Cyber Wars ‘Redux’ with Firelock Games

By Tyler Stone
This past weekend, ran its second ‘Cyber Wars’ digital convention. During the first Cyber Wars, I was able to , the lead designer of Blood & Plunder and Oak & Iron, by
Mitch Reed to cover Firelock’s other game, Blood & Valor. This time, Mitch and I joined forces and put everyone under one digital circus tent. You can check out the entire 2-hour recording on the , or read on below for the ‘spark notes’ version.
Blood & Plunder
By now, any avid NDNG reader should be aware that Firelock Games wrapped up their latest Kickstarter, titled This expansion not only adds new factions, characters, and starter box but also advances the game’s timeline into the 18th century while bringing the game’s model line into the 21st century with a range of hard-plastic miniatures. What you may not know is that ‘Raise the Black’ is the highest-grossing historical wargame ever released on Kickstarter. Over 2,000 backers came together to pledge more than $360,000. The next step in this wildly successful venture from the boys from La Florida will be to set up the Pledge Manager. Once that is available, backers will be able to update their pledges and claim rewards. The Pledge Manager will also allow Late Backers to get in on the action if they missed the initial offers.
While we wait for the Kickstarter’s 2021 ship date, we can still expect to see continued growth for the game. An intermediary PDF will bring rules for some of the new units that we’ve already seen on the Force Builder. There is also a possibility of seeing some new terrain and units come to the game before ‘Raise the Black’ reaches our doorstep.

Painting Heer and Luftwaffe Splinter Camouflage

By Kreighton LongGerman WWII Tent Quarter & Poncho Zeltbahn Splinter Pattern Camouflage – International Military Antiques

While the Waffen SS made extensive use of camouflage uniforms, the German Heer incorporated its own pattern, albeit not to the thoroughness of their SS peers.

In this article, I would like to share my process for painting Splinter Camouflage. This pattern is applicable for both Heer as well as Luftwaffe Fallschirmjager who sported similar patterns during the mid and late-war periods.

I recommend finding examples of splinter camouflage in history books or Google Images and leaning on them to help form the shapes of the different parts of this pattern. We will be using the following Vallejo paints in this tutorial:  German Cam. Beige (821), Leather Brown (871), German Cam. Medium brown (826), Black (950), and Luftwaffe Cam. Green (823). We will also use Citadel’s Seraphim Sepia as a wash.

Bringing Docks to the 4Ground

By Glenn Van Meter

I’ve been avidly playing Firelock’s Blood & Plunder for over a year now, and in that time I have constantly been on the lookout for more and better terrain options, especially as I intend to host some tournaments once COVID-19 risks are a bit more relaxed.

To that end, I have purchased terrain from Firelock’s own range, made some cardboard Spanish-style houses, purchased a few 3D printed options, and even bought a couple of Laketown sets from Games Workshop in the hopes of using the docks and older (albeit slightly fantasy) style houses in the future. So when Firelock Games announced a partnership with 4Ground to produce the “Ports of Plunder” range, I ordered a variety of kits to try out, including several of their dock pieces. 

Batrep : Battlegroup NorthAG Soviets vs British 500 pts

By Tom Gall

is the Plastic Soldier companies WWIII what if set of rules. It brings the Battlegroup style of rules to the early/mid-1980s which for those fans of the period can be welcome competition for Battlefronts Team Yankee.

While Covid is still running around here in Minnesota, we’re lucky that cases are generally in check, so in-store gaming is something we can do masked. D6 Games in Rochester Mn is my frequent haunt and with time around the tabletop, I’ve been catching up with gaming I’ve been wanting to do since things shut down in March.

A number of friends who are fans of Team Yankee have wanted to give NorthAG as try. This batrep is the result of one of those games. It’s a 500pt affair on a 6×4 table in 15mm reusing much of our Team Yankee hardware. The lists are at the bottom of the article.

HMGS CyberWars Round Two

Many of you enjoyed the online CyberWars event that held in July, that featured gaming, speakers, and a virtual vendor hall. HMGS is back at it and will hold another event on 12-15 November 2020, and the NDNG crew is once again run running the roundtable with some great speakers.

A Pirate’s Last Chance – “Raise the Black” The Last Hurrah

By Tom Chairborne Mullane

It’s peak season for leaf peepers here in New England. Cold temperatures usually accompany autumn in the North East, but this year has seen some really warm weather. I took the opportunity to play some demo games with my friend Tim outside.

Tim and the other gamers from in Catskill NY play a pretty diverse array of games. Blood and Plunder isn’t officially carried by the store, so I’ve been painting commissions for folks to get them started. I am painting a Pirate force for Tim, and he wanted a refresher on the rules before he dived into the kickstarter.

My Dad and I have also been selling hotdogs out of our roadside stand in Hudson NY as a way for him to kill some of his free time. (as a limo driver doing mostly airport work, he hasn’t had a lot of trips lately). So I packed my car full of Tables and Terrain, along with a bunch of my models, and headed for Hudson, NY.

Soviet WWIII Book: How to Build and Play a New Soviet Force

In my previous , I discussed how excited I was for this book to come out for and now I want to share with you some of the lists and new toys I want to run in the future. Along with these new lists, I also want to explore how my playing style may change with this new book and which of my older lists will need to be adjusted with the release of the new book.