Brett's Brawlers Contest Winners

By Mitch Reed

On this past November 11th we commemorated the 97th anniversary of the guns falling silent in 1918; this date also reflected the closure of the contest for the Brett’s Brawlers box set.  With so many folks reading the article I thought we would have been flooded with responses; and I was way off.  However we did have three great responses and added a 3rd place award, and that mission will also be published by Battlefront.

Without further ado here are the winners:

First Place: Chris Huhn for “Counteraction”

Second Place: Nic Pacholski for “Capture the Tank”

Third Place: Mark Holmstrup for “Unsupported Flanks”

I do plan to detail these missions as they closer to release, so instead of a review I wanted to give some background to the 3 winners above and speak a bit about playing Flames of War in the Great War Period.

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Bolt Action - Review: Trenchworx T34/76

By Patch

  Our friends at Trenchworx recently ran a successful Kickstarter campaign to launch a new range of 1/56 scale vehicles based on  Japanese and Soviets forces from their battles around Manchuria.  This comes on the back of another successful Kickstarter where the focus was on WW1 machines instead. I went in for 6 vehicles (three Russian and three Japanese) and had them delivered on time, which is a massive bonus on what can be a gamble when pledging money to a Kickstarter funded campaign.



The three Russian tanks I ordered were the T-34/76, the BT-7 and the T-26 (from a much wider range available) as I am building an early war Soviet force based around the Battle for Moscow and these vehicles fit with that period nicely. Knowing the quality of product that Trenchworx puts out I was not surprised when they arrived and were just top notch stuff.

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Star Wars Armada - Painting Guide for Armada Rogues and Villains

I knocked these guys out in about 3 hours, and figured I'd share my techniques here! All colors referenced are Vallejo paints. I used el cheapo flat black spray for the stands, but masked off "connecting" points so it all still fit together nicely. The wash I use is CGR Painters' excellent Magic Mudd. All cockpits were done with a Pitt artist pen with a small nib.

The whole crew!

 Rogues.

Villains.

For all models I did a simple process: Spray coat black, Apply a thinned down base coat (sometimes twice for the lighter color ones). Once dry, I painted all the details with a Windows & Newton Series 7 size 0 brush. Once all of the details were done, I liberally washed the ship with the Magic Mudd, then soak up any areas that are pooling with a Q-tip. When dry, I used my artist pen to carefully draw in the cockpit.

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Star Wars Armada - Video Report: 300 point Star Wars Armada Game

By Steven MacLauchlan

I finally decided I wanted the ability to broadcast games live over twitch for future WWPD events, and just for the fun of it. I signed up to Twitch (You can see my account at http://www.twitch.tv/wwpdsteven ) and tested out a camera setup for my game table. You can also subscribe to the channel to be notified when I start streaming- I will also be broadcasting Star Wars: Battlefront and Destiny on Playstation 4.

Here is my first attempt at streaming a tabletop game. Tony and I played Armada for our league game.

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Bolt Action - Review: Blitzkrieg Miniatures Panzer III and Hanomag

We are back with another video review of Blitzkrieg Miniatures 1/48 scale Hanomag and Panzer III for 28mm World War II gaming over on the Bolt Action channel.

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LOTR-LCG: Grant Unboxes The Land of Shadow Saga Expansion!

Grant "pfcamygrant" Ellis un-boxes the latest Lord of the Rings Living Card Game Saga Expansion, finally catching up with those who obtained it at GenCon!

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Star Wars Armada - Battle Report: Rieekan's Corvettes vs Vader's Battle Group

By Steven MacLauchlan

I was excited to get another Armada game, and excited to play a new opponent. This time, I faced Joey (TrueGreek on the forums) and took the opportunity to try something I'd been theorizing about a bit. The Rieekan-led Corvette Cruise Missiles. "Rieekan's Cruise Missiles"? That fits! Joey took Vader, which I was equally excited about.

We were both 400 points, and rolled to see who got their choice. I won the dice off, and elected to go second. Joey chose "Fire lanes" from my objectives and we got to work!

Here are the fleets:

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Bolt Action - AAR: Japanese vs the French Foreign Legion

By Bryan

Welcome to the French colonies of Indochina. It's 1945 and the Japanese have occupied the colony for the last 4 years, leaving the French colonial garrison in place under a compliant Vichy government.

Now, with the Allies liberating France itself, the Japanese decide to wipe the French out before the Allies arrive to help them.

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Star Wars X-Wing - Fall In X-Wing Roundup

The WWPD crew played a ton of X-Wing Heroes of the Aturi Cluster at Fall In! We had an absolute blast. At one point 3 tables were running simultaneously. At my table we got through 12 missions or so through the course of the weekend. Below are some pictures I have and some links to other blogs talking about our Heroes games.

Paul's Blog "The Man Cave" covered our X-Wing games pretty thoroughly as did Miles' Lair of the Uber Geek. Take a look at them to read about the experiences of some rook pilots we put through the ringer.

We had quite a large showing for the squad! I may not remember everyone's callsign here, but I'll do my best:

Steven AKA "Dice" for my abysmal dice rolling abilities.
Sean AKA "Escape Plan" for needing (and sometimes failing) to bug out frequently.
Dano AKA "Hoover" for vacuuming up all the XP.
Jon AKA "Rando" cause he never got a proper callsign.
Eric AKA "Gramps" for having more XP than anyone.
Chris AKA "Hawkeye" for having his eye on an HWK from the get-go.
Nicole AKA "Looper" for doing infinite K-Turns.
Blaze AKA "Zaro?" not actually sure what his callsign was.
Reilly AKA "Magnet" for drawing heaps of enemy fire.
Miles AKA "Dozer" because he thought we were supposed to fly INTO the asteroids, not around.
Luke "The Sweeper" for cleaning up all the dust.
Adam "Ragnar" because he is a viking and flew like one.

The crew making a ground assault.

75% of the Intensify Forward Firepower crew.

Escape Plan's A Wing and Dice's B-Wing go in as wingmen.

The crew.

We had a blast! Thanks for everyone who flew with us!

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A Visit to the 2015 North American Masters Tournament

By Mitch Reed with photographs by Sean Sarah

As the skies get darker earlier and the air becomes chilly another year of Flames of War tournament play ends with the North American Masters event.

The 2015 installment of what is billed as the tournament between of the best players on the continent was held at Games and Stuff, a gaming shop just south of Baltimore on 14-15 November.

The annual affair pits the players who have won a nationals level event or have played well during the year and have made it to the top of the North American rankings.  I had the opportunity to visit with the players and organizers during the first day of competition and left with a better understanding on what the Masters Tournament is all about.

The Organizer
The first person I spoke with is Dave Griffin who works for Battlefront and runs all of the events Battlefront runs during the year along with the master’s tournament.  Dave is running his third Masters event this year and tries to add some wrinkles to the game in order to create a more challenging environment for the competitors.

This year he limited lists to those that are contained in the 8 hardcover late war books; Dave explained how those lists which represent the early part of the late war period are “classical lists” and, as a whole, are very well balanced for players to pick from. This year Dave had each player develop a 1400 point base list and then create three 250-point task forces from the same list.

Before each game, a die was rolled and results could range from selecting one of the three task forces to add to that game, to having the player or the opponent chose to the final result in which none of the task forces are used.  Dave also limited the amount of times a player could use a particular task force during the course of the tournament, so if one of your task forces are used twice, they are no longer eligible for use in a later game.

To me this is an interesting twist that, while it does change things up, can also be manipulated when your opponent picks a task force.  With most of the players coming from two distinct regions (more on this later) you could have a buddy pick an already used task force that would cause your list issues in order to make it ineligible for a later game when you may have to play that opponent.

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