Beginners: Late war lists ready to go!

Right. Continuing the Flames of War for beginners theme I wanted to write a couple of 'starter' lists for the Late War period. In this post you'll find some introduction to the lists, the lists themselves and some discussion about the selections. I've also made your shopping experience pretty easy if you want to actually go ahead and buy that exact list. Cut, paste, email your LGS and ask for a quote!

Ok, for starters, it's tough to pick a book for the lists. Each Flames of War source book is specific to a time period in the war. Blitzkrieg deals with Early war. Eastern Front and North Africa deal with Mid War and pretty much everything else is focused on Late War. I've proposed the use of Fortress Europe as it's a good starter source book before but for specific reasons I'll explain further on, I think Turning Tide and Earth and Steel are wise investments for the new Late War players.

Review: The Plastic Soldier Company 15mm Panzer IV

Alrighty then! Griddon here and I'm pretty excited to give you a review of 'The Plastic Soldier Company' 15mm Panzer IVs.

I hadn't heard much about this company until a few weeks ago when I listened the guys on the WWPD podcast talk about the T34s the company makes. They gave the kit a pretty positive review. (I can't remember the episode number but maybe one of the guys will chime in below and help us out!) When I went looking I found out that they also made PzIVs. My German project needs at least ten PzIVs so I figured I'd give them a go. Straight off the bat, they are a solid value proposition. Delivered to my door by the fantastic Irresistible Force here in Australia for $30 AUD per box.

Each box comes with five injection moulded plastic sprues with one Panzer IV per sprue. The Plastic Soldier Company have been very smart about how they went about making this kit and the box is capable of making four variants of this popular tank.. The PzIV Ausf F1, PzIV Ausf F2, PzIV Ausf G and the PzIV Ausf H. I'll be making the PzIV H for my late war force but that leaves me with five kits and I hope to use them for an upcoming mid war army.

The sprue

News: Games Workshop makes Flames of War even more attractive!

After much rumour and speculation, Games Workshop (GW) this week announced new trading terms for their UK independant stores. You can read the full details over at Maelstrom and Wayland Games sites. The upshot of this is that to most Australian gamers the Games Workshop systems just got a lot more expensive from the end of May. I have no doubt that in time other avenues to achieve the same good price from UK indies will surface. (Erm... Ebay?) However, it's more GWs attitude to fixing the price discrepancy. Instead of conducting some price adjustment to make shopping in Australia more attractive, why not just prevent Australians shopping elsewhere? Not cool and I really don't think the move is going to benefit local gaming stores at all. Combined with GW's recent announcement of their Finecast range, which if you can believe it will cost more than the outgoing metal models, and the total picture for Australian GW product fans is financial pain.

Buying Stuff: Local Hobby Store or Cheapest Option

G'day all. Griddon here with a rant. Albeit a rant with factual information. It was meant to be a quick update on my Panzergrenadier Division Grossdeutchsland as I said I'd detail where I bought my stuff from but I kinda got mad half way through and thought I'd chuck some emotion into the mix. ;)

Where you buy your stuff is an important factor for Australians. Perhaps not so important for those living in the UK or the US. Before we get into the meat of this, let me say this:

I totally get the need to support local gaming stores and I have done so with my latest Flames of War orders as well as the entirety of my last 40k force and all my Malifaux. However, I feel the viability of local gaming stores are being completely undermined by the pricing policies of a particular and very popular gaming company, Games Workshop. That's my opinion.