Getting in to Flames

Hey guys. Ive been putting off getting into flames of war for a while but I think the time is right. I was wondering what armies people are playing ? Im sure theres alot of germans and americans....but how much ? I play Axis and allies minis which is something like a faster/simpler version of FoW and it just so happens the tanks are the same scale so I've got plenty of Vehicles for Germany and Canada and i'd like to go in one of those directions...leaning more toward germany but if there are tooo many german players I will probably go with Canada. What are your thoughts ? Thanks !

There are waaaaaaaaaaaaay too many German players. Canadians would be cool. They have their own special rules. I forget what they are ,but I do remember being impressed by them.
If you wanna be the bad guys there's the Hungarians,Romanians,Italians and Finnish. They are all viable and competitive armies and have some interesting rules. Plus when you kick ass with them you can really gloat.

Either you should do either army, or even both if you already have the models. Unlike GW, Battlefront doesn't care if you use non-BF mini's at their tournaments so I think your good to go.

Both armies provide some differences. There are alot of German players but thats mainly because they are the only Axis faction available in both mid war and late war.

Go with Either!

I'm hoping to get an escalation league going for FOW starting mid-may, I think that'd be a good time to get started and learning the rules, etc.

Dan you forgot... Midwar you have Italians,Romanians,Hungarians and Fin land.
Late war at some point should have All of those except the Italians. All of those minors lasted til almost the end of the war. Hungary surrendered in February 1945.After the siege of Budapest.

Most Axis and Allies minis are not to scale with each other or with Flames of War. The vehicles in A&A mini were sized according to their power in the game. So a transport with no combat strength was tiny (Jeep) while a Tiger tank was huge.

The last three released sets of A&A minis and all future sets are all 15mm. The older sets had weird scales but with the popularity of flames of war they switched to pure 15mm for the line to try and draw in more customers.

Cool, so Canada it is. I may add some finnish stuff later down the line. I loves the finns..I have a small unit of them in AA but borrowing german tanks for them. And yes, all the AAM pieces I have are from the last 3 sets. I actually got into that game right when they did the scale change. good timing.

All of the Finnish units are rated as fearless Veteran. Which is the best rating a unit can have. They some hardened fuckers. Teach those Russian Monkey's a lesson.

Yeah, that also means your not getting alot of them, particularly benefiting all those German rules.

well... I got the Open fire set. Going to start reading the rules today. I was looking through the books and I saw a little bit for Canada in Montys Meatgrinder. Is that all thats available to them ? I also saw they have the priest Kangaroos but not the ram kangaroos... that kinda stinks as I like the ram Kangaroos better and I already have 2. Hopefully they will publish stats for them soon.

No each campaign book that the British were involved in has formations and for late war the main army book is Fortress Europe. This book has all of the company types for all the major forces in late war. It has all the rules for Common Wealth troops as well.
For Mid War its the Afrika Book.

Which North Africa is set to come out this summer by the way.

Here are the books where I believe you can get access to the Canadians:

North Afrika (Which is going to be replaced by "North Africa" this summer, so hold out) Thats the Mid-War book.

Fortress Europe (the main LW book, has rules for Canada in it).

Monty's Meatgrinder (theme specific book, Late War). p


Each one of these works independently of the other, so you really only need one for each war era.

Cool. I got the Montys Meatgrinder as I assume most people do late war anyway. And so far I got a Sherman Tank platoon with a Firefly. So i'm thinking of buying an infantry company box and adding a machine gun platoon and that should right around 600 points. The minimum I need to get started correct ?

That could work, but I'd recommend against the MG platoon. Those guns don't usually last too long. Your better off just getting an infantry platoon and using that, it'll be a good start to your force and let you experience infantry and tanks.

just an infantry platoon ? I was trying to shoot for a 600 point army to start. Should I maybe get a mortar platoon instead ?

Mortar platoons are good also, I'd say fiddle around with it. I'll try to pull out my book tonight and see what I can do.

I was cruising through the FOW site and found this little article about the 4th Canadian Armored Division.

http://www.flamesofwar.com/hobby.aspx?art_id=603

Take a look, it may help you design your list!