Review of a new wargame product
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.
By Mitch Reed
Seems like I am playing a lot of games about Stalingrad recently. I recently wrote a review of the digital port of David Thompson’s Pavlov’s House and that got me to pull out a game in my collection that I have yet to get to the table. Stalingrad: Inferno on the Volga by was a game that was funded via Kickstarter in 2018 and received a lot of buzz. I missed the Kickstarter campaign, but I was able to get the deluxe Kickstarter version unopened from someone on Facebook of all places. I was not only glad to get this game to the table, but equally as pleased to find that the buzz behind it was well deserved.
By Mitch Reed
One of the greatest things about Blood & Plunder is the rich historical background the game recreates. The early colonial Americas features some amazing stories that centered around some larger-than-life characters who still hold our imagination today. The team at Firelock brings this history to you with their organized play kit which features unique missions and characters in a linked narrative campaign which is available for free from the website.
By Tom Burgess
My good friend Ed and I have been playing the campaign for the last few months and we have been having a great time with it. When it came time for our sixth game, the campaign called for the River Crossing special mission that was covered in the Bagration: Soviet book.
Previously we had to use standard mission instead of a special mission because we did not have the still yet to be published Bagration: German book. So this was to be our first special mission played from the Bagration expansion for Flames of War. This would require some special terrain pieces and assault boats.
Fortunately Ed had bought We knew this terrain pack would have a river mat and card punch-out assault boats we needed, but I did not realize how much this pack actually had in it. Yes, this pack had the river mat and special pieces but it had so much more.
By Mitch Reed
Well before I ever rolled a die, painted a miniature, or put a map under plexiglass I played with little green army men. As my son was growing up, he also gravitated to those green men and played with them for hours. I always wondered what use I would have for the bucket of army men as I grew up. My question has been answered with the game from .
By Tom Burgess
Though I already have plenty of BRDM-2s, SA-9 Gaskins, and Spandrel AT launchers I could not pass up the great deal that the new World War III: Team Yankee (WW3:TY) Soviet army box was. This gave me five BRDM-2 sprues that I was not sure I needed. I considered selling them or giving them away but decided I’d go ahead and build them to help get me to my goal of completing 365 Flames of War and WW3:TY teams in 2020. I also thought I could do a decent review article since I could compare these new plastic models to the older resin-metal models.
By Mitch Reed
One thing I have learned from playing and covering this hobby is that gamers always have an opinion and are never shy to share it. For the titles I have worked on I dread the comments on social media on things that were omitted or the fact we did not write the game just for them.
While I have never seen Paul Neher make any disparaging comments, he has done what I recommend all gamers to do; create your own game. Paul’s Hounds of War ruleset did something that can make all gamers happy, a set of rules that allows the gamer to create whatever type of skirmish fight they want and include whichever capabilities they desire.
By Tom Burgess
Battlefront has released its Bagration German book. I was interested and how, or even if, the Battlefront team could make a unique new book when so much of the standard German units seem already accounted for. Though I was already quite content with the new book as is, it’s normally the Command Cards that take a new force book to the next level. That is the case here as I think these new Bagration German Command Cards take an already excellent book product and knocked it out of the park with these new command cards.
By Mitch Reed
Recently sent me some of their brand-new and I got around to finishing them just in time to make sure that they land on your holiday wish list. I usually do not collect too much terrain in 15mm however after recently getting a mat that looks like a torn-up battlefield, I decided to take this project on. Past buildings from Battlefront were usually one to three-story affairs made of resin and came pre-painted, these plastic kits are huge and very well done with five floors to expand your table upwards.
By Mitch Reed
Kickstarter has been a blessing to the gaming community. So many great games now have a path to our tables from small developers unlike any other time in our hobby. One such game is The Shores of Tripoli by located in Washington DC. Fort Circle is run by avid Nationals fan Kevin Bertram who has a steady social media presence on many gaming threads.
The Shores of Tripoli (SoT) looks at the Barbary Wars fought between the United States and the Barbary Pirates from 1801 until 1805. The game faithfully recreates this conflict with a fun and easy to play game that history buffs and seasoned grognards will both enjoy.
