Gaming

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 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.

By Michael “ACON” Rafferty

AdeptiCon 2023 is in the books!

AdeptiCon 2023 was held March 22^nd – 26^th in Schaumburg, IL. This year we had over 6,500 badged attendees, which is the largest AdeptiCon we’ve ever had. It looks like we’ve fully recovered from the COVID slump and things are bigger and better than ever. This was the second year of having a full second venue at the Hyatt, which grew from just hosting historicals to also hosting Lord of the Rings and A Song of Ice and Fire.

We also had a 1:1 scale Urbanmech

By David Garvin

When I first played Squad Leader back in 1983, I found that 35-page rule book to be rather complex. The rules were laid out in Programmed Instruction in order to facilitate ease of learning. This just meant that the player only had to read a few pages, play a scenario and then progress.  By the time the player had gone through the book, he or she could then play any scenario.

This method of instruction continued through the original series, up to and including GI: Anvil of Victory. By that time, the player could play any of 47 scenarios released with the games, and a number more of officially-released scenarios. There were a few third-party scenarios, including some from On All Fronts and even Dragon Magazine. That said, as I attempted to parse some of the rules while hanging out with my friends, the language was at times dense.

Later as I delved into Advanced Squad Leader, (ASL) I found the rule book to be too much for me to initially comprehend. It was around 1986 and I failed to put any serious effort into learning the rules or the game.  Programmed Instruction was now a thing of the past, and even though there was a learning chapter, my friend Gary and I just never really got into it.

Imagine my surprise then, many years later as I was learning how to play, that not only were many people playing ASL – likely more than at any other point in its history – but also that there was a very large and vibrant international community of players. In fact, one of the first of many third-party producers made ASL scenarios in French!

“This game is so bad it makes Superman 64 look like Doom.” — anonymous game reviewer

By Patrick S. Baker

Okay, boys and girls, please have a 55-gallon drum of hand sanitizer ready for this one. Today gentle readers I recount the story of not only one of the worst video games of all time but also one of the foulest and most atrocious video games of all time. And NO, I’m not exaggerating in any way about what a disgusting piece of work this game is.

Custer’s Revenge, also known as Mystique Presents Swedish Erotica: Custer’s Revenge was one of three ‘adult’ video games released November 1982 in a package of video games called Mystique Presents Swedish Erotica. The other two games in the set were Beat ‘Em & Eat ‘Em and Bachelor Party.

Many sources erroneously report that the games were produced by a game company named Mystique, but in fact is no game company named Mystique. Mystique was the brand name for the line of adult games produced by American Multiple Industries (AMI).

By Tom Gall

With the release of the Berlin German book by Battlefront, capabilities not seen since FOW version 3 for night fighting are once again available to those that like to run Germans. This article is going to look at the ins and outs of taking advantage of this new material.

By Michael Rafferty

AdeptiCon is back! After a triumphant return last year, the premier wargaming convention is back in Schaumburg, Illinois.

AdeptiCon continues to grow year after year, with new events and larger existing events. Wizards of the Coast will be in attendance this year with their new game Onslaught. No longer contained by only the Marriott Renaissance, the Hyatt Regency will again host several events. Historical events like Bolt Action and Flames of War will be there again, but we welcome A Song of Ice and Fire and Lord of the Rings to the growing AdeptiCon presence at the Hyatt.

But you didn’t come here to read about how we’re growing. You want to know what’s going to be run at the con! Battlefront will be hosting a one-day Mid-War National tournament. This will be a four-round event at 100 points held on Thursday.

by Dennis ‘Matt Varnish’ Campbell

Fresh off our earlier review of the updated Hail Caesar book, Scott Roach and I have played our first game of the new rules.

We decided to run three Divisions for around 500pts each side, and are opting for the classic orders procedure and not the simplified procedures.

Scott had this lovely table set up (above) with a sweet Roman Fort that I would be defending in front of the main gate, whilst his Pyrrhic Greeks would be marching from the Sicilian beaches after debarking from their galleys.

The fort and occupants are just for show.

By Mitch Reed

One of our biggest fans sent me a message about a miniatures game he just purchased that was all about a conflict on the moon. I found that concept very interesting and thankful that it did not trigger my PTSD from the creation of the Space Force. I contacted the creators of the game over at Black Site Studio and they sent me the starter pack to try out. I quickly painted up the models and played a few games and I wondered why there is not a lot of buzz about this game.

By David Garvin

One thing I’ve found in war gaming is that I tend to stay in one genre for most of my gaming. In spite of the computer evolution of the 1990s that saw many war games be released in digital form, I have almost always come back to play my games on cardboard. There are exceptions, of course, but for the most part, I have stuck to tossing dice.

For a while, I did get into Flames of War (FOW), but my interest faded with the advent of edition 4, which coincided with my deep dive into Advanced Squad Leader. But one thing that I do like about war games, in general, is that the variety of genres allows many people with various interests to play.