Friendly Local (War)Gaming Stores – #TuesdayNewsday 2/1/22

Each week, #TuesdayNewsday’s whirlwind tour of the strategy gaming headlines keeps you dialed into what matters

We mentioned it last week, but we’re starting to gather contributions for our FLG(W)S Spotlight, in which we want to showcase the best of the brick-&-mortar wargaming stores around the US.
We’re hoping to start this recurring feature in a few weeks, but we need your help to load up the entries for the feature. We’ve got a short online form for you to give us the info about the store, and a way to contact you for follow-up questions if we have any.
Please note that you’ll need a Google account for this form because there’s a place on page 2 for you to upload some of your own photos of the store.  Also, don’t scrape photos from their website; give us your pictures of the store, especially ones that can showcase wargames there.

(As a note to store owners / managers: it is totally OK and not gauche at all to submit your own stores!  This is about building the directory, and it’s OK to toot your own horns)

• MMP have started shipping Hollow Legions to preorders
• S&T #333, with Ty Bomba’s Operation: Unthinkable is now shipping. The game covers an Allied-vs-Soviet clash over Germany in 1945.
• Avalanche Press are bringing back Defiant Russia as a playbook. They also have a “campaign study” examining what would’ve happened in the US and Japan clash in WW2 was moved up 18 months.
• Hollandspiele has launched Dual Gauge: Denmark and England & Wales which isn’t a wargame, but it’s Hollandspiele, so we’ll give them a pass
• Steamforged games have a new line of “epic encounters” sets that include both the fantasy adventure scenario, and a box of minis to support it. There’s around a dozen of them, all at about $50.
• FFG released an updated edition of the core starter for Lord of the Rings: The Card Game with some new updates.
• Catalyst Game Labs continue their planetary guidebooks for the Battletech universe with Touring the Stars: Kerensky’s Vision
• Warlord Games are continuing their “new year, new army” campaign, and this one is focusing on their Beyond the Gates of Antares sci-fi minis game
  • Concord (see right for part of it)
  • Ghar
  • Ghar Rebels
  • Algoryn
  • Boromite
  • Isorian

 

• GOG has a giant New Year sale going on, and games start at 49¢ 😳
• Lock ‘n Load have expanded their Battles on Demand series to include Dawn’s Early Light: Red Hammer, and Nuklear Winter ’68, which are also on sale right now
• Decision Games “deal of the month” is an escalating sale on their “Lightning” series of games, where the per-game price goes down as you add more of them to your order.
• If you’re a Prime customer, there are monthly free content drops for Battlefield 2042.
• Graviteam Tactics: Mius Front is on sale on Steam right now
• In advance of a new DLC later this week, Matrix Games has put the base Valor & Victory game on sale.
• Paradox has Steel Division: Normandy ’44 on sale over at Steam at over 50% off
• Modiphius has an insane sale going on John Carter products (clearly dumping inventory that didn’t take off), like this hardcover-in-a-slipcase set you can get for under $25.
• S&T’s game-edition magazine sale this week is S&T #264, with Shiloh: Bloody April 1862 at 25% off.

 

• We missed the launch of SJG’s Hexagram #9 on Kickstarter. Probably distracted by trying to come up with a good joke about Munchkin Farkle¹.
• The Thunder Road games are a cross between Car Wars and Mad Max and it’s getting relaunched with the new Vendetta set that’s on Kickstarter right now.  Players control a team of cars, and pledge levels start at $50.
• Magnetic castle terrain for minis games?  Sure thing! Oh yeah, it’s pricy.
• MonsterTamer can’t seem to decide if it’s going for 8-bit mobile-screen charm, or How To Train Your Dragon gameplay, but it looks like it could have some promise, and the funding goal is pretty low.

 

• After last week’s Tuesday Newsday, several folks got back to us about writing for the site, and we’re hoping that they come through with some solid content for our audience.
• Saturday Night Fights ~ The Battle of Isandlwana for “The Men Who Would Be Kings”, part 2
• We ask “Five Questions” of designer Sebastian Bae, on Littoral Commander
• This week’s classic AAR was World War II Frontline Command, Mission 2
• Rocky gave us the excellent Holding Fives -or- Pentomics in Iron Curtain: Central Europe, 1945-1989 from Multi-Man Publishing
• Mentioned in Dispatches is back on Friday!
• A note to those that have asked: our UnboxingDay articles are nested under the larger “reviews” on our site, along with the reviews themselves.  So you hit the “reviews” page on our site, you’ll get a lot of UnboxingDay articles, too.  There’s also a lot of game-specific info under “analysis” where we don’t look at the entire game, but just specific parts of it.
• Upcoming Dragoons Events
  • Next #UnboxingDay is 17 February
  • Next Virtual Convention is Connections Online, 19-21 April 2022
  • Next Real-World Convention that’s actually confirmed is Origins, 8-12 June 2022

 

• Wednesday Night Warfare was Another Run Through “Ruthless”
• The Thursday Night Throwdown was Probe into Fontenay for “Chain of Command”
• Hethwill is still looking for some players for an online game of Battles for Prydain: Heroic Combat in Dark Age Britain 450-650 AD on Friday

 

• Wargame Design Studio are standardizing a lot of the optional rules within their digital game engines.  They explain the rationale for this through the lens of their recent changes to Panzer Campaigns Japan ’45.
• The Wargaming Company are offering to bring your minis orders to you at AdeptiCon and save you the shipping charges.
• Worthington’s latest update notes that they’ve got a giant shipment due into the warehouse next week, so look for recent order to start shipping February, probably.
• Last week we poked fun at Battles! Magazine, Clash of Arms, Ventonuovo, and Minden games for how long it’s been since they updated their sites.  The English-language side of Nuts! Publishing needs to go on that list, too, since their last news update was 23 April…  New England Simulations is getting there, too, as is UK’s Plastic Soldier Company.
• If you’re looking for some high-quality scans of older SPI games, check out these guys.

 

• This week in our forums
  • Chatter is ramping up on Distant Worlds 2 as it gets closer to release
  • Reactions are strong to Cyrano’s latest rant on his 10 essential wargames.
  • We’re still sharing entries from Scott Paulsen’s “On The Turntable” series on Facebook, for those that don’t want to use FB to read it.
• “Truth in Advertising” Department: Mark Herman telling people that the recently-re-released-re-make-re-*mumble*something The Pacific War is as complex / crunchy as people are gonna get these days.
• Here’s an interesting thread on BGG² about the author’s home-brewed Mexico-in-collapse wargame that he’s been noodling around with for 30-odd years
• So the author of this tweet ended up deleting the entire thread, as he greatly expanded it, with updated info, on his Substack newsletter. There’s also a PDF about Hutspiel from ORO back in 1958, too, that the author dug up and shared.  So the Twitter formatting is jacked up because the original tweet was whacked, and there’s more info elsewhere.

 

• Rocky takes a deep dive into the classic “little black books” for Traveller and likes what he finds.
• Anyone surprised that Moe is digging into a wargame with a major USMC amphibious operation?
• Episode 4 of the “Pushing Cardboard” podcast is out. Lots of ASL, and about 9782346592873 different games that the author is playing all at once.
• Ardwulf’s counter clipping stream talked about “dream projects” in the wargaming world. He also spent some time on the recent MMP 2022 production update.

 

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

• Some counter upgrades might be necessary for NATO’s Eastern Flank as the countries their start upgrading their vehicles.
• What’s happening to US Army artillery?  Malign neglect?  Or legitimate budgetary allocations?
• UK Fight Club’s copies of Take That Hill have shown up at their offices and yes, they’re teasing us all by posting photos of a game that is not commercially available.
• Today, GUWS has Designing & Facilitating Matrix Games (at noon EST!) and in February, they’ve got Off the Hex Map with the Center for Army Analysis
• PaxSims gives us a rundown of the latest issue of the Simulation & Gaming academic journal

 

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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We appreciate you visiting the Armchair Dragoons and hope that you enjoy our weekly news dumps!
Please leave us your feedback in our discussion forum, or in the comment area below.
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