Keeping things classy: Battlefront Miniatures

Now I'm sure an awful lot of you will have seen this video already. I was going to interrupt Macavity and Frontline Cat week to put an article up on this, but I thought I'd hold off until boxing day as I'm not doing much of anything and it means I put off doing the washing up for another hour or two. However, I think it does deserve a serious piece of analysis I guess and also some coverage. Why? Well because it's genuinely a really nice gesture from Battlefront Miniatures to their loyal customers, to offer the 3rd edition Flames of War rulebook free of charge. Yep you read that right, and you heard them right in that video. They are giving away a free version of the rules if you already have a second edition rulebook. Now they've done this before, but to be brutally honest they weren't giving that many out the first time they did it, this time around that's a very different story.

Why can't I get passed the mental block that these guys existed?

Flames of War

I  think it would be fair to say that I am not the worlds biggest historical wargamer, in fact you might say it doesn't interest me in the foggiest... and you'd not be too far from the truth. While for my parents generation I think historical wargaming was ever so slightly more important or prevalent in the hobby, it has taken somewhat of a back seat, certainly for me and my peers to sci-fi and fantasy inspired games, why? Well Elves and Jedi's are just way cooler than Red Coats and Yankees!!! Well they are to me. There's also something that I always found a little unnerving about the whole 'battle re-enactment' thing as well. Maybe others don't have an issue with it but I have to admit to being ever so slightly uneasy about say reliving the Alamo or the landings on Omaha beach. Actual people died in those fights and while I have no problem obliterating fantasy Orcs or space ninjas... dropping a mortar shell on an actual unit that had real people in it... well it just cuts a little too close for me.

I need to make it clear that I have not yet played any 'proper' games of Flames of War, I had an abortive intro game at a hobby store I happened to stumble across while trying to find a train station and... well the guy running the game had some interesting 'beliefs' and it kind of put me off the whole thing for a while. However people kept saying give it a go, have a try, its good fun etc. etc. etc... so I got the starter set, Open Fire, which gives me 2 German tanks and 3 American tanks, a mini rulebook some dice; you get the picture. Now I've actually played 2 games using this starter set and while I'm certain there's way more to the game, I do like the mechanics of it all. It seems fast and fluid and well structured. So I went out and got a load of the source books and I have to say they are exceptionally well produced and are of an extremely high quality and treat the source material with an incredible amount of reverence and dignity... unlike the strange guy who gave me the intro game, who I still to this day regret not punching!