Monday, December 20, 2010

15mm Flames of War British Recce in North Africa


These beautiful photos are courtesy from my friend Tim Brown in Saskatoon. We had a WWII North African game a few years back using 15mm Flames of War castings. In the shots are some of my British 'Cherrybums' light recce and Crusaders doing what they do best. (As another good friend of mine, Sean McWatt, would say, "Recce by Death.") The rest of the models and terrain are from Tim's great collection.


I appreciate how Flames of War has almost single-handedly revitalized the WWI miniature hobby but there are a few things I just can't get into. One is the look of tanks on the game table hub-to-hub. It just seems so out of scale to the vehicles. I know they are supposed to represent around 5 AFVs but it looks whacky. The second thing is seeing heavy artillery on a tactical game table. Even in the scale FOW is operating at these models should be located a couple rooms away. Again, it just looks wrong and plays weird (opponents can conceivably move across the table and actually attack your artillery which would typically be located several miles from the front). I know they just want to sell miniatures but they should have created an abstracted system for having artillery on the table.  But hey, what do I know. Its popular and is getting guys excited about the hobby.