Is April the Cruelest Month? News from ATO Magazine

This spring season finds many of us ready to look up from our game boards and see the world outside once more. So before you head out, here's a quick update on what's happening at ATO Magazine plus news of a special offer further below.
 

What’s Old

All copies of ATO #53 with ROME, INC inside have been mailed. If you haven’t gotten yours by May 1st, 2021, write us at admin@atomagazine to let us know and we’ll investigate.

What’s New

When T.S. Eliot penned, "April is the cruelest month", he was talking about seasonal and life stages, not about a dreadful offensive on the Western Front that would be called the "Battle of Arras" but remembered far better for what the Royal Flying Corps called it-- "Bloody April."

We’ve selected The Cruelest Month, by designer Paul Rohrbaugh, as the game appearing in our 2020 Annual. To celebrate, we have an announcement and several cool offers for you now.

First the announcement—our 2020 Annual (published after La Vendee in the 2019 Annual) will be The Cruelest Month, a nice dive into the World War I Battle of Arras (handled simply) and the complex air battles that surrounded it. Despite the Royal Flying Corps' air "armada" being mostly comprised of "obsolete" and "obsolescent" aircraft, "Boom" Trenchard orders an all-out air superiority campaign to control the skies, gain the ground photos needed for the offensive, and spot for artillery. But the Germans have both new fighters on the scene and are improving their Jasta-based air defense system.

The result is locked into history as "Bloody April."

That will be following La Vendee as quickly as we can move things along, as ATO works to bring the "year" dates on our Annuals up to the present.

And "The Coolest Month" is when you can also bring your Annual collection up to date or even jump ahead. Select the back Annual issues you've been missing and take home cool extras all month long.

In fact, one special offer—you can include La Vendee and/or The Cruelest Month as part of a Pick 2 Big Special Offer and get that discount—and we will mail you those games when they are ready!

Across the board…

Order anything and you can pick one of our Pocket Battle Game "bundle sets"—your choice from Five for Fighting (the D-Day beaches), the Leipzig Quad set (plus the hard to find 5 add-on counters), or Bad Bulge Puns (the Peiper quad)—and the die-cut counters to combine the PBG sets (the combo rules for each set are below and to the right). Write your PBG "bundle pick" choice in the Comments field on the order form.

Spend at least $35.00 at our site and you can also pick one of our "Black Swan" games FREE from this list.

Desert Duel

Schwarm!

Nautical, but Nice

Tatsinkaya to Tempelhof

The Winds of War

War with a Vengeance!

Plus you still get the usual one free PBG pick off the order form. (Be sure to check out our newest one, Barring the Gate, on Hougoumont in 1815).

Nothing at all "cruel" about any of that!

Want more? Check out the planned new edition of ATO's Beyond Waterloo below.

Against the Odds Magazine will be conducting a Kickstarter campaign is raise funds to reprint the 2011 Annual issue with Beyond Waterloo inside, featuring updated rules, an expanded map, more counters, upgraded quality cards and more scenarios! The campaign will run on Kickstarter next month. We’ve set this page up to allow people who are wary of giving Kickstarter their credit card information a first shot to get a copy now through the end of April 30th, 2021.

And What’s Coming

Next up from ATO will be issue #54 with Monty’s D-Day inside. Monty’s D-Day was first published in 1985 and well received, but not widely distributed due to a production error that limited the number of salable copies. Four decades later, designer John Prados smoothed and polished the system, added solo rules, and ATO published Bradley's D-Day as Campaign Study #3. Of course, everyone would like Monty’s D-Day to get a similar upgrade. The wild blue yonder hope would be that the two games could combine.

Now it's happening.

Monty’s D-Day will complete the Normandy Invasion vision by adding the D-Day assault frontage that was targeted by the British Commonwealth forces under Miles Dempsey which -- likely -- got much more of overall commander General Bernard L. Montgomery's attention. Most certainly, the objectives for the Anglo-Canadian beaches sound like Montgomery talking. The city of Caen, nine miles inland, was targeted for capture on D-Day itself. It actually fell in late July, and only after the city had been leveled by bombing. Was it a "city too far?"

So, to wrap up, lots of interesting releases coming down the pike. Use this month to subscribe or resubscribe and take full advantage of our promotion to get your issues back in sync and grab some great freebies.

Thanks for reading!

Steve Rawling, Publisher, Against the Odds Magazine