2021 Team Yankee Masters

By Howard West

Team Yankee 2021 Masters was held at located on 8796 Michigan Rd, Indianapolis, IN 46268 on June 26th and 27th, 2021. Family Time Games is a really nice gaming store and has a nice stock of both Flames of War and Team Yankee products. They also stock many other Boardgames, RPG’s, Miniatures, Cards, and other Gaming supplies. Stop and visit the store if you are in the greater Indianapolis area.

Team Yankee Masters is an invitation-only event hosted by each year in June for the top sixteen players as ranked by Battle Rankings in the United States and Canada.  The rankings are based on players placements in various Team Yankee Tournaments across the country during that years season. The Team Yankee tournament season runs from May 1st previous year to April 31 of the current year.  Formal invitations where mailed out to the qualifiers in early May. The 2021 Team Yankee Masters Tournament was sponsored by , Family Time Games, and

Converting a Romanian 75mm Artillery Piece

By Kreighton Long

While window shopping for light artillery models for my WW2 Romanian army I found limited options to choose from. While Great Escape Games makes a fine looking Romanian light artillery piece (one will make its way into my arsenal eventually) I wanted to challenge myself with a bit of conversion work to add variety to my three-light artillery Romanian list for Bolt Action.

For my conversion attempt I began with the wooden spoked wheel variant of the WWI French style 75mm gun as found in the Warlord Games . The crew themselves needed a little customization to make them more Romanian which is where the conversion work was done for this piece. I did attempt to find a way to modify German, Soviet, and American helmets to the point where they would pass as Romanian but the solution alluded me.

Firestarter: Who were the Boucaniere?

By Tyler Stone

Firelock recently announced their , the gun-toting women ‘Boucaniere’. The project “funded” in record time, and digital modeling is underway for a full release of the ladies. We’ll be seeing them in live metal soon, but where do these women come from, and how do they fit into Blood & Plunder?

The only lists that Boucaniere appear in are the French ‘Chasseurs’ and ‘Caribbean Militia’ subfactions. These factions reflect the early 17th century French settlements in the Spanish Main. Despite their reputation, these settlers were not adventurers, but refugees of religious persecution.

Ahhh… Gaming again and a batrep

By Troy Hill

I didn’t realize how much I missed other gamers until I had to go about 18 months without seeing them.

True, we stayed connected on social media. And a lot of us used TableTop Simulator, or Roll20 to get in virtual games.

But there is nothing like being back in person. Seeing friends (for me, new friends that I barely got to know last winter. I forget if we had a March game day (maybe?)

This technically wasn’t my first game back from the great distancing. We had one of those in June. Back then we had four players at our North-east Indiana Bolt Action day. Our group gets together once a month for Bolt Action on the second Saturday of the month, and again on the fourth (occasionally the fifth weekend if there is one). This Saturday we had five players for Bolt Action. Not bad. We’d had a few drift off to other games, or still ensconced in catching up with family. Five is a good number. Except someone has to take on two opponents…

Yep. That someone was me. And mistakes were made.

Summer of Plunder – World Campaign Month 1 recap

By Tyler Stone

We have had our first full week of campaign gaming in July, and the latest results are flooding in! The Brethren of the Coast have widened their lead, claiming 22 of the more than 100 games played. They’re not ahead by much though, and the English are doggedly pursuing the unruly pirates with 20 games to their name. Hot on their heels are the Spanish and French, each claiming 19 games.

No Dice No Glory Episode 99: Tails of the Sail 18

Glenn, Tom, and Tyler take a dive into Oak and Iron. Tune in to see what the game is about, what you get in the starter, and what to expect when you’re trying it out. We also update the community about the current state of affairs in the Blood and Plunder Campaign. Glenn and Tom make their bets for July, and finally, we give away our biggest Trivia prize yet with a question about a Pirate King from Madagascar.  Thanks for listening!

Review: Command & Colors: Samurai Battles

By Mitch Reed

Recently the NDNG crew had a that emulated the NCAA Basketball championship where a team of four gamers selected our four favorite games and debated until there was only one left standing. The winner was Command & Colors Ancients, which is one of the many games under the C&C banner. This event motivated me to pick up the latest release in the series, Command & Colors: Samurai Battles.

River Crossing – A Bagration Special Mission AAR

By Tom Burgess

My good friend Ed and I have been playing the campaign for the last couple of months.  With our sixth game of the campaign we matched up for the River Crossing mission from the Bagration: Soviet book.  Ed had bought which would give us the special pieces we needed for this mission. We played at 105 points.

The River Crossing Mission is much like the No Retreat…with a wide river down the board center. To balance the attacker’s difficulty of having to force a river crossing, the defender does not have an ambush in this mission and instead of having immediate reserves, they are delayed.

Historical Advanced Squad Leader

Squad Leader: Where it all began

By David Garvin

With the 1977 release of , the wargaming world experienced an earthquake. The virtual tectonic plates didn’t just rattle; they shattered the gaming world!

The late , designer of Squad Leader, had developed a game like none other. Now gamers could re-fight various battles of the Second World War at such low tactical levels like never before! Not only did players get to move squads around, but also some individual and even key leaders!

Squad Leader spawned three successive games, (called gamettes by the designer); , and . These were later supplanted by Advanced Squad Leader, developed in great part by and .

By 1986, Advanced Squad Leader had released its revolutionary rule book as well as the first module in the system, . With the 2013 release of , pretty much every nation that fought in the war had a module covering its actions. And in 2017 with , the ASL universe had expanded into the Korean War.