Latest news with #tactical
Daily Mail
20 hours ago
- Sport
- Daily Mail
BREAKING NEWS Sarina Wiegman reveals why Jess Carter is left OUT of England semi-final after suffering 'disgusting and vile' racist abuse
England head coach Sarina Wiegman has offered an explanation for leaving defender Jess Carter out of the starting XI for tonight's Euro 2025 semi-final against Italy. Wiegman cited tactical decisions rather than the 'disgusting and vile' racist abuse the player said she has endured during the tournament. In Carter's place, Wiegman has opted to start Esme Morgan at centre-back. The boss said: 'Yes, that decision is based on the tactical challenges we have. We think in this game it is best to put Esme in. 'Jess is good. Of course a lot of things going on but she is good, trained well and is ready to compete and play. 'It is a huge night for everyone, Esme is ready and has been ready for a while, she showed that the other night and I hope she does really well of course.'
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Sport
- Yahoo
Maurizio Sarri Testing Alternative Lazio Formation in Pre-season
Lazio head coach Maurizio Sarri is renowned for preferring a 4-3-3 tactical system, but the squad is also testing other formations. The Background In the first four days of pre-season, the Biancocelesti underwent double training sessions. But as La Lazio Siamo Noi reports, the manager opted to give the players a breather on Friday morning, before resuming work in the afternoon. The team focused on attacking patterns in their practice drills before engaging in a mini-match between the ranks. Which Lazio Players Missed the Session Gustav Isaksen, Mattia Zaccagni, Samuel Gigot, Patric, and Luca Pellegrini all missed the training session as they're currently recovering from various physical problems. As for those who attended the session, they were split into two teams, with the greens playing in Sarri's tried-and-tested 4-3-3 formation, while the reds portrayed a 4-2-3-1 system. Maurizio Sarri Tests 4-2-3-1 Formation For the red team, Nicolo Rovella and Matteo Guendouzi connected in the double pivot, as it was often the case in Marco Baroni's 4-2-3-1 system, while Fisayo Dele-Bashiru was tested as an attacking midfielder in between Tijjani Noslin and Sana Fernandes, with Boulaye Dia leading the line. (Photo by Marco Rosi –) Nevertheless, it was the green side that prevailed thanks to goals from Mario Gila and Pedro. The squad then trained on set pieces before ending the session. The Lineups Red Team (4-2-3-1): Mandas; Marusic, Ruggeri, Provstgaard, Tavares; Guendouzi, Rovella; Noslin, Dele-Bashiru, Sanà Fernandes; Dia. Green Team (4-3-3): Provedel; Lazzari, Gila, Romagnoli, Hysaj; Belahyane, Cataldi, Vecino; Cancellieri, Castellanos, Pedro.
Geek Dad
11-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Geek Dad
Kickstarter Quick Picks: ‘Hardwar'
The turn of the 22nd century was a time of great progression for the human race, space exploration, scientific and technological advancements. It was also the time of neo-colonialism, and a new order emerging from the pyres of the old world. It was the time for a new breed of war – the Hardwar. What Are Kickstarter Quick Picks? Kickstarter Quick Picks are short looks at projects currently on Kickstarter that are of interest to me, and by extension, many of our GeekDad readers. A Quick Pick is not an endorsement of the Kickstarter campaign, nor have I (as yet) received any product copies to review. If you like what you see here, go check out the campaign and decide for yourself if you'd like to back it, or wait until GeekDad has had a chance to go hands-on. As always, caveat emptor- let the buyer beware. What Is Hardwar ? Hardwar is a 6mm scale tactical skirmish scifi miniatures game for 2 players, ages 14 and up, and takes about 30-90 minutes to play. It's currently seeking funding on Kickstarter, with a pledge level of $82 for the 'Force Commander' pledge, which is essentially a single-player starter set containing the rulebook in both print and PDF, one miniatures set of your choice, dice, and tokens. There are many different pledge levels and add-ons available, from those who want to dip their toes into the game all the way to people who want everything. The Kickstarter campaign is currently live and has met its minimum funding goal, and will run through July 31st. Hardwar was originally developed by Strato Minis of Poland, with rules by Krzysztof Raczynski, Rafal Zerych and Robey Jenkins. Strato Minis Studio was acquired by Modiphius Entertainment in 2024. Modiphius recently launched a Kickstarter campaign for this 6mm scale tactical sci-fi miniatures game. New to Kickstarter? Check out our crowdfunding primer. Pro-painted Consortium Security Squadron. Image by Modiphius Entertainment. Hardwar Miniatures Note: My review is based on a prototype copy, so it is subject to change and may not reflect final component quality. Modiphius sent over a Consortium Security Squadron, one of the 9 different unit sets available in the campaign. All of the miniatures arrive unpainted and require assembly. While there were no instructions included with the minis, each was individually bagged and I had no trouble putting them together. The miniatures are in 6mm scale, and made of a resin that was easy to work with, and had minimal mold lines. Trimming was easily accomplished with a hobby knife. The Longinus tank sprue. Image by Paul Benson. Plastic bases are provided for each of the miniatures as well. Just a couple of drops of super glue was sufficient for assembly. Despite the small scale of the miniatures, it should be possible to magnetize the turrets on the tanks, if you wanted to be able to turn them during games. The completed Longinus tank. Image by Paul Benson. Another argument for magnetization is that a couple of the models came with alternate weapons or turrets. I only had access to the Quickstart rules, so was unsure what swapping these parts out would do for the model stats. However, with the full release of the rules and unit information once the Kickstarter campaign fulfills, those mysteries are sure to be solved. A couple of unused parts that are sure to have rules in the final release of the game. Image by Paul Benson. It's not just tanks that you'll find in the unit sets, but also walkers and flyers. Here's the pieces of one of the Consortium walkers: The pieces of the Ranger walker, cut from the sprues. Image by Paul Benson. And here's what the Ranger looks like fully assembled. I opted for a pose that would have the walker raining down missiles on the enemy. The assembled Ranger walker. Image by Paul Benson. Here's a look at all of the minis from the Consortium set, assembled and based: The assembled Consortium Security Squadron. Image by Paul Benson. To give you an idea of the actual size of these miniatures, here's a look at one of the 6mm-scale tanks side by side with a 40mm Star Wars: Shatterpoint miniature. Look out Anakin, it's a tiny tank! Image by Paul Benson. How to Play Hardwar You can download a copy of the Quickplay rules here. Note that any rules that I mention refer specifically to the Quickplay rules. There will be a full rulebook, which will have much more in-depth rules than provided in the Quickplay, as well as stats for all the units in the game. To play the Quickplay, you will need: ■ 10-12 twelve-sided dice, called 'D12s' ■ A tape measure marked in inches ■ 4 Miniatures per side, representing combat elements (more for longer games and more tactical options) ■ A handful of small dice or counters representing damage points, Smokescreens, Vulnerable and Exhausted elements ■ A print-out of the cards on page 21 as reference for your elements' stats ■ A pen or pencil to mark off damage on the elements (or use dice) ■ A flat surface of 2×2′ (61cm x 61cm) to represent the battlefield, with a few terrain pieces such as trees, buildings, and hills. As noted in the Quickplay rules, a game of Hardwar is 'two or more sides meeting in a decisive engagement of tactical and strategic importance to all participants.' These are the Combat Missions that you can choose from to play. In the Quickstart rules, a single mission, Patrol Encounter , is included. The game length and table size in Hardwar are both dependent on the size of the force chosen. For Patrol Encounter, the game should be played on a 2'x2′ board, and should last around 30 minutes. For the largest games of Hardwar, you'll be playing on a 4'x6′ table, and the game will last 90 minutes or more. In general, after setting up the board with some terrain, each side will then deploy their forces opposite each other, with the elements (individual miniatures) touching the edge of the table on their side. At the start of each turn, player will place Action Tokens next to each element (usually 2 per element) showing how many actions that element can take during its activation. The person with the least elements on the board at the start of the turn has the initiative, and will go first. A turn in Hardwar consists of players alternating activating elements, until all players have either activated all elements, or passed. Once all activations are resolved, then there is first a cleanup of tokens, and then a check to see if the victory conditions for the Combat Mission have been met by either player. When activating an element, you can perform up to two actions, removing an Action Token each time you perform one. The actions include: move, shoot, aimed shot, advancing fire, guard, and special action (as indicated by the element's special abilities on their stat card). I'm not going to go into detail on how these all work; for that, take a look at the Quickplay rules. However, it's worth discussing how the attack rolls work, as this system is at the heart of Hardwar. Attack and Defense Rolls Hardwar uses a system of exploding d12 dice for all attack and defense rolls. To perform an attack, you add the Firepower number of the attacking element, and roll that many d12 dice. Any natural 12 explodes, enabling the roll of an additional d12 known as an Augment die. The Augment die can also explode if a '12' is rolled. The target number for an attack is the distance between the attacking and defending unit in inches, with 1 added to the target for every inch of light terrain it passes through, or +3 for heavier cover, as well as the defender's Armour value. The defender rolls a number of dice equal to their Defense value, modified by applicable conditions and any special rules. The attacker and defender then cancel out die results that match. For any attacker dice left over after removing matching sets, the attacker can then group dice together into sets, adding together the results on their die faces as needed to reach their target number. Each successful hit causes a point of damage on the enemy element. Critical hits (caused by pairs of the same number) cause Critical Hits, which add an additional point of damage to the attack. Here's a shooting example from the Quickstart rules, to help clarify how shooting works if that was hard to follow: A Firepower 4 Attack produces results 6, 6, 4, 7 at a distance of 8″ with a target that has Armour 2 for a total target of 10. Let's assume the Defending element rolled their Defence dice and did not cancel any of the attacking dice. The attacking player decides to assign 6 & 6 to one group, and 7 & 4 to another. The first has sufficient range (total of 12 vs 10″) to be a successful hit and is also critical, doing a total of 2 points of damage, while the other is a hit (total of 10 or more) so inflicts just one point of damage, for a total of 3 points of damage. The Syndicate Taskforce. Image by Modiphius Entertainment. If you're interested to get an idea of the flow of a game, I've included the battle report that Modiphius put on the Kickstarter page below. Why You Should Back Hardwar For you middle-aged gamers like myself, you may remember Epic, a 6mm-version of Warhammer 40K where you could stage truly massive battles, but on the same size table as regular miniature wargames. But Hardwar has a slightly different approach. While you certainly can play bigger games, Hardwar is geared more towards taking big mechs and tanks, but allowing you to play skirmish-level encounters with them. The ever-increasing popularity of skirmish-style miniatures games is unsurprising. While maneuvering large armies on a table can be satisfying, it also takes up a lot of time,both in gameplay and in building and painting your forces. Skirmish games deliver a lot of the rewards of those games, but without the space and time constraints of their larger cousins. With Hardwar, you also have a ruleset that is easy to learn and looks to play pretty quickly. l'm always a sucker for exploding dice in games, and I appreciate the simplicity of combat as presented in the Quickplay rules which manage to avoid getting bogged down in the minutiae of different types of weapons and armor. The rules aren't so simple that those are disregarded; different elements in Hardwar will have special rules that come into effect during gameplay. But if you've ever played games like Warhammer 40K, you know just how easy it is with those rules to lose sight of the forest for the trees. There also seems to be a good amount of variety between the different factions, at least judging by their miniatures. One of the sets, the Udar Industries Hardbots, contains only walkers and nothing else. It will be interesting to see just how differently all of the factions play. Some of the farm terrain available in the Kickstarter. Image by Paul Benson. The miniatures, as mentioned previously, are all detailed and easy to assemble. I'm also confident that they'll be a breeze to paint. Some speedpaints and a couple of highlights here and there should give a nice looking force in no time without much effort. And did I mention there's also 6mm terrain that's offered as part of the Kickstarter campaign? There are three different futuristic Farm terrain sets available as part of some of the pledge levels, or you can grab them as addons. I haven't as yet had a chance to try the Quickplay rules for myself, but it looks like Hardwar will be a blast to play. I love the quality of the miniatures, and the quickness of the matches. As someone with limited space, this is also a game that will take up very little space to store, which can definitely be a plus. So if you're looking for a scifi skirmish game that's easy to pick up, take a look at Hardwar. For more information or to make a pledge, visit the Hardwar Kickstarter page! Click here to see all our tabletop game reviews. To subscribe to GeekDad's tabletop gaming coverage, please copy this link and add it to your RSS reader. Disclosure: GeekDad received a set of miniatures for review purposes. Liked it? Take a second to support GeekDad and GeekMom on Patreon! Ken Denmead Editor-in-Chief Matt Blum Managing Editor Z Associate Editors/GeekMom Partners Jenny Bristol Senior Editors Jonathan H. Liu, Patricia Volmer, Sophie Brown Associate Publishers* David Michael, Gerry Tolbert, Andrew Smith, Ray Wehrs, Joel Becker, Scott Gaeta, Beth Kee, Joey Mills, talkie_tim, Danny Marquardt, Adam Bruski, John Bain, Bill Moore, Adam Frank, Lacey Hays, Peter Morson, James Needham, Matt Fleming, Adam Anderson, Jim Reynolds, Seiler Hagan, Bryan Wade, Petrov Neutrino, Jay Shapiro Editor (Emeritus) Chris Anderson Contributors Paul Benson, Darren Blankenship, John Booth, Jenny Bristol, Rory Bristol, Robin Brooks, Tom Fassbender, Whit Honea, Rob Huddleston, Will James, Michael Knight, Joey Mills, Brad Moon, Anton Olsen, Skip Owens, Mariana Ruiz, Derrick Schneider, Tony Sims, Dakster Sullivan, Mark Vorenkamp *Thanks for your support on Patreon!
News.com.au
01-07-2025
- News.com.au
Security footage captures man with shotgun outside Brisbane home
The chilling moment a man with a shotgun allegedly approached a Brisbane home has been caught on camera. Home security footage captured a man knocking violently on the door of a Narangba property on Saturday morning, before shouting at the residents to come outside. 'Open the door,' he can be heard yelling, 'Don't make me smash the window.' Hours later, the couple who live at the address found their ute, which had been sitting in the driveway, peppered with bullets. The following day, more shots were fired at the Mitsubishi Triton which had a rear window smashed and the driver's side mirror shot off. Special police dressed in tactical gear searched the property on Monday morning after obtaining information about a person of interest. No one was located and no weapons were found inside the property. Investigations are continuing with a police spokesperson saying 'we are unable to provide further comment at this time.'
Associated Press
09-06-2025
- Associated Press
PepperBall® Launches Shatter™, Jammer™, and Lumen™ Projectiles at the 2025 OTOA Tactical Operations and Public Safety Conference
Sandusky, OH June 09, 2025 --( )-- PepperBall®, the global leader in distance-based, non-lethal de-escalation technology, today announced the official field launch of three next-generation projectiles—Shatter™, Jammer™, and Lumen™—during the Ohio Tactical Officers Association (OTOA) Tactical Operations and Public Safety Conference at Kalahari Resorts and Convention Center, booth 96. The one-day vendor exhibition draws more than 1,500 first responders and PepperBall will showcase the new rounds in technical videos and hands-on product samples. New Projectile Line-Up Developed through an exclusive multi-year partnership with RoboRounds®, an advanced payload research and development laboratory, the new rounds give tactical teams fresh options for safely resolving barricades, surveillance threats, and suspect apprehensions. PepperBall Shatter™ – A high-density glass-breaking projectile filled with RoboRounds ultra-hard micro balls. On impact, fractures tempered and automotive glass, enabling rapid entry or rescue while minimizing collateral damage. PepperBall Jammer™ – A projectile containing a specialized payload that blocks LIDAR, IR and CCTV and blinds camera systems, effectively obstructing signal transmission. PepperBall Lumen™ – A photoluminescent UV-reactive projectile that coats targets with a long-lasting, fluorescent marker, aiding apprehension and evidence collection even in low-light environments. Proven and Recommended by NTOA The National Tactical Officers Association (NTOA) awarded the glass-breaking projectile a 'Member Tested and Recommended' rating (overall score 3.64) following multi-state evaluations. Field testers reported: 'Our team's experience with these projectiles was positive and a surprising improvement from the glass breakers we currently use.' — Ohio evaluator 'We penetrated ½-inch tempered glass in three rounds; the projectile pairs perfectly with our VKS PRO PLUS™ launcher.' — Florida evaluator 'We trained with these under vehicle suppression and vehicle breaching training, and both roles had the same results. These rounds are a good addition to the PepperBall platform, not just for SWAT but patrol operations as well.' — Minnesota evaluator 'Each window shattered and partially fell away with the first round. From what I can tell, there was no pass-through of any portion of the round itself.' — North Dakota evaluator 'Every second matters when officers face a barricaded suspect, a surveillance threat, or a fleeing subject,' said Bob Plaschke, CEO of PepperBall. 'Shatter, Jammer, and Lumen expand the PepperBall toolkit so teams can more effectively break glass, blind sensors, and mark targets—while still relying on proven, non-lethal impact energy. Launching these rounds at OTOA puts them directly into the hands of the tactical professionals who need them most,' Plaschke concluded. The rounds will be on display throughout the vendor exhibition on Tuesday, June 10, with video footage and technical data sheets available at the PepperBall booth. Commercial availability is slated for late 2025 through the PepperBall global law-enforcement distribution network. About PepperBall® PepperBall is dedicated to creating the highest-quality non-lethal law-enforcement solutions that de-escalate confrontations, safely change behavior, and ultimately save lives. For over two decades, PepperBall has been the trusted non-lethal partner for law-enforcement, correctional, and military professionals worldwide, and more than 20 million PepperBall projectiles have been safely deployed. Based in the U.S. heartland, PepperBall stands behind each product with an industry-leading commitment to training and service. To learn more, visit Contact Information: PepperBall Katherine Riley 260-478-2500 Contact via Email Read the full story here: PepperBall® Launches Shatter™, Jammer™, and Lumen™ Projectiles at the 2025 OTOA Tactical Operations and Public Safety Conference Press Release Distributed by
