Late War Alpini and Corrivalry Report

Heya all,

Jersey James here with some more Italians... I'm not meant to be doing Italians this year as for me it's going to be about branching out into new armies through all periods and company types but at this early stage none of my other late war projects were anywhere near ready for Corrivalry so I took 1800 points of RSI and was the only player out of 96 to choose an Italian list from the new book, Fortress Italy!

Here's what I took, 12 platoons of Italian Infantry and guns laid out after I finished painting at work. No aircraft as I didn't have the option and no tracked or armoured vehicles except the recce AB41 cars. There is a platoon of Confident Veteran Germans lurking in there though, more on those models later.

British Rifle Company (Plastic) (BBX28) -Review

Hello All

Battlefront kindly sent me two platoons of the new plastic British Infantry for the Nachtjager Painting challenge, so I figured I might as well review them at the same time.

Whats in the box?

Now I only got four sprues which is enough to make two platoons of infantry, but the box set comes with 6 sprues which gives you the whole company of three Rifle Platoons. The sprue itself is great with a Piat team, Light Mortar team, two Officers, a Radio Operator, 12 individually sculpted Riflemen, 2 Bren gunners and 3 NCOs... it's crammed full!

Mortars - The Essential Infantry Unit.

Originally this was going to be my first 'road to nowhere' article about my new french mortars (please enjoy the pictures) but I think looking at mortars is not a bad idea, a real 'back to basics' look at the humble mortar.

The mortar really has so many uses, broadly they break down into the following

PAVN Local Forces Company all done (for now!) for Vietnam!

Hi everyone (James here):

A year ago, Ben and I started 1250 point Vietnam army projects and recently we both completed them. If you like ‘Nam then you've probably seen Ben’s Americans and a post I put up at the start of the project as both appeared on the Battlefront website too and can be found here searching under Vietnam tags but I've been lax on doing posts as I've painted so here… is the finished force!

(check out the end of the article for a proposition if you're interested in getting into games of Flames of War Vietnam! I’ll also put up on the Battlefront Forums for Vietnam!)

Snapped at our local store before a game!

Banzai! The Road to Art of War III - Part One

Hello All,

As you may know from listening to the podcast myself and Adam were picked to play for team Scotland at the ETC. We set about planning armies for the event and looked at which tournaments we could go to to get some much needed practice in. Well unfortunately I'm now not going to the ETC for personal reasons, but I still have a Japanese army that needs painting! So the new focus (if you hadn't worked it out from the title) is the Art of War III in April.

While I have always thought the Japanese army looked a lot of fun to play, Bournemouth has been overrun with a number of Japanese armies my regular opponents are using. So I wanted to do something different, something that would make my army stand out from the rest - while researching the Japanese I came across Mike Haught's post on the Special Naval Landing Force on his blog. From this I picked up the Osprey Men-at-Arms book on them and I had found my army!

Nächtjäeger Tale of Four Gamers Month One - Fez

Phew, who knew toy soldiers could be so tiring!
Hot on the heels of a mega paint session of American tanks for Corrivalry, the deadline for our first months Nächtjäeger painting came roaring up out of nowhere.

Given that the new models aren't in stores yet, I chose to start with what I had - the Mobelwagons, Stugs and Panzersturm Cannon Platoon.

As these are going to be late-late-late war, I decided to use the Mig Ammo Late war paint set  and AK Interactives' Late war Camouflage profile guide for inspiration. I found the pictures of disc-camo moblewagons, and thought that I would once again tackle the Anarchy Models HD Stencils, using the new 1mm ambush mask.

Beyond The Foxholes Episode 25 - On The Road to Corrivalry

Hi all

Welcome to Beyond the Foxholes episode 25 - On The Road to Corrivalry, the largest Flames of War tournament outside of North America.

In act one we join Ben and Adam in Adam's car on the road to Corrivalry, the guys chat about their army's, practice games and a few other random bits.

In act two the guys chat to Wild Bill Wilcox, the tournament organizer Nobby, one of the Italian regulars Stefano and finally a catch up with Fez.

Rounding out the episode with act three the guys run through their games in detail, discuss what they have learnt and finally look forward to what they have coming up next.

Road to nowhere - EW French Project

Hi all another project which I’m starting, thought I’d go into a little detail about why I’m doing this and some of the thoughts behind it.

In my head I’ve always liked the idea that I could field and axis and an allies army in every period, and ideally form different theatres of the war. For LW I’ve got Germans (always suitable for every front) and my Brits and Finns, likewise all of those work well for MW too. EW though has been where I’ve been lacking – whilst my Finn’s cover the Axis and Eastern front, I really wanted something to cover the Allies and Western Front/Desert. Concurrently I’ve really wanted to get away from Veteran Infantry armies this year, they’ve pretty much been my exclusive area of playing over the last 12 months (again the Finns are to blame for this) so I really felt like some Mech/Tank’s ideally ones which were trained. This had been floating round my head fro some time, but with the invitation to the ETC I realised I needed a Mech force for this – and having reviewed the options for Trained Mech lists, one really grabbed me – French Armoured Cars. Now I’ve played against this list before and thought it was great, lots of mobility, some high AT and a nice variety of units available to play with. As things stand though I’m now playing the Finn’s at the ETC, but with all the models in my grasp, I think this is a lovely small little project I can be getting on with! (and yes I realise the idea of me and a small project don’t really go…)

Nächtjäeger Tale of Four Gamers Month One - Alex

So here's my first month of painting and modelling for the Nächtjäger challenge. Now unlike The rest of them I had to put together a load of motorcycle recce, which certainly brought out my masochistic streak.

I also had got SS motorcycles, now I had planned to just paint them up as Heer troops but when I looked closely at the models and saw the uniforms were completely different I decided to paint them up as SS. Now this is probably historically inaccurate, but in my defence I will put forward the following:

1) I've put together two platoons of motorcycles, I'm not putting more together just to get the right uniforms.

2) At this stage in the war supplies were a little sketchy, so it seems slightly plausible that a group of Heer might get some other uniforms given to them.

3) Riding motorcycles cross country is bound to be grubby work, my motorcyclists will therefore have overalls for when they are riding and will change swiftly into a neat clean uniform when they dismount. 

4) It's my army, naff off.

I'm aware 2&3 do not seem to make sense together.

Anyway, this meant I have had to try doing SS camo, which was fun, if also painstaking and eyesight straining.

Motorcycle recce, out in force

Great War German Commission - A7V

Hi all,

I've pretty much given up on making plans, as it seems whenever I do, something else crops up and and knocks all those best laid plans sideways.  To this end I haven't bothered with new years resolutions and I'm scrapping the painting list.  The reason is quite simple, I find these things add stress and detract from the enjoyment of what is simply a hobby.

If you asked me a couple of months ago if I was interested in doing more commissions, you'd have heard a resounding "NO WAY!"  Commissions in the past have been more like work than fun and typically get in the way of my resolutions or prevent reducing the size of my to-paint list.

When I asked if I fancied doing a Great War German commission, I realised I actually quite fancied it and I'm not being constrained by resolutions and lists...so I accepted.  Now I'm quite lucky, in that my client is not in any hurry, which is lovely.

Nachtjager Tale of Four Gamers Month One - Andy

Talk about cutting it fine! I've enjoyed it but its been a bit pressured at the end.

The progress this month was slow but steady, mainly due to the infantry platoon. Work also threw a bit of a spanner in the works meaning for a week instead of sitting at my painting table I was in a cabin looking at this:

Not a bad view really but being on the Shetlands did hold up progress. So without further ado here is my progress for month one of our painting challenge.

The FOW Centurion Challenge - January's Update

In episode 22 of Beyond The Foxholes I set myself the rather bonkers New Years Resolution to play 100 games of Flames Of War in 2015! Follow and track my progress as I attempt to conquer the FOW Centurion Challenge!

Hi folks!

I'm pumped and motivated - It's been a very solid start to this challenge indeed! 12 games in already and we are only at the end of January! So far so good... BUT... I have to say that I have had some real shocker performances at times it has to be said. To the point where I even felt the need to apologise to a couple of my opponents for not being able to offer a remotely decent contest oops! Playing late war British armour has proven quite a test for someone who has predominately played Finnish and German infantry until this point as well. Nevertheless I am not going to take the shameful errors to heart, the good times will come. 'Just gotta keep on swimming, just keep swimming'! (I have had to watch a lot of Disney lately in case you were wondering how Finding Nemo has made its way onto a Flames of War article!)

Nachtjager Tale of Four Gamers Month One - Ben

Hello all

Month one of the Tale of Four Gamers challenge is in the books and I don't mean gloat but I knock this one out of the park! Not only did I finish this with three weeks left of the challenge, I also painted up 6 extra Shermans so I can use them as a tank company.

The Shermans are all the new plastics Battlefront have been recently release (which Adam reviewed here). They are really nice and so so so so much better than old Open Fire versions.

The Road to Corrivalry, Ben's 2nd ID (Yes them again!)

Hello All,

If you tuned in for the last Podcast you will know the biggest (and one of the best) FoW tournament in the UK takes place next weekend, Corrivalry. This event marks the beginning of the tournament scene for 2015 (they come fast and furious after this, including Breakthrough Assault III in a months time).

So after last years less than glorious performance with my Matilda horde I decided to go back to an old favourite of mine- US Infantry. I had already done a fair amount of the infantry for my US Armoured rifles but I needed to bulk my collection to turn the Armoured Rifle platoons into Rifle Platoons,

Corrivalry - Stuarts Ho!

So as may have been alluded to on a few occasions, I've been trying to put together a list of late war Stuarts for a while. This is the list memorably described by Winner as 'the worst list I have ever seen', shortly before it ground him down to a 3-4 win (I lost, it's not that good).

So this idea came about when I read the bridge at Remargen book and saw the Task Force Rider's special rule which let's armoured rifle companies bin off their half tracks an sit on tanks gaining a 3+ save, rather than a 5+ save. I thought 'that's quite cool' and then looked at how I could maximise light nippy Staurts using the armoured rifle bazookas to compensate for the rubbish guns on the tanks. The idea is that the Stuarts kill infantry (very well with stabilisers and loads of machine guns) while the armoured rifles dismount to scrag anything bigger than a panzer IV.

Anyhow, this struggled a bit in playtesting, particularly when my dice were awful and when I realised that Machine Gunning tanks covered with men resulted in a dead armoured rifle platoon, regardless of a 3+ save.

Corrivalry - Panzerkompanie : Fortress Italy

Hi all so it's corrivalry yet again, and once more time to build a list!

Now I'm not expecting a repeat of my heroics from last year - mainly due to my imposed exile from vet infantry lists. One of my thoughts when making a list for this event is that I want to maximise the swap out - it's one of the best bits about this event, lists which usually are ignored because they can't 'do everything' now get brought out as the swap can mitigate this.

I was tempted by Westfalen, but I struggled for a good swap out. My gaze then rested on my original idea for BA3, the Panzers in Italy.

Corrivalry - British Armoured Squadron: Overlord

This list has been long in the making...

I have been itching to do a 4th Armoured Brigade company for quite some time now. The attached regiment; 3rd County of London Yeomanry had a squadron headquarters just minutes away from where I grew up and also have very strong ties to where I'm living now in Kent. I love learning about the histories of all these famous units and FOW has certainly helped inspire me with that. Probably the main reason I started playing the game in the first place to be honest!

Despite the above, I have found that up until fairly recently I've stayed firmly away from the bog standard Sherman tank. I lost faith quite quickly following some harsh introduction games playing the Open Fire scenario and decided to build on the German infantry initially instead. As I mentioned in a previous post however 2015 for me is the year of the tank - and what better occasion to roll out with the Black Rats than at the illustrious Corrivalry event!