By Kreighton Long

Over the years I’ve slowly been building up my collection of urban terrain and as my tables experience urbanization I’ve come to realize that the next step is to include sidewalks. Adding sidewalks to my terrain collection will help to fill in some void space in my town, and will help the town become a more aesthetically pleasing, lived-in, setting.

At first, I looked for simpler options such as printing cobblestones onto card stock or buying mousepad cobblestone rolls and cutting to size but none of those gave me the modeler look I desired.  Eventually, I rolled up my sleeves and declared, “Fine.  I’ll do it myself”, with my best Thanos impression.

As the summer gets hotter, and June has given way to July, one of the East Coast’s premiere wargaming events is nearly upon us. Historicon! Hosted by HMGS is happening from Wednesday, July 19th through Sunday, July 23rd. A number of No Dice No Glory staff will be there playing games, running events, and buying way more minis than we could possibly paint in a lifetime.

Additionally, Glenn Van Meter and Tom Mullane will be running two tournaments for Blood and Plunder on Friday. Read on for more info!

By Michael Rafferty

We’re soon going to see the release of the first new country with unique equipment since Oil Wars (I’m looking at you Cuba with your Warsaw Pact equipment). S-Tanks! Centurions! Bandkanons! Cute Danish Recon Jeeps! It’s exciting to see some new models coming into Team Yankee. I know most armies standardized certain models of vehicles, usually provided by the larger nations. Still, it’s fun to see some new makes of vehicles. Let’s see what the armies can bring and how the vehicles stack up.

By Patrick S. Baker

Plumbers Don’t Wear Ties (Plumbers) was developed by Kirin Entertainment (no relation to the fine Japanese beer) and released in 1994. It has been variously called an adult-oriented “romantic comedy”, a visual novel, and dating sim, as well as a full motion video game. Whatever the developers’ ambitions for the game were, they were not met. The game actually turned out to be a branching slideshow with strictly limited player interaction.

Plumbers feature John and Jane, who are being pressured by their respective parents to go out and find a spouse. The player’s task is to get John and Jane together.  Set in the fictional city of “New Lost Wages,” a stand-in for Las Vegas, the game is centered on the lives of the two main characters.

John is an unemployed plumber, while Jane is a beautiful and ambitious woman caught in a bizarre love triangle between her rich father and an oddball photographer.  The gameplay consists mainly of making choices at various branching points in the story.

Players must navigate through a range of quirky and inexplicable situations, each filled with absurd and unexpected twists. As the game moves along, the player meets a range of flamboyant characters, including a domineering boss, a sexy secret agent, and a leather-clad dominatrix.

By Mitch Reed

I hope many of you can recall my article from the Connections Wargaming Conference in 2022 and the podcast from 2019 that spoke to this event. The 2023 event held at National War College in Washington DC was yet another for the record books and we here at NDNG were glad to attend in force as well as help sponsor the Dice-Breaker social event.

By. Paolo Paglianti

Almost one year ago, our friend Thrun Last contacted Livio Tonazzo and me: they were organizing the European Team Yankee tournament. Two days of games battling with Leopards, T72s and Harriers – how we could say no? Challenge accepted!

The first step was to choose the weekend. Cornaredo, my hometown, is a perfect spot for international tournaments as it is between Milan and Malpensa Airport: very easy to get here from every corner of Europe, with lots of cheap flights from major cities.

For the same reason, the new “Milan Fair” is very close to Cornaredo, and I needed to find a gap in the almost endless series of shows and fashion weeks, to avoid the spike in hotel costs. The 27-28th of May was one of the few weekends without huge shows and was an immediate choice. Also, May is typically warm but not damned hot, so players could come with partners and families.

By Robert Kelly

This is my latest museum report from last year’s Grand Tour of Europe. I had always heard that Budapest was a city worth visiting and it didn’t disappoint. Budapest has many things to see and do and is quite inexpensive compared to places like London, Paris, or Copenhagen.  The Hungarian Army Museum is located on Castle Hill near the Buda Castle.

There are two ways to get to the top of the hill.  To ensure that you go right to the museum first, you take the minibus/golf carts that are parked at the base of the hill.  They are inexpensive, rather fun, and will drop you off at the entrance to the museum before it heads over to the castle (with the rest of the family). The second option is the funicular. It won’t drop you off right at the museum but it was impressive.

By Mitch Reed

Recently the folks from Draco Ideas contacted us about looking at some of their games. I have been a huge fan of Draco for some time. One of the first games I picked up from them was Normandy: The Beginning of the End and its solo expansion Alone in the Storm.

I also wrote about their amazing ancients game, Onus Traianus. The two games they sent us, Scope: UBoot and Frontier Wars quickly made it to my table to see what they were all about.

“Squad Leader is a watershed moment in war gaming, offering an unparalleled level of tactical depth and realism.” – Strategy & Tactics magazine.

By Patrick S. Baker

Introduction

Squad Leader was released in 1977 by Avalon Hill and holds a significant place in the history of board gaming. Squad Leader is, perhaps, the classic tactical war-game and also perhaps is as important to war-gaming history as Kriegsspiel.

Simply put, Squad Leader set the standard for the genre by introducing groundbreaking mechanics and providing an immersive gaming experience, giving the player a real sense of commanding troops on the battlefield.

Development

By David Garvin

On the 9th of June, Paxsims hosted Connections North, a conference on professional wargaming. According to its website, it is “…a community of practice devoted to the professional use of wargames (and other serious games) for education, training, and policy analysis in Canada.” There were over 70 in attendance, ranging from military members, and civilian members of the defense community as well as many in various think tanks, government departments, and me. The conference was held at the impressive Canadian War Museum in Ottawa.