I've been playing Flames of War for 15 years I started at version one and have seen Battlefront move from strength to strength with each new addition. I am both a garage gamer and an occasional tournament player so as you can imagine I was a bit apprehensive about the upcoming Version 4 changes I was fully expecting my armies to be nerfed or worse completely removed from the game. I was however pleasantly surprised by both the way Version 4 was rolled out with free resources in the form of new rule books, Youtube gaming tutorials and web articles.

A few aspects of this latest version that I really enjoy is that it encourages players to move a lot more than they used to and with infantry speed increased and tank terror gone when assaulting a tank means they can move across the battlefield darting from cover to cover and with that increased movement pose a threat to lone heavy tanks and gun teams. The other change I like is to artillery in previous editions 155mm cannons would sit behind cover spending the game destroying tank platoons over an over again while their infantry sat dug in (usually automatically defending) playing a role of sitting still and being impossible to hit now with the decreased anti-tank rating but generally increased firepower artillery can now focus on destroying dug in infantry (especially with a repeat bombardment) and guns and we can finally deploy a smokescreen to cover our own troops advance!

From a miniature perspective Battlefronts new plastic ranges really do look amazing they may not have the heft of metal and resin but they detail and quality are superb they're easy to assemble and sure do make the gaming bag a bit easier to carry.

It's always a pain to have to purchase new army books however but I wouldn't be a gamer if i wasn't complaining about that getting in the way of buying more tanks. Overall I think Flames of War has come a long way and the latest version is extremely fun to play and I'd recommend it to anyone wanting to get into WW2 miniature gaming.