Gaming

By Mark Greenwald

What’s the best thing to do in Spain? Visit Barcelona, Sagrada Familia, Madid, Prado Museum, Granada, Alhambra Palace, Segovia, Roman Aqueduct, Seville, Alcázar, Cordoba, Toledo, Valencia?

No, my friends, the best thing to do in Spain is go to a board game convention in Badajoz! For me, it’s been since 2019 for a game convention (GenCon and WisconsCon). I really enjoyed spending a long weekend making new friends in Spain while playing some historical board games.

First up…why is a convention named for an acorn?  Well, Badajoz is famous for producing Iberico Jamón (ham from pigs fed on acorns). Badajoz has been settled since Neolithic times, with several Dolmen and Roman ruins nearby (it was part of Roman Lusitania).

It was also a Muslim Taifa kingdom, so has medieval ruins to explore as well. The convention takes place in January, which is great because Badajoz can get really hot during the summer.

By Howard West

Background

My previous article Team Yankee COLD WAR Warrior Revisited the T-55 Tank focused on a Team Yankee player adding a 24-27 point 2nd or allied T-55 tank formation to an existing army list. With the “official” Team Yankee points reduced for this year’s US National events and with the changing META caused by the new NATO books as described in Tom Gall’s recent No Dice No Glory article on chasing the Team Yankee Meta. 

Also, several of our upcoming local Team Yankee tournaments that I will be playing in have the following point levels: 110, 94, and 70. I thought this provided a good basis for a series of list-building discussions for Team Yankee on No Dice No Glory.

By Mitch Reed

One great aspect of my “day job” is that I get to see some really innovative wargame designs and meet some very gifted designers. One such designer is Sebastian Bae, who I have written about before with his work in teaching wargaming at Georgetown University.

Sebastian invited me to see the games his students were working on this past December and I featured them right here on NDNG. One game which Sebastian designed is now available for presale and I wanted to make sure our community had the chance to pick this game up.

by Troy A. Hill

“For the love of God! Troy! Here we are painting up stuff in 28mm and you go batshit crazy in 12mm…” was what one of my local gaming friends posted under the photo of my newly arrived Epic Battles French and British Waterloo sets on Facebook.

He might be correct.

Warlord Games took a gamble on their Epic Battles Scale, and its first incarnation with the American Civil War (ACW). And that gamble paid off big. The napoleonic era seemed to be the next logical entry into the Epic Battles line. So I wasn’t surprised when I learned that Waterloo was the next focus for Warlord.

But why such tiny figures? Warlord is known as the go-to company for 28mm historical (along with their friends the Perry Brothers, who fill the gaps around Warlord’s ranges.) Why produce such a small figure size that doesn’t line up with the other majorly produced conventional scale?

By Patrick S. Baker

The early 1990s saw the release of many of the seminal games of what would soon be called the 4X (for eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, and eXterminate) PC game genre. Games like Armada 2525, Civilization, and the subject of this article, Master of Orion (MoO) were published some 30 years ago and still influence the genre today.

In fact, reviewer Alan Emrich named the game type “XXXX” in a 1993 preview of Master of Orion for Computer Gaming World (CGW). A year later Martin E. Cirulis in the same magazine shortened the term to “the four Xs” this later became “4X”. While MoO was not the first 4X game, that honor goes to Reach of the Stars released in 1983.

Still, it was Master of Orion  that “would define 4X gaming for years.”

By Howard West

Background

With the “official” Team Yankee points reduced for this year’s US National events and with the changing META caused by the new NATO books as described in Tom Gall’s recent No Dice No Glory article on chasing the And since several other upcoming local tournaments have reduced point levels, in the following order 110, 94, and 70.

I wanted to see what a 2nd Warsaw Pact formation might look like and I started playing around with different formations and kept coming back to an old reliable T55/T54 Tank family. Team Yankee represents the T55/54 Family in 20 different tank and motorized infantry formations in 5 different books from the Soviets, East Germans, Czechs, Poles, Oil Wars(Syrians and Iraqis).

The Desert War comes to ASL

By David Garvin

From the 10th of June 1940 until the 13th of May 1943, Axis and Allied armies struggled against one another across North Africa until the Axis surrendered 275,000 prisoners of war. Many of us know of many of the battles and famed figures of the war. Kasserine. El Alamain. Tobruk. Rommel. Montgomery.

They all evoke images of the hot, dusty sand and the sweeping tank battles across the desert. There are many games that depict battles in North Africa, but few do it at the tactical level. After how, how does one maneuver over a barren landscape bereft of cover? Well, the folks at Avalon Hill came up with a way to do this with their Advanced Squad Leader (ASL) series.

So that’s what I’m going to discuss: how tactical desert warfare is gamed using ASL and some of the implications of fighting in the desert. Finally, I will discuss how Multi-Man Publications have brought the desert back to ASL after 34 years.

By Tom Gall

January 2nd 2022 The Wargaming Company announced series 3 of Et Sans Résultat (ESR) their Napoleonic results for playing grand / epic scale Napoleonic conflicts. That’s not all,  on December 29th The Wargaming Company announced their own line of 10mm figures was coming. a few of the initial images that David Ensteness from The Wargaming Company had shared.

These two developments make 2022 a pretty exciting year for grand-scale Napoleonics. I have a fondness for the Napoleonic era, there are some good rulesets out there from Empire to Sharp Practice but none scratch the itch for large-scale battles like ESR. For me, ESR is my go-to system for these large battles. Besides the rules, The Wargaming Company has a great lineup of campaign guides that includes very impressive uniform guides for painting your armies.

Check out this interview with Jason Petho the designer of the PC game Campaign Series Vietnam. Jason talks about the development and all of the new goodies in the latest title in this iconic series.

By Tom Burgess

When we first saw the Flames of War Version 4 Formations charts, we all wondered what the “Wildcard” box was meant for. Many of us speculated that perhaps that might have some future tie-in with “Mid-War Monsters” or some future rare/special units. Battlefront has been mum on the purpose “Wildcard” for over four years. With the release of the North Africa Mid-War Forces compilation, we know that this was an avenue to bring Mid-War Monsters back into the game.

But that’s not the only way the new North Africa Compilation will let you add for Mid-War Monsters. Battlefront also added new formations to utilize these beasts in their full glory. I think many of us expected to see Mid-War monsters to come back into the game at some point with Version 4, but I don’t think any of us expected to see new formations explicitly for these special units.