Flames of War Tournament 2014

Popped by PI last weekend to pick up some airbrush paints and ran into a tournament that was going on. The terrain was excellent and created a strong sense of narrative. I'll let the pics do the talking. 

Storm the village! 

Connecting the tables, it made the tournament seem like a massive game.

Defend that church! 

Painting submissions for the recent painting competition at PI

The winning entry

Will update once I finish the construction of the Wraithknight. 

A little goes a long way. Antennas in your miniatures.

In this post I will talk about adding a little more character to your models. It may be a simple or often neglected thing to do, but once the deed is done there is no denying that it was all worth it after all.

Just like drilling out the holes in your Boltgun, adding antennas is something I've always put off. However with the new Arab-Isreali war miniatures released late last year for Flames of War, I figured I needed to do something extra to befit their "modern" status. 

I was inspired by Tomwise (for those who do not know him just do a google search of his name, he represents FOW, not kidding) in his post in the official Battlefront forums. And this was his idea. 

Using plastic brooms as antennas. Yup, the cheap $4 broom that can double up as an actual household utility! 

Simply look for the black ones, snip it off, cut it to the correct length and you have the perfect antenna! Cheap, flexible, easily replaceable should it get lost. 

The next step is pretty straightforward, drill the part where the antenna should be sticking out. I used the P3 drill bit (the smallest one they have available) and just went in as deep as I could. The reason why I did this is because this enables the antenna to stick in really far and be held in place without glue. This is especially important as there are days when you just want to remove it due to storage constraints.

Here are the tanks in all their little pointy glory.

Although I did this with my FOW tanks, I'm pretty sure the same principles work even for your 40K tanks (might look for slightly thicker broom bristles) and of course the radio pack found on your Guardsmen and many other possibilities. 

I for one look forward to the release of the new Guard models and you can be sure I'll be adding all these pointy bits wherever I can!

Total War, 9 Players massive game!

The Flames of War Community (albeit very very small one) came together to play a Total-War game for the departure of one of our players Raj, who will be leaving for New Zealand for a change of environment. We wish him all the best in his endeavors and don't forget to buy more Flames of War stuff as New Zealand is the home of FOW!

Each side had 4 forces amounting to 2000pts each roughly. I did not keep track of the battle as it was huge and I was busy playing it. But here are some pictures of the throwdown that happened that day.

And oh, the Allies won.

FOW quick AAR: Soviet Forward Detachment Mech Company VS German Volksgrenedier

Got back into a gaming mood after a long dry season which always happens towards the year end holidays!

Last weekend Tim Miller came over to my place for a game of FOW. I was still tweaking my Forward detachment list as the Soviets have been seriously hit by lots of special rules and the such in Version 3.

Tim on the other hand brought along the latest Volksgrenadier list from the latest released Nuts: Bastogne book. And is looking set to spam cheap "reluctant trained" germans with their panzerschreck & panzerfausts! Not very good for my Tank heavy list.....

Here we see the big man looking up on our mission. We rolled the random mission generator and came up with "Hold the Line" which was played along the long table edge. Being a Mech company I am always the attacker so I had to wait while the Germans chose the table edge to defend and deploy. It's a long way to the end of the table for the objectives and the Germans are all nicely dug in. It was gonna be hard to root them out and get the objectives. 

I had to get any objective before turn 6 to win the game. The Germans had to hold or contest to bag it.

Naturally the Germans capitalized on this and chose the end with the dense town. Lots of buildings for concealment and ambush. Lots of hedges and obstacles to hinder my movement.

Our terrain setup for the battle. A really tightly packed table. The germans deployed on the bottom half of the table.

 Despite pulling up a large platoon of T-34s with my decoy Panthers unit. I was unable to get any shots due to the Germans being comfortably dug in and gone to ground.

I moved up along the road but was quickly halted by the Anti-Tank Guns. One lucky turn saw all four of my Heavy IS-2 tanks go down in flames......

This led to a large platoon of German infantry being stuck in the houses with very little targets for the rest of the game. But I guess they already served their role well in taking down my heavy tanks.

With the company HQ and almost 15 stands of infantry holding the objective. I was not going to be able to root them out. And once the Germans dig in and hold the objective it's gonna take a lot to clear them out.

I had to rely on my T-34s to rush down the relatively unprotected right flank and try to get the objective quick to seal the game.

Tim was really unlucky that upon reserve roll none of his units arrived to lend the much needed reinforcements as my T-34s looked poised to steamroll their way towards the objective. 

However Tim was lucky enough that my T-34s failed to destroy his small Stug unit tasked to defend that objective. Once again Tim failed his desperately needed reserve roll the second time on turn 5!!!

I was almost certain of victory as no reserves meant that his 2 remaining Stugs could not have withstood the advance of my T-34s. But alas my tanks all bogged down during that vital assault toward the objective, which meant that Tim would definitely get his reserve reinforcements on turn 6.

My infantry were too far behind to do anything. And with reinforcement arriving along the German edge would mean fresh German units contesting the only objective I could possibly take. We ended the game as it was a certain German victory as they held firmly onto both objectives.

I was so close! Darn those tank mechanics, if only they had done their job better! 

Soviet Mortar 82-BM-41 squad painted.

Just a quick post up of more painted Russians. Next up is gonna be a huge Late War Strelkovy infantry horde.

Soviet Spetsnaz Platoon. More painted FOW units.

I'm in a FOW painting Mood recently so I spent some more time painting up more soviet infantry.

This time I focused on the soviet Spetsnaz platoon. They are the most elite warriors within the Red army. Think of it as the SAS special squad of Russia. Only with even more tenacity!

And more importantly they are a recon unit, and in my tank army they will be able to make a free 16" move as well as pull along another tank unit with them. This effectively gives that one extra tank unit an additional 16" deployment. Very vital especially in Version 3 Flames of War where the soviet tanks are seriously nerfed with the new "Hens & Chicks" rule.

And yes, the platoon moves around in captured German Halftracks. Making them move around undetected. Sneaky bastards indeed!

Painted up more SMG Russians for flames of war.

Been using unpainted infantry stands in the past few months of gaming and it certainly did not feel proper!

Finally got time to finish up the important SMG infantry to use as my Tank Rider Company.

Quick look & review - rural church from battlefront

You've got to love a great piece of terrain on the tabletop. And no other game needs it as much (ok in exaggerating here) as flames of war.

I ordered this rural church as soon as it was released as I wanted to collect all the new terrain pieces from battlefront this year onwards.

When it arrived my heart broke as I saw that the packaging was destroyed. But upon opening up the miniature I'm glad to say that the styrofoam packaging inside the actual product protected it thoroughly. Unlike the previous rural farm houses, which came in a million pieces.

As you can see in the pics this is a huge building. Complete with space for an observer team and many units to hide within the confines of the walls.

Another great terrain lot from the makers of flames of war. Definitely worth the £19. Preprinted terrain at its best Value : quality ratio hands down.

Completed PSC soviet Decoy units.

Got my airbrush compressor back from repairs last weekend. And decided to finish up some captured German vehicles for my Soviet FoW army.

As always PSC plastic models are an absolutely joy to work with. And the details and "clean-ness" of these models never fail to amaze me.

Should I start a German Panzer Kompanie? Hmmm....

Hobby: Making Smoke & Flame Markers

Smoke & flame markers are an essential part of wargaming, for most part of my gaming I have used the simple white cotton wool to represent them. While this would be sufficient and simple enough (actually it required no work at all apart from buying it). Visually it did not have the impact of blown up vehicles. And sometimes it gets mistaken for just smoke markers. Which happens quite often when I play Flames of War. Therefore I told myself that I would make some for my Tankovy. Once again this has been done before many times and blogged by many others before. So here's just another version of my take to add to this library of Smoke & flame markers construction.

 Upon my net-research I found out that almost everyone who did their markers used Clump Foliage. I had this material at hand, but most of them required quite a number of steps to achieve the final outcome. I wanted something quick and simple. As well as cheap. As always I would check out my local dollar store (Daiso) and I found these steel scrubbers. I thought these were the perfect base so I bought a pack. I only used 2 bunches out of the 18 in a pack. So these definitely go a long long way!

As you can see the material has the properties of cotton wool, being able to simple pull them to reshape them was great. The added bonus was that they were steel after all. Therefore they held their shape perfectly without the need for an additional wire in the middle to hold them up. Something most other hobbyist need to use while making their markers.

One thing that I did was to follow Big Lee and spammed super glue all over the "wool" to harden it and make it super sturdy for the rigors of gaming. As he has already pointed out, this super glue spam will get messy no matter how careful you are.

To weigh them down I went the conventional way of putting them onto steel washers. These are just the right weight and best of all they stick to the already magnetized tanks in my Flames of War army!

Once it was all hardened and stuck to the washer bases I went outside and gave it a quick dose of black spray at the base of the marker. The silver color once stretched looks just the part for the smoke at the upper part of the marker.

I then cut off the strays. This step is totally optional as I just wanted my markers to be a neat solid piece instead of having to many strays flailing around like a bad hair day. (p.s I later discovered this step to be quite crucial when I had to paint the colors on as it would definitely hinder the coloring process no end, so I would strongly advise to do it!)

After which I simply wet-brushed red at the bottom most area, followed by a light dusting of yellow to highlight the flames. 

Here they are completed and eager to burn some tanks!

I even tested it out with some 40k miniatures and they look the part. Shower a certain area of the table with these markers during a 40k game to make the area impassable maybe? Definitely could add a nice dimension to the table, if not just purely for the looks.

Let the galaxy burn!

Hope this article helped. Those that have been putting off making them, go ahead and try it! It's simple and quick. Most importantly, even when your tanks die in battle, at least they go out in style! 

FoW game Russian tankovy vs German pioneer infantry

Had a good game today of FOW. The Germans brought along lots of pioneers and the Russians used their standard tank company.

I wanted to continue trying out my tankovy to see how I can either overcome and use my tanks effectively ever since the revised "Hens & Chicks" rule that I seriously feel brought the Russian tanks to almost uselessness.

We rolled fighting withdrawal for the mission. The game pretty much centred around the middle of the table where an objective was placed in between the two hills on the road.

After 6 turns of intense fighting for that objective we decided to call it as the Germans had too many infantry teams surrounding the objective with too little firepower from the Russian tanks to be able to take them out before the 8th Turn. When the defenders would win by default if no objectives have been taken by the attacker.

FoW game on Sunday

Had 2 games on Sunday with my freshly painted Russian Heavy Assault Gun list. I faced an SS German tank company and an American tank company. Lost the game against the Germans but managed to snatch an objective quickly by turn 4 to win the game against the Americans.

I did not prepare to write a battle report so here are just some pictures of the day.