On January 22nd, 2021 was published on No Dice No Glory the premise behind the article was the question: can a person who plays a miniatures war game use some basic data collection to keep track of your performance in tournament play and over a time period improve your tournament results based on previous tournament games?
The original article had data from 50 tournament games from the summer of 2018 thru August 2020, V2 adds 34 more tournament games thru August 2021.
So what is new in V2?
When was published on in January 2021, I received quite a few comments and e-mails asking me did I have data on the types of Tank Teams encountered and what types of Air Units where players using. I have added charts for both Tank and Air Units that players used. I also added the new missions from the Team Yankee Extended Missions Matrix that I have played.
MicroProse and Mythos stopped working together, but MicroProse ended up with the X-COM license. Dave Ellis was assigned as chief game developer for MicroProse’s X-COM games. Ellis was the company’s in-house guru on the franchise, having worked in quality assurance and also, he had written strategy guides for the first two games. Inspired to expand the X-COM Universe by LucasArts’ Star Wars games, Ellis determined to create a game using a flight simulator engine and set the new sequel during one of the previous X-COM games. The idea was to let the player experience the events of an earlier game from a different viewpoint. This concept would become X-COM: Interceptor.
Throughout the development process Ellis and his team received fan input from what they referred to (perhaps not so politely) as the “Cult of X-COM” through an open online form and public e-mail. When fans learned that the game was going to be a flight simulator and not a turn-based squad-level combat game, accusations flew that MircoProse was just slapping the X-COM name on something as a marketing gimmick. MicroProse strongly denied this.
Join the Talesmen; Glenn Van Meter, Tyler Stone and Tom Mullane for their latest podcast as they discuss the global campaign and give advice on running one of your own. The winner of a brand new Core Box of Oak and Iron is announced and we try to stump our listenership with another Trivia Question. Glenn, Tom and Tyler discuss plans for upcoming events as things start to reopen. Join us for news of the Global Campaign and some general chatting about the game we all love
Now that we’ve been out of lockdown for a while and things are getting back to normal, I’ve been able to start getting more games in. I have noticed many new players seem to have shown up during the quarantine. Some of you might have jumped in right as everything started to shut down. Some might have decided to get up to speed before the finalized. Whatever the case may be, this article is for you! Today, let’s talk about Force Building for
Before we start, I want to make one thing clear – I am not going to be showing you how to build “the ultimate net-list.” I played GW games and Magic: the Gathering for a long time. I’ve been there, done that, and got the sweaty tee-shirt to prove it. This article is just a “how to” for putting your own list together, but I’ll pepper in a few Tactical Tips along the way. I’ll also be using the , if you want to follow along.
Book Review of Courage Under Fire: The 101st Airborne Hidden Battle at Tam Ky by Ed Sherwood, LTC US Army (Retired). 360 pages. Casemate, 2021. $34.95.
By Patrick S. Baker
Recently, publishers have loaded the book shelves with titles touting the “hidden”, or “forgotten”, or “secret”, history of some event. The worst of these so-called “hidden history” books are pseudo-historical bilge, but the best of these books actually tell previously untold stories.
LTC Sherwood’s Courage Under Fire is certainly among the later as it relates the long ignored story of the First Brigade, 101st Airborne Division’s bloody struggle at the Battle of Tam Ky, also known as Operation Lamar Plain, May through August, 1969.
A highly adept researcher and skilled writer, Sherwood has crafted one of the best and most complete narratives of combat in Vietnam ever published. A young lieutenant leading the 3rd Platoon, Delta Company, 1st Battalion, 501st Infantry during the first part of the battle, Sherwood also writes with that precious firsthand knowledge most historians lack.
Yet the narrative rises far above mere personal account, as Sherwood takes care to put the fighting within the context of the tactical, operational and strategic climate of post-Tet Offensive Vietnam. Valuable context is also provided by the multiple maps, nine appendixes and a glossary.
Sherwood portrays the American soldiers, young enlistees or draftees, as well-trained, physically fit and mentally resilient, but who were deficient in combat experience against the North Vietnam Army (NVA). Attrition soon cut the line companies to two platoons, with junior NCOs heading shorthanded squads, yet the troops soldiered on. Sherwood implies that the odds favored the NVA, who had extensive knowledge of the ground, the support of the locals and well-prepared fighting positions. While the Americans depended on the massive firepower provided by artillery and air support, which ultimately made the difference at Tam Ky.
The book concentrates on the lead-up operations and the key battle of Hill 376. The 501st Battalion made the first helicopter combat assault of Lamar Plain on 16 May. Like most such actions in the Vietnam War, Tam Ky involved days and weeks of vicious and intense small-unit actions. Day to day, the casualty numbers seemed small compared to those World War Two, but the numbers gradually and relentlessly grew into the hundreds and then thousands. For each month of combat, Sherwood chronicles what was going on back in the US, or “The World” in soldiers’ slang. Each chapter ends with a table of casualties and medals awarded.
Men of the 1st Brigade, 101st Airborne Division, fire from old Viet Cong trenches
In the decisive action of the operation, the Americans launched a frontal assault on Hill 376. For nine brutal days the Americans made a bloody trudge through the rain and mud and enemy ambushes to the top of the hill. After reaching the hilltop, the men raised an American flag on the peak and then walked away, victorious, but also downcast.
The rationale behind the fact that the sacrifice and valor of the men of the 1st Brigade of the “Screaming Eagles” at Tam Ky was intentionally hidden for decades is simple. As Operation Lamar Plain started, headlines back in “the World” were trumpeting the 3rd Brigade’s “meat-grinder” fight at the Battle of Hamburger Hill some 100 miles northwest of Tam Ky. Hamburger Hill left more than six hundred American soldiers killed or wounded.
The politically beleaguered President Nixon and the new American commander in Vietnam, General Creighton Abrams, could not afford to openly acknowledge that another 525 Americans soldiers had become casualties in the Battle of Tam Ky; Not directly on the heels of the carnage of Hamburger Hill. The Battle of Tam Ky had to remain official “hidden” for political reasons.
Summing up: I recommend Courage Under Fire in the strongest terms possible. This book is a must read for anyone interested in the Vietnam War, or anyone interested in stories of the courage and camaraderie of men in combat.
Patrick S. Baker is a U.S. Army Veteran, and a retired Department of Defense employee. He holds Bachelor degrees in History and Political Science and a Masters in European History. His history articles have appeared in Military History, Strategy and Tactics, Modern War, Medieval Warfare and Ancient Warfare Magazines.
One of the joys of moving to a new city, and finding a new group to game with is diving into the games they play locally. Here in North-East Indiana, the game that is second most popular in the group I game with is .
When I first encountered Saga, back in California, I was warned that I wouldn’t like it, for the same reasons I left another game behind. Too low of a point system, too many special powers and abilities. So I avoided it.
But then, after moving back to the midwest (of the USA), I found myself in a When in Rome, do as the Romans do… situation.
A lot has been happening on the many battlegrounds of the Caribbean this past month. The folks at Firelock, and Blood and Pigment, have been helping to host a global campaign. Guy Rhueark and Joseph Forester as well as the many other commanders of the varied factions vying for supremacy have been busy.
This article will give you the rundown on where we stand, how to submit your own reports, What secret objectives may still be available for intrepid players, and also a full Battle Report from the frontlines. Read on to get the full story!
Panzerschreck is an annual Flames of War tournament in New Zealand, hosted by the Manawatu Duellists club in the city of Palmerston North. It has the honor of being the longest-running FOW event on the NZ wargaming calendar, having first been held in 2001 when the game was still in open beta.
The format of the 2021 tournament was 160pt Late War doubles, with 2.5 hour rounds played on 8’x4′ tables. Teams were required to field a valid force with a minimum of one formation per player, with the points able to be split between players however they wanted.
In the many wargames I’ve played, most countries’ soldiers were treated fairly equally. Some units were stronger than others, and some were faster than others, but in , units do not only differ by nation, but also by class and type. Section 25 of Chapter A of the rule book is dedicated to the various nations; however, there are other parts of the rule book that lay out the various characteristics of the many countries that fought in the Second World War and the Korean War.
Chapter A covers the nationalities that fought in Europe, Chapter G expands into the Pacific and Chapter W covers Korea. In order to maximize your forces in ASL, a complete understanding of your national characteristics is vital. Before getting into the meat of the characteristics and traits, a note from the authors of the rule book is in order. As they say, “Nationality Distinctions vary troop capabilities from one nation to another, and while patently unfair in their application of stereotyped and over-simplified traits to all troops of a country without exception, nonetheless do serve to give the game much of its flavor.”
With copies of the first X-COM game flying off the shelves, MicroProse, now merged with Spectrum Holobyte to form MicroProse, Inc., wanted a sequel to the game in just six months. The Gollop brothers hesitated at this proposal, declaring that all could be done in this timeframe was changing sprites and re-using the original code.
So, instead of developing the sequel the Gollops licensed the game code to MicroProse, that would produce the sequel, named X-COM: Terror from the Deep, in-house. Meanwhile, the Gollops went to work on what would become the third game in the series.
Terror was released on 1 June 1995 for DOS PCs and then ported to the PlayStation the next year. The game tells the story of the Second Alien War, some forty years after the First Alien War. Following the destruction of the Alien Brain on Mars, extraterrestrials under the Earth’s seas awaken after millions of years. These new aliens begin to terrorize ships and ports, and abducting humans. The X-COM organization is revived to fight this new alien menace from the deep.
X-COM: Interceptor
By Tom “Cap’n Chairborne” Mullane
By Patrick S. Baker