: the 12th, 13th, and 14th Field Regiments, Royal Canadian Artillery. The are focused on the armoured divisions, with nothing suitable for the artillery units of an infantry division. In order to provide markings for my Kangaroos, I decided to try printing my own using our home inkjet printer.

The specific decals that I wanted were the divisional insignia, the Arm of Service flash for the regiment, and the battery identification markings. I created the images I needed using PowerPoint, while the divisional insignia was downloaded from Wikipedia then scaled to the right size. The big issue was always going to be how to achieve the white lettering in the unit symbols with a printer does not use white ink.

Modeling the Priest Kangaroo for Flames of War

By Richard Steer

One of the features of the 4th Edition of Flames of War is that many of the missions require both the attacker and defender to take and hold Objectives. This is a challenge for infantry-based forces, as having your lead infantry platoons pinned down can easily cause your attack to stall. Fortunately for Late-War British Forces, the Canadians solved this problem in 1944 with the development of the Priest Kangaroo: the conversion of surplus self-propelled guns into armored personnel carriers. I won’t go into the history here, but a good summary can be found at MilArt.

River Crossing – A Bagration Special Mission AAR

By Tom Burgess

My good friend Ed and I have been playing the campaign for the last couple of months.  With our sixth game of the campaign we matched up for the River Crossing mission from the Bagration: Soviet book.  Ed had bought which would give us the special pieces we needed for this mission. We played at 105 points.

The River Crossing Mission is much like the No Retreat…with a wide river down the board center. To balance the attacker’s difficulty of having to force a river crossing, the defender does not have an ambush in this mission and instead of having immediate reserves, they are delayed.

Romanian Round Up – A look at Flames of War’s Most Flexible Late War Force

By Tom Burgess

Bagration Axis-Allies, along with the Finns and Hungarians, brings the Romanians to Late War for Flames of War V4. As a wargamer who always prefers Red vs. Blue match-ups, the fact that the Romains fought for then against the Axis in World War 2 makes them very appealing to me.  The Romans lists are solid  with a lot of decent options. The Romanians seem to combine some of the best aspects of axis and allied armies into a force that can fight on either side.

Bagration Axis-Allies gives us three tank and one infantry formation to choose from. These are expanded by command cards options with an additional Pioneer, Cavalry Squadron, Mountain Rifle Company, and T-38 Tank Company formations. We end up with far more options and variations then we ever had from Version 3 for the Romanians.

Charge of the light attack company – IDF WW3 TY Force Building

By John Meier

For many days scrolling through the official WW3 Team Yankee Facebook page, I’ve seen many people ask how to play Israel from the oil War book. Many problems that Israel has are low anti-tank and no spearhead unit unless you take a tank formation. Another problem I’ve seen from lists posted or from watching battle reports is that Israeli players don’t take the Pereh ATGM or if they do take it they don’t target anything but tanks.

So the best way I’ve found to play Oil War Israeli is the infantry company. Players get four Galil Assault Rifle teams, three FN Mag team “machine gun” all of these come with LAW AT, one mortar team, 3 RPG teams, one Dragon team, and finally 5 m113 transport with three 50cal shots and two 30cal shots most machine guns on a transport you can find. Their soft stats are fearless vets. Players rally on 3s, last stand on 3s, and counterattack on 3s. Assaulting into a platoon is not advised, for 11 points players get a great objective holder and you have enough stands so take an objective if you need to.

Batrep – Bagration Hungarians – how do they play?

As part of the Minor Nations Bagration book, Hungarians offer an interesting force for Late War now part of the v4 rules. I’m sure you’re eager to know how well they play? Maybe you’re a past Hungarian fan from the days of v3 or maybe you’re looking to put together a new Hungarian force. Let’s play a game and see how they perform.

Let’s start with the setting for our battle, a valley that has already seen plenty of action. I was aiming for something that can serve as hilly area in Hungary towards the end of ’44, early ’45 when the Hungarians were defending their homeland from the invading Russians. The terrain is mostly Gale Force 9 with a bit of Novus Design and some scratch builds.