By Mark Greenwald

What’s the best thing to do in Spain? Visit Barcelona, Sagrada Familia, Madid, Prado Museum, Granada, Alhambra Palace, Segovia, Roman Aqueduct, Seville, Alcázar, Cordoba, Toledo, Valencia?

No, my friends, the best thing to do in Spain is go to a board game convention in Badajoz! For me, it’s been since 2019 for a game convention (GenCon and WisconsCon). I really enjoyed spending a long weekend making new friends in Spain while playing some historical board games.

First up…why is a convention named for an acorn?  Well, Badajoz is famous for producing Iberico Jamón (ham from pigs fed on acorns). Badajoz has been settled since Neolithic times, with several Dolmen and Roman ruins nearby (it was part of Roman Lusitania).

It was also a Muslim Taifa kingdom, so has medieval ruins to explore as well. The convention takes place in January, which is great because Badajoz can get really hot during the summer.

By Howard West

Background

My previous article Team Yankee COLD WAR Warrior Revisited the T-55 Tank focused on a Team Yankee player adding a 24-27 point 2nd or allied T-55 tank formation to an existing army list. With the “official” Team Yankee points reduced for this year’s US National events and with the changing META caused by the new NATO books as described in Tom Gall’s recent No Dice No Glory article on chasing the Team Yankee Meta. 

Also, several of our upcoming local Team Yankee tournaments that I will be playing in have the following point levels: 110, 94, and 70. I thought this provided a good basis for a series of list-building discussions for Team Yankee on No Dice No Glory.

By Richard Steer

from Warlord Games is an Age of Sail wargame set between 1770-1830. The game, reviewed here, does an excellent job of capturing the feeling of wind-powered naval combat in a fast and enjoyable format.

For many people, the attraction of the game is the thought of recreating the fleet battles of the Napoleonic wars, featuring large ships of the line. It is also very enjoyable when playing engagements with smaller ships such as schooners, cutters, and gunboats, and a great format for these smaller games are using Warlord’s free .

Ed and Tom start off their third year of Flames of War and Team Yankee podcast coverage for No Dice No Glory with Episode 24.

By Mitch Reed

One great aspect of my “day job” is that I get to see some really innovative wargame designs and meet some very gifted designers. One such designer is Sebastian Bae, who I have written about before with his work in teaching wargaming at Georgetown University.

Sebastian invited me to see the games his students were working on this past December and I featured them right here on NDNG. One game which Sebastian designed is now available for presale and I wanted to make sure our community had the chance to pick this game up.

By Richard Steer

A lot of the focus on the upcoming North Africa release for Flames of War has been on the new units that have been added, and the historical units that haven’t been. This is understandable because as gamers we love having new toys to play with. One area that I haven’t seen much discussion about is the force charts in the book and the way that the source material for the compilation has been combined. In particular, the German support options have some subtle structural changes that are worth taking a closer look at.

by Troy A. Hill

“For the love of God! Troy! Here we are painting up stuff in 28mm and you go batshit crazy in 12mm…” was what one of my local gaming friends posted under the photo of my newly arrived Epic Battles French and British Waterloo sets on Facebook.

He might be correct.

Warlord Games took a gamble on their Epic Battles Scale, and its first incarnation with the American Civil War (ACW). And that gamble paid off big. The napoleonic era seemed to be the next logical entry into the Epic Battles line. So I wasn’t surprised when I learned that Waterloo was the next focus for Warlord.

But why such tiny figures? Warlord is known as the go-to company for 28mm historical (along with their friends the Perry Brothers, who fill the gaps around Warlord’s ranges.) Why produce such a small figure size that doesn’t line up with the other majorly produced conventional scale?

Today Phil and I sit down with the creators of a game about West Point also known as the US Military Academy and their upcoming Kickstarter Campaign. You can find the Kickstarter here.

By Patrick S. Baker

The early 1990s saw the release of many of the seminal games of what would soon be called the 4X (for eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, and eXterminate) PC game genre. Games like Armada 2525, Civilization, and the subject of this article, Master of Orion (MoO) were published some 30 years ago and still influence the genre today.

In fact, reviewer Alan Emrich named the game type “XXXX” in a 1993 preview of Master of Orion for Computer Gaming World (CGW). A year later Martin E. Cirulis in the same magazine shortened the term to “the four Xs” this later became “4X”. While MoO was not the first 4X game, that honor goes to Reach of the Stars released in 1983.

Still, it was Master of Orion  that “would define 4X gaming for years.”

By Howard West

Background

With the “official” Team Yankee points reduced for this year’s US National events and with the changing META caused by the new NATO books as described in Tom Gall’s recent No Dice No Glory article on chasing the And since several other upcoming local tournaments have reduced point levels, in the following order 110, 94, and 70.

I wanted to see what a 2nd Warsaw Pact formation might look like and I started playing around with different formations and kept coming back to an old reliable T55/T54 Tank family. Team Yankee represents the T55/54 Family in 20 different tank and motorized infantry formations in 5 different books from the Soviets, East Germans, Czechs, Poles, Oil Wars(Syrians and Iraqis).