Behind Enemy Lines Episode 17

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After hiatus, we are back! We hope you enjoyed the fabled "Lost Episode" and are ready for more randomness!

This week, the guys (minus Mike) talk about little things and big things. We cover off the latest in news we've sourced from around the nets.

Then we get into what we did in the latest round of TCOW shenanigans and also plug the next big event on the NZ Flames of War calendar, FlamesCon.

Part 3 is all about your questions and also an EPIC discussion. We also have a wee competition going….

Want to join the conversation? Please sound off in the comments below, or let us know on our forum!

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Star Wars Armada - Stats Analysis: Critical Effects

By Eric "R1H4" Riha

Welcome back to R1H4's mathematical breakdown of Star Wars: Armada.

In my previous article we talked about expected damage outputs given particular sets/colors of dice. Between articles, I've managed to create an Excel spreadsheet that can run these kinds of calculations dynamically, based on user input. I am proud to present the R1H4 Armada Attack Roller, courtesy of Google Drive.

In this article, we'll look at our chances to trigger Critical Effects. If we take a look at our dice chart again, we can see the chance to trigger a Critical Effect is (thankfully) the same across all dice.

 

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Intensify Forward Firepower Episode XIII

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Coming at you with all the power Lobrad can muster out of the engines set to their highest vibration settings, Intensify Forward Firepower Episode 13: Rogue Bombers Approach covers all the latest! The enigmatic Easy, deafening Dano, Drunk Tarkin, and Slashing (Ackbar) Steven report to the Flesh Star Destroyer's conference tub to talk about their experiences with large ships, wave 2 anticipation, and the upcoming Rogues and Villains pack. Much more is packed into this ep, so check it out!

Want to join the conversation? Please sound off in the comments below, or let us know on our forum!

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On the Road - Episode 97

Luke and Jon travel to a 1500 point open Late War Flames of War tournament at Huzzah Hobbies.  The usual predictions and list discussion takes place on the way up, with a tournament report on the way back.

Click Here to Download Episode 97

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Bolt Action - Review: Warlord Factory and Warehouse Terrain Set

By Patch

    Terrain is a major part of our experience as tabletop war gamers and the best terrain is that which has a narrative and tells a story. This is generally found when instead of just randomly placing some buildings and trees down and leaving it there you add some of the more ordinary things that would be found in that environment. This brings your table to life and creates a much more spectacular and challenging environment to play over.

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Star Wars Armada - Battle Report: First Wave 2 Game! (MC80 Rebels vs Imperial Star destroyer)

By Steven MacLauchlan

Finally, Opponent Prime Sean and I had massed our fleets and unleashed the Capital Ships in the sector. After countless border skirmishes, the time had come to draw out the fleet commanders. Read on as Vader and Ackbar square off. Will the Imperial will be done, or will the freedom fighters score a much needed victory against the Empire?

Here are the fleets we choose to take into this first capital clash:

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Bolt Action - Review: Rubicon M3 Half-track

By Tristan

    Let me set the tone of this review with one word.... Wow!

    My first Rubicon kit arrived in the mail and considering all the things I'd heard about the quality of Rubicon I was excited to get this on my desk. Pulling open the box and examining the sprue, I was delighted to see plenty of different options to customise and personalise my particular model.

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Bolt Action - Review: Warlord Mk. IV Humber Armoured Car

By Tristan

    Since changing to a British army, I've impatiently waited to get my hands on all the tasty options the British armoured cars allow me. Having run Americans for quite some time, the two choices between the M3 White scout car and the Greyhound meant my options were limited and at times a little dull. This Warlord Games Humber is my first step into a much larger world (please excuse the Star Wars reference).

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Star Wars Armada - Massing at Sullust Tournament Report

By Steven MacLauchlan

I was able to participate in a Massing at Sullust tournament at Battleground Games in Richmond VA, but unfortunately they did not receive their Wave 2 kit in time. I decided to stick it out and play the tournament (it was only even a question because I had moved into my new house less than 24 hours before!), and I'm glad I did!

My list was pretty straightforward:
Assault Frigate Mk II B: Garm Bel Iblis, Gunnery Teams, Advanced Projectors.
Assault Frigate Mk II B: Gunnery Teams, Advanced Projectors, Enhanced Armament
Assault Frigate Mk II B: Gunnery Teams, Advanced Projectors, Enhanced Armament

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Bolt Action - Review: Warlord Universal Carrier and Sherman

By Tristan

  Recently I made the long haul to Sydney, for MOAB, and whilst there I was fortunate to pick up a universal carrier, otherwise known as a Bren carrier and an M4 Sherman.

  Both of these kits are from the Warlord Games plastic range and having already assembled a plastic Sherman previously (it was the first Warlord plastic I ever assembled and in my haste I managed to stuff it up) I was eager to get these gems home and begin work.

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Star Wars X-Wing - Green Squadron: Mission Seven: Capture the Imperial Officer



Listen up, Green Squadron. Intel out of the Nulan system has recently been handed to me that indicates a V.I.P. is about to arrive at a nearby imperial facility for an inspection. This is a big one, folks: Moff Lankin is going to arrive via the following flight path -


The central holoprojector blinks to life, indicating a spinning Lambda shuttle and a trajectory through the Nulan system.

- and it's your job to neutralize the shuttle so that we can bring it back to base. Whatever we gather from the Moff and his shuttle's computer should provide us with even more valuable intelligence to be used in future operations. Green Leader, you have the floor.

What is this all about? Check out previous Green Squadron Missions here!

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It's All In The Details

By Matty

I've never claimed to be an excellent painter. I tend to take too many shortcuts and am not quite patient enough to win any painting awards. What I do enjoy, is basing. More specifically, the addition of colors, textures and 'props' to really make my units stand out. Let's have a look on how you can add some flair to your army.


There are a lot of options when it comes to basing material. Some people use sand, drywall (sheetrock) compound or more recently, modeled miniature bases. They come complete with texture and other details that you can then paint to make your Flames of War more detailed. Everything you are about to see is relatively cheap to buy and even easier to use and work with.

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Bolt Action - Ghost Army Podcast Episode 11

The guys are back in this super sized episode! We welcome fellow China lover, Steven Drury, to the cast to talk about "Empires in Flames." We also welcome our old friend Nate, from Trenchworx Miniatures, to talk Kickstarters, tanks and the Pacific! 

Tune in for a ripper of an episode!

Find this episode in your friendly local iTunes shop or download it directly from HERE.

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Bolt Action - Review: Warlord GAZ AAA Lorry

By: Old Man Morin


A few weeks ago, some of you would remember the almighty, Patchimus Prime's article about the Soviet Zis-6 Truck by Warlord Games. I have to say, seeing his truck really inspired me to get my own truck painted. Although my truck is also by Warlord games and is also a Soviet truck, it is a completely different vehicle altogether.

I present, without further ado, the Soviet GAZ AAA Lorry!

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Star Wars Armada - Stats Analysis: Expected Damage

"Sir, our algorithms are failing!"

By Eric "R1H4" Riha

Now that I've completed my consciousness transfer from The Mathemagician into the R1H4 Battle Computer, it's time to delve into my favorite topic again: MATH.

Star Wars: Armada's unique dice arrangement - both in facing and in color - makes calculating "Expected Results" extremely difficult or super fun(!) depending on how you look at it. Defensive abilities that modify those dice directly (rather than simply modifying the final result) add a layer of complexity that makes Armada a highly variable (and super fun!) game to play.

Today, we are going to talk strictly about Expected Outcomes from each set of dice in the quantities we see from Capital Ships - specifically in terms of damage output. We will also look at these outcomes through the lens of a basic Pareto analysis; that is to say, which outcomes are greater than 80% reliable. We all know there's a chance we can roll 4 blanks on 4 black dice, but how common is it? Should the rare chance of that occurring impact how we make decisions? Using this "80% Rule" allows us to make decisions based on reasonable outcomes when chance/risk is involved.

Unlike the world of Flames of War or other games where the outcome of a die roll requires additional "calculations" (skill + modifiers = required value to hit), Armada's dice deliver results that are applicable across all (or nearly all) scenarios. For example, if I am firing out of the front arc of a Nebulon B using 3 Red Dice, the outcome of my attack roll is the same regardless of what my target is. Different targets may have different mitigation profiles (defense token sets), but the initial attack roll always has the same probability to damage, crit, accuracy, etc.

Let's start our analysis with a single Red Die.

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Bolt Action - Michigan GT Wrap Up

Today we have a special guest poster in the form of our old buddy Mike:

  Last month we held the first annual Bolt Action, "Back to the Front!" Event at the Michigan GT. The GT started as a 40k event and grew to include Warmachine / Hordes. It now hosts Firestorm Armada, AoS, Infinity, and of course Bolt Action!

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Star Wars X-Wing - Green Squadron: Missions Five and Six



Listen up, you two. The rest of the squadron is scattered to all points of the cluster, but we've got an important one that just can't wait. A team of special operators at Argus might have some actionable intel for us, but they've gotten themselves into a bind.

Turns out the HWK-290 they were being extracted in suffered from some faulty hyperdrive repair parts and couldn't complete the evac. They've got a plan to cobble something together - if they sacrifice their weapon systems' power cells to make the fix - it just might work. The problem now is the imps have scrambled squadrons to ferret them out of the asteroid belt they've sheltered in. I need what's left of Green Squadron here on Green Squadron to cover them as they make their final preparations for escape.

Captain M'Kel, commander of Emerald One and the task force responsible for operations in the Aturi Cluster, stops Zholl "Wrongway" Markyle as he's exiting the ready room.

Listen, Green Leader, command has ordered me to keep you on a short leash. I need all the talented pilots I can get my hands on - but I also need all the ships for them to fly in! You lose another x-wing from underneath you and you better hope the ejector pod malfunctions. No more foul-ups, Wrongway!

Participating Pilots:

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LOTR-LCG: Grant’s Three Player Campaign – Part 4 - The Uruk-Hai – “Entering the Realm of Rohan” - Report

By Grant “pfcamygrant” Ellis

In the last campaign report, our Fellowship was broken, as Frodo headed towards the Land of Shadow, and we saw the capture of Pippin, Idraen, and Gimli by the Uruak-Hai at the Seat of Amon Hen. I have difficulty reconciling the narrative as to why and how the proud Dwarf and elusive Dunedain hunter would have been made prisoners. One theory is that Idraen, known to the people of the village of Archet as Hawk, would have the knowledge and ability to leave the most obvious trail for Aragorn and company to follow. Secondly, she may have instructed Gimli to allow himself to be captured should the need arise for a fight to the death with the Uruk-Hai; Gimli would have the battle sense and sheer ferocity needed in an unfair fight with the Orcs. Regardless of the deeper reason, our Noble Hero Idraen and the son of Gloin, joined the fool of a Took as captives to start our next quest.

The Treason of Saruman rules explicitly state on page 5 that if Aragorn was being used as part of any players’ campaign deck, he can be replaced for free, or rather not incur a +1 threat penalty. The tactics version of Aragorn had been used as part of our mono-tactics Three Hunters deck. He needed to be replaced so his Fellowship Sphere counterpart could be used.

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Star Wars - Marksman of Concord Dawn: Rako Hardeen

by "Dirty" Jon Baber

Here's another article to help out the folks who want to build a Rako Hardeen costume....if any of you are out there!

After Dredd, I decided that I would like to make something related to Star Wars, since we totally love everything Star Wars around here. Before even thinking about this, Steven convinced me to watch The Clone Wars cartoon series and I got completely hooked. Though I had to skip some Jar-Jar and Droid episodes, I thought that the series was very, very cool. In particular, I liked the Season 4 story line with Obi-Wan disguising himself as the famous bounty hunter, Rako Hardeen.

Really, this is all about the Obi-Wan version of Rako Hardeen. In the story line - which I don't want to spoil too badly - the Jedi ends up infiltrating a bounty hunter group from prison. In a great display of The Clone Wars detail, Rako's actual wardrobe is similar, but not exactly the same as the outfit Obi-Wan builds after they escape from prison. I like the look of the post-prison uniform, so I decided to build that. Technically, this is an Obi-Wan Kenobi outfit.

Useful, but not EXACTLY correct Rako image.

So, where to start? I went online and did a lot of image searches.  

I also looked for some people who had already done Rako, and found only a few - this was going to be hard. First, I needed to sort a helmet. No one is making a helmet online, and EVA foam seemed impossible.  Luckily, my friend Devon had just gotten into doing some commission work, so I asked him to whip me up a helmet. I figured that if I could get that, the rest would be easy.

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Intensify Forward Firepower Episode XII: The Fleshing at Sullust

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The Fleshing at Sullust is finally brought to you through the engineering prowess of Lobrad with a little comlink help from Drunk Tarkin, Rulesbot Dano, Steven Skyshuffler, and the enigmatic, mysterious, grey (or purple) eyed bounty hunter named Easy. The team comes together from around the Atlantic Coast to discuss the Massing at Sullust events they attended. Success varies per crew member - unless you measure success on a good time scale! Tune in to find out how the fleet engagements went and any takeaways the Intensify Forward Firepower podcast left with.

Want to join the conversation? Please sound off in the comments below, or let us know on our forum!

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Over the Top: Brett's Brawlers Mission Contest

By Mitch Reed

It seems like I got an extra box of Bret's Brawlers from my work on the new Great War book that just came out. Instead of sending it back, the folks at Battlefront told me to give it away to someone who wants to get into the Great War period,  I am sure I could find many takers, however why not have some fun with this and create a contest that we all can enjoy?  So let's see what great ideas can come from our Flames of War community.


The Contest
Right now the new Great War book has a total of five missions, three of which are original Great War missions and two which are modified from the WWII period of the game.  I know that many of our readers have some great ideas which could expand this total and we want to see what ideas you have.

We are looking for an original mission just for the Great War period.  The winner gets the Bret's Brawlers box set and will have their submission released as a download from the folks at Battlefront. The runner up will not get the box, but will have their mission released to the public as well.  Seems like fun doesn't it?

Submissions
Each participant will need to submit their mission  to wwpdbrawlerscontest@gmail.com.

The mission should be
1. Great war focused; a mission that really represents the period.
2. Complete, make sure you look over the content of the current missions and address every section.   --The map does not have to be pretty but make it something we can understand.
-- What Great War or Flames of War Version 3 Special rules does it use.
--Type of battle, Mobile, Defensive, Fair Fight, Etc.
3. Unique, not a re-hash of a current or past FoW mission.
4. Playable; it should be challenging, fun, and balanced. It should also not re-write or modify the current rules.

Along with your submission please include some details about what gave you the inspiration to write the mission and why it would be a good Great War only mission.

Rules
1. You may turn in multiple submissions
2. No ringers please, folks writing content for Battlefront should let others get their ideas out
3. All submissions should be received by 11 PM (EST) on 11 November 2015.  A very fitting date and time.
4.Include your name and contact information with your submission.

The staff of WWPD will take the first cut on the submissions and send the finalists to Battlefront for them to pick the winner and runner up. We hope to announce the winner by end of November 2015.

Questions should be posted on the thread that goes with this article on the WWPD forums.  We will not be checking the email address very much during the contest.

When I say "Over the Top" I don't mean this! 

So lets see what ideas you  have and good luck.

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Bolt Action - Review: Warlord Plastic Fallshirmjager

I Finally got my hands on a box of the new plastic Fallschirmjager from Warlord Games.  These models are absolutely outstanding!

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Flames Of War: 71st Anniversary Market Garden Battle Report

Guest Article by Igor "Yegr" Modelski

2 times Canadian, 2 times Polish National Team representative on FoW ETC

On 17th of September 1944 started the greatest airborne operation up to date. In nine day’s it would be over with British and American forces failing to achieve a breakthrough into the Rhineland.

Shan Morris has donated a wonderful Holland table to the ETC, and as we got the Stewardship over it – what better way was there to celebrate it, then to do a climactic battle report.

So I’ve asked P. and StaryKur to take part in the battle report. They would each prepare their 1780pts lists without knowing what they were up against – only that they were to choose a force that could possibly appear during Operation Market Garden.

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Behind Enemy Lines Podcast Episode 16

Download the episode here
The Lost Episode… This Behind Enemy Lines episode was literally lost when Mike moved house. It was uncovered in an unmarked box guarded by top men in a warehouse located somewhere in a remote army base. We cannot be held responsible for the (dated) content within! Listen at your own per

Want to join the conversation? Please sound off in the comments below, or let us know on our forum!

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Brief Announcement: We've re-enabled comments on the blog!

As many of you know, we strive to update our "Discuss On Our Forum" link at the bottom of an article as articles publish. Unfortunately, the editors here at WWPD all have busy and sometimes unpredictable schedules, making it very difficult to reliably ensure every single article is "linked up" in a timely fashion.

Thus, I've decided to re-enable comments on the blog- they should appear on all new posts from here on out. We will still strive to "link up" the forum. I'm hoping this doesn't get TOO messy by having multiple places to discuss an article, but we'll keep an eye on it.

Thanks everyone for continuing to support us! We're loving the current state of WWPD!

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LOTR-LCG: Angmar Awakened Cycle - Treachery of Rhudaur Unboxing video!

by Grant "pfcamygrant" EllisThis month's Lord of the Rings: LCG Adventure pack, The Treachery of Rhudaur has arrived and I'm about to jump right in and explore the new player cards and discuss my initial thoughts and impressions.  The video below gives an overview of each card that has been added to the card pool. It introduces the latest Hero card, and explores the various allies, attachments, events, and side quests that are included in this month's release.

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