By Scott Grasse

I am very excited to be talking about Firestorm Sicily which launches this weekend on May 25th. The notion of creating a Firestorm Italy campaign has always been a burning desire but when Tom Richards approached me with his vision of a Mega Firestorm Italy Campaign – one that would cover three phases of operations in Italy and spanning from mid-war into late war – I immediately became energized to join the team and get to the fun.

Themed campaigns are a great way to delve deeper into the historical elements of WWII battles and tactics. The Battle for Sicily represents an interesting, dynamic and unique time period in the war that makes for a particularly great campaign. Many things were changing at the time. Everything from – the terrain the battles would be fought on to troops and equipment that would participate. Political and military leadership strife was occurring on both sides. The fight for Italy would be a very different experience than the battles fought in the open deserts and rugged terrain of North Africa just months before. Sicily was to be the flashpoint for a new phase of the war.

By Ian Birdwell

Having been a relatively recent convert to , getting into it at the start of Version 2, I was ecstatic for the publication of Saga’s Age of Magic Universe. Essentially, Age of Magic opens the doors for players to explore any fantasy universe they’d like with any forces they’d like using the already existing Saga rulebook (which already has two existing historical universes for Viking and Crusades periods).

To me, a refugee of the Old World and not thrilled with Age of Sigmar as a warband sized game, Age of Magic was almost exactly a dream came true.

I know I’m terribly excited about this new Saga Universe, but I’ll contain myself for now to an overview of the main rulebook.

The main Age of Magic rulebook is divided into three sections, the introduction of new rules specific to this Saga Universe, descriptions of the various factions, and the grimoire of magic.  So we’ll take a look along those lines.

By Dennis “Matt Varnish” Campbell

Napoleon.   Stop me if you’ve heard this one before:   “Man takes over country, then takes over Europe, and has grand ideas of marching to Moscow, but is then thwarted by logistics and winter”

Scott’s place on a Saturday, with some Sharpe’s Rifles on the tele

Napoleonics? Why? Well, for me with my gaming background starting mainly with sci-fi and fantasy (Games Workshop) I had never really looked at historicals, and certainly not Napoleonics. I knew who Napoleon was, and the era, mainly from watching Sharpe’s Rifles, a series where A: Sean Bean’s character doesn’t die, and B: Has Elizabeth Hurley in it (see header pic)

By Mitch Reed

As many of you know I am all about anything dealing with the Great War. I have always felt that the Great War is underrepresented in the gaming community so I am quick to promote any new game that truly captures the war on my gaming table.

Blood and Valor is a new game that will be out later in 2019 that gives the Great War an amazing skirmish level game and since it by the guys from you know it is going to be an amazing game that will be a must for your collection.

Here is my truth in advertising statement, as soon as I heard about the game I begged the developers my services as a playtester. While my statements in this article are based in fact, they are also from helping out the developers. Another caveat to this article I want to bring up is that this article is based on a version of the game that is still in the draft/playtest phase of production, so things may change.

By Tom Mullane

As a teacher, my gaming time is limited due. Spring Break is a time where I try to get games in and catch up with friends in the hobby. This spring, I got to connect with a friend I haven’t had a chance to play a game within a long while and made the most of the opportunity.

Joe and I played four games over the course of the afternoon and evening consisting of one Flames of War MW at 109 pts, and three Team Yankee West Germans Vs West Germans.

By Austin Coped

V4 Late War is so close I can almost taste it! And BLUF: While not super in-depth or unique, the British lists are super competitive with the lists that have been shared. List Gold!

***Disclaimer*** Buy Churchills before they go up in value from supply and demand!

Now that you have my initial thoughts, I want to show you a deep dive into the units, the formations and the rundown of National rules and tidbits of info I have run across. First up Special Rules.

By Benny Christiansen

Soviet players, rejoice! Even if the prospects of another Soviet book is a long time into the future, there is plenty of “good stuff” in the Fortress Europe to keep you busy painting and gluing and playing till then.

In this article, I will try to describe a few of the things I have found most interesting and most promising about the content of the Soviet part of Fortress Europe. It will not be a page-by-page walkthrough, but more like a tactical suggestion article. My aim is to let you get a feeling of the things that I have found most likely to be in my first LW battles.

By Paolo Paglianti

Images courtesy BattleFront

Whatever you play sci-fi Warhammer 28mm games or 15mm historical ones, half of our hobby is painting miniatures. If you are like me, you have tons of unpainted metal and plastic miniatures in the hobby room. Those Orks you bought because that fantasy soccer was so good. The space marines you collected because sooner or later you’ll do that WH40K army. And obviously boxes of WW2 tanks and Alexander phalanxes in 15mm.

Something that can’t miss in the wargamer’s shelf is a book about painting techniques. Before the Internet, they were precious as gold. Although you can now find plenty of online written and video tutorials, a good colour reference book is still quite useful.

In my painting “career” I have read books from Games Workshop and the awesome , but Battlefront’s is something unique, because it’s one of the few (actually the only one, as far as I know) totally focused on 15 mm armies. As one of the best and most inspiring lines in the book, it would be crazy to paint a full Russian 15mm WW2 army with the same definition as a 54 or even a 28 mm miniature. Colours of War is totally aimed for your twentieth century armies.

Finally, the Late War has come! After two years from V4 release, we’re nearing to the most significant and hyped WW2 period, the latter two years of intense fighting towards Berlin. Battlefront is going to launch Late period with Fortress Europe, the first Late War book covering the period between the end of Mid-War period to D-Day.

The focus of this book is to ferry players from the desert and Russian plains to the later stages of war pre-D-Day. So, for British, we’re talking about the invasion of the Italian boot. In Mid, the British generals can count on a single book that is a bit outdated if compared to the last German Ghost Panzer army list. If you played a game between 8th Army vs Ferdinand or Panzer IV spam you’ll surely have that “unbeatable” feeling.  We can still win the day, since FOW scenarios are based on taking and defending objectives, but it’s really hard when you face lots of frontally uncrackable tanks. Well, in late-war this is going to change…

By Chris Jackson

The question on everyone’s lips on the interwebs these days, at least in the forums I frequent, is what’s coming for Late War? has given me a sneak peek at the new book Fortress Europe and I think they have done a good job with it.

A lot of thought was put into how to roll out the new era, and it seems to me a lot of the complaints we as a gaming community have made since V4 was released have been addressed. Now I’m not saying the new v4 is perfect, nor that I don’t have some issues with it, but I think, on the whole, BF has done a good job, particularly with the concept behind this book.

Fortress Europe is designed primarily to get existing FOW players into Late War with a minimum of muss and fuss. Almost every unit in the book (and for the Germans, EVERY unit in this book) is already produced. The units are simply repointed to Late War levels.

My focus for this article will be the German Forces in Fortress Europe.