Category: Enemy at the Gates

Fighting For Mother Russia! Army Planning

with Chris Potter

In part one I shared with you how I came around to choosing Soviets for the Enemy at the Gates army book release.

Here I am going to go into more detail about how I decided what units to take, how I arrived at my points cost and some of the reasons for including certain units and reasons for not including others. So, without further ado…

My first unit had to be a unit of T-34s. In the army book, there is a formation whereby you can, in theory, take two platoons of x10 T-34’s, and a HQ unit of x1 T-34 for a total of 21 T-34s. However, this would be 109 points, and so well outside the range for the brief we were given.

With the idea firmly rooted of taking a horde of T-34s, I scaled back the units, so that I was still formation legal, and I could keep some points free for some troops as support. My dubious calculations made for a total of 14 tanks. That’s 1 for the HQ, a platoon of 6 and a platoon of 7 T-34s.

Looking at the stats for the T-34, I was further tempted by the 76mm main gun, which has a fairly decent range and an AT rating of 9. Added to this the T-34 has a cross rating of 3+ which reflects it’s wide tracks and decent size crossing rough terrain. Furthermore, it’s higher than average speed for the class, allows me to close with the enemy fast and start pinning them down with shots.

Coupled with my ideas for support choices this could come in very handy.
So up to now, I am at 73 points, and realistically, it is an easy army to paint being 14 tanks. But, my plan of churning out an army over the weekend somewhat failed with my next choices. On the formation diagram, your support choices for the T-34 Battalion can come from Anti-Tank, Infantry or Artillery. I need infantry. To have a balanced army that can be vicious in the attack, but also hold objectives and make effective assaults, there is no other choice than a SMG company.

Not one to do things by half, I’ve decided to take a full SMG company of 22 stands of infantry with their appointed Komissar. This comes to 22points, and an army total of 95points. 22points seems a lot for a support choice, but in the assault, these dudes will be invaluable and allow me to clear any enemy infantry away from objectives and strongpoints.

With a measly 5 points left to me, I looked through the command cards, however for the time being decided to buy an upgrade for my SMG team. As I envisage a lot of our Eastern Front battles taking place on built up city boards with lots of buildings to clear and rubble to hold, I needed something that can further chew up enemy infantry.

I can add up to two Flame-thrower teams for 2pts each to my SMG platoon. That’s a nice 99points that is well within my 100point goal.

All I need to do now is gather and assemble my army and put down some basecoat paints on them to get them table-top ready. Once I’ve managed to get a couple of games in, I will re-evaluate my army composition. I can always reduce the amount of SMG teams in my platoon, thereby freeing up quite a few points to build a support mortar company or buy in some command cards.

And some of the command cards do look rather juicy…

~Chris

Firestorm: Stalingrad Preview

with Chris Townley

Last year we ran two tremendously fun Firestorm Campaigns for Team Yankee. This year we have one planned for Flames Of War players. Welcome to Firestorm: Stalingrad!Firestorm: Stalingrad recreates the fighting in and around the city of Stalingrad where the Germans and Soviets fight over every factory, building, and city block, whilst outside the city the Soviet attackers drive
to encircle the city, forever cutting off the German Army.

The Campaign pack will be available shortly and is designed (much like the previous Team Yankee versions) to be played over the course of a day as a single event, or over a series of nights or club days.

The campaign consists of a series of Flames Of War games in which players attempt to capture areas from the enemy or recover those lost in earlier games.

Each time a player attacks they place a marker on the map, once all the markers have been used the campaign is over and the side with the most victory points wins.

Unlike previous campaigns the winner is not solely determined by taking sectors, or areas. This time players will need to be mindful of what is happening inside Stalingrad itself!

By capturing the city, a defeated side may be able to swing the final result, potentially turning a defeat into victory!

There is no point breaking the German 6th Army if the remaining troops inside the city have turned it into Fortress Stalingrad, dug in and prepared to hold off any attacking Soviet force…

Stay tuned for more information on the Flames Of War website about how your club or store can get a copy of Firestorm: Stalingrad, or…

Download a copy of the rules now (Right Click, Save As)…

~Chris

 

Stalingrad to Berlin and Back Again

with Chris Townley

Returning to the Eastern Front is a pretty exciting time for the team at Battlefront and in my case, it is a chance to revisit the book that made me fall in love with this theatre, Stalingrad.

Back in 2005 the Battlefront team produced Stalingrad and it was filled with fantastic miniatures and some amazing custom-built terrain. Up till this point I’d never really had much interest in the Eastern Front, having been more interested in Normandy to Berlin in the west, but this was the book that changed everything. This was the book that made the human wave of Soviet infantry look like fun…

Fast forward 13 years and we get to return to Stalingrad (and the rest of the Eastern Front) with Iron Cross and Enemy at the Gates. For me this means a chance to put a wall of humanity on the table and have them charge headlong into the guns of my opponent. Watching your troops get mercilessly gunned down might sound a little heart-breaking but the payback comes when your troops hit the thin red (or is that German Grey) line of enemies. Much like a tsunami there is no stopping the Soviet horde.

Needless to say, the army I’ll be dusting off starts with a Rifle Battalion HQ and two Companies of infantry. I’ve picked the ‘small’ 20 team versions to leave me some points to add a Penal Company of another 20 teams to the core of the army. These cowards will form the ‘forlorn hope’ of my army and take this opportunity to redeem themselves at the forefront of my army. My opponents can choose to gun them down knowing that they won’t pick up a Victory Point for doing so, or can ignore them at their peril.

With the wall of humanity taken care of it is time to add some support elements to my force. Since I don’t have any Flamethrower teams to pin down the enemy I’ve chosen to add two units of mortars and a unit of machine-guns. The reason for this is fairly simple, I feel like they are good bang for buck coming in at 11 points for the three units. I can also position one unit of each flank where they can dig in once they get to a good firing point as they will probably need to self-observe their fire.

I thought about adding some tanks to my force and whilst I am still tempted to add my trusty KV-1 tanks they are painted in a summer camo whilst my infantry have winter basing…

Work in progress shot of one of KV tanks with blu-tac vs finished KV (from 2012)

So putting this aside I decided to stick with some more gun teams, adding in a battery of 76mm guns for artillery and improvised anti-tank work, along with a Heavy Tank-killer Company of 57mm guns. The 57mm guns are seriously nasty, having a range of 28”, Rate of Fire 2, and Anti-tank 11. These will have no problems slicing through enemy Panzers. Best of all they are rated as Careful and are hit on a 4+, with a 3+ save. Assuming they are concealed and Gone to Ground this means they should survive the inevitable alpha strike as enemy Panzers make a rush at them.

With a whole 7 points left I’ve added a Scout Platoon. They are purely there for their Scout and Spearhead rules. If you have every tried to fit 40+ infantry teams and support weapons on one flank in a game you will know how important it is to try and expand your deployment options.
My plan is simple, attack, attack some more, then rally what is left and attack some more.

~Chris

Two Armies, One Week

Welcome, Battlefront UK. Your mission should you choose to accept it (and you will – no choice) is to provide two complete armies for our upcoming appearance on Beasts Of War. These will showcase the core of the new Iron Cross and Enemy At The Gates books, and allow your agent to showcase the new Soviet and German armies, as well as the brand new Stalingrad Two-player starter set. You have one week from today to accomplish your mission. This message will sit in your inbox until you comply.

Okay; so maybe the order to assemble and paint two new armies didn’t come in as dramatic a fashion as described above, but it was certainly a task worthy of Ethan Hunt and the rest of the IMF team. We were already each building and painting new armies for the Eastern Front launch, and now we had to put those aside and crack on with these. Worse still, we were two men down: Matt and Tim were both off living the dream in Croatia at the ETC (check out this photo album for all the action).

Not one to balk at a challenge we divided everything between us with Gordon and Gareth concentrating on the infantry and Jonathan, Chris and Seb painting even more tanks. In just a few days we had two new armies completed. Here they are:

These are now over at the Beasts Of War studio where they will meet our roving reporter, Simon (aka ‘Freddy‘). He’ll be exploring the new books, new armies and new starter set Stalingrad on their website this weekend.

~Jonathan

Fighting For Mother Russia!

with Chris Potter

Since the launch of V3 and the subsequent army books, I have always been drawn to German armies. This theme continued in V4 with the war in the desert, where I have built a sizeable DAK force.

However, when the UK Sales office decided that we were all to design and build new armies for the Eastern Front books, the way for me was clear – мать Россия! Mother Russia! Going from the German Wehrmacht Army to a Soviet Red Army force, presented some interesting shifts for me; in terms of colour schemes, military doctrines and sheer numbers of models on the table. But mostly importantly (and the crucial swing vote) was the formation organisation charts in Enemy at the Gates army book.

The force which grabbed me as soon as I was able to flick through the book, was the sheer numbers of T-34 tanks I could fit into an army list. I would be the first to admit that I’m a bit of a ‘tread-head’ when it comes to AFV (armoured fighting vehicles or Tanks!) and like nothing better than collecting, painting and looking at rows and rows of iron beasts. However, playing a German force, quite simply there is never enough tanks! And in the T-34 formation, I can take lots and lots of tanks to crush my enemies before me. As with any new list I’m planning on taking, I write out a list without points. This is my wish list. This allows me to go through and like a kid in a sweet shop, choose everything I want that I think looks cool and I think will work to my plans for the theatre.

The Eastern Front is amazing as it has some seriously awesome potential fights ahead of me. From sweeping tank battles around Kursk and Operation Citadel, to city fighting block by block in Stalingrad, and even with the new book, snipers duelling it out amongst shattered buildings. After I had added up my list and realised that there was never a hope that I could paint 22 tanks, with 44 stands of SMG-packing infantry, 4 Anti-Tank guns and a sniper team, I conservatively reduced my list down, mainly to fit within the 100pt force limit the office had set, and also my own painting time-constraints. That’s not to say that I didn’t manage to fit in 14 T-34 tanks, 22 stands of Red Army troops as well as some flamers in lieu of the snipers (I think Jonathan or Gareth wanted to be all heroic and sneaky, whereas I prefer all-out assault)  Further I picked up a box of the Valentines for some Lend-Lease tanks for the times that the T-34 wouldn’t be able to match the likes of the specialist German support options. My excuse is we have the Germans on the run and can choose what units to deploy and when… The factories were all uprooted and moved East to ensure The Soviets didn’t lose the manufacturing capability after all.

I planned to paint all the tanks in one batch, so as to ensure some degree of consistency between them as a finished article. Then I plan to tackle the infantry, which are my least favourite part of painting, however something which when done correctly, really stands out.  Tune in for the next article, where I plan to outline my exact army, and the reasons for my choices, followed by my method of painting my Soviets, from idea conception to actually putting paint on the model.

~Chris

The Block: Stalingrad. The War Starts Here…

The Block is a local New Zealand and Australian TV series where contestants spend 12 (or so) weeks completely renovating a series of houses competing to see which house will sell for the most at the end of the season…

With the impending release of the Stalingrad plastic buildings it felt like a great time to launch a little in-Studio challenge where v0lunteers each take a set of the plastics to see what they could come up with. Unlike the competitors in the TV version we won’t be winning piles of cash, but rather the respect of our peers.

To make it more interesting we will pick a start and finish date (to ensure that nobody gets a head start) and then over the course of a few weeks complete a sample building. Once the allocated time period is up we will invite the Flames Of War community to pick a winner. Best of all, someone in the community can win some of these great new plastics just for voting (bonus prize for voting for me – Chris).

Time to meet the contestants
Casey
As quite a keen amateur builder Casey is no stranger to a hammer and nails, of course he is also yet to meet a gaming miniature that couldn’t be airbrushed. He also has a leg up on the rest of the contestants as he painted the buildings shown in the two books.

Wayne
Having built many buildings shown in Flames Of War books over the years, Wayne has certainly earned the title of builders apprentice. With the release of the pre-painted Battlefield in a Box range of buildings though he might have let his skills decline?

Mike
One of the alpha-hobbyists in the building he is often leading the charge on any hobby project, having written some of the best scenery enhancement (or “pimping” for short) articles on the Flames Of War website.

Chris
Voted as most likely to glue himself to something, Chris is not the most likely candidate to take out The Block: Stalingrad. He is however a bit of a dark horse so cannot be written off early.

Stay tuned to the Flames Of War website for the launch of The Block: Stalingrad

~Chris

Sniper War – Intro Article

with Mike Haught

Snipers have always invoked a lot of talk and enthusiasm around the office whenever we get the chance to update them. There is just something to be said about a one-person warmachine that can instil fear deep inside the hearts of the enemy. These legends of the battlefield always sit above the rest and so they are rightly something we all were excited about during the project.

It all started around the lunch table, when someone suggested we each get a sniper team and really get into modelling and painting. We all have large army projects on the table, and doing a simple sniper team is a great achievable distraction that we can actually use in our armies.

As we were talking about what painting and modelling we’d like to do with our snipers, I spied a set up city table across the room and I started to visualise my sniper operating in the new City Building terrain. Then, as it so often does, my mind instantly went into design mode. So we decided to up the ante a bit by throwing together some missions just for snipers and try and have our snipers ready to face off during the launch event. In the next few weeks we’ll get those missions and our snipers ready, so until then, stay frosty!

Lunch Comes But Once A Day…

The morning has flown by. No surprises when you have a group of friends getting stuck in to some serious hobby time together.

  • Mike has the last of his StuGs assembled and is starting to get the base colour on,
  • Sean is making rapid progress on his Soviet Sniper team,
  • Wayne, who only has one tank to finish for his army is wondering what he will be working on tomorrow,
  • Andrew has his Fortnite inspired sniper hide coming along nicely,
  • Victor has finished his build and is wondering what infantry he would need to paint to flesh out his TANKS force to turn it into a full on Iron Cross force,
  • Morgan has graduated from building digital assembly guides on boxes to building her first actual plastic tank, and
  • Chris continues to keep adding yellow decals to Lee tanks.

~Chris

City Fighting 101

with Mike Haught

From the very start of the Eastern Front projects we knew that urban combat was an essential part of the story of Stalingrad and wanted to include some city fighting rules. We also knew that city fighting generally comes with some barriers to entry, so we carefully marked out some design considerations to make city fighting accessible and fun.

  • We wanted to make sure the rules played fast and focused on the action.
  • We wanted the narrative to focus the action on one or two key buildings.
  • We wanted urban table set ups to be achievable for the average player
  • We wanted to give players the ability to play city fighting games practically anywhere.

Streamlined Rules
Often city fighting rules games can take a lot of time and effort to use and detract from the fun. The terrain causes strange situations, raises questions, and generally adds a lot of administration time when you’d rather be just throwing grenades into rooms before storming it with flame-throwers and submachine-guns. So we wanted to focus on what matters in city fighting and tried a lot of things out.

The breakthrough came when we freed ourselves from the burden of measured movement inside buildings. Getting tape measures into buildings to measure movement from room to room, up and down levels, and checking weapon ranges was simply taking up time and actually causing a lot of disruption by hitting models and tipping over the buildings. What really mattered about fighting in buildings were the rooms themselves. Everything happens between rooms and the position of teams in the rooms doesn’t matter. It’s a lot easier and more narrative to just point to a room and say “I’m going to assault that room from this one.” and then just start rolling dice. It cuts straight to the action and lets you start throwing grenades, rather than measuring to see if that team in the corner could reach the doorway.

Key Buildings
When you read about Stalingrad, the stories you see are about key buildings like the Grain Elevator, the Red October Factory, or Pavlov’s House. The buildings were as much a character in these fights as the soldiers themselves, shaping the fight as well as the battle’s final outcome. We included four special missions in the Stalingrad books that let you recreate these fights. While they draw inspiration from actual fights for Stalingrad buildings, the missions are intentionally designed so that you can use them at any point in the war so you can use them for battles set in places like Leningrad, Arnhem, Cologne, Berlin, or even more remote urban areas like Tobruk.

Achievable Tables
The common temptation or expectation is to always try and cover a whole table in buildings. While tables full of city terrain can certainly be done and look amazing, for many of us gamers, this creates a huge barrier to trying city fights. Having a full table of building terrain, is typically unattainable and often impractical for the normal gamer. So we wanted a solution that would work for both types of players. The terrain goal for playing the city fighting missions in the book is achievable and reusable. We limited the essential buildings for these missions to at least two complete buildings so you can get two building boxes and be ready to play. Of course you can add more to your table and play larger urban games if you’d like.

Kitchen Table Gaming
The nature of city fighting is that it takes a lot of troops fighting in a small area to get the job done. Every level in a building effectively doubles the gameplay space below it, so you can fit a lot more troops in a square foot than you would on other tables. This means that you can still use a normal sized force on a much smaller table, which opens up an interesting possibility. The urban fighting missions are designed for a 2’x3’ (60x90cm) table, so you can play a game of Flames Of War wherever you have a table that size. For me, that includes my coffee table in my lounge or my dining room table. (Pro tip, make sure 19 month old children are properly stowed before using this product within 24”/60cm of the floor.) So if you’ve got that friend that you want to introduce the game to, here’s a set of missions that you can use at your home to push them over the edge.

So that’s it! If you’ve never tried urban fighting in Flames Of War, now’s your chance. The rules are streamlined and narrative-focused, the terrain goal is achievable, and you don’t need a lot of space to play. It’s time to grab that bag of grenades and go clear that building!

Want to try out the new City Fighting rules for yourself?
City Fighting Rules PDF (right click, save as)…

~Mike