The View from the Turret

WWPD Interview with John-Paul from Battlefront

Posted on 23Jun12 Updated on 31Aug12

Well the boys over at the What Would Patton Do podcast score a big one with a great interview with John-Paul of Battlefront, makers of Flames of War. The boys must have had his family tied up at some undisclosed location because they got him to spill the beans on just about everything! You won’t want to miss the interview for yourself but here are the highlights of what John-Paul mentions (forward the show to 51:00 to get right to it) :

• Nuts book at printer now. Next Battle of the Bulge release.
• The new European building range shown in Wargames Illustrated 296 will include about 12 total buildings.
• Mid-war remake (probably starting 2013?) will see campaign books on topics such as Tobruk, El Alamein and Kursk.
• Market-Garden compilation will be ready for Christmas 2012. It will be two ~80+ page books.
• Next early-war release will be winter war (Barbarossa?) in 2013.
• Sea Lion will be done as a campaign book(s).
• Vietnam gets proper campaign/rules book in February 2013 with lots of ‘new things to come’.

John-Paul gives some nice details on their efforts in plastic production where he mentions:

• Battlefront makes over 640 vehicles, over 400 of which are armored vehicles.
• Battlefront wants the plastics to look like BF game miniatures not scale models.
• An Open Fire! boxed game will be released in October 2012 that will include ~11 tanks/guns, ~150figs and a V1 Rocket on launcher all in plastic.
  • Plastic infantry on frames with ~60 figs each. Look identical to metal infantry figures.
  • Company boxes of plastic infantry to come later.
• Battlefront ships 70-80,000 packs (of miniatures?) a month.
• Battlefront produces 1,500-1,700 pages of Flames of War material a year.

[Updated: 31AUG12]