Flames of War

By Benny Christiansen and Helge Macintyre

A few years ago I attended my first ETC. It was a warm experience and even though I don’t see myself as a competitive player, I signed up for what I had been told was a very competitive event.

Our Danish team began after my friend, Helge, played on the Swedish team as a mercenary (the teams are allowed to have a certain amount of “foreigners”). He returned and began to build a team for the following year.

Playing the ETC was an exciting experience! I still remember the games from the first tournament, but I also remember the mood and the people and the nerves and all the other fantastic things.

We return for part 2 of the three-part series of Kampfgruppes in Flames of War. For this report, I take a Kampfgruppe into combat.

For this game, I played against Brian Sullivan. I was expecting to go against his Soviets, or for him to make a list from my Americans. Instead, he decided to pull out his Hungarians for a run.

We used the More Missions matrix.

I was attacking and Brian was defending for our scenario. We ended up with No Retreat for our mission.

Today we are going over part one of a three-part series of Kampfgruppes (KG) in Flames of War.

The first thing you may be thinking to yourself if you played Flames of War in Version 3, is that the Kampfegruppe rule was taken out in Version 4.

I am actually referring to a little known, but very well written article that Battlefront put out when Desperate Measures was released. In that article, is a Random Kampfgruppe Generator.

The Kampfgruppe Generator is used to simulate what a German Commander might have faced when an operation got underway. He really didn’ know what he had till it was time to go into action.

For example, several of the tanks could have broken down on the way to battle. His company of Panzergrenadiers actually may be only Platoon size, or worse, squad size. Inits that existed in paper only. The Battalion of Panzers that were promised to him from reserve ends up being just too worn down Panthers.

Greetings from Virginia. I wanted to start by introducing myself. I began my journey into tabletop wargaming as many of us do, with a force of plastic warriors from Games Workshop’s, Warhammer Fantasy.

I reveled in the joy of High elves before slowly getting bored with the game. I found a winning strategy ended up with who had spent more USD and not who had built a better force on paper or led his troops better.

I moved from Warhammer to a new game I had seen at my FLGS, Flames of War (FoW). This game seemed to have it all. Tactics, list building, and strong individual models (Yup I thought King Tigers were invincible, how quaint young me was.)

Today we take a look at how Battlefront’s Latest addition the mid-war desert books, Armoured Fist, changes the tournament scene. It’s complicated.

One of the most talked about and biggest changes that come with Armoured Fist is actually something that affects the Desert Rats book. The hotly contest Scout Tanks card has been changed, making the cost two points for each platoon using it, and the card must be applied to every platoon it is viable for. This is a huge, much-needed change.

Battlefront set the point cost for the card too low on the first go around, but, I will give them credit for admitting their mistake and fixing it. This change, however, will kill the Stuarts swarm of 50+ tanks.

Assembly of Mk II finished.

Plastic Soldier Company has released their and 20mm scales. They were kind enough to send NDNG a set of 15mm for review.

Out of the box, the 15mm sprues are impressive, yet daunting. Two hull tops are included – one with side skirts, one without. The instructions list the side-skirt hull as the Valentine III and IX model.

These tanks are a welcome addition, with both Flames of War and BattleGroup focussing on Desert War in North Africa right now. Players of any 15mm WWII game with an eye toward North Africa, or even the Eastern Front with Valentines as Lend-Lease can make good use of this set.

By Scott Grasse

One of the exciting features of a Firestorm campaign is the use of additional “free” units that are added to players’ forces for each battle. These additional troops represent the combat power associated with the units fighting on the campaign map – the more units attacking on the map, the greater the force attacking on the battle table.

Troop types in Firestorm Tunisia: Armor, Infantry, Delaying Force, Fortification, and Roadblock.

Iron Tom Burgess, Chairborne Tom Mullane, and (no nickname) Troy take a look back at the past year since BattleFront premiered Version 4 rules.

What did they like, and not so much? What works? What do they want to see tweaked?

Listen now for commentary on Version 4, a year later.

By Dennis Campbell AKA Matt Varnish

Photos by the Author

Hey guys, now I go through my step-by-step for painting vehicles. You need a good drybrush, and optionally, these :

 

After getting a good dark tan spray down, get your vehicles up to Vallejo (VJ) 879 Green Brown