Flames of War General /fowg/

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Any good recomendarions for cheap models?

Shit. *Recommendations.

Of what?

Most of Battlefront's plastics are fairly priced.

As are the vehicles from Plastic Soldier Company.

What specifically are you looking for? Shermans? StuGs? T-34s? Halftracks?

Plastic Soldier Company.

Repeating from last thread: Some pioneer squads have the option to replace teams with flammenwerfers. How many men are in a flamethrower team and what base do they use?

Basically a standard infantry team but with a flamethrower operator. Standard base. A flame thrower operator and some escorts.

I really need British trucks. Lots of em.

reposting from end of last thread:
looking to get into team yankee, are they thinking of doing a starter any time soon? Also, are the army boxes worth getting?

No
Yes

The army boxes are basically the starter sets.

But a nation specific army box, the rule book (and Leopard if you're starting Germans) and you're set.

>British trucks

Either PSC or Zvezda are a safe bet fot cheap trucks.

You're mostly stuffed then.

Zvezda do Matadors and PSC is about to release Morric/CMP quad tractors, but other than that there's not much available for cheap.

thanks, wasnt sure if i should hold out for a two-player box to sate my faction hopping or not.

I'll be honest, I'll be playing both US and West Germany.

My Americans are almost fully assembled.

The Germans have not yet arrived at my FLGS.

As for Soviets... Perhaps one day, but not anytime soon. Soviets require like triple the amount of everything.

Well, there's these, if you're ok with really shitty papercraft.

Wish I could find a simple Zis-5 model like that. There are some nice papercraft models out there, but if I am slapping together enough for a motorstrelkovy company, I'd like it to be as easy as possible.

At the very least, Zvezda do a fairly cheap ZiS-5 truck, so it's not like there's no alternatives in that regard.

Granted it has Zvezda's patented pain in the ass chassis/suspension assembly, but still.

>recomendarions

U wot m8

I corrected it in the post below.

You are a legit lifesaver.

Nobody should be forced to pay $10 for a 5pt transport option. Enjoy.

It could be worse, You could be trying to do a Bersaglieri army which if I remember correctly is the most expensive combat choice in all of Flames of War because of the sheer amount of infantry, guns and weird stuff you need to build a single combat company.

do those exist for german trucks

Not that I know of, unfortunately. I made this one from some orthographic projections I found online (pic related), and then arranged and added tabs to it. It wouldn't be that hard for someone to do the same for another truck.

Scaling was the only really tricky part, but once you know the DPI you're using you can figure out how many pixels tall/wide/long it needs to be and scale the drawings appropriately. I did this in MS paint until it was time to color it.

Bump

Yeah, Italians can get expensive.

Are dismounted red army cavalry (not cossacks) just standard strelk?

Depends on the book. In Berlin they are Fearless Veteran but you have to field a platoon of nondismounted

I mean in terms of uniform and appearence. i.e. do they just wear strelk uniform or should they have unusual markings or something?

Repeating question from last thread: Should I take two troops of 4x 25pdrs, or one troop of 4x 25pdrs and one of 2x BL 5.5"s?

I would imagine that the two groups of four 25 pdrs would be more effective.

Small batteries of under 3 guns suffer penalties to range in.

Depends on what ya wanna do.

Do you want two sources of smoke/pinning?
Go for double 25 pdr.
You can still combine the bombardments if you want a bigger strike.

Do you want a single higher-power combined bombardment?
Bring in the 5.5"ers.

Penalties to hit (re-roll hits), but not penalties to range in. Thankfully they're CV in the lists I'd be using, and a combined bombardment with the 25s is always an option.

Yeah, I'm mainly trying to weigh the pros and cons. Local meta is unfortunately tankfags everywhere (despite my combined force frequently kicking their asses), so pinning isn't a big concern.

I prefer 8x 25-pounders as opposed to 4 + 2: even when combining, you lose a lot more than say US arty, going from Fp2+ to Fp4+....not really worth it IMO.

I'd go for the 25pdrs and 5.5" guns, use them for a general combined bombardment. It makes 25pdrs passable guns.

Once more, I find myself in need of help choosing a list. An upcoming tournament with only 800 points, MidWar. I've decided to go with british, most likely infantry (surprise, Night Attack... unless I very much prefer to be the defender).

However, that said, I have 3 different lists that I can't decide between. I know only one of them has recce. My hope is that night and "rapid" movement by matildas will prevent them from putting to large a dent in my forces by ambush... I will most likely be able to do without lifting GtG, since I have only rifles and MGs that can dig up most infantry (the 25pdrs work over several turns, when I don't need the smoke).

Option A: Matildas (because I hope most people won't be prepared for TA2 tanks) and 25pdr artillery (will also serve as Anti-tank, if someone else decides to be cute with Matildas), as well as sticky bomb for desperate anti-tank work.

Option B: Still Matildas, but only mortars for pinning and smoke (the idea of digging up stuff with artillery went out the window, meaning my only way of actually killing teams that are not infantry running around, is to assault it). Anti-tank is now provided by crazy ass Aussies (but I repeat myself).

And option C: No more Matildas, but 25pdrs and carriers, to make a valiant attempt at keeping enemy HMGs away. Still anti-tank in the form of crazy-ass aussies.

(I might also note that my figures are modeled as Aussies, with at least one slouch hat on each stand, hence the predominance of aussie lists).

And I forgot to attach the list, like a fucking newfag.

I'd say it's a toss up between A and B for me.

There's not much you can do at 800 points in Mid-War, but those both attempt to cover most of the big things.

...

Seconding this.

800 is tight, but I like the look of A or B.

Fans of the finns:

I'm looking up finnish armour schemes and I'm noticing a mix of swastikas and a blue and white roundel; was the latter a post-armistice design to avoid confusion with german tanks, or what?

They changed to the roundel in August 1945, iirc. Better double check; that might only be true for their air force.

The Finn "hooked cross" was not actually a swastika. Irrc, they chose that because (like the Germab swastika) the symbol had historic relevance. Finland's has the hooks reversed in direction, and blue on white. Finland's also had absolutely nothing to do with the nazi party of Germany, or their place among the axis countries. Finland continued to use the symbol after they switched to the allies side, and only ever joined the axis in the first place in order to fight back against Russia.

-cont.- it should also be noted that Finland was not one of the Axis powers, and never signed that treaty. Rather they went to war against the Soviet Union (initially), and received aid and provided aid to Germany, until peace treat negotiations with Stalin had them turn on their former allies (see ref. Lapland war).

Huh, I never knew that about Finland.

World War II seems to be full of these "me too" wars where nations just wanted to reignite old conflicts.

Well, in Finland's case, it was mostly that the russians decided they wanted their old vassal back and settled for a pile of Finland's territory after the Finn's gave them a bloody nose fighting solo. So teaming up with Germany to rip Stalin a new one was less of an old conflict as a continuation war...

Theres a lot of "you sunuvabitch, I'm gonna get my revenge now!" type of conflicts too.

A lot of countries were dragged into it without wanting any part of it, or were forced to keep fighting after they realized it was time to quit while they were ahead. Hell the Germans held Hungarian royalty hostage to keep them in the fight for example.

>Royalty

Even if Horthy set himself up as a King in all but name, he wasn't even remotely royalty.

...

Bagookas.

Hummels or sFH18's wat do

If you're talking raw optimisation, neither, German Tube Artillery is good to have if you can spare to the points, but you get no special rules. If you can get them cheap, like Volksartillery from B@R, then they're slightly better.
If you have the points, Hummels because they can't be pinned down. If you don't, sFH18s.

Context, m8. In what list, with what else?

Hummels are not bad for mobile Bunker Buster, too.

just in general, if you had to choose. I've recently run into situations where rockets don't quite cut it, and the Hummels and sFH18's seem like pretty ubiquitous ways to do some digging.

There's really no good metric for "in general" with these since they're really very niche compared to ubiquitous nebelwerfers. If you're having trouble with Nebs not being as killy as you like, get bigger 21cm or 30cm ones, in general.

Hummels come into their own when there's bunkers to bust, or when you're concerned about cunterbattery or pinning. They are expensive, though.

sFH18s... not a lot of use IMO outside of two, maybe three lists, with their "best" use being in the Bridge by Bridge companies teamed up with the special character that gives ToT and combined bombardment.
The rest of the time, they just don't bring enough to the table for their points. (and in EW, are so hilariously expensive that you'd almost never consider them.)

fair enough, I guess. It'd be in late war so, 230 points for a battery of 3 sFH18s, and 300ish for 3 hummels.

I've recently had the misfortune to play against a soviet arty park (and posted photos from the game) so I just wanted more options for killing dug in stuff.

Honestly, you're not going to win in a counterbattery fight with a Red God of War setup, at least not as Germans.

In that case you'd be much better off throwing some cheap shots out to pin them with the wimpiest nebs you've got, and then either concentrate on overwhelming the rest of the opponent's force, or chew up his pinned (or smoked, I guess) arty with flanking recce cars or light tanks.

Or hit them with air. A bomb Stuka is cheap and cheerful.

Or Assault them with fast Recon tanks like Luch, or undig them with breakthrough guns. Jagdtigers, Allied Zriny IIs, Sturmtigers, StuHs, etc. Or Flamethrowers.

>In that case you'd be much better off throwing some cheap shots out to pin them
As the other player in that game, that's a great suggestion until the re-rollable (damn CiCs) fearless morale tests come into play. At which point it's a pile of horseshit.

oh right yea I'll just pin down the fearless sapper infantry with the morale re rolls and send all my light tanks that germans have in such abundance to kill those dug in zis-3's that are behind them real quick good thinking thanks.

If your list is from DM why not try Rudel. Bit expensive, but auto-success ranging in and hit on 2+ with FP 3+ is great against arty park. Also, if there are only one team under the template it got hit twice.

I tried exactly that.

It's shit.

So that this doesn't keep going in circles, here are the soviet lists (two 1750 lists per side)...

And the deployments (no good angle pic). He should have his german list around somewhere, my brits were:

>Compulsory B Squadron HQ (p.11) - CinC Cromwell IV, 2iC Cromwell VI CS, Cromwell IV CS (245 pts)
--->Sherman ARV (10 pts)
>Compulsory Challenger Platoon (p.11) - Command Challenger, Challenger (285 pts)
>Compulsory Cromwell Platoon (p.12) - Command Cromwell IV, 3x Cromwell IV (380 pts)
>Cromwell Platoon (p.12) - Command Cromwell IV, 2x Cromwell IV (285 pts)
>15th/19th Hussars Recce Patrol (p.12) - Command Scout Car, 2x Scout Car (90 pts)
>Scout Platoon (p.15) - Command Wasp Carrier, 2x Wasp Carrier (115 pts)
>Field Battery, Royal Artillery (p.32) - Command Rifle, Staff, 2x Command Rifle, 2x Observer Rifle, 2x OP Carrier, 8x OQF 25 pdr gun (315 pts)
>Air Observation Post (p.30) - Auster AOP (25 pts)
1750 Points, 8 Platoons

As you can see, no place to flank around the pioneers and assault the guns in the side, and like fuck are tanks going to successfully charge pioneers with AT guns in range to support.

Holy shit that arty park list is absolute crap.

BS-3s? *8* 152mm howitzers?

The only thing that could make it physically worse would be IS-2s.

The only AA that entire team has is 2 .50cals.

Take a Typhoon and go nuts on his arty park, his infantry blobs, and his pathetic quantity of tanks.

I thought two 1750 lists mean neither list can exceed 1750.
Why sapper list is 1770?

Even if they're combining the totals, with those pencilled-in transports they're *still* over.

Tell them to unfuck their points, to start. It's a point *limit*, not a suggestion.

We were doing combined totals, and we were 5 pts over as well. Probably should have insisted on 1750 flat per company.

Unfortunately
a) we don't get to play against him often (college friend that lives ~6 hours away now that he's moved states)
b) Even if we did play him regularly, he's got about 5000 points of Russians to choose his lists from. Each of us has a pretty set composition because we haven't thrown mountains of money and time at our armies.
c) he's an obligate list tailor. This wouldn't be bad were it not for b, which means he can easily do it vs us but we can't do it vs him.

Mind explaining your reasoning on the howitzers? Because all I see is 8 cheap AT 5 FP 2+ guns that hit as vets.

Dig-in or not, They're hellishly fragile - even light artillery like nebs, mortars, whatever - can pin and/or smoke the shit out of that massive blob of guns. They don't even have gun shields. Also, no turntables, so he's painfully vulnerable to flank attacks.

It's giant pile of a lot of guns that is protected by two small infantry platoons that are hit as trained and will often pack even more fragile gun teams, and the list's practical AT is either a couple panzerfausts, RGoW ZiS-3s, or 4 of the worst heavy AT guns in the game.

It also totally lacks any sort of mobile element - so unless you exclusively play 40K-style set-piece annihilation battles, that's going to hurt him in a lot of scenarios.

Finally, the whole list is painfully vulnerable to both pinning and smoke - nebelwerfers, mortars, etc. are ideal here.

Honestly, your cromwell list should've run roughshod over that if it wasn't for blobby mcsapper covering his weaknesses. In a normal game, it'd be toast against most lists - fast medium tanks *especially*.

I still maintain that Typhoons, or air in general are an *excellent* counter to both their lists as is.

On that note, Blobbly MCsapper's primary weaknesses were covered by the artillery park in general. It's clear like you said that they tailored.

That, I think is part of your problem here. You were using two 1750pt lists to fight one big fat 3500pt list.

It's like DOTA pubbies vs. a stomp team. Never ends well unless Literal Jesus showed up with his SS list.

It's happening. I've pulled the trigger on my Team Yankee purchases. Potecknov’s Bears, Hind Box, plus another King Tiger, IS-2 and Comet for Tanks. And one of those straight line lasers.

>all that FV infantry
>all that regular infantry
>no real AT guns aside from 8 zis 3's and a few T34's.

I'm kind of surprised you didnt park just outside of the infantry's charge range and hammer his arty park with massed stationary fire. With all the tanks you guys had you would win the initial firing match easily. Heck, StuG's would be completely immune to Zis 3's except for glancing on a 1 at long range.

I'm kind of amazed how well the slavs did with so little armored support. You guys must have been really shy about pushing up. Especially with all that smoke. You could essentially make any enemy direct AT fire completely worthless.

It is a swedish nazi's swastika, though. The finns have it because their first planes were given to them by Eric von Rossen, the brother in law of Goering, and he used a swastika as his personal emblem.

The Finns definitely weren't part of the tripartite pact, and they only once acquiesced to German desires to solve the "Jewish question" (in which either 6 or 8 jews were taken to Germany), but their swastika isn't quite clean.

>soviet arty park
-Soviet- arty park? Haven't seen that one before.

>You guys must have been really shy about pushing up.
Yeah, we mainly lost because we didn't push enough of our stuff hard enough. Though being constrained by the terrain against an arty park doesn't help. Game would have been very, very different if it wasn't longways.

Hey, I just got me some French infantry for bolt action. But since you guys use Frenchmen too I thought I could ask you.
I'd like to use Games Workshop paints since that's what I'm used to. For regular French riflemen and some colonial troops, what colours do I need to buy? My current paint is mostly dry and most are very colourful(playing bretonnia), so I'm kinda starting from scratch.

How large table did you have? I can't help but think that part of the problem is that you had too much stuff on a too small table.

The airplane was donated in 1918, two years before the National Socialist German Workers' Party was formed so there is no Nazi connection whatever. Von Essen adopted the svastika in 1901.

The svastika adopted by the Finnish airforce was blue, but the short-armed version used by the armoured forces was black with white shadows acording the official regulations from June 1941, prior to that date there were some versions with long-arms,reversed blue etc, but gradually after 1941 most armoured vehicles used the regulation one,certainly after 1943 when the new camo scheme was adopted almost every vehicle used the official version of the hakaristi.

Von Rosen, Eric Von Essen is a jazz musician.

He predates the use of the swastika as the symbol of the nazi party, but given he was a high-ranking swedish nazi, it's inaccurate to say there is no nazi connection between Von Rosen's swastika and the nazi swastika.

Now, it's true that the Finnish swastika is a degree removed. But it's hard to see how the personal emblem of a nazi is unrelated to the nazis.

Guys, seriously. The damn thing was ubiquitous all across Europe and Asia as a powerful symbol, often times one of good luck, since ancient times. Read some history for once.

Yes, but when the guy who's using the symbol is -actually a nazi- there is a bit of a difference between the blanket labelling of every swastika as nazi. The skull-and-crossbones is generally accepted as being a pirate symbol but when it's used by an SS-division it's a nazi symbol. Same kind of deal.

A nazi appropriating a symbol from his culture suddenly makes it bad forever. Got it.

you're trying to argue with libcucks, you can't win

For some reason I was picturing you having already bought 10 boxes of Hinds. Are you still planning on making Afghansty?

Also, how are you using the laser level? I am curiousl because it sounds like it might be useful for deployment zones and maybe more.

I realised that I could also go with the following Infantry Tank Company (because matildas are cute)

HQ: 2 Matilda II, 2 Matilda II CS

3 Matilda II
3 Matilda II

3 RV South African Carriers

It is 10 (!) 7/6/2 tanks, though they're trained, slow, unreliable, and 8 of them are armed with dinky 2pdrs, the other two with 3" howitzers, which at least don't suffer from No HE... and no Night Attack.

You're not remotely arguing with what I've said.

Von Rosen was a nazi. Things he used as personal iconography were thus the iconography of a nazi, and nazi symbols. Other uses of the viking swastika from pre-nazi times are going to be generally not nazi (except where they were also later appropriated by actual nazis for personal use).

And yeah, things nazis stole to use as their icons are pretty tainted by association in their contexts. Lightning bolts, skull-and-crossbones, and hand grenades are pretty inoffensive (well, maybe not hand grenades), but the SS strips, totemkopf and dirlewanger emblem are considered bad. Lightning bolts, skulls and crossbones, and hand grenades existed prior to the nazis using them, but after using them, their respective icon forms aren't cool to plaster on things.

Fuck off back to /pol/

Well actually I was planning to use it for stuff like Mordheim, checking that lines of sight aren't stopped by buildings etc. Although it's also a good argument solver about forests and stuff.

Hinds and the gobshites to stick in them are bloody expensive though. So my initial plan is to run them under-strength and paired to a Red Banner Tank Division.

>Red Banner Tank Division "Chernyy Orkestr"
HQ: 5
Mandatory T-72 platoon 1. 4 tanks: 17 points.
Mandatory T-72 platoon 2. 4 tanks: 17 points.
SA-13 Gopher SAM Platoon. x4: 4 points
ZSU-23-4 Shilka Platoon. x4: 4 points
Subtotal: 47

>Air Assault Battalion "Krasnyye D'yavoly"
HQ: 1 point.
Air Assault Company 1.
7x AK-74 teams, 6xRPG-7 teams, 2x PKM Teams, +AT-4 Team: 12 points.
Air Assault Company 2.
4x AK-74 teams, 3xRPG-7 teams, +AT-4 Team, +AGS-17 team, +SA-1 team: 8 points.
MI-24 Hind Assault Helicopter Company 1: 4x Hinds
MI-24 Hind Assault Helicopter Company 2: 4x Hinds
Subtotal: 45 points

Supertotal: 92 points.

Still need to buy for this list: Four more bloody Hinds, SA-13s, Shilkas, Motor Infantry Box, Infantry Blister, Afgansty Weapons Blister.

In the mean time if I find anyone to play with I can run:

>Red Banner Tank Division "Chernyy Orkestr"
HQ: 5
Mandatory T-72 platoon 1. 4 tanks: 17 points.
Mandatory T-72 platoon 2. 4 tanks: 17 points.
Red Banner MI-24 Hind Assault Helicopter Company: 4x Hinds
MI-24 Hind Assault Landing Company
4x AK-74 teams, 4x RPG-7 teams: 4 points.
Total: 53 points.

Still to buy: Infantry.
Need to consider Artillery and airsupport at some point.

Now you are just getting Matilda crazy.

Maybe, you get lucky and no one comes prepared with enough AT or integrated AT, and your Matildas run right over them...

But then again what are you going to do when you come up against FC KV-1e or SU-152s. At best you could hope to bail them, knowing there is a good chance they climb back in. You aren't going to outmanuever them in Matildas. Even good AT is much cheaper in midwar and might be brought.

That Matilda list is powerful, but betting it all on the matildas is risky. Personally I like list B, because you will get to bring Matildas and FV Aussies.

IMO, it depends if you're playing for a laugh or to win. I think the aussies will be a more solid pick to win, but I'd go for the matildas and not really focus on winning so much as fucking with everyone else.

Modelling question here:

For LW soviets, should my panzerfaust/SMG bases have 1 guy with a faust, or 4 per?

Well SSO197 only comes with four figures, so you should probably distribute them amongst a number of teams rather than spending USD $3 per squad.

In that case go for it. There's always the chance that no one brings enough AT to deal with it at that point level.

But you know if you really wanted to spam matildas you'd bring them in a soviet tonk horde. Who needs to kill anything in assault when you have TA2 and keep passing morale checks?

It's the laser thing that makes a line across a wall (or table in this case) right? I may have see about getting one.

I am running into the same problem for West German Recon. Getting to 100 points seems daunting, to say the least, so I am most likely going to add them on as a supplement to a Panzer division.

Sure, but I'm not the dude who's making the list.

But there is still no connection between von Essens svastika to the nazi svastika through Göring since he met Hitler and joined the nazi party in 1922, two years after that the nazi party was formed and 4 years after the Finnish airforce adapted the symbol... The only connection is that it is an ancient symbol used by many cultures before.

I paint desert camo with kislev+agrax+ drybrushed kislev. Idk about olive drab but you could look at some guardsmen painting vids. Also if youre starting from scratch, why not get some army painter paints?

>I paint desert camo with kislev+agrax+ drybrushed kislev.
This is exactly the kind of advice I'm looking for.
Desert camo doesn't show up on the compability list. dakkadakka.com/wiki/en/Paint_Range_Compatibility_Chart Which colour is it specifically?

>It's the laser thing that makes a line across a wall (or table in this case) right? I may have see about getting one.

So useful.

I originally purchased it for checking firing arcs in X-Wing, but it also works really well for determining line of sight in FoW and TY.