with Andrew Haught
V4 Late War is here with loads of ways to get into playing Flames Of War— so where do you start? Well, if you want to just get a feel for the rules the FURY is an amazing box set for you, or if you want to get into the game with a friend, Hit the Beach gives you two awesome armies to play against each other. If you have some idea of what force you want to run, then picking up the corresponding Starter Force box set is what you want to do. This article covers the Soviet Starter Force but if you want to learn about the other three Starter Forces, there’s more info in previous posts.
This Starter Force gives you a lot of stuff to play around with right away, and like all the V4 boxsets you get a lot for your money. The British Starter Force has a total 17 armoured vehicles, a full 4-gun artillery battery, and an infantry platoon, with the whole army adding up to 82 points using the Fortress Europe book, the box can also be used for the upcoming D-Day: British book so it’s a great core set to pick up for players who want to play the British throughout the V4 journey. On top of models you will get a complete A5 rulebook, Start Here booklet, and your Unit cards, so you can start playing games as soon as you’re done building your force.
In The Box
T-34 Tank Battalion HQ with 1x T-34 (76mm) Tank (3 Points)
T34 Tank Company with 5x T-34 (76mm) Tanks (15 Points)
T-70 Tank Company with 5x T-70 (45mm) Tanks (5 Points)
KV-1 Guards Heavy Tank Company with 3x KV Tanks (12 Points)
S085 Tank-Killer Battery with 4x SU-85 (85mm) Assault Guns (23 points)
Katyusha Guards Rocket Battery with 4x Katyusha Rocket Launchers (8 Points)
Total 66 Points
Creating a 100 Point List
This set gives you a ton to work with but Soviets are points-affordable, so we will need to add a few more things to make it a full 100 point list, but let’s keep it focussed. I think after playing around with your Starter force you may get a good feel of what you want to add but for those who want to start off with a full 100 points I would pick up five more T-34s, some flame tanks, and an 82mm Mortar platoon and you will be good to go. To get to 100 points you just need to add the following:
T34 Tank Company with 5x T-34 (76mm) Tanks (15 Points)
KV-8 Flame-Tank Company 3x KV-8 (45mm) Tanks (15 Points)
82 Mortar Company with 6 82mm Mortor Teams (4 Points)
Total 34 Points
Now, I would run the T-34s in platoons of 5 and have two working platoons, but you can combine them into a single ten tank platoon if you want the numbers.
Army Tactics
This army is pretty medium armour heavy, so you want to maximize your speed and numbers to hit tanks on the side amour and use your massive numbers to overrun any dug in troops with the sheer amount of firepower you can bring to bear on them. Your SU-85s are your strongest Anti-Tank assets so you want to place them somewhere that they can hit your opponent’s heavy armour no matter where they deploy them. Your artillery combined can decimate any dug in guns and infantry guarding objectives, while your heavy KV-1 can slowly move towards the objectives to take them.
Your T-70 light tanks are perfect to hunt and kill any lightly-armoured tanks your opponent has or to hold an objective against advancing infantry.
Hobby League
If you are looking to get in on the Hobby League at your local store or club the Starter Forces are ideal starting armies for the league. If you add the units I talked about before in the Creating a 100 Point List section you can easily use it for the hobby league.
If you do not know what the hobby league is or want to learn more check out our video about the Hobby League above.
The main goal of the Hobby league is to create a Flames Of War community where players can come together to play games and work on their armies. To this end players are rewarded for hitting certain painting goals throughout the league. The first month players aim to paint 50 points, at the end of the second month players will aim to finish another 25 points and at the end of the third month players aim to finish their final 25 points and end the League with a fully painted 100 point army. The League also feeds into the upcoming TableTopGaming Global campaign, so if you finish painting your army for the League you will be ready to participate in the Global Campaign.
Month 1 has a 50 point goal; it also ends in a 50 point tournament, so you will want to focus on your core formation to make sure you have a legal list to run in the tournament. For this I would paint the following units first,
T-34 Tank Battalion HQ with 1x T-34 (76mm) Tank (3 Points)
T34 Tank Company with 5x T-34 (76mm) Tanks (15 Points)
T-70 Tank Company with 5x T-70 (45mm) Tanks (5 Points)
82 Mortar Company with 6 82mm Mortar Teams (4 Points)
S085 Tank-Killer Battery with 4x SU-85 (85mm) Assault Guns (23 points)
Month 2 you are looking to paint another 25 points, you just painted core so let’s work on some more support and some heavy tanks.
Extra T-34s to add to your existing T34 Tank Company with 2x T-34 (76mm) Tanks (6 Points)
KV-1 Guards Heavy Tank Company with 3x KV Tanks (12 Points)
Katyusha Guards Rocket Battery with 4x Katyusha Rocket Launchers (8 Points)
This is a total 26 points (one over but it will count towards your next month so it’s all good)
For the Final month I am keeping it simple, this time you just have to paint up six tanks. This is what I am planning on painting for the last month,
KV-8 Flame-Tank Company 3x KV-8 (45mm) Tanks (15 Points)
Your remaining T-34s with 3x T-34 (76mm) Tanks (9 Points)
At the end of month three you have another tournament and this time it’s a 100 point tournament so you will get to use your full army and get used to how it works in games. After that the Global TableTopGames Campaign begins having you and your friends fighting over Europe, you club or
store with rest of the world will be sending in their game results to contribute on the global scale making this one of the biggest campaigns you will ever participate in.
My final word of advice is to take time to enjoy painting your models your way and to learn as much as you can from others in the league to get the most out of the Flames Of War community.