Connections Online 2022 Official Announcement – #TuesdayNewsday 3/29/22

Every week, #TuesdayNewsday is the intel briefing you need to keep up with the strategy gaming world

Please share this far & wide among your wargaming & other professional networks.  Thanks!

• MMP announced that they would start shipping Arracourt as of yesterday. You can still get it at pre-order price, but it’s officially released now
• Avalanche Press has a new expansion for their post-WW2 Panzer Grenadier series Iron Curtain that covers the Canadians. w00t!  And it’s FREE!? double-w00t!
  Oh, wait.  You need three other games, plus a Gold Club membership, plus then you get to download the 10 scenarios and assemble the 80-odd pieces yourself.  So it’s “free” if you’re already over $200 into the PG/IC series and you don’t count your own labor cost to assemble.  Well, at least the Gold Club guys get some cool new PG toys to play with
• PSC now has British 8th Army heavy weapons crews – both mortars and machine guns – that look pretty sweet
• Ares Games are now shipping the reprint of This War of Mine, the boardgame
• Free League has officially released The One Ring on the world, although some pre-order copies had snuck out a while ago
• Wargame 2027 just released on Steam and is 30% off

 

• Alternative Armies has a big Spring sale right now, with 20% off across the board until the first week of May
• ESR Series 3 base rulebook is only $19 for a few more days
• To celebrate the release of WEGO: WW2 Stalingrad later this week, Matrix Games has a sale on the WEGO: WW2 games right now
• Miniature Market has the Lock ‘n Load Tactical: We Stand Alone expansion on sale for $30 and their ongoing 20% off sale/clearance items should apply, too. This one covers the battles of Easy Company from Band of Brothers
• There’s an EU IV Complete Collection on Humble Bundle right now
• S&T’s game-edition magazine sale this week is S&T #286, with Sparta Versus Athens

 

• The Wargaming Company has new card decks for stats & orders, in support of ESR series 3, on pre-order
• MMP put out a “last call” for preorders on Arracourt, the upcoming BCS game, as they’re starting to ship
• Might’ve snuck past us at some point, but OSG has Bonaparte Overruns Piedmont on pre-order for about $30 off
• Warlord Games has a big Black Seas box covering the Master & Commander oeuvre on pre-order
• Modiphius has a new edition of Five Leagues from the Borderlands on pre-order; it’s a solo adventure game with some legacy aspects to it, but does need some space for map & minis
• Kingdoms Rise & Fall – Dorian is a new deck-building / fixed-map fantasy battle card game on Kickstarter that might interest you
• We bring your attention to this Kickstarter campaign for Traders & Raiders! not because we think you’ll be in a rush to grab it, but rather because the campaign goal was insanely low – just $52, and no that’s not a typo
• GMT’s monthly newsletter popped last week, and their new p500 additions are
  • Norman Conquests: Men of Iron Volume V
  • Henry: The Agincourt Campaign, 1415 (Levy & Campaign series)
  • Cuius Regio: The Thirty Years War

huh…  I guess GMT’s going to continue to ignore & under-serve the oft-neglected WW2 Eastern front market, eh?

 

Every Monday, starting at 5pm US EDT, we kick off a virtual happy hour on our Discord server.  Some days it lasts about 45 minutes; others it goes for 2-1/2 hours. We start a little earlier so the European Dragoons can join us, and stay on the line as long as folks want, so the rest of the West can pop in as they punch out of work.  Here’s a calendar invite you can stick on your own schedule to remind you to join us.

 

• Saturday Night Fights took the week off with Cyrano on vacation
• My Own Worst Enemy ~ Battle Hymn Volume One – Pea Ridge
• Game Conventions ~ Playthrough 2022
• Mentioned in Dispatches let Bryan take the wheel this week, and no, that might not have been the best idea
• Upcoming Dragoons Events
  • Next #UnboxingDay is 21 April
  • Next Virtual Convention is Connections Online, 19-21 April 2022
  • Next Real-World Convention is now going to be Buckeye Game Fest, 7-11 April (we can’t get there early enough for The War Room at BGF)
  • Don’t forget that we’re still on for Origins, 8-12 June 2022

 

 

 

Planning continues for Connections Online, being held from 18-24 April 2022, with the Core Events being held 19-21 April from 10am-4pm EST.  As the Armchair Dragoons are the co-sponsors of this event, you’ll get regular updates each week in Tuesday Newsday between now and launch.

• Core events are largely set, but exact times are being confirmed.  They’ll include
  • Recent Innovations in Wargaming
  • How Wargamers Get Hired
  • Designing a Professional Wargame
  • Methodologies for Designing Cyber Wargames
  • Wargaming Outside the NatSec World
• Extended events will occur across all 7 days, at a variety of hours that do not conflict with the Core Events.  Current planning includes, but is certainly not limited to
  • Wargame Bootcamp (multiple sessions) for VASSAL / TTS usage
  • Moderated panel, and a seminar game for the 40th anniversary of the Falkland Islands War
  • Wargame Design Workshop, where participants will actually design the broad-strokes mechanics of a wargame
• Registration will go live this week
• All Core Events will be streamed through YouTube, but using unlisted URLs, which will limit live interaction to registered attendees.  After Connections is over, streams will be made public.  Some – but not all – Extended Events will be streamed.
• If you are interested in volunteering with Connections Online, please drop a note in our forums or contact us at armchairdragoonsevents – at – gmail – dot – .com

 

• The Highly-Not-Official 30 Years War S.P.I. Tournament
• The Blood Bowl Tournament continues
• Hethwill & GenChaos are still working through their NLB game on VASSAL

 

• The Wargaming Company had to break up their ESR series 3 releases into “waves” for shipping; wave 1 is out the door, as we announced last week
• Avalanche Press has a set of “packages” on sale, with a variety of connected games & supplements in each one.  But as with more and more of their products, they’re limited to Gold Club members
• Rumors of the demise of grognard.com seem to be premature as they’re back online this week. They’re still posting errata from 1978, but whatevs, yo ¯_(ツ)_/¯
• Catalyst Game Labs are donating the proceeds from sales of Craig Culledge’s latest book for them to support his family, following his untimely passing 2 weeks ago

 

• This week in our forums
  • Barthheart’s Federation & Empire game is rumbling along
  • A bunch of chatter about the different editions of Civilization and which ones we talk about
  • We’ve been adding the games that we feature during #UnboxingDay, so there’s plenty of places for y’all to chatter on about the different games that are out there
• BGG got to talking about Arthurian-era wargames
• The silliness never ends at BGG, where there’s a significant thread group-designing an AC/DC CCG around Highway to Hell
• A discussion on social.csw is asking about well-designed counters
• There was a discussion of air combat / dogfighting on tabletops over on Twitter
• Hethwill goes through a bunch of wargames that he’s enjoying lately, with a tweet-length blurb about each

 

• Rocky is not giving up wargames for Lent
• Moe has the legendary Mark Herman on Whiskey Charlie tonight
• Ardwulf’s counter clipping stream doubled up this week, with a Friday show about Vietnam War games, and a Monday show about Medieval wargames

 

Don’t forget we’ve got a dedicated area of our forums for the professional wargamers.

• Connections Online is 18-24 April
• Go teach wargaming at the US Army War College
• Future US Army acquisitions are going to include considerations of the underlying industrial base, which has been true forever
• UK Fight Club is showing off Ukrainian hobbyists using their own drones to help the warfighting effort
• The next GUWS webinar is later this week (3/31) and covers US Air Force Wargaming, and make plans now for April 5 to see Strategic Wargaming – The US Army War College Approach
• PaxSims has “Reflections on gaming not-Ukraine” that seeks to apply lessons from elsewhere to the current conflict

 

And finally….

 

That’s all for this week!
Be sure to drop by our forums and join the fun, and next Tuesday we’ll drop some more news on you.

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