Flames of War

By James Copland

Mid-War Romanians are coming, soon! (October maybe) I will frame this review/preview with this nugget of knowledge. Bring more MGs to all your list building. Did you add and MG Platoon? Ok, now add another one. I have friends who will smile and friends who will shudder at this statement, but Romanians are going to be a terror in MW Flames of War. So sit back, relax, as best you can while I show you how this force is a better elite army than Germany or Brits… a better spam force than the Soviets or Italians/Americans and superior to their fellow MW Axis Minors.

By Richard Steer

I am in the process of for my Late-War British. The Kangaroos were created in August 1944 by converting 72 Priest self-propelled guns belonging to the 3rd Canadian Division into armored personnel carriers. The converted Priests retained the markings of their original units: the 12th, 13th, and 14th Field Regiments, Royal Canadian Artillery. The are focused on the armoured divisions, with nothing suitable for the artillery units of an infantry division. In order to provide markings for my Kangaroos, I decided to try printing my own using our home inkjet printer.

The specific decals that I wanted were the divisional insignia, the Arm of Service flash for the regiment, and the battery identification markings. I created the images I needed using PowerPoint, while the divisional insignia was downloaded from Wikipedia then scaled to the right size. The big issue was always going to be how to achieve the white lettering in the unit symbols with a printer does not use white ink.

By Richard Steer

One of the features of the 4th Edition of Flames of War is that many of the missions require both the attacker and defender to take and hold Objectives. This is a challenge for infantry-based forces, as having your lead infantry platoons pinned down can easily cause your attack to stall. Fortunately for Late-War British Forces, the Canadians solved this problem in 1944 with the development of the Priest Kangaroo: the conversion of surplus self-propelled guns into armored personnel carriers. I won’t go into the history here, but a good summary can be found at MilArt.

By Richard Steer

Panzerschreck is an annual Flames of War tournament in New Zealand, hosted by the Manawatu Duellists club in the city of Palmerston North. It has the honor of being the longest-running FOW event on the NZ wargaming calendar, having first been held in 2001 when the game was still in open beta.

The format of the 2021 tournament was 160pt Late War doubles, with 2.5 hour rounds played on 8’x4′ tables. Teams were required to field a valid force with a minimum of one formation per player, with the points able to be split between players however they wanted.

By Tom Burgess

My good friend Ed and I have been playing the campaign for the last couple of months.  With our sixth game of the campaign we matched up for the River Crossing mission from the Bagration: Soviet book.  Ed had bought which would give us the special pieces we needed for this mission. We played at 105 points.

The River Crossing Mission is much like the No Retreat…with a wide river down the board center. To balance the attacker’s difficulty of having to force a river crossing, the defender does not have an ambush in this mission and instead of having immediate reserves, they are delayed.

By Tom Burgess

Bagration Axis-Allies, along with the Finns and Hungarians, brings the Romanians to Late War for Flames of War V4. As a wargamer who always prefers Red vs. Blue match-ups, the fact that the Romains fought for then against the Axis in World War 2 makes them very appealing to me.  The Romans lists are solid  with a lot of decent options. The Romanians seem to combine some of the best aspects of axis and allied armies into a force that can fight on either side.

Bagration Axis-Allies gives us three tank and one infantry formation to choose from. These are expanded by command cards options with an additional Pioneer, Cavalry Squadron, Mountain Rifle Company, and T-38 Tank Company formations. We end up with far more options and variations then we ever had from Version 3 for the Romanians.

By Richard Steer

It’s been a long wait, but the Finns will soon be returning to  with the release in June of a 26-page booklet that allows them to be played in the Mid War era.

The Finnish Mid War list has three Formations: an Armoured Company, an Infantry Company, and a Light Infantry Company. The troops are all rated as Careful, Fearless Trained. All of the infantry units have the Hunters rule, which allows them to Cross-country Dash through snow, woods, and forests, and units in the Armoured Company and Light Infantry Company have the Crafty rule, giving them Tactics 3+.

by Dennis ‘Matt Varnish” Campbell

Editor’s note: Dennis and Jon played this game over two months ago. But we’ve had enough FOW and TY news (books, tourneys, etc) happen that we left this report in the stack for a while. Or, we’ll blame the courier pigeons that took the lazy route from the front, and stopped off for a nosh, then a holiday enroute to NDNG HQ

By Howard West

Hard Knox Games located in Elizabethtown, KY hosted a Flames of War Tournament on March 13th, 2021 as part of WOLFKRIEG 2021. This year due to the state of Kentucky’s COVID-19 event size restrictions WOLFKRIEG 2021 was been broken into two consecutive weekends. Weekend #1 for Wolfkrieg 2021 took place, March 13th, 2021 was Flames of War and March 14th was Team Yankee. This report covers the Flames of War for weekend #1.

Hard Knox Games has been hosting small gaming tournaments during COVID based on the state of Kentucky’s COVID-19 guidelines that are in place at the time of the event. Chad and the team at Hard Knox have a great store and is like walking into the vendor area at a gaming convention. This is the 12th year that WOLFKRIEG has taken place.