So. I’ve complained, whined, whinged, and badmouthed FoW V4 plenty on this blog. My club played a ton of V2 and a METRIC TON of v3. When v4 came out - it basically killed the game for my local group. Nobody liked the force selection, the smoke rules were a huge turn off, and (most critically I think) those first books were just BLAND.

That being said! Painting tanks for Clash of Steel got me curious about Flames of War - the outstanding plastic kits got me curious about doing it again.

e-100 What a cool tank - seeing this thing in a 15mm model is so cool. I play a lot of World of Tanks so CoS immediately caught my eye

panther88 Another CoS prototype tank - Panther small turret with the long 8.8 gun. See this thing all the time in WoT. In a shocking (to me anyway) turn the sprues contain enough parts to completely build the “historical” panther.

konigs No big tank collection is complete without the King Tiger. Nuff said!

skorpion

I get blown up by this @&*$ing thing all the time in WoT so it was very novel to build it and blow it up on the table!

panter7.5 This is one of my favorite WW2 tanks just in terms of appearance (and using on the table - reluctant trained panthers were my jam in V3). The plastic kit for the Late model Panther is very nice to work with

jgdpziv70 Guderian’s Duck! This is an example of a vehicle that I think works well with FoW v4s changes. The high armor is offset by a dismal cross rating which makes these interesting to use tactically.

marderiii Open top vehicles have been some of my favorite things to work on lately.

pzgren I used to hate painting 15mm infantry but I found this really fun and relaxing to do. I think I’ve gotten much better brush control from when I first returned to the hobby. I’ve also learned to be a little kinder to myself - impression at a distance matters a lot more than pinpoint pixel historical accuracy at this scale.

sdkfz This was the only new plastic kit I found a little annoying to work with - but the end result is nice

88 crack crack - no further comment needed, iconic (I painted mine grey so I can use it the whole war - big brain thinking)

So I cracked open the Normandy compilation book and was immediately blown away! No more bland options! Full fleshed out lists!

Playing some games of v4 in the Great War setting re-iterated that there are core rules changes I like. Faster infantry and slower tanks is good - I like the data-card approach (40k has conditioned me to be cool with this sort of setup and it is very nice to be able to print out all your cards and have a very easy way to reference it during the game).

There are things in the core rules I dont like (the smoke rules in particular are atrocious - we will be house ruling that to use v3s smoke rules full stop). Morale is definitely easier from a gameplay management (as in units routing) standpoint now if feeling a lot less meaningful for the game.

I’ve been working on Normandy German Heer and US Armor. I’m hoping I can convince the guys to give it a try with some house rulings around smoke bombardment (seriously what were they thinking).

Speaking of clash of steel…what a cool game! FoW v4 lite with rad prototype vehicles and a very dynamic mission setup. I am planning to do all but the Brits for this (in particular its a sneaky way to get ready for an Early War period of Team Yankee which I find way more exciting than the late 80s/early modern TY stuff currently out there).

I’ll put a post up Soon(TM) with my done American stuff - Americans are my main interest for Leviathans/early cold war stuff (love those vehicles) - it might not even take my six months to do it!