Gaming

By Kreighton Long

While window shopping for light artillery models for my WW2 Romanian army I found limited options to choose from. While Great Escape Games makes a fine looking Romanian light artillery piece (one will make its way into my arsenal eventually) I wanted to challenge myself with a bit of conversion work to add variety to my three-light artillery Romanian list for Bolt Action.

For my conversion attempt I began with the wooden spoked wheel variant of the WWI French style 75mm gun as found in the Warlord Games . The crew themselves needed a little customization to make them more Romanian which is where the conversion work was done for this piece. I did attempt to find a way to modify German, Soviet, and American helmets to the point where they would pass as Romanian but the solution alluded me.

By Troy Hill

I didn’t realize how much I missed other gamers until I had to go about 18 months without seeing them.

True, we stayed connected on social media. And a lot of us used TableTop Simulator, or Roll20 to get in virtual games.

But there is nothing like being back in person. Seeing friends (for me, new friends that I barely got to know last winter. I forget if we had a March game day (maybe?)

This technically wasn’t my first game back from the great distancing. We had one of those in June. Back then we had four players at our North-east Indiana Bolt Action day. Our group gets together once a month for Bolt Action on the second Saturday of the month, and again on the fourth (occasionally the fifth weekend if there is one). This Saturday we had five players for Bolt Action. Not bad. We’d had a few drift off to other games, or still ensconced in catching up with family. Five is a good number. Except someone has to take on two opponents…

Yep. That someone was me. And mistakes were made.

By Tyler Stone

We have had our first full week of campaign gaming in July, and the latest results are flooding in! The Brethren of the Coast have widened their lead, claiming 22 of the more than 100 games played. They’re not ahead by much though, and the English are doggedly pursuing the unruly pirates with 20 games to their name. Hot on their heels are the Spanish and French, each claiming 19 games.

By David Garvin

With the 1977 release of , the wargaming world experienced an earthquake. The virtual tectonic plates didn’t just rattle; they shattered the gaming world!

The late , designer of Squad Leader, had developed a game like none other. Now gamers could re-fight various battles of the Second World War at such low tactical levels like never before! Not only did players get to move squads around, but also some individual and even key leaders!

Squad Leader spawned three successive games, (called gamettes by the designer); , and . These were later supplanted by Advanced Squad Leader, developed in great part by and .

By 1986, Advanced Squad Leader had released its revolutionary rule book as well as the first module in the system, . With the 2013 release of , pretty much every nation that fought in the war had a module covering its actions. And in 2017 with , the ASL universe had expanded into the Korean War.

By Tom “Cap’n Chairborne” Mullane

As we enter week two of the Global Campaign for Blood and Plunder and Oak and Iron, things are tightening up for the many major powers participating. For those who have been checking things out from the sidelines, there is no better time than now to join the fight.

the full update on global events can be found in this on Blood and Pigment’s site.

And a full accounting of the rules can be found .

Bottom line, we want as many battle reports as possible submitted, that means an email, and some pictures! Send them along to:

By Patrick S. Baker

The mid-1990s was the Axial Age for personal computer games. Titles like Civilization, Steel Panthers, Panzer General and X-COM: UFO Defense (known outside North America, as UFO: Enemy Unknown) were released with staggering success. These seminal games essential created a whole entertainment genre of PC strategy games.

Perhaps the most important of all these was the first X-COM game. X-COM: UFO Defense is still considered to be one of the most influential games ever made. Further, some have argued that X-COM is not just a franchise, but is actually its own genre. In short, to say “X-COM game” is to define a game type, like “first person shooter” or “real-time strategy game”.

The first X-COM game was created by the Gollop brothers, Julian and Nick, under the auspices of the game design studio they founded, Mythos Games, in partnership with game publisher, MircoProse.  Julian had been developing games since the early 1980s, two of his earlier games are direct precursors to X-COM. 

By Paolo Paglianti

I really like to have custom bases for my miniatures, as you can see and read here (), here () and here (), I normally try to have small dioramas for my Flames of War or Team Yankee infantry teams. When I began painting my new Iraq army, and I come to the three platoons infantry formation, I wanted something different. One of the three platoons would fight on rocky ground, the same I used for my “Sicilian” bases for my British WW2 Paras. Some great inspirations come from my friend Luca Papisca and his US bases!

For the other two platoons, I chose an “urban street” scenario and a “rural village” scenario, using my new 3D Resin Printer (). I think 3d Printing is a true revolution in modeling and in our hobby: not only because you can print the tanks you need, but especially since you can “create” almost everything you want, you just need some creativity.

By John Meier

For many days scrolling through the official WW3 Team Yankee Facebook page, I’ve seen many people ask how to play Israel from the oil War book. Many problems that Israel has are low anti-tank and no spearhead unit unless you take a tank formation. Another problem I’ve seen from lists posted or from watching battle reports is that Israeli players don’t take the Pereh ATGM or if they do take it they don’t target anything but tanks.

So the best way I’ve found to play Oil War Israeli is the infantry company. Players get four Galil Assault Rifle teams, three FN Mag team “machine gun” all of these come with LAW AT, one mortar team, 3 RPG teams, one Dragon team, and finally 5 m113 transport with three 50cal shots and two 30cal shots most machine guns on a transport you can find. Their soft stats are fearless vets. Players rally on 3s, last stand on 3s, and counterattack on 3s. Assaulting into a platoon is not advised, for 11 points players get a great objective holder and you have enough stands so take an objective if you need to.

By Mitch Reed

I try not to mix my work on NDNG with my day job since despite them both having “wargame” in the title they are vastly different and done for very different reasons. Last summer I was asked by the USMC Warfighting Lab to help them playtest a game called Assassin’s Mace which is based on the Operational Wargame Series rules and is developed by the USMCWL. I was immediately impressed with the game system and felt that the hobby community would enjoy hearing about it.

By Glenn Van Meter and Tom Mullane

We are about a week and a half into the Blood & Plunder Global Community Campaign (,) and things are getting heated between the various nations involved. Players all over the world are submitting games they’ve played to to help their favorite nation.

Last week we had an update from Guy over at Blood & Pigment via the Campaign Newsletter, and we found out that with 26 entries so far the French were in the lead with the Dutch and English tied just one game behind them. The Brethren of the Coast were lurking in 4th place. Spain was still getting her ships together and hanging out with the pack of minor nations such as the various Native Tribes, Portuguese, and the Swedes. Scotland had an especially strong showing, leading the rest of the minor powers (and Spain) by one game.