Pafetikbazerkas foray into 15mm Flames of War

So with nothing left to paint or put together in terms of ground forces for my Germans or Americans it’s time to start the air war!.

I had initially thought to get some allied close air support to balance against my German force and it seemed a relatively historic way to do so. But while I was in the Vitrix store buying 1/100 scale Typhoons I couldn’t help myself and purchased a box of Stukas as well.

To get the most of out of the models I decide to magnetize the load outs. As FoW Typhoons only use rockets and FoW Stukas can be armed either with gun pods or 500lb bombs I decide to take the 500lb bombs from the Typhon box and make them swappable with the gun pods on the Stukas.

If I wanted be historicaly acurate it would never make the table so I thought it was the perfect canvas to have some fun.

At this point I’m wondering if the real test is mirroring it to the other side.

It’s been a little while since I’ve updated any of projects but I havn’t been sitting still by any stretch. Last update had me and my mates decide that I’m going to be the one that expands upon the Germans. Shortly afterwards I’m sitting playing Dune (great game) in my local games store one Friday night ,between lockdowns, when a I can’t help but feel the call of some of the stock, glaring at me from the shelves. A box of plastic soldier 250’s ,a box of Panthers and , a box of Stugs come home with me that evening. And Soon after 88’s, 251’s and Panzer grenadier HQ arrive from OTT (thanks Spring Clean Challenge). And I feel my German army nearing complete.
One of the more frustrating things about both plastic Soldier Co, and Battle front is that their plastic kits tend to have a great selection of variations and armaments in them, I nearly burst with indecision but determine to try reconcile it all with magnets.

Some very careful drilling and filing and some 1x2mm magnets mean I’ve now got a few options to play with.
I can switch between early or late Stugs, and my 251’s can be either transport or 7.5cm guns and my 250’s can be transports, mortars or scouts.

I settle on straight up yank versions of the jeeps and m3’s but after spending so much time trying to understand the variations available I decide to consolidate my findings and put it in a video.

Got a golden oportunity to drive 2 hrs and play my first ever game of Flames of War. It was my mates first game as well so we spent a little time running through a little encounter involving some shermans running into a 7.5cm gun ambush then stepped up to a small 25 point encounter to help us get our heads around command, units, teams, and see how infantry units work with tanks.

We did realise later that a few mistakes were made with declaring targets and we missed the rule on turned turrets but got a flow up and going by the end, to the point where we could see why the smallest games recomended are generaly 50pt games . We really enjoyed it. My Mate wants to focus on Brits, his brother is thinking Russian so I’m going to look at expanding my Germans with some mid war stuff

A few shots chonological to the battle , starting at opposite side of the board we closed on each other till he was behind a wall and I was hunkered down the forest. He took out my stugs with tank fire while I got most of his Shermans with Panzershrecks. His charge across the field into the forest was painfull to the Americans but they still had enough to repel the Germans whan I returned the favour. I dont think tactics was high on our list this game, but it was a lot of fun creating situations then seeing how the rules worked.

Also recieved some more toys for the BoW store and Vitrix in the last couple of weeks so it appears this project will be active for a while yet

Finally all Flames of War miniatures in my possession are complete.

Weathering process prceeded as follows.

sepia wash

pinpoint black wash

pale sand vertical wash lines

homemade weathering powder from soft pastels scraping lots of brown and adding ochre, red, yellow & white till I was satified it looked like typical Normandy. Puffed powder on liberally with brush then dripped a isopropyl on to set before matte varish spray

I supose I shouldnt complain , I only have myself to blame for Striping all my panzer IV’s and tigers at once. Turned out to be  a good days work to stripe and then another good days worth in painting accessories, a quick coat of gloss before decals, and tiny hand painted numbers. Next step , the weathering.