Every year, the Hutt Miniature Wargames Club hosts the ValleyCon wargaming event in Upper Hutt, New Zealand. 2024 was the club’s 25th anniversary, and fittingly, ValleyCon 2024 was its biggest event yet. 170 gamers came together from across New Zealand to spend two days playing in tournaments for eight gaming systems.
I played in the Flames of War tournament, which had 20 players with 98-point Mid-War lists using Dynamic Points in five 2.5-hour rounds. I try to bring a new army to each ValleyCon, and 2024 was the year that I finally built a British ‘Death or Glory’ Armoured Squadron.
Tally ho! A troop of ‘Death or Glory’ Crusader IIIs charging across the desert.
Late-War Leviathans first came to Flames of War in May 2024 via a free “Early Release” PDF of tanks from Gale Force 9’s alt-history game Clash of Steel. This stretched Flames of War’s timeline into the early years of the Cold War, while also adding tanks that were only prototypes, or in some cases never made it off the drawing board. That early release has now been expanded into a full book, with additional units and new formations.
I liked the Soviet Early Release Leviathans. The ability to add the IS-3, T-44, T-54-1, and ISU-130 as Wildcard units to other Soviet Late-War lists provided some nice options for upgrading existing FOW forces. The new Leviathans book provides even more options, so let’s take a look at what the Soviets get from it.
Late War Leviathans could be summarized as, “somehow, World War II continued.” Use one of provided scenarios or make up your own, like mine where Kaiser Wilhelm II comes back and overthrow the funny moustache man and then crusades against communism. Let your imagination run wild.
The vast majority of the vehicles in this book were in limited production, prototyping, or having their designs finalized. The reasons they didn’t see the field could be simplified to “the war ended.”
Late-War Leviathans are coming to Flames of War. Battlefront is releasing a free PDF on 2nd May that allows the models from their new 1948 alt-history game Clash of Steel to be used in the Late-War era of FOW. These new tanks, the Leviathans, are a mix of vehicles that entered service shortly after WW2, and experimental prototypes that never entered production.
The Late-War period of Flames of War was completed last year with the release of the Berlin books. With no new releases over the last 12 months, the meta of the competitive scene is probably the most stable it has ever been.
A meta can be defined as “the game around the game”. In Flames of War this includes all of the things that go on up until you start deployment, such as the options that go into list building and your choice of Battle Plan. There’s always been a meta: those lists that appear, dominate the competitive scene for a while, become super popular, and then fade as players work out how to counter them and new books create new competitive opportunities.
Local metas are often created by the way that the most successful players in a particular region or gaming group approach the game. To find out more about the Late-War meta in our local region of Wellington, New Zealand, I recently spoke with four players who have for many years been among the top FOW players in New Zealand: Bede, Chris, and Simon from Wellington, and Sofia from Auckland, to hear their views of the state of the Late-War game in our corner of the world.
The latest round of “Dynamic Points” for Flames of War has been finalized. If you are not familiar with the term, a Dynamic Points document is an update that Battlefront publishes that adjusts the cost of units in the game without needing to re-release the books. If you are playing a game using Dynamic Points, treat any units in the document as costing what they are listed there, while any units not in the update continue to use the points given in the books.
“Does anyone have any Wespes that I can borrow?” The request was posted by a friend on one of our local group chats ahead of a Late-War Flames of War tournament last year. Once the accusations of “meta chasing” died down, it led to a conversation about the role and effectiveness of artillery in the game.
As someone who primarily plays British forces, my contribution to the discussion was that while the Late-War British lists have a lot of artillery options, only mortars and AVREs offer good value. The British towed artillery piece, the 25pdr, is only Firepower 4+ and is expensive due to being Fearless Veteran. Where the Germans and Americans have cost-effective three-gun units of self-propelled artillery, the British Priest and Sexton troops are units of four, again being Fearless Veteran.
To cap it off, it’s not easy to make use of that Veteran skill because most British Formation Commanders are only rated as Trained. Almost everything that the 25pdr should be able to do in the game can be done more effectively by Crocodiles.
The 25pdr field gun played an immense role in British and Commonwealth actions throughout the war, and it’s a shame that they don’t see the table more often. To do my bit to help correct this, I challenged myself to build a British list that goes all-in on artillery.
The Late-War era of Flames of War V4 is rapidly drawing to a close with the upcoming release of Berlin: Soviet. This book picks up where the Bagration series left off and represents the Red Army in its campaigns in Europe in 1945 leading to the final destruction of Nazi Germany.
The pattern that V4 has followed has been to support each book with the release of new plastic kits. Berlin is no exception, with the main new plastic kit being the lend-lease M4A2 Sherman.
Bulge: British is the final book covering Late-War British forces for Flames of War 4th Edition. Combined with D-Day: British, these books are Flames of War’s representation of the British, Canadian, and Polish forces in Northwest Europe from D-Day through until VE Day.
Supporting each book is a deck of Command Cards. These cards add additional formations, units, and upgraded weapons, that are not included in the core books. Amongst the cards for the British books there are a number of options for different reconnaissance units. This article looks at the historical units, and how they have been represented in the lists.
Bulge: British is the latest release for the Late-War era of Flames of War. This book covers the British, Canadian, and Polish forces in Western Europe from August 1944 through to the end of the war in Europe.
It’s a book that many of us have been looking forward to for a long time. The arrival of the Comet is a large part of that anticipation, but there are several infantry formations in the book that also deserve a close look.
Kangaroo Rifle Company
Bulge: British takes the standard Rifle Company from the previous books and upgrades it. The overall structure of the formation is identical to those earlier iterations, but the Company HQ and Rifle Platoons now have the option of including Ram Kangaroo transports.
By Richard Steer