by Yep, it’s #TuesdayNewsday and here’s what you should care about in wargaming this week >>>
This Week’s Headline:
Last week we talked about all the pre-orders Compass Games announced on their Friday webcast. Then they spent the rest of the week announcing even more pre-orders. Lock up your wallets!
- The Russian Campaign, Original 1974 Edition
- Victory at Sea, Original 1992 Edition
- Manassas, Designer Signature Edition
- American Tank Ace: Europe, 1944-45
- Spitfire Ace: Air Defense Over Britain, 1940
- Interceptor Ace, Volume 2: Last Days Of The Luftwaffe, 1944-1945
- War For America: The American Revolution, 1775-1782
- Operation Storm-333: Soviet Coup In Kabul, 1979
Newly Released This Week:
- $40 for a d20? Seriously? Well, it is 2-1/2 inches tall.
- Flames of War just released four new Soviet packs of infantry.
- You want an adventure for The Fantasy Trip? How about 40 of them? How about 40 of them for $15? The winners of last years “postcard contest” are collected with the rest of the entries into a new book from SJG.
- Maybe not this week, but High Flying Dice recently released 2 games that take place in the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s: An Undeniable Victory, and Guards & Martyrs: The Battle for Basra
- Not that they were newly-released this week, but GMT Games has pretty much all the Combat Commander battle packs reprinted and ready to ship
Newly Launched This Week:
- March on the Drina from Princeps Games has launched on Kickstarter
- The Deadly Woods, Ted Racier’s new Bulge game, is on pre-order from Revolution Games
- Paradox has Empire of Sin on preorder. Gotta love any game that you have to enter a birthday just to see the preorder page.
- Want some minis? How about some mini minis? How about some 6mm fantasy crusaders, now on Kickstarter? Notably, these are real minis, and not a bunch of 3d printer files.
New from the Dragoons:
- Mentioned in Dispatches talked about Saturday Night Fights and Tabletop Simulator / distributed gaming.
- This week, Design x Dragoons is (finally!) back and talking about doctrine on the tabletop.
- Saturday Night Fights went all floaty-boaty with a Fletcher Pratt naval battle at River Plate.
- My Own Worst Enemy is continuing the Battle of Ligny
- Did you miss #UnboxingDay ? If so, you missed up opening up Napoleon Retreats from OSG; Star Fleet Marines; Victoria Cross II from Worthington Games; Flying Colors DELUXE 3rd ed from GMT Games and the Flying Colors 3rd Edition Update Kit from GMT Games; Verdun from Fellowship of Simulations; SeaFall by Ironwall Games; One Small Step from Academy Games; and Last Stand: The Battle for Moscow 1941-42 from MMP
News From The Wargame Industry:
- Strelets has a line of Prussian Dragoons minis, and if you have to ask why we’re bringing this to your attention, you might be on the wrong website.
- Avalanche Press has a sale on Defiant Russia, half price/no box, on closeout right now.
- Matrix Games has an update for Gary Grigsby’s Eagle Day to Bombing the Reich.
- Free League has an online showcase coming up this weekend for you to check out their latest & greatest games.
- AEG has an interesting game called Inner Compass on sale. It’s an odd one, seriously. Not really sure what to make of it.
- The Gamer’s Armory has restocked Friendly Fire pack 11 and 12 for your ASL scenario goodness.
- You want a Combat Wheelchair for your fantasy gaming? Of course you do.
- There’s a pretty cool minis wargaming online fanzine called Warning Order that you might enjoy looking through.
- Centurion has a fun look back at 10 random facts about TAHGC
- Rachel Simmons has a thought-provoking article around the design of her current game, Stavka.
So, what is the quiddity of Stavka? Again, what is Stavka about?
Stavka is about the end of end of the Clauswitzian era of warfare. It is about the transition from armies being the repository of military power, to instead being the expressions of military power, with the real repository being economies.
The German army leadership in June 1941 was steeped in Clauswitzian ideas. They aimed at the destruction of the enemy’s armed forces. Which they achieved. In the first two weeks of the war. Only to find that the Soviets built another army. Which the Germans also destroyed. Then another. In a war of armies, the Germans easily triumphed in 1941. But in a war of economies, the war had barely started and the Germans had achieved little.
The same scenario was to soon begin playing out again, 6 months later, and halfway around the world when Japan destroyed the American battleships at Pearl Harbor. It is true they didn’t destroy the American carriers, but it would have availed them nothing if they had. The Americans could and would build many, many more carriers to replace whatever Japan destroyed. (And in fact, by October 1942, the Americans had lost the Lexington, Yorktown, Hornet, and Wasp, and the Enterprise was badly damaged and out of service; it took longer than it might have, but the Japanese did eventually effectively destroy the pre-war U.S. carrier fleet. And it made no difference.)
The Professional Wargaming World:
- GUWS has webinars coming up on solitaire game design, and wargame pathologies.
Something From The Real World That You Can Use In A Game:
- Brian Train goes beyond the headlines and actually created a counter for the “heat ray” for one of his upcoming games, Civil Power currently on preorder from CSL.
- US troops to Latvia?
- How are Cheetos interfering with the operation of lasers on the battlefield?
- How many US divisions would you need to defend Taiwan?
Something From Our Partners:
- Moe opened up C&C Tricorne: Jacobite Rising.
- Ardwulf opened up C&C Tricorne: Jacobite Rising.
- Dan did not open up C&C Tricorne: Jacobite Rising.
- RMN opened up French & Indian War 1757-1759 instead. There’s also some very good musings on using boardgames for learning during this pandemic-induced distance-education era.
This Week’s Tunes:
This past week on Six Degrees of Radio ?
- Ain’t Gonna Cry No More by Whitesnake
- Circles by Post Malone
- Off The Ground by The Record Company
- Drop Dead Cynical by Amaranthe
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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