Warlord Games

By Tom Gall

Warlord has released for Cruel Seas navy fleet boxes for four different countries. The US, Imperial Japanese Navy, British, and Germans are all covered. Sometime this month we should see the addition of the Soviet and Italian navies.

Within the Core Box, along with the rules, counters and other necessities are four British Vospers and four German S-Boats. This is a good starting force but what might you want to pick up next?  What plays well?

This set of four articles will explore the navy boxes that Warlord has released starting with the German Kriegsmarine.

by Tom Burgess

has become one of my favorite games over this past year. I was immediately drawn to it as I’ve always been a big fan of Akira Kurosawa’s Samurai movies, but a year’s worth of gameplay with it has greatly heightened my appreciation for Test of Honour as a fast and exciting skirmish game.

This is especially impressive as skirmish games as a wargame genre are not normally my forte. This made me wonder why I was not seeing more of Test of Honour being played if it was a game system that could get a non-skirmish guy like me so enthralled with it.

My guess is that many people just have not really taken a good look at it or maybe have not managed to get in a demo game. My hope is that this article encourages some players to consider trying the game and hopefully to seek out a demo game.  So where to start…..?

Once again we have Jon Russell from Warlord Games on the show. We talk about what is coming out for all of our favorites games in 2019. You do not want to miss this one!

Some of the topics we covered

Cruel Seas

Blood Red Skies

Bolt Action

Bolt Action Korea (due out in August)

New Tournament System for Warlord’s games in 2019

… And so much more.

By Troy A. Hill

I confess. I’ve wanted to play a naval wargame for the past 30+ odd years and never have.

Back in the halcyone days of university, I remember the HMGS chapter renting out the “old” gymnasium on campus once a year and playing with their 1:350 (or was it 1:700?) waterline models. That event took all weekend, and they had binders full of charts and ship information. It was glorious to watch, but seemed an impractical way to game with your mates. Not everyone has access to a gymnasium floor, nor room to store all of those models.

Since that time, I’ve had my eye out for a tabletop naval game that had a player base of regulars that met in a game store. A game that I would not mind investing my gaming dollars in, nor storing the minis in the limited space available to me in my tiny Los Angeles apartment. Negotiating berthing rights with my spouse in such cramped quarters for large ships, even in 1:700 scale would be daunting.

Fortunately John Stallard at Warlord Games decided to build and release .

By Tom Gall

Now that our local group has a few games of under our belts, we wanted to get in a larger game that was scenario and point driven. Each side built a 650 point list and cast away their lines. Set off the coast of France, British airmen are in the water and our little flotilla needs to go and pick them up. We played this one at D6 Games in Rochester Minnesota, USA.

The Allies were sporting three type II Vospers, with two having regular crews and 1 having an inexperienced crew. Last we have a Fairmile with a regular crew.

By Tom Gall

Warlord Games released their much-anticipated ruleset covering small ship skirmish actions, which they’ve entitled

The core box offers the rules, and a starter set of British Vospers as well as German S-Boats. Perfect to get a game going with a friend. In addition, there are already nine expansion boxes offering more ships from four different nations.

The rules themselves are divided into basic and advanced sections with a set of eight scenarios to get you going. Interspersed are some histories, many a pretty picture, ship/plane stats, instructions to make your own stats and last some rules for campaign settings.

by Troy A. Hill (Photos by the author, graphics courtesy of Warlord Games)

I’ve managed to get my US Bolt Action army into a playable state that I’m not embarrassed by. I do still need to finish my various vehicles for it (a few are still in boxes).

My sell-off of models from my previous games garnered me enough hobby dollars to hit up my Friendly Local Game Store (FLGS) for a new box from Warlord. Combine this with the new Western Desert book for Bolt Action, with some additional forces, and I’ll be good for the upcoming Duel in the that No Dice No Glory is sponsoring this February at Orccon in Los Angeles.

Folks, sometimes we get lucky. Jon Russell wanted to get out the word about all the great news coming from Warlord games, so we quickly put together a podcast to get it to you. Tom and Mitch talk about Cruel Seas, Blood Red Skies, Fall of France, and the upcoming Korea book.

By Troy Hill

Photos by the Author

If you’ve been following our blog, you’ll know that Mitch Reed has begun playing from Warlord Games. He’s mentioned on a few podcasts that I’ve begun the game as well.

Rather than re-walk the newbie road that Mitch has already traversed with three stories and a podcast here on No Dice No Glory, I’d like to take a look at one of the offshoots from Bolt Action: Tank War.

(You can find Mitch’s previous posts on BA here: , , and ).

Bolt Action typically uses the infantry platoon as its core force and limits armoured options for the player to only a few vehicles at most. Tank Wars changes that equation and uses the main Bolt Action rules (with some alterations) to allow armoured vehicles as well as fully mechanized infantry units to play a larger role in the game.

For those who have read my previous on my  (BA) journey, I have just completed my first few BA games in a tourney at the NOVA open. This article will focus on my overall experience in learning Bolt Action and my impressions of the game in general.

With typical beginner luck, I lost my first game 0-4, tied the next game 4-4 and got wiped out in my last game. After a long day of thinking on my feet, playing an unfamiliar ruleset, I walked away from my last game tired. But I loved every minute of play.

Bolt Action has been out since the early Twenty-teens (German 1st Edition Book published in 2012). I have no clue as to how I missed it for so long.

The game uses dice to activate your units. Each unit provides one order die. Each player throws a set of uniquely colored order dice into a bag. One per unit in your force. A die is blindly drawn, and the player to whom the die belongs gets to activate a unit. This mechanic is at the heart of the game, and the random simulation of the “vagaries of the battlefield” effect it provides is one reason, I believe, why the game is so good.