BATREP

By Tom Gall

This past weekend the Twin Cities crew hosted the first ever Midwest regional tournament for Flames of War at Dreamers Vault in Minneapolis. The goal was to crown the regional champion for the year.  Between D6 Games in Rochester and the two Dreamers Vault locations in the Twin Cities, we’re really blessed to have an active and fun group to spend many a Saturday with pushing lead and rolling dice.

It was a 3-round Flames of War tournament, mid-war at 109pts. We had 18 players in attendance with the Novaks traveling the furthest. The special aspect of the tournament was players were to mark allegiance to a store and the top two scores from that store would result in taking the title of Regional Champion for the year.

The plaque is all ready to be filled in.  Thanks much to Keith Gilmour for all the planning and especially TOing the event.

By Tom Gall

Now that our local group has a few games of under our belts, we wanted to get in a larger game that was scenario and point driven. Each side built a 650 point list and cast away their lines. Set off the coast of France, British airmen are in the water and our little flotilla needs to go and pick them up. We played this one at D6 Games in Rochester Minnesota, USA.

The Allies were sporting three type II Vospers, with two having regular crews and 1 having an inexperienced crew. Last we have a Fairmile with a regular crew.

by Keith Gilmour

On October 3rd, I was super happy to get my second ever invite to . The invite started all sorts of list noodling and planning on what I was going to bring. The Masters tournaments all have some sort of twist to make them interesting. This year, it was an escalation theme where you had to bring three lists of 62, 88 and 104 points that need to be built on different formations and each would be played twice.

By Dennis Campbell AKA Matt Varnish

Hey guys, what’s going on? Well, after a solid MONTH of painting nothing but Crusaders, I was ready for the Flames of War tournament portion of the No Dice No Glory Iron Man competition, at Fall In 2018 in Lancaster PA  (Apparently the locals make it rhyme with ‘kissed her’ not ‘Pastor’)    Anyways, while I would normally post my list and how I did, this time all I will say is, sometimes a good list in the wrong hands doesn’t perform well!   James Copeland and Chris Johnson helped me tweak out a Cavalry Crusader List, but I guess I’m not aggressive enough to field them correctly.     ‘Blah Blah Blah, let’s see pictures”  Alrighty!

I think this was Bill White’s US force.  I dig the captured Dingo objective 🙂

by Tom Burgess

After playing several city fights with the new Version 4 Mid War East Front lists, and I decided to turn our attention to more open field battles.

We set up an East Front looking table with few woods, wheat fields, a couple of built-up areas, and a rail line. We also increased the points we were playing at from 55 to 81 points as that’s what we’ll be playing at Advance the Colors in October.

by Tom Burgess

Our local Flames of War gaming group got in a second City Fight game. Last time we fought out “The Square” mission from So this time we turned out attention to Iron Cross with “The Boulevard” mission. “Battle Buddy” Ed would be playing his Soviets while Charles “6by9” would be rolling out the Germans. The point level was 55 points.

We played the game at Hard Knox Games when we could make great use of the in-store terrain collection. We used a 28mm city game mat as the base, which we thought looked much better than the plain black base we used last time. We the two halves of Miniature Building Authority (MBA) “Factory Building” to make the two main objective buildings.  To further subdivide these two buildings into four “rooms” we simply added some Battlefront Desert Walls.  We added some other MBA building halves to add to the boards generic “rubble” look. We also added some building around the perimeter edge of the board which were “off table” but helped with the visual back-drops.

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 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.

By NDNG_Dane

Lieutenant Dan here,
This past weekend, I was able to get in my first ‘ game against one of the Local Force Leaders – Comrade Paul. We played the “HOT LZ” mission at 45 points each.

Fielding the 173rd Airborne in Viet Nam

Airmobile Rifle Company HQ
Airmobile Rifle Platoon (x2)(short)
UH-1 Huey Aviation Platoon
Airmobile MG Platoon
Airmobile 81mm Mortar Platoon
Support:
Gunship Aeroweapons Platoon
OH-6 Aeroscout Platoon (2)
A4 Skyhawk Flight (2)

By Dennis Campbell AKA Matt Varnish

Photos by the Author

Rob and I did a test game with the new Nam rules for Team Yankee (Team Yankee Early War?) but instead of using traditional lists, we decided that since Team Yankee the novel is a what-if scenario, then why not do a what-if of the Oil Crisis of the 1970s!  In our case, we did a Canadian Tank force (Aussie Centurions) vs some T-55s and Motor Rifles out in a desert oil facility.    As usual, video bat-rep at the end.  Thanks to Rob for hosting as usual, this time on his awesome AFG board where I added my 15mm terrain to good effect:View from the industrial center