By Benny Christiansen
After reading through the new LW book, Fortress Europe, I decided to challenge a friend of mine for a quick match. We decided on 71 points, and I would play the role of the Germans, while he would play the Soviets.
I decided on a list that would let me try some of the well-known things from MW and see how it would pan out in the LW era.
By Jacob Shober
The first twenty-four hours of the invasion will be decisive. . . . [T]he fate of Germany depends on the outcome. For the Allies as well as Germany, it will be the longest day.
—Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, 22 April 1944.
D-Day has finally come to , and I can definitely say that the campaign book does it justice. At least from the German perspective, one can definitely feel the gravity of the situation, the desperate hold on the beachhead bunkers and fortifications as wave upon wave of Allied troops storm the beach, drop from the skies, and rain high-caliber naval shells on top of them.
It also shows much of how the Germans appropriated French armor and guns for their own purpose after the successful invasion in 1940. From both a historical and gameplay viewpoint, this campaign book has a lot of content to offer, from the units, to the fortifications, and lastly, the theater selectors.
4th Battle of Kharkov – August 1943
Mega-Game
by NDNG_Dane
The Huntsville Historical Gamers gathered in April to recreate the Soviet offensive that aimed to recapture Kharkov and destroy the German 4th Panzer Army. The 4th Battle of Kharkov was a series of battles between 3 and 23 August 1943, following the Battle of Kursk. After their defeat at Kursk, the Wehrmacht was clearly on the defensive, with the Soviets launching a massive offensive. The 4th Panzer Army conducted a fighting withdrawal to fighting positions around the city of Kharkov.
The Kharkov Mega-Game was the culminating engagement of our spring Ghost Panzer – Red Banner, Eastern Front Campaign.
By Ed Sales
If it’s one thing I love about painting and making these models, it’s that I have a range of creativity at my disposal. You can really add a lot of character to your tanks. I like to make each of my tanks different from the others, even if they are the same model.
When Desperate Measures came out, this added a whole new dimension of how I looked at modeling tanks. When I modeled my tanks, prior to that release, I might have the stowage a little different on each tank.
Now I can take a StuG Platoon, and paint each tank with a different camo scheme and say that the platoon was thrown together last minute. Maybe one of the Stugs left the factory in primer red because they were running low on dunkelgelb. I could do up a Tiger, and paint the running gear a different color, saying a T34 hit it to track it. You could really go all out and really have fun with it.
By NDNG Dane
The Huntsville Historical Gamers gathered on December 8th (the day after the day that will live in infamy) to recreate the German attack on Stalingrad as part of Operation Fall Blau (Case Blue) and the Soviet Heroic Defense. The Mega game was the Culminating engagement of our Mid-War Eastern Front escalation league using the Flames of War V4 system.
Our three board Mega Game centered combat action on: Board #1: The Univermag Department Store and Barmaley Fountain, Board #2: The Red October – Tractor Works, Board #3: The Grain Elevator and Pavlov’s House. Additionally, we added a few campaign specific rules such as sewer movement. Infantry teams were allowed to use sewer movement, based on a skill roll, to enter and navigate throughthe Stalingrad sewer network.
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
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.
by Tom Burgess
Our local Flames of War gaming group got in a second City Fight game. Last time we fought out “The Square” mission from So this time we turned out attention to Iron Cross with “The Boulevard” mission. “Battle Buddy” Ed would be playing his Soviets while Charles “6by9” would be rolling out the Germans. The point level was 55 points.
We played the game at Hard Knox Games when we could make great use of the in-store terrain collection. We used a 28mm city game mat as the base, which we thought looked much better than the plain black base we used last time. We the two halves of Miniature Building Authority (MBA) “Factory Building” to make the two main objective buildings. To further subdivide these two buildings into four “rooms” we simply added some Battlefront Desert Walls. We added some other MBA building halves to add to the boards generic “rubble” look. We also added some building around the perimeter edge of the board which were “off table” but helped with the visual back-drops.
