God Saves the Queen: my first FOW tournament – Part 2

After a good start, I was in the top half of the classment. Now we need to fight some serious fight! (If you want to read the first part, just click here!)

Second Game

For the second game I met Alberto De Luca, the owner of  (the Italian  Battlefront official importer) and host of the tournament. After one year of tournaments and events on Team Yankee, I consider Alberto and his wonderful, tireless wife close friends even outside the hobby. Needless to say, Alberto knows the game very well and is one of the top players in Italy. He had a Russian list with two tank Formations, a Grant one and a mixed one with dreadful KV-1, Valentines (“Tovarish Dimitri, they are the tanks I lent to you and now you use them against me!”) and a 10 T60 tanks strong platoon. Also, he had two mortar troops to barrage the enemy line while the tanks march full forward.

God Saves the Queen: my first FOW tournament

After one year of intense gaming on with my British BAOR army (of which and ), I decided to try the WW2 side of Battlefront rules. has lots in common with Team Yankee, so I basically had the same ruleset with much more variety in army lists.

I chose the British Mid-War army in the desert: partially because I already had some V1 pieces, but also since I planned to paint the US Army (the other army I’d like to paint) in the Late period for an internal campaign we’re going to have at our local club in early 2019. So I fast-painted the missing pieces and formed a list of Desert Rats. The first tournament at a stone’s throw was Hobby Model Expo on 30th September. Hobby Model is one of the most important shows in northern Italy: everything related to modelling hobbies is there, from miniatures to plastic models, from painting to lots of soldiers of any scale.

Review: 15mm Epsilon Studios Terrain

For our MW Eastern Front escalation league, the Huntsville Historical Gamers were given the opportunity to review a nice addition to our table terrain.  This Iconic terrain piece is produced in 15mm by the Epsilon Studios from Barcelona, Spain

Introducing the Stalingrad – Barmaley Fountain. This historical fountain is based on a Russian fairy tale, Aybolit and Barmaley, written in 1925 by Korney Chukovsky.  In the poem, Doctor Aybolit cautions the Little children:  Do not go to Africa for there are large evil barmaley there that will bite you!  In the whimsical statue, by sculptor Romuald Lodko, the children are dancing around the barmaley.

The View From New England – Tournament Play in the Northeast 2017-2018

There are many people who enjoy our hobby of miniature wargaming in different ways.  Some love a great historical game, tailoring a board to match a particular battle, designing forces to match.  Others like a cooperative aspect to it, playing on teams, or making huge games that bring in lots of players at once.

Chairborne in front of a UN APC. The basis for what will be a beautiful but losing army in a team Yankee tournament next year.

Some are in it for the modelling and painting, designing elaborate bases, displays, or beautiful scenic pieces.  Others participate to test their competitive meddle against the best competition they can.  At any given point, some of us are in the hobby for all of these reasons.  I enjoy all these things, but I love tournaments. At a tournament, I can get three or more games against diverse opponents, and I get to sharpen my skills at something I enjoy doing. I get to see new techniques for painting armies and meet people with the same passion for this as me. I’ve made some great friends since I got going with

Since I began playing in 2011, I have only managed to finish first in a tournament once. But I felt with practice and opportunity, I might be able to claw my way into the big dance at masters in Indianapolis this year.  Last year I managed to climb as high as 22nd in the rankings. Maybe this year was my best opportunity. And so my travels began.  As our tournament season closes and another one begins this October, I’ll show some pictures of my journey throughout the past year, some big wins, some big losses, and some lessons I learned along the way.

NDNG Podcast – Austin and Ed on FOW

In this Podcast, Austin and Ed discuss new looks and insight to help give a competitive edge. After the introduction, Austin talks the difference between taking red steel vs Soviet lend-lease tanks. Ed then talks about the supreme of Italians after the Eastern Front books.

FOW Regionals in Los Angeles

By Players at the tourney: Johnny Vasquez, Justin Rodriguez, Hyato Tukakosi, Scott Miller and Tom Richards 

Photos by: Hyato Tukakosi and Troy Hill

Compiled by Troy Hill (Edited to include Justin R’s comments).

I recently organized the Pacific South-West regionals, a two-day, five-round FOW MW Tourney held at . No Dice No Glory and  sponsored the tourney (along with the Team Yankee tourney the day before).

Since the tournament occurred one week after BattleFront’s new books for the Eastern Front, Iron Cross and Enemy at the Gates hit the shelves, I allowed lists from the new books in the event.

Afterwards, I asked players to send in their thoughts to several questions about how the new forces affected the games they played. Below are their responses. The only editing I have done is for spelling and grammar, as well as organizing their comments by category.

Final Standings: Surprisingly, the top player fielded a force from Armoured Fist – a Death or Glory list. Another Brit list took fourth. Soviet lists were second, third, tenth and fourteenth. Germans bunched in the middle of the pack at fifth through eighth place, with one at eleventh. The fourth Soviet player, Ramses, is a younger new player in his first season of playing Flames of War. Give him some time to learn both the game and his army, and he’ll climb the ranks.

The British 1st Airborne Division – A Project Completed

My first article for WWPD was about the British Airborne.  And unfortunately thanks to the changing hosting rules of Photobucket.  My pictures there are lost for all time. But to be frank, there wasn’t much to see. It was a lot of blisters sitting atop a British Flag. Which my wife kept asking me if I was selling. The answer was always and still is, no. Especially now that this is all done.