Flames of War General: Now with more flames! Edition

> S-35s and Char B1s and Pz-38(t)s backing up Pz IIIs and IVs
Uhhhh, those are French Tanks. You're shit out of luck. Considering that they were on different sides. Unless you want to do Late War, because then you can field a Looted Tank company.

You'll want Blitzkrieg or Barbarossa, you're not likely to fit both Panzer IIIs and Panzer IVs into the same list, they're quite expensive in Early War.

youtube.com/watch?v=-wUhv3Ecvs8

>Phil is playing East Germans

He's cheers'd himself.

I wonder if he's just spamming t-55s

No shit they're French tanks. Germany deployed S-35s to the Eastern Front in 1941-1942, they captured several hundred and they were better than German light tanks. I think they deployed some Chars as well but those may have been just in France as a garrison.

So is fielding looted french tanks not possible other than the normandy invasion? Because that's annoying.

Mid and late war Romanians can field french light tanks, 38(t)s, and panzer IIIs/IVs though their effectiveness will be questionable.

You're putting words in my mouth.

I said it required a different play style and that some people would have to adjust their tactics.

Nothing about cheese. Those are your words.

And I did say I wasn't entirely certain about 7s and 8s. It helps, but I wasn't sure, and still am not sure, if it fully makes up for it.

Although I do fully agree with Lord Viruscide's criticisms of how Eyes and Ears used to work.

As for the poor community interaction from BF, we call Phill on his nonsense all the time.

Now, if you don't mind, I'll be over here enjoying my BADWRONGFUN.

Cheers

Too bad early war doesn't have them.

Looks like the medium tank company can take a czech platoon as a weapon platoon option. So Medium company HQ, medium company platoon, czech platoon, and a panzerschutzen platoon would be a good start.

So, looking through the barbarossa rules.

Medium tank HQ
Pz IV F: 245 pts
Sdkfz 9 recovery vehicle: 5pts

Medium tank platoon
3 Pz IVD: 450

Czech platoon
4 Pz-38(t)E/F: 450

Panzerschutzen platoon
3 squads 275
AT rifle team 10

Light AA gun platoon
3 Sdkfz 10/5: 70

Light armored car platoon
3 Panhards 145

Comes out to 1650, which I read is a popular point level? I have no idea if that's actually a viable list but it's the kind of thing I'd like to build. I'm mainly wanting to get into it for the hobby aspect, the game gives me a better excuse to build them.

That cover of thundstruck

youtube.com/watch?v=reN9KbB1Cd4

I still feel secure in my decision to eagerly await Battlegroup: NORTHAG instead of Red Thunder.

I haven't figured out if I prefer Battlegroup yet. I like the mechanics but it feels like it will bog down in bigger games and is meant for "platoon+" as opposed to company engagements. This might just be because the local group is still learning the rules and things haven't smoothed out yet.

What turns me off Battlegroup is also one of the core problems in Flames of War, it's a tank game in an infantryman's war.

In almost all the North West Europe batreps I've read the two sides tanks knock each other out, and the attacking infantry company stops two bounds from the objective and withdraws.

Perhaps realistic in result, but there's not really enough detail there in the infantry fight to make the game feel alive.

How do you mean? Would you prefer the game had more complexity/depth to the infantry rules?

>Mid war Rumanian
?

>I said it required a different play style and that some people would have to adjust their tactics

Pretty sure Virus was talking about how people were upset that their cheese got removed. Naturally the meta should be expected to shift, but the main casualty of V4 is diversity of play and if you want to be more cynical... logic.

One of the complaints going into V3 presumably was how huge blobs of dug in infantry perhaps accompanied by arty parks were too hard to shift. Battlefield reduced the AT for the artillery, which was a good start. However they also made several other changes including making gun teams more surviveable, nerfing breakthrough guns and bunker busters to the point of uselessness, modifying flamethrowers so that they hit like a normal gun, and in the simplifying of assaults, also making them more challenging to bring in. Light artillery gets a boost to FP and repeat barrages cause rerolls of infantry saves. Artillery in general is the only way to soften up infantry positions. it behooves both sides to invest more in artillery or maybe even some nearly unkillable planes to harass artillery and/or slap tanks with their cannons.

When we factor in morale into these changes infantry combat basically comes down to an artillery duel and then one side rolls in to clean up the other (maybe... who knows how long that is going to take). So far in V4 I believe infantry play best as 1 or 2 platoons supporting some tanks.

Eyes and Ears is whatever, but Battlefront nerfed so many other ways of dealing with infantry I have still been left scratching my head. If I run my EW strelkovy and dedicate some points for cheapo mortars to counter battery enemy artillery, what's going to counter it besides tons of artillery? It's fine that you are enjoying V4, no one is saying you can't have fun. I think a lot of people wish we could keep the simplified rules and still have a diverse way to play the game.

>"I think a lot of the complaints, and I know I'm going to get flak for this, are people who have a certain style of play, and they figured out how to play with the rules as they existed in version 3, and now that things are different in version 4, they're not- They're trying to play things the same way they did, and not trying to adjust to the new rules. They're just complaining they can't keep playing the way they were."
>>~2:41:30

>"a lot of these complaints, like I said, seem to be from people upset that their little tricks from version three don't work any more"
>>~2:46:00

I don't know about your area, but around here "little tricks" is used as a euphemism for powergaming/cheese tactics. The whole thing came off to me as "the majority of people complaining are mad that they can't powegame like they used to or just won't adapt." Might not be what you intended to say, but that's what I got from it. Not that the whole thing isn't a WAG, but that's gonna be true of everything since we don't actually have any surveys of players to draw conclusions from.

If something is cheese I'll call it cheese.

American artillery parks in V3, pre-nerf Patton, pre-nerf Naval Bombardments, pre-nerf US Tank Destroyer companies. Those were all pure cheese.

As for "little tricks", I perhaps chose the wrong phrase.

What I was trying to get at was that things people used as their go-to method for dealing with certain situations during their V3 games are not working the way they used to due to the changes in the 4th Ed rules.

And a lot of the complaints I've been seeing here, and in social media, about 4th Ed is that people don't like that their go-to tactics from V3 for dealing with certain situations are either gone from 4th Ed entirely (like Eyes and Ears), or don't work the same way that they used to.

I mean, even if he didn't mean powergaming, the "little tricks" that v4 ruined are things like "wanting to bring a balanced force," "having effective anti air," "recce being useful and appropriately costed," and "infantry being removed by anything other than massive amounts of artillery"

Now those quirks are gone just gotta man up, adapt, and bring an arty park son.

Maybe part of it is people aren't being told how to update their tactics, just that they need to.

So, a constructive question. What's a normal list look like for you in v4? What're your new go-to ways of dealing with different threats?

>"wanting to bring a balanced force,"

Still perfectly doable. I've been playing a very similar list to what I was using in V3 with a mix of infantry, AT guns, tanks, and artillery, and I've found them all to still be useful.

>"having effective anti air"

Not an issue I've come across yet mysel, but that could just be down to the dice.

I've seen planes get turned into Swiss Cheese from AA fire.

But again, that could just be the dice.

>"recce being useful and appropriately costed,"

I still think that expansion of deployment zones and light harassment work are good roles for recce units.

And in Mid-war at least their relatively low points cost makes perfect sense.

Although they probably are a bit overpriced in the other two eras.

>"infantry being removed by anything other than massive amounts of artillery"

Again, not something I've come across yet myself.

I'm not bringing more than a single unit of artillery, and it's proving sufficient to lighten up enemy infantry for a turn or two before they get assaulted.

That's a bit of an open ended question.

I'm honestly still trying to get a feel for that.

It's been a bit of trial and error using old V3 tactics and seeing what still works the same, what mostly still works but needs some tweaking, and what doesn't work at all anymore.

So far at least, I've found anti-tank tactics in 4th Ed are still pretty close to what they were in V3.

Artillery only getting one spotter requires even more careful placement of the observer so he can see a significant portion of the battlefield.

Anti-infantry tactics seem to be shifting towards repeat bombardments (I've found two turns on the same target to be about right) and weight of fire to pin them down before assault.

But again, I'm still slowly trying to figure out what still works and what need some tweaking.

>about 4th Ed is that people don't like that their go-to tactics from V3 for dealing with certain situations are either gone from 4th Ed entirely (like Eyes and Ears), or don't work the same way that they used to.

Fair enough, but when they nerf every anti-infantry tactic besides artillery and certain tanks what do you expect?

>shifting towards repeat bombardments

I think that's a big point of concern for a lot of us that have problems with v4

Not only is it unrealistic, but it also puts lists that lack heavy artillery in a bad spot.

I've played games against arty parks, it's just no fun. Games devolving into an arty duel just sounds awful to me.

>Eastern Front

I don't like arty parks either, but I haven't seen that developing in my local group. At least not yet.

As for the wider player-base, I can't speak for that.

If anything, I might try to add some mortars to my list. Possibly instead of the actual arty, but I'm not sure yet.

So I'm looking at the V4 rules, haven't started to play FoW yet.

There's literally 3 tanks available for the british in north africa. Stuarts, Grants, and Crusaders. There should at least be Valentines, and Matildas were still around in 1942 even if they were becoming less relevant. What's up with the super limited selection? I like the V3 rules I'm seeing where you have options for a bunch of different cruiser types and stuff even if they're obsoleted, as cheap filler tanks.

V4 is in the process of killing FoW.

V4 has restarted MW, and has had exactly one release so far. Presumably, more is coming (such as, as you said, Matildas and Valentines, and British Rifle Companies)

>What's up with the super limited selection?

People forget that this is only the first release. There will be more.

Battlefront only wanted to include what THEY currently made in plastic, in order to sell new models

Battlefront just released multiplayer Total War rules for Team Yankee.

What do you guys think?

flamesofwar.com/Portals/0/Documents/TeamYankee/Team-Yankee-Total-War.pdf

Seems fun. I like they table layout suggestions.
>I wish my friends weren't shit and played TY with me more than twice a year

Play a better game, like Battlegroup

>Battlegroup
>Company+ level
I'd like to have at least some of my weekend for other things
that being said, Battlegroup is top for smaller stuff

So I checked Eastern Front and Romanians can't field any French tanks.

Yeah I'm looking around and all I can see is the normandy Beutepanzerkompanie.

Using that list, I can field a whole lot of tanks that are totally useless but might be fun to swarm with. And they'll maul light armor and half tracks and stuff still.

HQ: 2 S35s
1st platoon: S35, 4 R35s
2nd platoon: S35, 4 R35s
3rd platoon: Pz IIIJ, 4 H38s
4th platoon: PzIIIJ, 4 H38s

5 Char B1s, 2 with flamethrowers

4 Marder Is

3 Pak 40s with trucks

A grenadier platoon with 3 squads

4 88 artillery pieces with trucks

2 ZIS-3s with trucks

3 Flak38s with trucks

There's also the lapland war beutepanzerkompanie, from Grey Wolf Digital.

That's bizarre as fuck. They get R-35s in Barbarossa Digital and Red Bear. I guess they just 'misplaced' them for the years of 1942 and 1943.

Any suggestions for 6mm Team Yankee infantry? I'm wanting to build an East German T-72 battallion with a supporting company of BMP-1s. So I need 10 assault rifle + RPG 18 teams, 9 RPG-7 teams, 2 PKM teams, an AGS-17, and an SA-14.

Since when has making a tiny half assed effort that is very narrow and limiting ever been a good thing?

This, desu.

It seems like it could be fun.

I'd certainly like to try it out.

Everyone does release waves, even the mighty Games Workshop.

And Battlefront is nowhere near as large of a company as GW.

So they put out what they could reasonably accomplish as their first wave of the new edition, and will be following it up in the future with more releases.

Even the X-wing miniatures game which is on Wave 15 or so with about 3 Dozen different ships started out with only the X-Wing, Y-Wing, TIE Fighter, and TIE Advanced when the game first shipped.

>le 3 plastic kits
>this is Afrika, suck BF's dick
>forget all the other content that could easily be modified to flesh out Africa
>people defend this

>this first release for V4 is the totality of V4
>we'll never get anything more
>this is it
>just this and nothing else

>people are this dense
>people are this determined to shit on Battlefront no matter what

Oh look, I can green text a straw man argument as well...

>we're not going to release rules for all the old models everyone has because our competitors make those too but we want people to buy the new plastic kits but also we're gonna churn out those kits slow as molasses

>Publishing and updating two games and model ranges simultaneously isn't enough
>I demand they do all the work now!
>all at once!
>how dare they pace themselves!
>I don't care if they have limited manpower!

This strawmanning

>Updating previously established unit stats is hard
>literally an unpaid intern could put out more written content
Keep conflating this with model production, I dare you.

You seriously want an unpaid intern to write rules?

The stuff we get from the office game designers is questionable enough on it's own, and you want some random schmuck who probably wouldn't even know the first thing about the game to write rules.

That's a whole new level of stupid I didn't even think was possible.

Look, it's fine if they just want to do Afrika first, but at least do Afrika fully. One british tank, 2 lend lease tanks, and 1 armored car is ridiculous.

The entire unit roster in Desert Rats, a $20 army list, is those 3 tanks, a bren carrier, motorized infantry platoon, two anti-tank guns, an armored car, one field artillery piece, an AA gun, and a hurricane.

Team Yankee's core rulebook came with 2 army lists, and each of those has about as much as desert rats does. Less tanks because team yankee uses MBTs instead of the lend lease stuff, but they make up for it in IFVs and multiple different air assets and different types of AA and ATGM and artillery platforms.

For $20 I'm perfectly happy with 4 different core formations plus support options.

3 different kinds of tanks, all in plastic? Yes please.

AT guns, artillery, and infantry in plastic? Again, yes please.

A recce unit in plastic with 9 of them included in the box? Fuck yeah!

Desert Rats and the various models that go with it have given me plenty to be excited about.

I would look at GHQ's modern stuff, they're the gold standard for 6mm miniatures. I do Flames in 6mm GHQ but haven't tried Team Yankee yet.

Just the same, their "Modern Russian Individual Infantrymen" and "Soviet Cold War Era Heavy Weapons" is probably what you want.

Yeah probably works. I don't think i see any AGS-17s in there though.

The new plastic is really nice. I just wish list design and game balance weren't directly tied to selling new plastic... but o guess that's how the game is played.

Who else is shelving their T-72s for T-64s?

Use them as T-72Ms

I play East Germany, I don't give a shit

Why is the Chieftain the british MBT instead of the Challenger?

It's really cheap for its gun, but it's a slow piece of shit that is bad at firing on the move and has kinda bad armor. It's 20 years old.

The challenger would btfo any tank currently in the game, is why. The chieftain in game has stats halfway between what a challenger and a real chieftain should have

TY got fucky

The Chieftain is frankly overrated. All that thick steel armor was rapidly out classed by newer AT weapons using HEAT charges, and an engine that at one point had a 90% failure rate.

Then we have the actual combat record. During the Iran/Iraq War they got the pissed slapped out of them by Iraqi conscripts in T-62s. Fast forward a few years and they get BTFO again during the invasion of Kuwait, this time by Iraqi conscripts in monkey model T-72s.

Real winner this one.

Heroics and Ros do them

heroicsandros.co.uk/index.php?app=gbu0&ns=prodshow&ref=SM324

Heroics and Ros are great if you want a shit ton of cheap 6mm figures. The quality is average, but at that scale as long as you paint them ok no-one is going to notice the detail without a very close look in good light, or a magnifying glass.

Try Ostfront instead? it's well balanced, having been playtested over 5 years before release and has pretty much every vehicle available. It also doesn't release new versions of lists or rules so all the army lists are balanced against each other and made for the rules.

It splits the war into three periods - early mid and late. There is also "Fall Weiss" which covers the invasion of Poland and battle of France.

The British army list has 11 different vehicles for early war, while the Fall Weiss list has 17 vehicles for the 1939 - 1940 period. All the cruiser types from Mk I to Mk V (including the Cruiser Mk. IIA CS), Carden-Loyd tankette, Daimler Dingo, Vickers Mk. IV light tank, Mk. VIC Vickers, Vickers 6-ton, both A and B version, Matilda and Matilda II as well as the bren carrier and Guy Armored car.

The quick fire ostfront rules are free to download and have 4 short army lists included:
wargamevault.com/product/193463/Ostfront-QuickFire-Rules

The recommended points already takes too long with a too-crowded table. Not keen to play a scenario where it's even worse.

Do any of you gents know of a manufacturer that makes T-72 Urals or any model of T-80 in 15mm?

Well the Battlefront T-72 is some bastardized hybrid between a T-72 Ural, T-72A, and T-72M. Close enough?

Not quite what I'm looking for, looking or a T-72 without the extra composite turret armor and unfortunately the BF one does have that. A straight T-72M would fit my needs though.

I'm not good at this, but does this look better? Not the best quality, but fine for the table. The old glory stuff paints up so well if you are drybrushing.

oldgloryminiatures.com/proddetail.asp?prod=PW-706

Do you know anywhere with pictures? None of this infantry has pictures. What is "East German Support"?

>the vid

don't tell me they sung that themselves....

>just gotta man up, adapt, and bring an arty park son.

....aww shit nigger, he said it.

i just re-reviewed arty rules.

he's right. arty park is back, and there is no stopping it. i am gonna guess a lighter tank swarm will do the trick, but then, it's not trick to add 2x AT gun teams to your arty park force.....

...shit.

just...

(goes and get's the V2 box of tricks)

Well, didn't Phil say that they were going back to the start with V4?

Cheers

i have no T-72's to shelve, but, yeah, i'm spreading the buttcheeks.
i enjoy a healthy dose of T-64 up the ass.

Cheers.

looks like i am going to keep airpower and fast light tanks around should i ever need to reach out and fuck up some arty.

My FLGS is starting a Team Yankee campaign sounds fun

try google image searching the product name and "heroics and ros" - there should be pictures of minis people have bought or painted.

That is the worst thing about H&R, you often have no idea what you're getting. Shit cheap as chips though so just grab a bunch. You can always email them too if you have questions or are looking for a specific weapon or unit. They do take suggestions about what to model and cast next.

Choo Choo Motherfuckers

Aw fuck it didn't combat attach.

How well did that go for the train

Would it really be that much better than the leo 2

Minimally, it got swarmed by t34s.

should be slower than the leo 2

It might be slower but the armor would definitely be better.

Should an Abrams be slower than a Leo 2?

Chieftains are in such a weird place.

6 points per model with an amazing gun, but man with armor 10 on the sides vs heat even rpg 18s are lighting them up on practically every hit. And they're so damn slow.

Thanks for the recommendation, looks pretty good. Will try.

Sweden has a tank museum with stuff from ww1 to cw. Guess who went there today?

Imma spam pics, tell me if it gets annoying.

Open for requests, they had loads of different tanks.

Nice, do they have any of the rare stuff from WWI? Bovington has nearly every WWI tank except this exceedingly rare one which was a MKV converted into a gun carrier, I think only 6 were ever made.

Also when does Red Thunder come out? My original scepticism has turned into excitement for T-64's.

I think the official release day for Red Thunder is this weekend.

Post Universal Carriers.

Not much ww1 stuff, this tankette is the closest one. The rest was swedish armoured tractors.

Red tsundere released today right? At least in my flgs.

Righto