by Dennis “Matt Varnish” Campbell

Why finish off projects, when you can start completely new ones you never knew you needed?  Today I’ll be going through how I painted the DEVGRU team in Multi-cam from the starter set.

My good friend Drew Willis, of fame, asked me if I could paint his 28mm DEVGRU in Multicam… I’m a civilian so I understood the portion of that request, but what is DEVGRU?

By Paolo Paglianti

For ages, 15mm soldiers have been in metal, as many plastic versions of the soldiers were too flexible, with fewer details and of the wrong scale (1:72). Just a few years ago we began to see 15mm miniatures in hard or soft plastic, specifically for WW2 setting from Battlefront and Plastic Soldier Company (PSC). Now, for “ancient-medieval” Simon Hall’s set of rules, Mortem et Gloriam.

(By the way, ).

The first armies available are Imperial Roman and Gothic barbarian hordes, together with Sassanid and Hunnic: quite a good start for the later Imperial age. Could we miss the opportunity to check them out? So, let’s open the “Pacto starter armies” to see how good they are.

By Kreighton Long

This past weekend the hosted CYBËR WÅRS 2020 giving attendees a virtual convention experience that will hopefully help alleviate some of the pent up pressure to geek out after months of closed shops and social distancing.

Throughout the CYBËR WÅRS weekend over a dozen panels took place over Zoom with interviews of movers and shakers in the wargaming community. During one such panel representatives from came together for a 2-hour conversation including some sneak peeks at upcoming releases and works-in-progress over at Warlord HQ.

by Tom Burgess

Mitch Reed has already provided an excellent of the D-Day Waffen SS Book for NDNG, so it falls on me to review the Command Cards for this new Flames of War Late War book.

This might be the best part, as it is with the command cards that one can really flavor a list. I’ll break the cards down into the following five groups; Standards, Same as D-Day Germans, New Formations, Special Formation Upgrades, and finally Heroes.

Standards

Softskin Transport and Lucky.  You knew these had to be here. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anyone actually use the Softskin Card, but as with all Command  Card decks it is here.

By Kreighton Long

As the pandemic continues to dominate our news feeds and our minds I’ve been trying to focus on the future and how exciting it will be to attend club days and tournaments.

Warlord Games is doing its part to ramp up my excitement with the planned publication of their second D-Day Campaign Book with nearly two hundred pages focusing on the Anglo-Canadian Sectors from Gold, Sword, and Juno Beaches to the capture of Caen and the German defeat at the Falaise Pocket.

As you can expect from Warlord, this book contains new historical scenarios, units, and theater selectors.

Look for Bolt Action: Campaign: D-Day: British and Canadian Sectors to be released this coming Autumn. With the disruptions from the pandemic, Warlord has not put an official release date on it yet but indicate they hope to have it out potentially in October.

Wow, it’s been a while since I’ve written anything here. I’ve been busy with the ” podcast, and hanging out with the crew for our bi-weekly ” community painting sessions.

With the Co-pocalypse raging, there hasn’t been much to cover – until decided to put on , that is! Fellow TotS crewman Thomas ‘Chairborne’ Mullane and I interviewed pirate historian Benerson Little. Then we teamed up with Joseph Forster of ” to extract a fresh round of spoilers’ from Firelock’s Mike Tunez. If you want to watch as we raid Mike’s boat and interrogate him for 2 hours of podcasting gold, the video is on . Otherwise, I’ll share the juiciest spoilers here, so read on.

Can one get excited for a new book that has very little new models in it? Well if it is the new D-Day Waffen SS book from there is a lot to be excited about if you are a player who likes to play the SS. Do not let the lack of new models throw you off, this book adds so much flavor for the German D-Day forces you will never notice it.

After I built what I claimed was my only army for Flames of War almost a decade ago (Canadians) I soon found myself building an opposing force to play against them. I selected the Waffen SS because even decades after the war they hold an odd fascination for me as I try to wrap my head about how they existed as a separate force based on the Nazi party as opposed to the national army.

The SS also seemed to be everywhere during the war and one of the first lists I really loved to play was the SS Wiking Division that fought on the Eastern front. Now this force is available for Normandy as Battlefronts closes the Late War chapter for the invasion of France.

By Tom Burgess

The No Nice No Glory and Breakthrough Assault’s online Firestorm Gazala Campaign is now rolling into it’s third and final phase. The campaign has been driven so far by the 47 games played around the world from Turn 1 and Turn 2. The battle still hangs very much in the balance and either side could claim victory based on how the next four battles in Turn 3 go.

Turn 2 Analysis

The five battles in Turn 2 went three to the German/Italian forces and two to the Commonwealth forces.  Most importantly, British players in Turn 2 won some of the battles that mattered. The British line held to the south of Gazala at Knightsbridge (B5) and southwest of Gazala at El Adem (B6). However, to the southeast of Gazala at Belhamed (B7), Rommel did turn the flank and is now on the outskirts of Tobruk.

By Ed Hall and Tom Burgess,

In Turn 1 of the Campaign, Ed’s combined German/Italian forces attacked Point 171. defended by an Indian Motor Brigade. Ed chose Maneuver in that battle and we ended up playing Dust Up () which ended up as a German win.  For the next try at Point 171, he choose Attack and we ended up with No Retreat. So we slide the big hill, i.e. “Point 171” to the British side of the table and had them try to hold it from the combined German and Italian attacks.

By Tom Burgess,

My friend Charles and I recently met up to have another go at a Firestorm Gazala campaign. We had played a game, in Turn,One of the Campaign, where Charles’s Panzers managed to break up my British Motor Company and Crusader force. See that AAR . After breaking my reinforcing Crusaders and destroying all of my Anti-tank guns, his Panzers had free reign to take down my defending infantry.

Charles hoped to keep that momentum going for our next Turn Two battle.  This made a lot of sense since Charles was effectively just continuing the attack northward with the 5th Panzer Regiment. So he chose to play Battle One from Turn One at  El Edem (B6). This area was just to the south of Tobruk (see inset map).

Knowing I would be facing a mostly tank force, I based my defending force off of a British Rifle Company, with maxed out 6 pdrs. I also beefed up my Crusaders with a Grant Troop to assist the Firestorm Grant unit already provided from the campaign scenario.  I was very glad to have two Grant Troops as my Crusaders fared very poorly against Panzers in our last battle. Charles force was very similar to our last battle, but he did swap in a full unit of Panzer-IIINs to get some higher firepower.