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Hello all,
My wife and I recently picked up a introductory set for Flames of War, "Open Fire!" My wife, being partly German, wanted the StuG G's, so I took the Shermans. We each went about painting the box set together. I did the shermans, and then helped direct her in painting the StuG's. Unfortunately the local paint store was out of the colors I wanted, so we had to improvise. Here are the results of our session:

A good start. You need to let me know what you think of FOW. I am interested.

The stugs look beautiful

Shame abotu the lack of required paint tho :(

Subscribing for FOW goodness.

Glad you did! I sold some old minis lying around today and placed an order to the warstore to expand our armies:

For my Americans, a Rifle Company seemed like a good place to start. Cheapest way to get a few platoons of footsloggers (like I used to be back in the day, manning the 60mm).

I saw that that "Point of Contact" company appears to be making 1/100 scale M3s and the German Sd 251s, pretty cheap apparently. If I want to expand up to a mech army I can try that route (though I heard that these models are a bit out of scale despite the advertisements). If that fails I could always pick up battlefront models later.

For the Germans, I had expended most of the money on the rifle company so I had to settle for a Grenadier platoon. I figure I can go the same route, making a Gerpanzerte Panzergrenadier company sometime down the road.



We'll be having our first battles here in the coming week, using the Shermans and the StuGs. Battleground: Tunisia!

Solid result and you can tell your mrs that I think the Stugs look better than the Shermans

A rifle company is indeed the best place to start for the US, same with grenadiers for the germans. The only other thing I might recommend is picking up some US and German decals as for some reason there are none in the open fire box set and to me personally it always looks a little unusual seeing unmarked WW2 tanks.

Did you pick up any of the army list books yet? (Fortress Europe, North Africa, etc)?

regarding book's for "begginners" i would grab the D-day stuff, its pretty generic and has loads of lists for most late war stuff.

I have quite a selection of the books that I got from a friend. I used to play Flames of War years ago, back when Afrika and Ostfront were the main books for mid-war (iirc?), but I've since updated my library to include North Africa, Fortress Europe, and a few extra books like Cobra. I will get the d-day books eventually as well.

And yes, I believe her StuGs look better!

So, I've decided which army I wish to represent. I'll be representing the39th Infantry Regiment of the 9th Infantry Division



They were one of the few units that fought the entirety of the European Theater (at least as much as there was US involvement in). This should make it appropriate for eventually converting to a Late War army.

Nicknamed "The Fighting Falcons", the regiment's motto is "Anything, Anywhere, Any Time - Bar Nothing!" The regiment participated in Algeria, Tunisia, Sicily, Normandy, Northern France, The Rhineland, Ardennes-Alsace, and Central Europe. It was cited twice by the Belgians for valorous actions and awarded the Belgian Fourageré. It also received two French Croix de Guerre with Palm, the French Fourageré, and three Presidential Unit Citations.

This may not be appropriate for all the battles we plan in our campaign, but it is close enough. Now... how am I going to paint little regimental badges on their uniforms...?

Your not :p Simple as. Keep regiments stuff for Veicles etc. the models are just too small. And unlike 40K We didnt run around with huge banner bearers showing off our unit heradry. lol

FoxPhoenix135 wrote:Now... how am I going to paint little regimental badges on their uniforms...?

A really small paint brush?

I'll be watching as I too am considering join FoW.

wizard12 wrote:

FoxPhoenix135 wrote:Now... how am I going to paint little regimental badges on their uniforms...?

A really small paint brush?

I'll be watching as I too am considering join FoW.

I cannot recommend it enough. Great game, great miniatures, excellent company.

FP135, stuff is lookin real good. I'm diggin the paint job on the Missus' StuG's for sure. Keep up the good work, and looking forward to seeing some progress.

I made up some custom counters using the GIMP photo editing software, and thought I'd share them:

Very nicely done, thanks for sharing!

I like them. What are you going to make them out of? Just paper, or are you going to mount them somehow?

Cardstock probably, maybe cereal box cardboard, nothing too fancy.

We had our first game the other night, simple Open Fire scenarios straight out of the box.

After some warm up scenarios, we got to the good stuff-

Game One:
Using the standard set-up from the book, the Sherman tanks get first turn, attacking from the side. Rolling up 12", they unleash a barrage of fire (although not utilizing stabilizers) which, though slightly less effective due to the modifier, still landed a surprising number of hits on the StuG G's. Autopenetrating the side armor, only one firepower test succeeded in destroying a StuG. The StuG rotated in place and retaliated, destroying a single M4A1. During the next turn, the retaliating fire from the M4A1's (held in position) penetrated the StuG with a single shot that passed its firepower test, annihilating the last of the German vehicles.

Game Two:
As part of a "What-if" scenario, the StuG's were given first turn, and a small collection of buildings were placed in the middle of the map to break up line of sight. I was trying to prove to my wife that getting the first turn can make or break a strategy. She moved her StuGs closer to get better shots, hitting my front armor but failing her Firepower tests miraculously. So much for the lesson I was trying to convey... So I darted behind the buildings and fired off a single shot from the one tank that wasn't cowering behind cover. Of course this shot was totally ineffectual upon the superior front armor of the StuG. She then shot at the two tanks visible, destroying one. I double-timed my tanks around her flank, hoping to get around for another side shot. Unfortunately, it was not to be. No longer affected by the negative modifiers for range, she unloaded at full ROF into the side armor of my Shermans. Both tanks popped, unsurprisingly. Flawless victory for the Germans!




All in all, the game is very entertaining, but I have made a few observations:

Having played the game with naught but infantry, I must say that Infantry have more fun. Taking cover, digging in, and launching assaults are way more fun than plinking at each other with tanks, hoping to get the most effective volley in first. Not to say that tank battles are not fun, but I just feel that infantry better convey the flavor of the game.

The game doesn't really get interesting until you have actual company-on-company games, complete with combined arms such as artillery, armored infantry, man-packed guns, etc. Single Armor units engaging each other such as exemplified in the Open Fire boxed set are not a good example of the game system's potential.

Painting in this scale is WAY easier when it comes to tanks!

Looking like a great start, and I couldn't agree more! Infantry is way more fun.

Just as a side note, Americans generally have their division patch instead of a regimental one.

Keep up the great work and hope to see more soon!

Hey all you FoW fans, sorry I have been neglecting to update this thread! With a blog, I sometimes post the pics once and figure I'm covered, forgetting that not everybody goes to my blog...

Anyway, here are the most recent completed paintjobs (I'm slowly working my way through batch-painting my entire army, so I don't complete whole teams very often):

Objective marker:




1st LT and the rest of his Plt. Command:



Still have a few details, such as flocking and divisional patches.

Looking good. Very nice use of flock on the objective marker as well, good stuff!

Hey again, I know it's been a while but I've been a very busy boy! I've been arranging to hold a demo event for FOW up here in AK, where apparently nobody plays this game!

So, prize support is being figured out and I have a place to hold it, so now i've been plugging away at some MW Sicily /Italy based Americans. I've got one Armored Rifle platoon done, which now looks something like this picture of the Mortar squad:



In other news, I made a blog-ring for FOW. I even got a mention on Whatwouldpattondo.net's recent podcast!
http://flamesofwarubr.blogspot.com/



Automatically Appended Next Post:
Silly me, forgot to post the wife's fearsome Tiger tanks! She's whooping my a$$ with those beasts in Midwar, as 'zooks and Shermans are not always the most reliable of ways to deal with the big cats.


(this is before their final Devlan mud wash)

Oh, for the record... Don't buy POC Sherman tanks, as they suck. The tigers are great for the price though. I don't mind the M3s being a bit larger, as they look more proportionate to BF's big-headed minis.

I did try out Game Models, and theyre only "ok" for the price, which is cheap. Good for some models that you need cheap, but you may as well use Old Glory if you can get the 40% discount that costs $50... It pays for itself after the first 125 bucks.

I did get a SP tank destroyer platoon of M10 GMCs, and they help against the big cats but not nearly enough for their cost in MW.

Thanks for the info on alternatives. 5 tigers in mid war? That must be 99% of the army in terms of points!?

Well, using tigers, you can only fit like 3 tigers and a grenadier platoon at 1500 points.