By Tom Gall

Terrain in the form of buildings for the tabletop has evolved over the years. The technology for what makes for a great building continues to evolve. Scratch builds, plastic model kits, cast resin, pre-painted resin, MDF, 3D print just to name a few. Depending on how long you’ve been around you might have a variety of samples from from technology stage.

I was especially happy many years back when Miniature Building Authority and Battlefront/Gale Force 9 offered pre-painted terrain called “Battlefield in a box” that once the packaging was open you had something to use on the tabletop. It was nice to not be adding to my paint queue for a change.

Old favorites like Novus Design while great kit still had a “you must paint it” step. They just recently retired from the business and will be missed.

Micro Art Studios recently released a line of Normandy-themed buildings with “pre-painted” MDF in 28mm. This article takes a look at the line.

By Caroline Gilmore

The day is May 1, 2024: China is about to attack Taiwan, North and South Korea are poised at the precipice of conflict, and in India, unexpected floods force people from their homes.

Thus begins “Rising Tides,” the annual kinetics wargame organized by Strategic Crisis Simulations (SCS), an undergraduate-run organization at George Washington University.

By Tom Gall

This year I was pleasantly surprised to be in London on business at exactly the same time as Salute the largest independent game convention in the UK. This year, the 50th anniversary, was perfect timing for the first time ever attending. The event is held at the ExCel center on the east side of London. It was super easy to get to by the London Underground via the new Elizabeth Line. Once inside, queue up to enter…

Different than AdeptiCon or GenCon, no badge pickup, just get in line, get to it. Also different from those other Cons was something that really had me going, I wanted to sign up for a variety of games to play. Maybe a tournament? Or something? I did pack a tape measure and dice but going in this idea of going to a game convention and not knowing if you’d even get to play anything was well, weird.

With Salute it’s different than the states, there it’s run by the South London Warlords club. A good portion of the games were run by the variety of game clubs in the area. Then intermixed with the demos games were row after row of vendor, demo games, vendor, vendor, demo games. Different, but refreshing especially if you were looking to try out new things as well as shop.

By Tom Burgess

Henry Turner is one of the most prolific 3D Files creators for wargaming.  I first came across Henry’s work searching for STL files to supplement my Back Seas fleets. In addition to those glorious ships he has offered “6mm” collections for the American Civil War, Napoleonics, and others. Now he has entered the Medieval era with his new 100 Years War Kickstarter.

Henry asked No Dice No Glory if we would be willing to do a review of his new 100 Years War Kickstarter.  As I did a review of his 10 to 28mm  “Battleground 1983: Warsaw Pact” project previously, I volunteered to follow up with this one. This Europe Asunder – 100 Years War Kickstarter goes active on April 28th, 2023 and runs  until May 12th, 2023.

By Jim Naughton

Just when you thought it was safe to use or ignore my original treatise on Warsaw Pact artillery, BF introduced new toys. With the introduction of Red Dawn there are two new indirect fire systems – the 2S9 Nona self-propelled gun-mortar and the BM-37 82mm Mortar.

Previously NDNG has published three articles explaining Warsaw PACT artillery: TOS-UP Part 1, TOS-UP Part 2, and TOS-UP Part 3.  I will draw a few insights from previous for comparison but I’m not going to repeat the information. Part I identified the artillery available in Team Yankee and gave the statistics.  The next section furnishes data on the two new weapons.

The 2S9 NONA (Noveysheye Orudiye Nazemnoy Artillerii or Newest Ordnance of the Ground Artillery) was introduced in 1981 to replace towed mortars in rapidly expanding Air Assault forces as well as the towed guns of the Air Assault Divisions.  The NONA began showing up in Motor Rifle Regiments in the late 1980s as production continued.  A variant was built into the BTR-80 and towed versions exist for mountain fighting, and for airmobile infantry units (which have little organic transport).  Battlefront represents the 2S9 baseline, built into the BTR-D hull.

The BF model is sold separately from the generic BTR-D package (which features infantry carrier, BTR-ZD, and BTR-RD variants) and represents an essential component of a ‘pure’ VDV force.  The NONA populates the niche in VDV units that would be filled by the 2S1 Carnation and is also available as a support choice in the same niche of the Support Section of the Force Diagram occupied by the Carnation.

By Mitch Reed

A common question from new Blood & Plunder players is about what ships they should collect to play in sea battles and the most common answer we have is “it depends.”

In playing with the ships in Blood & Plunder over the last few years the best advice I have is that you can go big or go small and a lot of that depends on the force you play and your personal playing style.

By Troy A Hill

I put my preorder in for Warlord Games new Pike & Shotte Epic Battles Push of Pike boxed set, and it arrived this past weekend. Warlord continues their epic streak of 14-ish mm Epic Battles scale releases.

Special shoutout to Morgan, who packed my set. Everything looks spot on, and I couldn’t be happier with the set.

That said, I’m totally confused now. Growing up in ‘Muricah! and only getting to study the American Civil War (ACW), one can imagine my surprise to find out that our British cousins had their own civil war (English Civil War, or ECW) a couple of centuries before ours. So, now I’m wondering who the English versions of Lee and Grant were?

By Mitch Reed

When we think of the past we often tie the notable personalities of that period. In Blood & Plunder, the notables are at the forefront of the game.

Years ago one of the first things I noticed about B&P was that the characters, whether famous or infamous are a major part of the game. Every force needs a leader, so why not gamify some of the names we associate with the early colonial Americas?

By Michael “ACON” Rafferty

AdeptiCon 2023 is in the books!

AdeptiCon 2023 was held March 22^nd – 26^th in Schaumburg, IL. This year we had over 6,500 badged attendees, which is the largest AdeptiCon we’ve ever had. It looks like we’ve fully recovered from the COVID slump and things are bigger and better than ever. This was the second year of having a full second venue at the Hyatt, which grew from just hosting historicals to also hosting Lord of the Rings and A Song of Ice and Fire.

We also had a 1:1 scale Urbanmech

This is part two of our coverage on War Stories from Firelock Games! In the last episode we rolled up our characters and today we expand the squad by adding the two Phil’s and the designer of War Stories, Gabe Garcia. We play a quick game and then give you our thoughts on this new WWII RPG.