Battlefront

By Paolo Paglianti

The last Team Yankee tournament we had in Italy was more than two years ago, so I was super happy that Livio Tonazzo, one of the best FOW – TY players in Italy, created the event we had last weekend, March 12th. While we normally play Team Tankee at 75 or 85 points, this time we decided “to go big” and have 105 points lists, with a massive amount of tanks, vehicles, and infantry bases.

The idea was to allow the deployment of the “new” super tanks, like the Challenger or the M1A1HC Abrams: these tanks cost up to 54 points for a platoon of three, so it’s mathematically impossible to field them under 75 points. However, we knew 105 points can also mean lots of spam of light vehicles and transports, but with a missile AT 19 or 21 on top of them – an entirely new meaning for the “spam” of scouts we see in FOW, as in Team Yankee they are both numerous and lethal.

By Howard West

Photos By Rich Baier, and Michael Schwille

Videos By Donald Skovira

In the Greater Pittsburgh and Western PA area we have several groups of players that play Flames of War and Team Yankee at geographically dispersed stores and the players seldom get together other than for tournaments. So after reading about how other groups have run escalation leagues we decided to try a Team Yankee Escalation League here in Western PA.

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.

By Richard Steer

A lot of the focus on the upcoming North Africa release for Flames of War has been on the new units that have been added, and the historical units that haven’t been. This is understandable because as gamers we love having new toys to play with. One area that I haven’t seen much discussion about is the force charts in the book and the way that the source material for the compilation has been combined. In particular, the German support options have some subtle structural changes that are worth taking a closer look at.

By Howard West

Background

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 And since several other upcoming local tournaments have reduced point levels, in the following order 110, 94, and 70.

I wanted to see what a 2nd Warsaw Pact formation might look like and I started playing around with different formations and kept coming back to an old reliable T55/T54 Tank family. Team Yankee represents the T55/54 Family in 20 different tank and motorized infantry formations in 5 different books from the Soviets, East Germans, Czechs, Poles, Oil Wars(Syrians and Iraqis).

By Richard Steer

The North African campaign has always been the theatre of World War II that I have been most interested in, and specifically the British perspective of the conflict. This interest carried over into , with British forces in the Mediterranean has been my primary focus in the game.

To be honest, I was pretty disappointed with the first releases for FOW V4. Desert Rats and felt very lightweight compared to the previous lists for the African Campaign that we had been playing with, being the original North Africa compilation from 2009. That’s not to say that the V4 lists were bad. On the contrary, with the exception of the 17/25pdr anti-tank gun, Desert Rats was a reasonably historical representation of the most common British armored formations in Egypt and Libya in the middle of 1942. The British lists from Desert Rats were later expanded and re-released as Armoured Fist, which filled in many of the gaps, but the fact remained that the army lists had taken a step backward in detail and completeness under V4.

By Tom Burgess

When we first saw the Flames of War Version 4 Formations charts, we all wondered what the “Wildcard” box was meant for. Many of us speculated that perhaps that might have some future tie-in with “Mid-War Monsters” or some future rare/special units. Battlefront has been mum on the purpose “Wildcard” for over four years. With the release of the North Africa Mid-War Forces compilation, we know that this was an avenue to bring Mid-War Monsters back into the game.

But that’s not the only way the new North Africa Compilation will let you add for Mid-War Monsters. Battlefront also added new formations to utilize these beasts in their full glory. I think many of us expected to see Mid-War monsters to come back into the game at some point with Version 4, but I don’t think any of us expected to see new formations explicitly for these special units.

By Richard Steer

Every year, our wargaming club in Upper Hutt, New Zealand, runs a one-day tournament for club members at the final meeting of the year. Named Remember December, this event was first run in memory of Nick Garden, a valued member of the club and the wider New Zealand wargaming community, who passed away in 2015. The 2021 edition of Remember December was held on 11 December, playing  in a 1100pt Early-War format.

The Early-War era of Flames of War has always been my favorite. The oddball vehicles, the wide range of nations represented, and the generally weaker stat lines, all combine to create a game of huge variety that feels very different from the way that the Mid-War and Late-War eras play, despite using identical rules. While there has been no recent indication of the timeframe for Early-War being re-released for V4, for now, it is still able to be played using a conversion of the V2/V3 lists.

by Dennis ‘Matt Varnish’ Campbell

In Canada, it was decided (during our lockdown this summer) to not have one Canadian Nationals event in Ottawa (since we could no longer book the Marriott we usually go to), but instead have several Regional events. Overall winner would be the person with the highest total points, tie breakers going to number of wins, and then if still tied, going to the person who attended the larger event.

The National Capital Region (NCR) event was put on by Darko Prodanovic and John Edward (Jed) and hosted by a local game store across the river in Quebec called Freres de Bataille (Translation: Battle Brothers, hereafter FdB). Our event in the NCR occurred Nov 20-21 was , Late War 105 points (No Bulge US). Regionals in Winnipeg, Maritimes, and Edmonton also occurred. After compiling the results from the regionals, the winner is…

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 2^nd, 4^th, and 28^th Divisions have been offered in Bulge American as examples of “Battle Weary” units.