Current Events & the Wargame News – #TuesdayNewsday 3/8/22

Each week, #TuesdayNewsday does the rounds of the strategy gaming world to unearth what’s important

In case you’re wondering about the elephant in the room (for the second straight week) – we’re occasionally mentioning where other folks are talking about the ongoing invasion of Ukraine as it relates to wargaming.  We’re trying to steer away from straight news / current events reporting.  That said, we recognize that it is an area of interest to the audience, and to that end, we’ve set up a dedicated opt-in-only channel on our Discord server for these discussions.  If you’d like to be a part of it, join our Discord and ask to be added to the channel.

If it seems like we have more Twitter links than usual in this week’s update, it’s because we do.  But that’s where some of the better content was this week ¯_(ツ)_/¯

• Reaper Minis have a very nicely-sculpted anthropomorphic nightingale bard that they’re selling as a fundraiser for Ukrainian relief.
• High Flying Dice Games released Bad News On The Doorstep about the 1972 Battle of Kontum in Vietnam with some snazzy Tim Allen artwork
• Might not have been this week, but the Card Wars 28mm stand-up paper skirmish minis are available thru Wargame Vault now
• GMT packages are starting to show up with everything from Barbarossa: Army Group Center, and Pacific War: The Struggle Against Japan, 1941-1945 and Into the Woods: The Battle of Shiloh, and yes, you’re allowed to sing the movie title song whilst playing the last of those.
• Rapid Fire! Blitzkrieg Battlegames is a new release in their minis rules from guys at Rapid Fire!
• SJG started shipping Munchkin Warhammer 40,000: Rank and Vile, in case you were wondering if they took a week off from Munchkin

 

• Ad Astra’s Squadron Strike PDF bundle is on sale at Wargame Vault right now.
• Decision Games’ “deal of the month” is a back-issue bundle deal that can get you 20 magazines for $80; the downside is that it’s magazine-only, and not the game editions
• Miniature Market a lot of “wargame-adjacent” games on sale right now, including Rogue Agent, Templar’s Journey, and yes, the tabletop version of the Atari classic Missile Command, all under $30
• Hell Let Loose is on sale on Humble Bundle at 33% off
• Matrix is counting down to the release of Distant Worlds 2 with a 90% discount on Distant Worlds: Universe and no that’s not a typo
• Paradox has Hearts of Iron IV on sale at 75% off through Steam
• S&T’s game-edition magazine sale this week is World at War #60, including Eisenhower’s War, at 40% off
• Lock ‘n Load Publishing has a sale this week

 

• Bill Molyneux’s Battle of the Brandywine – Table Top and Pocket Edition is now live on Kickstarter
• Western Front Pocket Card Game is from a designer that has a bunch of these kinds of card games already under his belt and gives you a 30-minute WW1 game on-the-go
• League of Dungeoneers is on Kickstarter, and it looks like another tabletop dungeon-crawl like Descent, if that’s your thing
• Fragged Empire is back with a 2nd edition of the base RPG
• Modiphius has the Dune – Adventures in the Imperium: Agents of Dune Box Set on pre-order right now

 

• Saturday Night Fights ~ The 1809 Campaign for “Snappy Nappy” part 4
• My Own Worst Enemy ~ Midway Solitaire Deluxe Edition Part 3
• Mentioned in Dispatches ~ Looking Back at Wargames on Ukraine, and Tolstoi’s almost-comprehensive show notes
• Upcoming Dragoons Events
  • Next #UnboxingDay 17 March 2022
  • Next Virtual Convention is Connections Online, 19-21 April 2022
  • Next Real-World Convention that’s actually confirmed is Origins, 8-12 June 2022, but Buckeye GameFest is likely enough that we’ve added it to our front page countdown

 

 

 

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 in March
• 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

 

• Recruiting for a new Blood Bowl tournament!
• The Punch from Wunsche for “Chain of Command”
• The Landgrafenberg (4) for “Lasalle 2”
• Dan showed off some of the photos from last week’s WW2 desert minis wargame with MOGG, over on our Discord

 

• Ventonuovo’s site still says Orange Swan is coming “this February”.  Guys, “this February” was actually “last February” so maybe prod the web designers to do their jobs?
• Avalanche’s daily content this past week included a good backstory on Italy’s invasion of Albania in WW2
• The latest Compass Games town hall included discussion of several games that seem to be in the pipeline but not yet announced on their site
• Terrible news to report: Jeff Smith founder of MACE and the guy who ran that convention for 25 years, has passed away. This is the public post that was shared on the MACE Facebook page

 

• This week in our forums
  • Rather than have is sprawl through the forums, we’ve set up a dedicated channel on our Discord for discussing the ongoing invasion of Ukraine.  If you’d like access, join our Discord and contact one of the admins (Brant/Mike).
  • Go check out JD’s A-10 build
  • Talking about Salerno ’43 arriving imminently
• Lots of chatter at Matrix Games’ forums for the imminent release of Distant Worlds 2
• Hethwill’s latest wargamer coffee break is out

 

• Rocky used the Next War series to examine the ongoing invasion of Ukraine
• Moe finally dug into Third World War
• Fred did a teach-&-play for Verdun 1916: Steel Inferno with Volko across the virtual table from him
• Ardwulf’s counter clipping stream talked about anticipated wargames in 2022, and veered off into “what would we like to see reprinted”

 

 

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

• War on the Rocks reported on The Wargame Before The War and the insights it gave them into the initial days of the Russian invasion
• Professor Sabin’s final lecture on wargaming before retiring from King’s College in London
• Is it time to completely reboot the US National Defense Strategy ?
• Brian Train brings the 40th ID(M)’s dedicated urban warfare webpage to our attention
• UK Fight Club promoting an upcoming Women In Command seminar that’ll also talk wargaming
• The next GUWS webinar will talk about Principles of International Relations in Commercial Board Games on 3/15, and then on 3/31 you can hear about Air Force Wargaming
• McGill University is hosting a roundtable on the current activities in Ukraine, via Zoom. You can register here.

 

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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