By Troy Hill

This weekend (May 27-28, 2023) saw chaos and pandemonium descend on the Detroit suburb of Novi, Michigan as the Death or Glory group of GW gamers hosted Motor City Mayhbem, a Grand Tournament style of game convention at the Suburban Collection Showplace in Novi.

In addition to all of the Games Workshop madness at a GT, Warlord Games Raider Jeff Wiertalla organized two Bolt Action events, which I assisted by playing as the Gumby/Ringer in both.

Other games like Kings of War, Conquest, and Star Wars Legion also had events. Below is my own recap of my action in the Bolt Action tourneys, and a photo-dump of what I saw in the non-GW space.

By Richard Steer

“Does anyone have any Wespes that I can borrow?” The request was posted by a friend on one of our local group chats ahead of a Late-War Flames of War tournament last year. Once the accusations of “meta chasing” died down, it led to a conversation about the role and effectiveness of artillery in the game.

As someone who primarily plays British forces, my contribution to the discussion was that while the Late-War British lists have a lot of artillery options, only mortars and AVREs offer good value. The British towed artillery piece, the 25pdr, is only Firepower 4+ and is expensive due to being Fearless Veteran. Where the Germans and Americans have cost-effective three-gun units of self-propelled artillery, the British Priest and Sexton troops are units of four, again being Fearless Veteran.

To cap it off, it’s not easy to make use of that Veteran skill because most British Formation Commanders are only rated as Trained. Almost everything that the 25pdr should be able to do in the game can be done more effectively by Crocodiles.

The 25pdr field gun played an immense role in British and Commonwealth actions throughout the war, and it’s a shame that they don’t see the table more often. To do my bit to help correct this, I challenged myself to build a British list that goes all-in on artillery.

Home Page – The Guards Museum

By Robert Kelly

Located between the Guards Museum and Buckingham Palace is Wellington Barracks.  That is the home to the troops who are on ceremonial duties and conduct the changing of the guard ceremonies. Here are a group of Irish Guardsmen getting ready for parade. I found this part quite interesting and there were no crowds. 

Then I followed the troops to Buckingham Palace. The British tend to make the forming up and inspecting of troops a long drawn-out affair, but those from other armies might find it interesting. 

In fact, a US veteran was standing at the fence with me and I explained a few things.  Most don’t know that one of the reasons that the officers “promenade” back and forth along the edge of the parade square is to show sobriety. This goes back a long time when drinking was one of the few forms of entertainment for the troops and for officers.

“Flawed on every fundamental level, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is possibly the most unplayable garbage available on the Nintendo Entertainment System.” — Game Informer

By Patrick S. Baker

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Jekyll & Hyde) was a video game developed by Advance Communication Company and released by Bandai for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) in 1988. The game was based on the classic horror novella by Robert Louis Stevenson.

The novella tells the story of the brilliant scientist, Dr. Henry Jekyll, well known for his decency and generosity, but with a hidden and terrible dark side. He creates a potion to separate his dark side from his better self. Instead, the mixture changes him into a cruel and violent man named Mr. Hyde.

Jekyll & Hyde was a unique game for its time, in that it tried to tell a rather complex and subtle story through a video game.

by Dennis ‘MATT VARNISH’ Campbell

The second Canadian Tabletop Championships (CTC) was held over the Mother’s Day Weekend here in Ottawa, ON, Canada, after a 4-year hiatus thanks to Covid 19.  I attended the first CTC in 2019 where I was the ringer for Flames of War on Day One and wound up winning the Team Yankee event with my Syrians on Day Two.  I would have participated in the two-day Bolt Action event this year were it not on Mother’s Day and my wife’s birthday weekend, but I am assured next year will be earlier in the month, the first weekend of May.

By Tom Gall

Terrain in the form of buildings for the tabletop has evolved over the years. The technology for what makes for a great building continues to evolve. Scratch builds, plastic model kits, cast resin, pre-painted resin, MDF, 3D print just to name a few. Depending on how long you’ve been around you might have a variety of samples from from technology stage.

I was especially happy many years back when Miniature Building Authority and Battlefront/Gale Force 9 offered pre-painted terrain called “Battlefield in a box” that once the packaging was open you had something to use on the tabletop. It was nice to not be adding to my paint queue for a change.

Old favorites like Novus Design while great kit still had a “you must paint it” step. They just recently retired from the business and will be missed.

Micro Art Studios recently released a line of Normandy-themed buildings with “pre-painted” MDF in 28mm. This article takes a look at the line.

By Caroline Gilmore

The day is May 1, 2024: China is about to attack Taiwan, North and South Korea are poised at the precipice of conflict, and in India, unexpected floods force people from their homes.

Thus begins “Rising Tides,” the annual kinetics wargame organized by Strategic Crisis Simulations (SCS), an undergraduate-run organization at George Washington University.

By Tom Gall

This year I was pleasantly surprised to be in London on business at exactly the same time as Salute the largest independent game convention in the UK. This year, the 50th anniversary, was perfect timing for the first time ever attending. The event is held at the ExCel center on the east side of London. It was super easy to get to by the London Underground via the new Elizabeth Line. Once inside, queue up to enter…

Different than AdeptiCon or GenCon, no badge pickup, just get in line, get to it. Also different from those other Cons was something that really had me going, I wanted to sign up for a variety of games to play. Maybe a tournament? Or something? I did pack a tape measure and dice but going in this idea of going to a game convention and not knowing if you’d even get to play anything was well, weird.

With Salute it’s different than the states, there it’s run by the South London Warlords club. A good portion of the games were run by the variety of game clubs in the area. Then intermixed with the demos games were row after row of vendor, demo games, vendor, vendor, demo games. Different, but refreshing especially if you were looking to try out new things as well as shop.

By Tom Burgess

Henry Turner is one of the most prolific 3D Files creators for wargaming.  I first came across Henry’s work searching for STL files to supplement my Back Seas fleets. In addition to those glorious ships he has offered “6mm” collections for the American Civil War, Napoleonics, and others. Now he has entered the Medieval era with his new 100 Years War Kickstarter.

Henry asked No Dice No Glory if we would be willing to do a review of his new 100 Years War Kickstarter.  As I did a review of his 10 to 28mm  “Battleground 1983: Warsaw Pact” project previously, I volunteered to follow up with this one. This Europe Asunder – 100 Years War Kickstarter goes active on April 28th, 2023 and runs  until May 12th, 2023.

By Jim Naughton

Just when you thought it was safe to use or ignore my original treatise on Warsaw Pact artillery, BF introduced new toys. With the introduction of Red Dawn there are two new indirect fire systems – the 2S9 Nona self-propelled gun-mortar and the BM-37 82mm Mortar.

Previously NDNG has published three articles explaining Warsaw PACT artillery: TOS-UP Part 1, TOS-UP Part 2, and TOS-UP Part 3.  I will draw a few insights from previous for comparison but I’m not going to repeat the information. Part I identified the artillery available in Team Yankee and gave the statistics.  The next section furnishes data on the two new weapons.

The 2S9 NONA (Noveysheye Orudiye Nazemnoy Artillerii or Newest Ordnance of the Ground Artillery) was introduced in 1981 to replace towed mortars in rapidly expanding Air Assault forces as well as the towed guns of the Air Assault Divisions.  The NONA began showing up in Motor Rifle Regiments in the late 1980s as production continued.  A variant was built into the BTR-80 and towed versions exist for mountain fighting, and for airmobile infantry units (which have little organic transport).  Battlefront represents the 2S9 baseline, built into the BTR-D hull.

The BF model is sold separately from the generic BTR-D package (which features infantry carrier, BTR-ZD, and BTR-RD variants) and represents an essential component of a ‘pure’ VDV force.  The NONA populates the niche in VDV units that would be filled by the 2S1 Carnation and is also available as a support choice in the same niche of the Support Section of the Force Diagram occupied by the Carnation.