By Richard Steer
is the newest Late-War supplement for , covering the US forces in Europe from September 1944 through to the end of the war. While are the main feature, the book also contains three new missions, a linked campaign themed on the Battle of the Bulge, and a set of optional rules for winter weather that, while not recommended for competitive play, are a welcome addition to the game for use in scenarios.
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 2nd, 4th, and 28th Divisions have been offered in Bulge American as examples of “Battle Weary” units.
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 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 Tom Burgess
Motivation to finish models when you are facing a huge backlog of miniatures can be daunting. It has been for me over the years and I had to come up with a system to keep ahead of all the new stuff I was buying. I do buy a lot of kit from Battlefront each year.
Even before the COVID impact on 2020, I resolved to complete 365 teams from my huge backlog of Flames of War, Team Yankee, and ‘Nam boxes. As a means to motivate myself to chew through that backlog, years ago I started keeping a log and posting it on the WWPD and then the No Dice No Glory forums when I finished models. It always felt good to post pictures of what I had completed and to mark them done on my tracking spreadsheet.
By Tom Burgess
Battlefront has released its Bagration German book. I was interested and how, or even if, the Battlefront team could make a unique new book when so much of the standard German units seem already accounted for. Though I was already quite content with the new book as is, it’s normally the Command Cards that take a new force book to the next level. That is the case here as I think these new Bagration German Command Cards take an already excellent book product and knocked it out of the park with these new command cards.
By Tom Gall
The Flames of War Late War series continues with the latest book Bagration German. This is force is the mirror to the . Battlefront has slated the book, command cards, unit cards are more for a January release. Already if you look at the Battlefront site, you’ll see a .
Will this book make up for the Russian advances contained in the Bagration Soviet book? Is there a new meta ahead? Will Hetzers Hetz? What surprises await? Let’s dive and see what Bagration German offers for you!
