by Tom Burgess

It always amazed me how many comments I have heard over the last year or so about the “collapse” of the US tournament scene. For sure, Flames of War (FOW) tournament play has declined with Version 4, along with other factors. And though I’m sure FOW has completely dried up in some areas, overall I never felt that the situation was particularly as dire as many have portrayed.

So I did some research to get some actual numbers beyond my own or other’s personal perspectives. Fortunately, US tournament data for the last several years can be easily pulled off of the website, to include its predecessor’s Ranking HQ data. I will share here the data for what its worth. I’ll offer my opinions with it, but I encourage all to make up there own minds on what it all means for the current state and future of the game and our community.

By NDNG Dane

 The Huntsville Historical Gamers gathered on December 8^th (the day after the day that will live in infamy) to recreate the German attack on Stalingrad as part of Operation Fall Blau (Case Blue) and the Soviet Heroic Defense.  The Mega game was the Culminating engagement of our Mid-War Eastern Front escalation league using the Flames of War V4 system.

Our three board Mega Game centered combat action on: Board #1: The Univermag Department Store and Barmaley Fountain, Board #2: The Red October – Tractor Works, Board #3: The Grain Elevator and Pavlov’s House.  Additionally, we added a few campaign specific rules such as sewer movement.  Infantry teams were allowed to use sewer movement, based on a skill roll, to enter and navigate throughthe Stalingrad sewer network.

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 .

Ed and Austin are back for yet another episode to ring in 2019. They go over how you can tactic better when playing Flames of War

NDNG came to life on 1 Jan 2018 when a few writers from WWPD.net decided to carry on bringing our community great content about what is going on in our hobby. Over the year the core group grew from five writers to almost 20 contributors who really do cover war gaming roll by role.

When we started we didn’t want to be just another review site or flood our readers with after-action reports that gave little insight into the games we cover. When we first created the site I reached out to Pete Simunovich at Battlefront and asked him to see if we could have a similar relationship with his company as WWPD did. He said something that has stuck with me ever since;

…. Are you a site that promotes the hobby with inspiration for hobbyists and a touchstone for hobbyists
or another review site? The first one is much harder but much more rewarding I think.

By Tom Gall

This past weekend the Twin Cities crew hosted the first ever Midwest regional tournament for Flames of War at Dreamers Vault in Minneapolis. The goal was to crown the regional champion for the year.  Between D6 Games in Rochester and the two Dreamers Vault locations in the Twin Cities, we’re really blessed to have an active and fun group to spend many a Saturday with pushing lead and rolling dice.

It was a 3-round Flames of War tournament, mid-war at 109pts. We had 18 players in attendance with the Novaks traveling the furthest. The special aspect of the tournament was players were to mark allegiance to a store and the top two scores from that store would result in taking the title of Regional Champion for the year.

The plaque is all ready to be filled in.  Thanks much to Keith Gilmour for all the planning and especially TOing the event.

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 Keith Gilmour

On October 3rd, I was super happy to get my second ever invite to . The invite started all sorts of list noodling and planning on what I was going to bring. The Masters tournaments all have some sort of twist to make them interesting. This year, it was an escalation theme where you had to bring three lists of 62, 88 and 104 points that need to be built on different formations and each would be played twice.

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 James Copeland

When I first started playing Flames of War (FOW) many years ago I fell in love with the Late War period. It was my favorite because it was the culmination of the advance of technology of the nations involved in the conflict. By 1944 the major armies of 1939-1942 either improved their weapons, tactics, and doctrine drastically from the start of the war or ceased to exist as a credible force.