Hey Up Front & PanzerBlitz junkies...[and Naval War and Fortress America too]

Mike Sanches (the guy behind VAIPA Express/Quarterly) has put his sale page back up online.

For those not familiar, this VAIPA was/is a home-brew 'zine type thing that cranked out some interesting Up Front and PanzerBlitz variants. For quite a while, you could only get 'em whenever Mike felt like putting them up on Ebay; then they disappeared altogether and were fetching stupid prices from resellers .

Well, now, he's got Smoking Cobras [U.S. Brazil forces]; Bosnian SS; additional german armor, and SS Fanatic sets up for $7 per, as well as his larger Polish Forces set ($24 I think).

He's also selling his 100-card expansion set for Naval War [$17] and a shit-ton of cool Panzerblitz expansions [$20ish per but they come with lots of counters]

If you back-track from the sale-page, he's got a pretty good archive of PB/PL variants from various mags posted for free.

Finally, this is the same guy who developed the 5th column expansion for Fortress America. He doesn't have that set for sale. HOWEVER, the plastic bits for 5th Column can be scavenged from a cheap [on ebay or lots of US thrift stores] copy of MB's "Power Barons" game. I didn't hunt through the site for the rules and I failed to ask about it when I just put in my order for another Up Front set, but, if he doesn't have 'em posted somewhere, a polite request along with a purchase of something might be able to land you a copy of the Fortress America 5th Column rules.

I believe 1 copy of Power Barons provides enough pieces to make 3 or 4 "sets" of 5th column pieces [and that game does go cheap on ebay and I've passed over it many times at thrift stores prior to realizing what the bits could be used for, so I know it's out there...]

Interesting. I'm still coming to grips with what's in the box of Up Front but maybe I'll get a little more adventurous later.

I would love to see someone get the rights to Naval War. I have both Modern Naval Battles (okay but the expansions bog it down) and Naval Battles (Okay but the icons suck balls). Neither hold a candle to Naval War though. Naval War is the penultimate beer and pretzels Naval game. Not too much thought except blowing up other ships.

I've been gone away OFF-line when this was first posted, but I had just been bringing UP upon the "Up Front" items of this to folks at the BGG "Geek Chat" over there earlier. How about dat?

GROGnads- I sent you a private message in regards to other top secret paramilitary activies. Just offering a heads up in case you don't check your messages here.

Do you have a link?

Schweig! wrote:

Do you have a link?

Ok, I'm a dope. Thought I had it in the first line...

Here it is: www.rainbownerd.com/wargaming/mwgp.htm

Had a couple of email exchanges with Mike asking about 5th Column [turns out the rules are posted on the Geek and he does have a few limited copies left with the plastic bits, but he's moving to cardboard in the next batch]...seems like a very nice guy. He also mentioned that he's "retiring soon, which means more time for VAIPA projects, including big Up Front and Fortress America multi-variant issues."

Just a note of caution. I couldn't get the guy to reply to a query, while waiting he filed an ebay dispute and lied, then closed it to get the fee refund. Very unprofessional. I appealed to ebay who promptly removed the unpaid item strike. So instead of my buying more items from him, now I'll be recommending people avoid him.

P.S. Note that the 5th Column piece's colours do not match those of Fortress America.

Notahandle wrote:

Just a note of caution. I couldn't get the guy to reply to a query, while waiting he filed an ebay dispute and lied, then closed it to get the fee refund. Very unprofessional. I appealed to ebay who promptly removed the unpaid item strike. So instead of my buying more items from him, now I'll be recommending people avoid him.

P.S. Note that the 5th Column piece's colours do not match those of Fortress America.

Sorry to hear that you had a bad experience. I bought from him directly through the link above and had the stuff within 3 days as well as several pleasant exchanges. Cautionary tale noted though...

Also, so folks know: the 5th Column pieces are taken directly from Milton Bradley's Power Barons game [so, since the rules are posted to BGG, you only need a copy of PB from your average Goodwill to play it].