Gaming

By Tom Gall

If you enjoy playing Blood and Plunder or other skirmish games in 28mm, the one thing I love to have on the table is all sorts of brick-a-brack to give the scene plenty of flavor. I like my tables to look historic.

For this Blood and Plunder game on land, sure it looks like a little farmstead or a little inn, the fences fit it, the road is great, but I’m wanting a little more on the table top.

Where are the farm animals? How about a little wagon? Crates, barrels, the various things you’d expect to see in this kinda era and besides it can add in some extra places for impromptu cover that your heroes might need as they are doing their daring do.

One of the great sections contained towards the back of the new D-Day American book by Battlefront is the special missions that are thematic to D-Day.  “Shot in the Dark“, “Help’s On Its Way” and “Fubar” model the airborne landings, the daring ranger assault on the coastal defenses and the landing themselves.

Battlefront has structured these such that they can be played individually or as a linked mini-campaign where the outcome of one game influences the next.  It’s not quite a firestorm campaigns of yore, but certainly within the spirit of those past designs.

Protection from who Tommy? Ze Shermans?

(Photo Above: This piece of history sits near Juno Beach, M4A4 Sherman with the Duplex Drive propellor add-on)

Right around the corner, we’ve got the two options for running armour in Late War. It’s been a while since the release of the Late War books for V3. In the new book for the American forces in Normandy BattleFront has delivered a collection of lists I think will get people excited about their models that have been collecting dust for a while.

Some chose to wait and see what V4 would bring in the way of options for Late War, book by book and the addition of cards has once again delivered some interesting choices for the US forces. You might have to wait some more to see some of the lists that are part of this era.

By Tom “Chairborne” Mullane

David Webster (101st Airborne)[at a passing column of German prisoners]  “Hey, you! That’s right, you stupid Kraut *%&$! That’s right! Say hello to Ford, and General &@#$in’ Motors! You stupid fascist pigs! Look at you! You have horses! What were you thinking?”

For the longest time back in version 3, my least favorite matchup was to be put against an armored rifle company.

Not because the game wasn’t fun, it almost always was.  But because, under V3 rules, I knew it would be an uphill road against a balanced, take all comers kind of force.

The Armored Rifle Company in Fighting First was always a competitive midwar choice in my opinion, but the strength of that list was in the support, not necessarily in the base platoons. It had Green Troops, and poor skill ratings, so many things became difficult. While shifting 14 stands will always present a problem, the Armored Rifles didn’t shine in midwar the way I knew they could. Those days are over here in Late War….

By Paolo Paglianti

The Battlefront plan is simple and bright.

Deploy the Fortress Europe book to start off the Late Period Flames of War V4, with all four principal armies in short form – good lists, but focused on the “general” armies after 1943 – and after that explore the various Late War theaters of war and their specific armies.

So, we’ve just finished drooling on Fortress Europe it’s already time to dive into a new, more specific book: ladies and gentlemen, time to get on our brand new Sherman 76mm and storm the D-Day beaches with your Late US army.

With June once again upon us that’s the time of the year to do a set of D-Day battles and with the Screaming Eagles at D6 Games in Rochester Mn on June 1st that’s exactly what we did!

By Benny Christiansen

After reading through the new LW book, Fortress Europe, I decided to challenge a friend of mine for a quick match. We decided on 71 points, and I would play the role of the Germans, while he would play the Soviets.

I decided on a list that would let me try some of the well-known things from MW and see how it would pan out in the LW era.

By Ian Birdwell

Having been a relatively recent convert to , getting into it at the start of Version 2, I was ecstatic for the publication of Saga’s Age of Magic Universe. Essentially, Age of Magic opens the doors for players to explore any fantasy universe they’d like with any forces they’d like using the already existing Saga rulebook (which already has two existing historical universes for Viking and Crusades periods).

To me, a refugee of the Old World and not thrilled with Age of Sigmar as a warband sized game, Age of Magic was almost exactly a dream came true.

I know I’m terribly excited about this new Saga Universe, but I’ll contain myself for now to an overview of the main rulebook.

The main Age of Magic rulebook is divided into three sections, the introduction of new rules specific to this Saga Universe, descriptions of the various factions, and the grimoire of magic.  So we’ll take a look along those lines.

By Dennis “Matt Varnish” Campbell

Napoleon.   Stop me if you’ve heard this one before:   “Man takes over country, then takes over Europe, and has grand ideas of marching to Moscow, but is then thwarted by logistics and winter”

Scott’s place on a Saturday, with some Sharpe’s Rifles on the tele

Napoleonics? Why? Well, for me with my gaming background starting mainly with sci-fi and fantasy (Games Workshop) I had never really looked at historicals, and certainly not Napoleonics. I knew who Napoleon was, and the era, mainly from watching Sharpe’s Rifles, a series where A: Sean Bean’s character doesn’t die, and B: Has Elizabeth Hurley in it (see header pic)