BF Open Day 2019 – All the info!

Well yesterday was the BF Open Day and what a great day it was. Attendance was well up on last year (well over 120 people attended) and if the queues at the till are anything to go by, Late War seems to be selling well!

On offer was a host of participation games included the ever popular Whittman’s Wild ride, a New Brecourt Manor skirmish table, our 24×6 foot Omaha Landing Table, a lovely Oil Wars game, the famous Battle of the Bulge Gale Force 9 table and finally a stunning British Sword Beach table. All in all a lot of Flames players to see and join in with.

If you fancy seeing some of the tables we put up a couple of live streams on our Facebook page which you can have a look at.













As lovely as the boards were, what I know a lot of people want is a broken down synopsis of what came out of the Seminars and discussions ie what new toys and developments are on the Horizon. Well here you go, you lucky people.

Flames of War Late War

Germans

Released in September

Mainly a Plastic release with new Fallschirmjager models and new plastic halftracks doing multiple variants. New Zimmerit Panther in Plastic as well, although its still FA9 (Expect FA10 for the later models). A plastic cross bar Pak43 is also confirmed.

Recce Company looks interesting and it seems that you can take 3 Shreks in them which makes a big although expensive platoon.

Beach Defense Company is Aggressive, Confident, Green with a 5+ last stand. These will be a quite different way to play Germans.

Jagpanzers confirmed.

British Book

Released in Feb 2020.

Its a huge book Peter read out all the formations

Parachute Company Airlanding Company Commando troop Rifle Company Desert Rat Rifle Company Sherman DD formation Chruchill Sqn Cromell Recce Sqn Sherman Squadron Desert Rat Cromwell Sqn Desert Rat Motor Company Motor Company

Hobart’s Funnies are confirmed as a command card and will be Direct Order.

BF are switching back to hard plastic as of the British Book so nice hard plasic paras coming our way. I imagine some Commandos as well although this wasn’t confirmed.

The British book will be the first all plastic book and 17pdrs, Bofors 40mm and Daimler/Dingo are confirmed as plastic as well.

Crusader AA will be plastic but they are still working on it.

SS (Zee Bad guys)

April 2020 Release.

Much smaller than the other books with less model releases (because most tanks are already out).

Plastic SS troops will come.

Key news is that SS is Aggressive, fearless and trained but when within 6 inches of their formation commander they act as veterans for tactics rating (Commanders are Vet). You can get 5 Panthers for the cost of 4 vanilla ones. This will be a way to get a lot more things on the table (Beach Company Formation with SS Panzers could be interesting…).

Flames of War Mid War

German and Italian Para book coming in Nov as a Booklet with command and unit cards included.

German Paras get their own support where as Italian use the existing Italian Support table. German Paras can be taken in any MW German book.

US Para book also coming in Nov with a booklet inc command and unit cards.

British Para booklet in 2020 when the new models come out for LW.

Minor Nations are spread out over 2020-2021 inc Finns, Hungarians, Romanians, Japanese, Marines and Far East Commonwealth. Its all coming guys!

Team Yankee

Name change to WW3 – Team Yankee to represent that they are moving the story forward to the 90s and that this is now a global conflict.

V2 in Dec but its stressed that it is just the V4 rules.

British Book in Dec with Challenger 1 & Warrior(inc uparmoured 91 style) as well as Fox confirmed in plastic. MRLS mentioned as well.

US will follow British in 2020 with M1A1s, Bradleys, MRLS and Apache.

Next up will be Soviets with BMP3, Hip and T80.

Germans and Warsaw Pact will follow.

A number of PDFs will be released for early stages of the War (FOAN and Nam period) and if popular will combine into a book (Think this is Check Point Charlie, it was a little unclear).

General

There is a feeling that FOW is in a much better place than last year, lessons have been learnt from MW releases.

Team Yankee has continued to be much more successful than they originally hoped and is now expanding to a global conflict (remember Peter said on a podcast that there would be Scandinavian forces).

Beasts of War will run a global Normandy Campaign in Q4 2019.

UK GT is Nov 19 at Firestorm Games further info soon.

Early War will be done but no time line. It will be in a similar way to FOAN/NAM with compilation books.

Maus confirmed for end of LW.

BF are looking at options for partnerships to make plastic aircraft they are not happy with their resin ones.

MW points will be looked at for competitive play with some sort of generals collection or ability to change to a competitive point set on Forces. More to follow…

Peter apologized for the slowness of LFTF and says they will increase in regularity.

There will not be Command Cards for TY.

be Command Cards for TY. There will be card set called ‘Bloody Omaha’ which be a bit like the old Infantry Aces set. Expect this to change the way the game plays and add abilities and new objectives for a more narrative driven campaign.

The M18 hellcat will be in the US Bulge Booj

Wild Card ideas have been produced (SAS, LRDG, Brandburgers) however BF just dont have the time to do everything they want at the moment.

We may see a 15mm Dune game as BF have the license. No Star Wars though (Come on do a partnership with Fantasy Flight!!).

Stalingrad ruins will be available but they are being saved for a release that would suit them (I assume Bagration).

Card defenses set (5 A4 pages) will be released in Sep for Beach Landings including a sheet (I am assuming paper) for the beach area itself. 3D card bocage planned (Very dubious about this idea I always find card looks a bit tacky). A good move for casual players who don’t want to invest lots of money in scenery and defenses they would rarely use. It will also allow lots of beach landing games for the world wide campaign.

Well all in all a busy few years ahead for BF both for Team Yankee and Flames of War. The DDay book went down a storm with everyone who bought it on the day and the overwhelming comment was how much bigger and in-depth it was than the MW offerings. Next year maybe we will do a massive Bagration board.