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Looks to be an offshoot of Team Yankee for the 50s/60s incarnation of the Cold War, a period I find fascinating:

https://www.battlefront-community.com/tag/checkpoint-charlie/

Anyone had any experience with Battlefront rules & models?

I’ve not played it in a while, but Battlefront “Flames of War” is one of the dominant historical game series on the market, with a pretty decent tournament scene as well. The models, overall, are pretty high quality, 15mm, allowing for company-battalion size engagements on a pretty close to 1 to 1 scale. The rules, much like 40K, have gone through several revisions, with the most popular WW2 rules on iteration 3 or 4 (not quite sure which) and the Team Yankee one on iteration 2 (again, I think). They’ve also done Vietnam and WW1 rule sets.

They attempt to match historical OOBs and doctrines as much as a game allows, so overall, not a bad simulation-but the grognards will definitely not call it historical. A points based system where, yes you can field a dozen Tiger tanks on the 1944 Western Front if you want…

It is, again, like 40K, a bit of a lifestyle game, as a competitive force will take some time to assemble and paint. 10-20 plus vehicles and 30-100 or more infantry is often necessary, depending on what armies you play. There are many criticisms of the system online, and some forces tend to be far more effective than they were in reality (or even “what if” reality) to ensure good game play. The “tank parking lot” is a common complaint as well (armored units literally shoulder to shoulder and maneuvering as such, giving a very gamey feel to the armor system).

A tank focused game, but infantry can play a decent role and can be competitive. My biggest complaint is they are far more likely to be “out of stock” than other game lines-with their recently released WW2 Pacific line going out of stock very quickly, so unless you buy early, getting units can be a pain sometimes.

The models are great for many other games, from skirmish to much more, to suit your taste.
I’d say buy in if you have the interest in the periods, cash and time.
The game also plays very well at 6mm scale, if you prefer that as well…..

Flames of War/Team Yankee are basically a small scale historical off-shoot of like 3rd/4th edition 40k. (Not to say it plays like 40k, just that it borrowed a lot of design concepts from 40k to try to modernize and streamline historicals away from overly crunchy technically detailed rules).

Game is fun, rules are decent (though not necessarily historically accurate).

The biggest selling point though is that historicals are historicals, you can buy and build a force for Team Yankee or Flames of War, and theres a million other (less popular) rulesets that you can use them with (though infantry may require some adaptation as FOW basing isn't necessarily consistent with other games basing standards).

Yeah Battlefront are as close to a GW as the historicals world has really (for better or for worse...). On the plus side, as chaos0xomega says once you've got models for FOW/TY/CC you can use them with basically any ruleset for the same period (basing sometimes might be "wrong" but usually not a showstopper - we play a lot of Chain of Command in 15mm and other than needing wound markers it works fine with FOW style basing rather than individually based infantry).

Worth noting that Checkpoint Charlie (contrary, I think, to the original marketing) is much more late 60s / early 70s rather than a slightly earlier period that I and I think others were wanting/expecting. There are some early 60's equipment in the game too (including what I think is the only actually new kit coming with CC, the Soviet T-10) but the focus looks to be later than that given a lot of the other kit they're putting in the starter sets.

Rules-wise I'm not a huge fan of the FOW/TY system but it's fine.

Their plastics of recent years are great (in particular I think the second batch of TY products, T-62, Leopard 1, etc are fantastic) but it seems both for a rules and model perspective that they've become less interested in realism. Of course Cold War gaming is an odd one in that it's gaming a war that never happened (so isn't "historical" in that sense) but with historical equipment, OOBs, etc and they seem to be leaning further and further away from the historical side.

As an example, from a modelling point of view, the recentish T-44 / T54-1 kit (for Clash of Steel - a small added sprue to their existing T-55 kit - but of interest, in theory, for the 1950's/60's era) doesn't make an even close to accurate version of either, it's kind of baffling really and they don't seem to care at all (it does, if you just built it as a stock T-55A, build something which works fine as a T-54B, at 15mm scale the differences there are pretty minor). Depends on how much of a rivet counter you are of course...!