Flames of War: Hyper Autist Gamers edition

>He needs to put bedspring armor on those IS-2s and shove them down the enemies throat. It's the only way they are going to do anything on the battlefield.
It would help if more of us played infantry, but sadly our group is one german that can do tank/mech/inf, two Germans that have only tanks, an American that's tanks and one armored rifle platoon, the Russian above, and a Brit that has a tank company and is working on and airlanding company (myself).

compare that to the Leo1's cross rating of 2+ and i feel very secure about my choices....

The next one may not include the same German player (myself), as immediately after getting home from the reported game I developed appendicitis.

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Yeah. I'm probably going to be running East German T-72s myself.

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>i am beggingn to think the only way to play IS-2 heroes is expensive and lopsided.
Yeah. One unit maxed out and riding with the CiC can work as an effective anvil in a formation, being hard to kill and not something to engage in a drawn out brawl with. The issue is always that second required unit of 2.

How to fix hero heavy tanks:
Make the second Combat company a grey box.

Allowing them to only take 3 to 4 IS-2s (or 1 IS-2 and 2 to 3 ISUs) won't fix their problems. The problem is that the vehicles themselves are subpar to begin with.

>pic related

actually, he's right.
the sub par tank has weaknesses, but they are fixed by removing the army point crunch. think about it.

hell, try this with all Ghards heavies, see what happens...

The same thing that happens when you just field 3 IS-2s in a hero (or regular) army with better combat companies and support choices... They're painfully bad. ISUs are a bit better, but only if you take the 122.

The problem with taking the Hero Heavy Tank lists and making the second combat company optional, is you might as well not bother taking the briefing at all. It doesn't offer anything you can't get for better out of a Vistula Strelk, Hero Motorstrelk, Hero Udarny 2.0 (Berlin strelk), or the regular Tankovy.

I really really hope they are gonna cost something like 1 or 2 point each, there is no other way to justify them being so shitty

Which book has the best Soviet lists?

Barbarossa, Eastern Front, and Berlin.

How do KV-1 perform compared to other heavy tanks?

>Berlin
Objectively wrong, Berlin is full of Hero lists wich are considered shit by everyone
Best lists are Tankovy, Ligh Assault Gun, Rota Razvedki and Peredovoye Otryad from Red Bear

It's solid and cheap especially the FC version in MW, the only thing it lacks is a good gun, it's comparable to a Churchill, Germans get far better heavy tanks but at a steep increase in price.

>Berlin is full of Hero lists wich are considered shit by everyone
Whined about by internet tryhards, you mean.

They aren't bad but they aren't the best either and by a long shot. user asked about the best soviet lists and for LW they are in Red Bear

What are the strengths and weaknesses of these list?

My assumption is that it's meant to represent overloaded from the BDD applique, but...

Desperate Measures tankovy isn't bad, either, getting 160mm mortars, and Vistula-oder is the best strelk list.

>time to shit up the thread!

> Most expensive army to collect
> Will almost certainly be the classic Battlefront understanding of Soviet/Warsaw Pact forces, i.e; horde armies, when that's not how it worked

Why the fuck weren't these plastic?

Because I'm starting to suspect that several BF higher ups have stock in PSC?

I think they will end up costing around 2 points each, you are probably going to want to bring a parking lot of them.

Yeah, but now it crosses as poorly as a wheeled armored car which seems wrong.

I want to buy more Leopard 1s, but I think I am going to wait for a plastic option. Six seems like a good number for my recon list. They really need that 2+ cross rating because they need to always be concealed, preferably gone to ground until a target presents itself.

PSC are working on plastic Leos and T-55s. As per usual, battlefront fucks up and hopes nobody will notice.

Haha....hahahahaha.

I am have seen the rumor and I will cautiously be waiting. In the meantime I bought 9 skytrex (old glory) T-55s and I am reasonably pleased with them.

The answer I have been hearing is: The East Germans were originally going to be a small briefing, but they got pushed to a feature book and moved ahead of schedule. MW plastics are probably dominating the queues right now. That said, forgoing a plastic T-55 and giving the T-55AM nerfs to cheapen it up (Slow firing, "overloaded") is a horrible mistake as they are basically begging people to buy third party or forego the T-55 altogether. Not to mention a plastic T-55 would be good support for the OPFOR in Vietnam and AIW. As it stands right now, you are looking at a 300 USD purchase to run 20 T-55AMs (40-50 points since points increase with addition #s) with the Battlefront resin kits. Definitely nowhere near my budget.

>Yeah, but now it crosses as poorly as a wheeled armored car which seems wrong.
Oh, no doubt.

Rota can field mechanized platoons with 4 flamethrowers each and jeep-fast armored carriers, supports are the usual soviet stuff (ie. 120mm mortars, katyushas, spetsnaz, SU-100, SU-122 and big tank platoons)
Light SPG offers a fuckload of SU-122 or extra cheap SU-76 plus a lot of solid support choices like OT-34s and IS-2s as well as the usual soviet stuff
Tankovy lets you field 31 Matildas, you basically outnumber most infantry companies infantry bases with TANKS and good tanks vs infantry too since they have good armor and top 2, you can field hordes of T34 and 34-85 as well, you can also field OT-34 wich is nice and the usual stuff
Peredovoye lets you field a hybrid Tank and Mechanized company with the same stuff as the other lists

posted on WIP but its not spess mareens so not much in the way of replies.

how would one paint camouflage on 15mm and not have it look flat.

I can paint single colour parts of uniforms well enough with a wash and some highlights. But camo fucks my shit up and the background colour of the smock looks fine but the camo looks flat. Even if i try highlighting it just looks wrong and out of place.

ideas?

Don't highlight it, just paint the base color and camo then wash all of it and the result should be fine. Keep in mind you'll need a slightly lighter color than the final look you want it to be so the wash doesn't darken it too much

mfw based PSC will produce one of their 15/20 tank boxes for £50 letting me liberate the workers of the west for a decent price

Possibly a stupid question, in which case feel free to insult me.

Can you use coloured spray cans (e.g. Yankee Green, NATO Green, Chieftain Green) as a primer, i.e. directly onto plastic? Or do you need to spray something like black first?

The short answer is "Soviet Bitching".

They got pushed significantly ahead of their planned release schedule because a lot of people were bitching about 3 NATO releases in a row(US, W. Germans, and British).

You wanted more WarPac and you wanted NOW, so the result is E. Germans with no plastics since their plastic production is currently focused on the upcoming Mid-War kits for V4.

I believe you can use those without a primer no problemo however i don't know if the end result will look the same though

The correct thing to do when there's a justified complaint is not to do a half assed job then tell people to be grateful.

It was a no-win scenario for them.

Either you got it soon with no plastics and ridiculous fucking prices, or you wait until this time next year and get it in plastic.

WarPac players would still complain either way.

The good news is that it seems PSC plans to take full advantage of BF's fuck up. If the rumors are true.

The win was to go "Maybe we should vaguely consider a warpac book at some point". They fucked up when they decided to release nothing but block-to-block NATO. I mean, I like the brit models, size issues on the metal boxes aside, but they came out when we needed east germany or poland. The game now is endless training exercises, because nobody wants to play the designated opfor you need to paint a million stands for, i.e. the exact same issue as every other non-WW2 game they've released.

They went for the 4 biggest nations in the conflict first.

Unfortunately for WarPac players that meant Soviets, Americans, W. Germans, and British.

Now that they have the Big 4 in plastic, the gave us what should have been Big 5, E. Germany, in resin.

Ideally the release schedule should have been something like:

US & Soviets
W. Germans & Poles
British & E. Germans

While thematically it might make more sense to do both Germanies at the same time, I'd split them up to avoid confusion.

Yeah, that'd be what I'd have done; make pairing releases so the player bias isn't absurdly lopsided.

I'm guessing there'd still be a preference for NATO on player's primary armies but there would at least be some varied options for second army opfors (and pactaboos).

Yeah, it was always going to be a bit lopsided, because people prefer the "good guys", and for most people in the west their country are going to be the good guys. But at present I'm the only person who's still playing soviets, and I'm trying to get some africa games in so even that's not guaranteed.

Then why are Nazis so popular?

Ask /pol

But in all seriousness they've got a high quality army with diverse options and they're good for play through almost every front.

Pop culture.

There are a lot more popular WWII movies out there than Cold War movies.

Because they have "the best stuff" according to popular culture, and with wargamers that's all you need to get a large chunk of people playing them.

Cool uniforms, political and historical ignorance and the myth of excellent equipment.

Personally I'm a fan of the Waffen SS in tabletop form due to my fascination with their history and prefer their uniforms to those of the Wehrmacht, but I'm well aware the way they're depicted is far from the reality of their ability - while many of the people who are drawn in by the idea of 'elite troops' are often quite delusional.

Yea works fine

I think the KV-1s is the best heavy tank, honestly; no mincing about its role, it's there to run across the board and run people over. Hero KV-1ses would actually be a good list, I expect.

In addition to stuff other people said, there's a tragic hero element to them in pop culture (Clean-wehrmacht "they were defending their country and couldn't see the evil behind them" tragedy-revisionism) and, to a lot of people, they're still the least bad (because we spent decades demonising communism and dehumanising russians (and khazaks and ukranians and etc etc) during the cold war).

Uh, damn. Hope you're okay soon!

The Soviets were hardly saints. Especially under Stalin. You could legitimately argue he was as bad as Hitler, or worse.

But, he wasn't the maniac whose armies had invaded all of Europe, and the British and US *needed* to work with him.

It needed to be a two (or theee) front fight if the Allies were to defeat Hitler.

It was an alliance of convenience, not an alliance of trust or respect.

And as the post-war peace developed into new tensions, it was clear the West and the Soviets did not have the same vision for the future of Europe.

They're the only LW country whose tanks aren't all green, all the time. And they weren't into standardization so they have a ridiculous variety of vehicles. People are also drawn to the "small, elite" army lists that they tend to get.

It's hard to attract people to the faceless horde faction.

No, Stalin wasn't a saint, but we continued hating the communists long after he was dead, whereas the Germans became our friends again. We humanised the Germans long before Russia regained a face, so the soviet army is still a faceless blob.

Aesthetics.

Also, say you and a buddy are getting into the game; generally one player is gonna be Germans due to wanting a historical match up. It makes sense that a lot of people will be playing Germans seeing as overall, there's two sides to choose from. I know there's Italians and Finns and stuff on the axis side but Germans are easier to get into as well due to Open Fire.

Yes and no. The cold war came about mostly as a pissing contest from a growing sour mood. But during the war, there wasn't as much "allies of convenience" attitude. Loza reported that care packages of whisky and chocolates and more were stashed in the lend lease tanks they recieved. It was an alliance of convenience mostly for the political leaders.

The KV-1s is certainly good at it's role. If it could take escorts, it would be amazing. But even just driving 12" (or through woods with Wide Tracks), and being able to shoot with no negatives, is really nice.

The real good guys.

Yeah, escorts are the only downside. Even then, they get actually decent support.

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Also a reason is that German Uniforms barely change for the entire war. At least to the point of which that a non-Grognard would know, oh sure they changed out the boots and some of the webbing, but at this scale basically only rivet counters give even the remotest shit. Paint three German Grenadier Platoon with, AT-Rifle teams and Light Mortars and you're fucking Golden for Early, Mid and Late War Grenadier Companies. Magnetise your StuGs to swap out the long guns for short barrel guns somehow, and boom, Early, Mid, Late War Armour Support. Hell you can do it with Panzer IIIs and IVs. Battery of Nebelwerfers, Artillery Done. Stukas, Done.

>But, he wasn't the maniac whose armies had invaded all of Europe

USSR was invading all their neighbors pre-1941, the allies just overlooked it. At the time, Germany at the head of a European alliance was more of a threat ideologically and politically than the international pariah the USSR was.

Plus the west cared far, far less about the Baltics (and Romania, to a degree) than they did Austria, Czechslovakia, and Poland. The Soviets taking some tiny states that had been Russian anyway before WW1 wasn't as alarming as Germany recovering territories that'd been explicitly removed by Versailles, and was part of a pattern of them doing Stuff We Just Told Them To Knock Off.

So, I'm still getting used to Team Yankee, and the Brits in particular. Assuming that most of you actually know what you're doing, does this look remotely playable?

Chieftain Armoured Squadron

2 HQ Chieftain with Stillbrew 14

3 Chieftain with Stillbrew 21
3 Chieftain 18
2 Swingfire 4
4 Scorpion 4
61pts

FV432 Mechanised Company

HQ in FV432 plus GPMG SF teams 3

Full Mech Platoon inc. Milans 9
Full Mech Platoon inc. Milans 9
2 Mortars 1
22pts
Divisional Support

4 Rapier 6
2 TOW Lynx 6
2 Harrier 5
17pts

Grand total: 100pts

This gives me two acceptably tough formations - possibly light on the recce, but concentrated where I need it in the Armour sub-unit.

> tiny non-countries that had no strategic value to the west and were basically being established as buffer zones to distance Moscow from Berlin

No negatives, what are you refering to? Dont they suffer H&C?

They are Guards Heavy Tanks so they don't have Hen and Chicks.

Yeah, it's like playing a normal tank list, just with no smoke. You get FA 8, too. I like KV-1ses.

Total newb here.

Building the Shermans from Patton's Eagles box. The guide on the Flames of War website covers all the part except this gun barrel here. Can someone identify it for me, and tell me what it's use is?

IIRC they give you the 76mm barrel with and without muzzle brake.

US Forces had them without Muzzlebrakes. Soviet Forces had them with.

so, my brother and I are relatively new to the game (though I've got a fairly large number of Germans in the right scale already)

what's a good points cost for a introductory game to start figuring our rules and such? I'd be running German Grenadiers (probably from the Fortress Italy book), and he's got British infantry (probably use a list out of the Road to Rome book).

That's the M4A3; the soviets never got any. Some american tanks had muzzle brakes fitted, though it's a look you associate with Korea more.

So it's purely an aesthetic thing?

Some references while I'm at it.

For FoW? Yes. Obviously it's a later mark of tank, but that shouldn't matter much.

Well bollox, if I had known they were the same gun I'd have built them with it. Looks much nicer than the non-muzzle break version.

If there is a will there's a way, user. You could clip the muzzle brake off and drill a small hole in the backside to glue them on the end of your barrel.

I'm still not fully knowledgeable about the British in TY, but it seems pretty solid to me.

The mech company is the weak side; 2 mortars is going to go real fast and it's only two platoons.

OTOH I've literally never seen formation breaking make any difference in TY given it only kicks in when you're down to one unit that's under half strength anyway.

Do you only have the mortars for artillery? That's a bit of a hole, if you do. I'd also be inclined to go 4 harriers or 4 HELARMs, and commit to one approach; two TOW shots and a salvo at penalty is less useful that four TOW shots or a full salvo.

Hey guys looking to get into team yankee as my side war game or possibly my main one. My other choice is dropzone commander but I'd thought I'd ask here anyway.

So can you guys give me the pros and cons of the system?

Do we know anything if there will be missile-equipped T-55s in Volksarmee? (Or any missile equipped Redfor tanks soon, for that matter?)

Its a fast playing, relatively easy to learn, I-Go You-Go system with near-modern military technology.

I don't think we see tank-fired missiles.

The closest we see is the BMPs with their missiles. Or dedicated missile vehicles like the ITV or Jaguar.

meh, BMP-1/2 missiles are external launchers. I was really hoping we'd see some gun-launched systems sooner or later, especially since this was quite the thing on later Redfor vehicles.

I'd expect that we might see those at some point, once we start seeing more advanced Soviet tanks.

Right now we have the T-72, and we're getting the T-55AM2.

Perhaps the upcoming Soviet expansion book, (Red Thunder?) will have tanks that used gun-launched anti-tank guided missiles.

Screw both of those I want T-80Us. Kontakt-5 explosive reactive armour, improved gunsight, 9K119 Refleks missile system, and Thermals.
CAPITALIST PIGS WILL BE FORCED TO BOW BEFORE THE MIGHT OF THE USSR, COMMUNISM AND THE WORKERS. GLORY TO COMRADES STALIN AND LENIN!

Too soon to tell. They could be included as an upgrade to a T-55 HQ. If not there, will get abother opportunity to see it with the T-64 when it is unvieled next year.

Hope you get back on your feet soon. Runs in my family so I am just waiting for my turn. If you need something to watch while you are laid up and don't mind WW1, check out Our War on netflix.

Some M4A2 76mm lend lease had the muzzle breaks. The primary difference between the M4A2 and M4A3, was the engine and back deck setup (and most A2s were diesel). The lead M4A2 76mm in the picture attached is from the Guards 46th Tank Brigade, which only received 76mm M4A2s. The photo itself is from Vienna, when the Soviets successfully captured the city. As you can see, the leading M4 clearly had a muzzle break in the photo.