Flames of War – The BEST Introduction for Younger Gamers!!

I can’t say it better than Glenn Kidd did in his blog: Command Decision *Test of Battle* has:

Flames of War

In the past year I’ve heard a lot of buzz about ‘Flames of War’, some of it good, some of it not; in addition, I’ve been told many of the posts on the miniatures page are less than favorable. For me–I like the game. Yes, it makes no excuses about being a game, and perhaps this is one of the reasons I like the game. The ‘Flames of War’ folks make no apologies about their game–what they have done is to try and make their game fun and exciting, and I think they did.

Reflecting on ‘Flames of War’, I believe this game has done more for historical war-gaming than any game I recall. The only game I ever remember having a following near this large was WRG. The number of books and its web support Flames of War has is remarkable–I can only envy this.

My viewpoint, this article, is not a criticism and, in addition, I’ve actually played the game twice and both times had a good time. Some of the criticism of ‘Flames of War’ puzzles me–it’s as if the critic has not played the game or even given this game a fair chance. One of my observations, no, let’s say confessions, is if this game had existed in 1960s, I might have discovered the ladies and their charm much later–not to repeat myself, but if I was still a teenager I would love this game. Since I loved military history, and my Dad was a WWII veteran, this would have been my favorite game. During my adolescence I played most of the board-games of the era. I didn’t become involved with miniature war-games until 1969-70, not sure which–guess I’m getting old? Since I had a considerable number of models and soldiers, this would have filled most of my fantasies–most.

As I recall, not all, well, not many, of the vehicles needed to play anything but West-front existed when I was younger. I would have been stuck with West-front and, perhaps, the Pacific. So what? I would have still used my imagination to somehow create what I needed. Now, you can get almost everything you need, for pretty much all the war and all the fronts. What a dream! Not only can you get almost anything you need, but you have several scales to chose from. I used to game WWII in 20mm-1/76 but about 10 years ago I switched to 15mm.

To repeat myself, ‘Flames of War’ is a great game, and if I were younger I would play it more often. Now that I’m older and heavily involved with Command Decision, I don’t have time to play this game. In my fantasy or whimsy my interest now is more at the operational level, I like being a colonel or brigadier not a lieutenant or captain. Nothing wrong with being a lieutenant or captain, but I feel I need a promotion. READ MORE

I started out at the age of 18 with Mike Reese’s Tractics WWII ruleset and have gone through all the younger rulesets and now at the ripe age of 51 play Spearhead, TAC: WWII, etc…

There is a comparison review that includes these rules in the latest (No. 298 February 2008 edition) of Miniature Wargames, along with Rapid Fire, Flames of War, Poor Bloody Infantry and Battlefront WWII.