Flames of War – European Series 2025

Hello Readers,

Fred here. Happy New Year to all! May 2025 bring you bliss in playing our favorite historical game, joy of meeting old friends and making new ones, collecting, assembling, painting, and playing new toys. And may the odds always be in your favor!
Today I provide you an interview of the organizers of the new circus in town: the FoW European Series. Please join me in warmly welcoming our good friends Paolo “Terminator” Paglianti, Robby “Good Tastes” Notermans and Thomas “Iron Jaw” Rickal!

Breakthrought Assault [BTA]: Hello gentlemen and thank you for taking time for us. For our readers, can you please explain what are the Flames of War European Series you launched in 2025?

European Series Organizers [ESO]: The European Series is a series of interconnected European tournaments that share a common ranking system. Our idea is to create a European international circuit that allows Flames of War players to participate and share their passion together, much like what happens at the ETC in August every year since 2012. However, unlike the ETC, which is an invitation-only team event featuring the six best players from each nation, the European Series are open tournaments for individual players.

[BTA]: Round of applause to this initiative, this is great! It shows that competition is a nice social place where everybody finds what it is looking for in the hobby. How was this idea born?

[ESO]: Robby came up with this idea a few years ago, but couldn’t commit fully to it because he was already organizing the ETC 2022 and 2023. Robby wanted to create a circuit of connected tournaments, similar to the various Nationals in the United States, with the support of Battlefront. Robby started discussing the project with Thomas, organizer of the German Nationals, and shortly after, Paolo, organizer of the Italian Nationals was included in the loop.

[BTA]: Thank you Robby for having thought about the idea and thank Thomas and Paolo for providing your stones to the building. Why did you decide to make it a join series with the others?

[ESO]: The idea is to create a European circuit where all players, regardless of their competitive level or gaming experience, can share their passion, together. This would allow them to meet at high-quality tournaments with a larger number of participants compared to the usual 10-12 players at regular local tournaments. We hope and believe that the European Series can encourage players to travel to new locations and meet players from other countries, especially considering that a flight from Germany to Italy costs about the same per person as driving from Berlin to Frankfurt. We hope to recreate the magical atmosphere of the ETC in series of single player tournaments, high quality and accessible events, where Flames of War and wargaming enthusiasts come together for a weekend of shared passion, gameplay, and exchange of experiences.

[BTA]: Quite an ambitious target indeed. Here at BTA, we do have many ETC participants since 2012 and are active players on the European scene, we totally understand the concept. We find the idea of providing the players events where they can meet new players and improve their skills superb. How were selected the tournaments to be part of the Series?

[ESO]: To be eligible to join the European Series, a tournament must span two days, with five games, and use the classic Flames of War scoring system (8-1, 6-3, etc.); this is to ensure consistency, notably comparable scoring through the Series. It is not mandatory for all tournaments in the European Series to be in the same period (Mid or Late) or to use the same army points limit (100, 80, 95 points), nor to follow identical rules pack. Additionally, since we aim to create events that attract players willing to travel considerable distances (or miles!), we are looking for tournaments that offer a certain level of quality and are organized by teams with proven experience.
As a starter, the first European Series will take place in the first half of 2025, from January to May, and will include only three tournaments. The first will be the Italian National (February 1-2), held in Cornaredo, Milan, organized by Paolo Paglianti.
Next will be the German National (April 26-28) in Heiligenhaus, organized by Thomas Rickal.
Finally, we will conclude the first European Series with the Flanders GT on May 17-18 in Diepenbeek, organized by Robby Notermans, at the same wonderful location of ETC 2022 and 2023.

Here is our “locandina” with all events!

After that, if everything goes as we hope and Flames of War players show interest in these interconnected tournaments in Europe, we will start the second edition of the European Series in September 2025, running once again until the following June (2026). The ETC (traditionally held in mid-summer, between late July and early August) will serve as the “divider” between different seasons of the European Series. By the second season, we plan to expand the European Series to more events, like 5 or 6 tournaments. Most likely, we will include the English National (organized by our friend Mark Goddard – and writer for BreakThrough Assault!) and perhaps 1 or 2 additional European tournaments, provided we receive applications of the same caliber.
However, we don’t want to jump straight to 10 tournaments in 10 months, as we aim to ensure both quality of the events, and regularity of the participation. Also, we of course want to avoid making participation in the European Series rankings too demanding in terms of time, weekends, and financial costs.

[BTA]: Nice – and thank you for considering Real Life of players as well! 3 tournaments for this first edition is already very respectable, congratulations. We can think of several countries having the quality and experience to join the tour, and also others incentivized by the project. In fact, we guess you will run out of space before your run out of applicants! A specific of your tournaments is the “series” mechanism, which is quite a brand new thing here. Can you please explain how it works? Notably the ranking system?

[ESO]: The scoring system for the European Series ranking adds up the results from each tournament participating in the event and considers the best two out of three – as simple as that. Therefore, to qualify for final ranking, you only need to participate in two out of the three tournaments in the first season during the first six months of 2025. If you just want to attend 1 event, this is fine as well, just, you won’t participate in the final ranking for the Series. The tournaments are already known, so you can start planning which ones to attend, book flights and hotels, and so on. When we expand to a larger number of tournaments, we will determine how to manage the ranking, like considering the best half plus one of the tournaments in the Series – we aren’t there yet!

[BTA]: Quite a good idea to make players attending those events and we guess the “Series” challenge will attracts competitive players (well, we know we are hyped for it!). Speaking of players, how many do you expect to participate in the Series?

[ESO]: We would be very happy if around 30/40 players attended each of the three tournaments in the first season of the European Series. For the Milan tournament, we already have more than 30 registrations, more than half being foreigners. Both the German National and the Flanders GT are as centrally located (geographically speaking) as Milan, so we hope many players, from Spain to Ireland, from Italy to Poland, will decide to participate in one or more events in the Series.

[BTA]: Interesting. Be certain that here at BTA, we will do our best to support and advertise those events: the more players we are, the best it is for our favorite historical game and Community! To tease a little bit FoW players who may join the circus, can you briefly share the main content of the rulespack of the 3 events?

[ESO]: Apart from the mandatory 2 days / 5-games / BF scoring system, there are no restrictions on the rules packs for the individual tournaments participating in the European Series.
The Italian Nationals, which will be held in Milan (Cornaredo) on February 1-2, will be a 100-point MW tournament with the same rules as ETC 2025 (only Monsters with active combat 1942-1943 allowed, no repeated formations, etc.).
The German Nationals (April 26-28) will be a 100-point tournament with two mandatory and different formations.
The Flanders GT (May 17-18) will be a LW tournament with 92 points, 1 formation only with supports from the same book, and 1 mandatory ally.
As you can see, we believe the variety is an asset and an added incentive to encourage greater participation.

[BTA]: For sure, the diversity proposed makes sure every player will find its fun, and is quite challenging for the competitors wanting to be ranked! NDLR : Fred – I am already scrambling my head with the rules for the Flanders GT… Anyhow, your initiative is great for the Community. Does BattleFront was involved in the process? Did they offer support, like prizes, gifts, publicity…?

[ESO]: Matt Sulley from Battlefront expressed great appreciation for our idea when we spoke to him at the ETC 2024 in Poland, and he has already confirmed that not only will Battlefront provide the usual support for each National (plaques and prizes for the top players), but also a set of specific plaques for the winners of the Series, which will be awarded in Belgium in May at the final tournament of the Series. What’s more, Matt will participate as a player in Milan!

[BTA]: Matt S. playing is surely the most noticeable event of your project guys! Maybe Phil and Wayne will attend next season, who knows? Anyway, good to have the Company aboard, and yes, we do like BF’s plaques. The whole operation is quite ambitious: what is your goal for this? How do you see the future?

[ESO]: All three of us love organizing wargaming events with international ambitions, so what drives us is the desire to create a series of events that encourage European (and beyond!) Flames of War players to travel and participate in our tournaments. We hope that these will be moments of meeting, dinners together, and, of course, lots and lots of Flames of War games with friends from all over Europe.
The ultimate goal is for the players to be happy after a weekend of shared passion.
If everything goes well and European players show interest in the Series, we would like to expand following seasons of the European Series by including additional tournaments, to the point where we will have, every month, somewhere in Europe, a tournament of our Series.

[BTA]: A utterly noble ambition, and we wish you all the best for success. Thank you very much for this much appreciated initiative, and good luck with the 1st season.

That’s all for today folks.
Here at BTA we are super hyped by this new project, and we hope this interview gives you good motivation to attend 1, 2 or even the 3 events in 2025. Let’s make it a success so we it can expand in 2026 and beyond.
Please join us in thanking Paolo, Robby and Thomas for their time in the comments section.

Knowledge is power: share it widely!

Fred