Flames of War

Story and photos By Justin Rodriguez

The first Annual Pea Bowl was held at Pea Soup Anderson’s Restaurant in the heart of Santa Barbara Wine Country; the restaurant is located in the city of Buellton, California just a short drive north of the city of Santa Barbara. The event was originally imagined as a Team Yankee tournament and evolved into a general games day. Games of DBA, Flames of War and HG Wells’ Little Wars were hosted in addition to the Team Yankee tournament. The event was a success and I am glad to have accomplished hosting an event in my local area as I normally have to travel substantial distances to attend any gaming events.

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 🙂

Today we have special podcast where I sit down with the 2018 Masters Champion James Copeland. James talks about the event, breaks down each game, and gives us his thoughts on the event and the Flames of War tournament scene. You do not want to miss this show!

By Benny Christiansen

As we all know by now, all new books will be accompanied by command cards. These cards add to the diversity of the books and can present you with an easy way to spend a lot of points, instead of spending them on troops.

To the best of my knowledge, it seems like there is in the USA a trend of not spending many points on command cards, while in Denmark (at least where I play) we spend up to 10% of the total amount of points on cards. So there is no doubt, that the cards can produce a significant change in the list you field.

For the new Red Banner book, there are also new command cards. A lot of them are exact replicas of the one from Enemy At The Gates, but some of them are very new. I have chosen only to focus on a few of them. The ones I mention here are the ones I find to be the most spectacular, though more may come in another article in a not so distant future, where I have had the chance to test them more.

By  Tom “Chairborne” Mullane

The next German Mid-war book has arrived here at No Dice No Glory, and we would like to spoil it for you. When you combine this book with Iron Cross, I think you have a really bulked out set of options for the midwar Germans.

If you have been quietly petting your panthers or peeking in on the shoebox holding your Ferdinand, your wait is over.  Battlefront has effectively added the LW German equipment in here, but with midwar points.  This book should dramatically change what the German player takes in a list, and will add a lot of color to the Germans in general.

By Benny Christiansen

” ‘Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse”

The poem that describes a child’s first meeting with St. Nicholas; how he cannot help himself but laugh out loud, and how he quickly feels that he has nothing to fear from this plump old man. It is a poem, that can give you a sense of Christmas.

It describes very well how I felt when I looked through the Red Banner book. Like a little child seeing Father Christmas for the very first time.. and when I saw the SU-85, I could not help but laugh out loud, feeling certain that I would no longer have any reason to fear the Huns!

I have the honor of taking you through the new MidWar book for the Soviets. I will start out with giving you my thoughts about it all in all, and then I will touch, ever so lightly, on every formation and briefly mention the new tanks and choices available in this book. At the end, I will also reveal a potentially huge surprise in regards to Command Cards.

By Benny Christiansen

I have always had a weakness for the huge battles. I love seeing the terrain setup – with a “story in mind” so to speak – and then the first few turns in the game, making the first efforts to win the battle.

In this article, I will attempt to describe how I plan the 38,000 points battle and my thoughts in the process, as well as being a tiny battle rep with pictures and video. The primary intention here is to inspire others by sharing the experience. The setting is in LW, but I believe it can be done in any of the games in FOW.  I am well aware there are many other ways to do this, and I encourage anyone who finds large battles interesting, to try it. It is not the same as making a tournament. I think that an event like this is more interesting for the historically focused players than a tournament might be.

After a good start, I was in the top half of the classment. Now we need to fight some serious fight! (If you want to read the first part, just click here!)

Second Game

For the second game I met Alberto De Luca, the owner of  (the Italian  Battlefront official importer) and host of the tournament. After one year of tournaments and events on Team Yankee, I consider Alberto and his wonderful, tireless wife close friends even outside the hobby. Needless to say, Alberto knows the game very well and is one of the top players in Italy. He had a Russian list with two tank Formations, a Grant one and a mixed one with dreadful KV-1, Valentines (“Tovarish Dimitri, they are the tanks I lent to you and now you use them against me!”) and a 10 T60 tanks strong platoon. Also, he had two mortar troops to barrage the enemy line while the tanks march full forward.

After one year of intense gaming on with my British BAOR army (of which and ), I decided to try the WW2 side of Battlefront rules. has lots in common with Team Yankee, so I basically had the same ruleset with much more variety in army lists.

I chose the British Mid-War army in the desert: partially because I already had some V1 pieces, but also since I planned to paint the US Army (the other army I’d like to paint) in the Late period for an internal campaign we’re going to have at our local club in early 2019. So I fast-painted the missing pieces and formed a list of Desert Rats. The first tournament at a stone’s throw was Hobby Model Expo on 30th September. Hobby Model is one of the most important shows in northern Italy: everything related to modelling hobbies is there, from miniatures to plastic models, from painting to lots of soldiers of any scale.

For our MW Eastern Front escalation league, the Huntsville Historical Gamers were given the opportunity to review a nice addition to our table terrain.  This Iconic terrain piece is produced in 15mm by the Epsilon Studios from Barcelona, Spain

Introducing the Stalingrad – Barmaley Fountain. This historical fountain is based on a Russian fairy tale, Aybolit and Barmaley, written in 1925 by Korney Chukovsky.  In the poem, Doctor Aybolit cautions the Little children:  Do not go to Africa for there are large evil barmaley there that will bite you!  In the whimsical statue, by sculptor Romuald Lodko, the children are dancing around the barmaley.