And the Long Drought is Over!!!

BG is back! Not that it ever left, but it seems that the parties involved have ironed things out and are going forward with what matters, more Battlegroup!

Here is the press release in it's entirety:

PRESS RELEASE - MAY 2019

Well the long wait has finally ended!

From the end of May 2019, The Plastic Soldier Company will be taking over exclusive ownership of the Battlegroup gaming series from Ironfist Publishing.

What will this mean to our players?

Well not much will change for you but we hope it will finally secure new production and reprints going forward.

Warwick will be writing the rest of the books and finishing the series as always planned. Piers will be looking after the support and promotion of the game along with helping out on books as needed in terms of writing and photos. So in this regard nothing changes.

What will change is that along with the new books, PSC will commence reprinting the currently out of print titles. First up will be the first half of Overlord (D-Day) to pair with Beyond the Beaches. Following this will be Kursk and Fall of the Reich. It's planned all this will be in softback form, in order to lower costs in both production, shipping and retail.

The next hardback book release will be Battlegroup: Pacific War, later in 2019, followed by the series returning to the Eastern and Southern Fronts in 2020.

As regards NORTHAG, we will now be helping PSC with its final production and release, plus looking at a first supplement for the NORTHAG series.

Outside of Battlegroup and NORTHAG with PSC, other rules will be published by Artorus Games, and this will commence with Soldiers of Rome, which is almost complete. Vietnam will then follow.

We hope this brings security and stability to Battlegroup and it's community in the future and look forward to working with PSC on the game and increasing its popularity.

Piers and Warwick

And there you have it. I will keep folks apprised of what I know, when I know it. But for now, rejoice, the drought is over!

UPDATE:

Preorders for the Overlord D-DAY supplement are up on the PSC Site!

And the cover looks amazing!

Bloody Bolt Action Game at a Friend's Place.

Played some Bolt Action this Saturday. I had a good time playing the Germans, but man, my tactics were pretty bad and I deserved the spanking I got. That said, the terrain my buddy, Dave Luff put out was nothing short of awesome. I always enjoy going over to his place as his wargame room is the one a lot of us envy.

The game was simple, both sides had a small force of infantry and armor and the idea was to get control of the crossroads. Seems simple enough. But, well, things got complicated.

First I tried a coup de main on the crossroads with my Puma...not a good idea. It was soon fireballed by a Sherman. After that, the rest of the Germans entered on the American flank, and for a time, it seemed (bad dice notwithstanding) that we might carry the day. Alas, I got too aggressive after we fireballed 2 out of 3 American Shermans and sent the remaining one packing. (I also got a halftrack, which was pretty fortunate for a time, those things have an ungodly amount of machine guns). I lost my Stug and Mk IV and my tiny Renault and Halftrack spent the rest of the game stuck in the crossroads, until they too, were blown apart.

After I tried to hang in there with my infantry, my side fell apart, and we packed it in when the German infantry squad was wiped out.

Considering we began at Noon, and ended by 2:30? I'd say well done playing to a conclusion!

I'd like to thank my opponent Cory for a fine game and Dave for putting it on! Special recognition should go to my Panzerschreck team, who killed two out of the three vehicles we managed to get, and drove off that third Sherman!

And what do you know? It's post #25!! This seems an apropos post to have up for such a milestone!

Have You Seen This Wargame?

OK PSC, Where is Battlegroup?

Or, “Have you seen this wargame?”

Despite the title, this is not meant as an attack on PSC, more of a plaintive “Can we get more for the game system we love?” Almost all the books for the game are out of print, and for a system as both lovingly supported by its rabid fans (of which I am one), and it’s many fine reviews, there is no reason for this game to be allowed to die.

Now comes news that BG will not be at Salute in any form. Now, I’m a Yank, so I have never attended Salute. Guess what, even this guy knows not being at Salute is a BIG deal for a major rules set, especially with the recent release of Spring Awakening.

Now, I am not saying “Let’s march on PSC with pitchforks and torches.” We don’t know the sales numbers, we don’t know a lot of the “inside baseball” (or Cricket for you antipodes) that goes into the decision to continue to support a game, or pull the plug.

I do know this, as a person who was a big fan, and eventually ran the newsletter for the game, I for one would like to see the game back in a big way. I want to see NORTHAG released, we fans have been clamoring for it for a long while, and Warwick and Piers have put from the looks of what we saw in the playtests, a lot of work into the final product.

But it all rests with PSC.

So, humble readers, I am going to circulate this post far and wide. Here’s what we need to do. A simple letter writing campaign. We’re going to be polite. We’re going to be nice. But we’re going to be firm.

First open your email browser, and address an email to the following email address:

info@theplasticsoldiercompany.co.uk

Subject Line: Have you seen this wargame?

Then take a picture of your BG Book Collection and attach it into the email.

Then hit send.

I trust they’ll get the message after a while. And perhaps, we’ll get an explanation. Really, it’s all the fans want. And after the support we’ve given the game, it’s what we deserve. The truth.