Battlefront

by Mike Rafferty

I feel like I say this every year, but this was the biggest AdeptiCon ever. Early estimates are over 8000 badged attendees with the numbers still being calculated. That means likely 10,000-12,000 through the door since AdeptiCon does not charge for a shopper’s badge and there are a lot of people that come to walk around and check things out. Early reports from the vendor hall is that the majority of vendors had their best year ever and the hall was packed when I walked through. Despite all these record-breaking notes, there is one important question: did I have fun?

By Richard Steer

Late-War Leviathans are coming to Flames of War. Battlefront is releasing a free PDF on 2nd May that allows the models from their new 1948 alt-history game Clash of Steel to be used in the Late-War era of FOW. These new tanks, the Leviathans, are a mix of vehicles that entered service shortly after WW2, and experimental prototypes that never entered production.

By Richard Steer

A common discussion on various online groups for Flames of War is the unpopularity of Late-War Soviet forces. The Soviet lists do have their weakness, yet players have had success with them here in New Zealand. We have seen tournaments won by Hero Motor Rifle Battalions and Engineer-Sapper Battalions, so there are definitely ways to make them work.

The release of Berlin: Soviet provided me with a good excuse to try them for myself. The challenge I set myself was to build a competitive Soviet force and run it at our club’s 2023 Late-War tournament.

By Richard Steer

The Late-War period of Flames of War was completed last year with the release of the Berlin books. With no new releases over the last 12 months, the meta of the competitive scene is probably the most stable it has ever been.

A meta can be defined as “the game around the game”. In Flames of War this includes all of the things that go on up until you start deployment, such as the options that go into list building and your choice of Battle Plan. There’s always been a meta: those lists that appear, dominate the competitive scene for a while, become super popular, and then fade as players work out how to counter them and new books create new competitive opportunities.

Local metas are often created by the way that the most successful players in a particular region or gaming group approach the game. To find out more about the Late-War meta in our local region of Wellington, New Zealand, I recently spoke with four players who have for many years been among the top FOW players in New Zealand: Bede, Chris, and Simon from Wellington, and Sofia from Auckland, to hear their views of the state of the Late-War game in our corner of the world.

By Tom Gall

This past Saturday December 30th the usual suspects in Minnesota gathered to play a 3-round tournament at DreamersVault in Minneapolis Minnesota. This time was a 95pt LW contest with 15 players gathered. A number of the crew are bound for LVO at the end of January so they were eager to try some lists out.

Were I in the same state of mind my list would have been trying to balance between something competitive with what can I fit on the airline. It’s extra hard especially if you’re playing both Team Yankee and Flames of War that week!

I ended up taking my Brigade Armoured Assault Company. It’s one of those lists where almost all the units are hit on 3s, most everything is reluctant 5 motivation and skill tends to be a 4 for most units. Those basics are not a solid set of fundamentals to build around, the list is trash and has all sorts of issues so …. hold my beer.

By Richard Steer

The latest round of “Dynamic Points” for Flames of War has been finalized. If you are not familiar with the term, a Dynamic Points document is an update that Battlefront publishes that adjusts the cost of units in the game without needing to re-release the books. If you are playing a game using Dynamic Points, treat any units in the document as costing what they are listed there, while any units not in the update continue to use the points given in the books.

So far this concept has only been applied to the Mid-War era, with the 2024 version being the second round of adjustments for the era. The update can be downloaded for free from the FOW website, and have also been applied to the Forces of War list builder.

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 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 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.