by Every week, #TuesdayNewsday gives you a digest of what’s important in the strategy gaming world >>>
This Week’s Headline:
On this 80th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor, there were 2 interesting notes on the morning news here in the US
- This is likely to be the last major milestone anniversary with any Pearl Harbor survivors. Given that even the youngest of them are well into their 90s, it’s unlikely we’ll see any of them make it to the 85th anniversary, and almost guaranteed not the 90th.
- Interviewing one of the survivors, he noted that he’s often told while out walking “Thank you for service” and his standard reply is “You were worth serving for.” Pretty powerful reply, that one.
This Week’s Other Headline:
Chris Dean, the owner/operator of the NWS Online game store, passed away this past week. It seems as though there are some arrangements being worked on for someone to take over his store, but there’s not a lot of clarity yet on what’s happening with existing orders and pre-orders, but there are some legal tie-ups yet to be navigated. The best move for now is probably “patience.”
This Week’s Other Other Headline:
The ACDC is coming up in a few weeks, over MLK weekend here in the US (14-16 January). We’re starting to put together a draft schedule and plan to release initial registration / execution information shortly. If you are interested in volunteering as a GM1 or a speaker2 or a part of the production team3 or the Discord admin crew4 then we might be able to scrounge up a free badge5 for you, as well as a top-secret, ultra-super-special6, behind-the-scenes look at what it takes to pull off one of these conventions.
Drop us a line in the forums and we’ll see about getting you connected to the organizing team.
Newly Released This Week:
- High Flying Dice released Alfred The Great – The Campaign for London 885 AD as a part of the “Warrior King Campaign Series”.
- Legion Wargames released Captain’s Sea – The American Frigates 1799-1815 for all your Age of Sail entertainment.
- Wargame Design Studio have released a new beta scenario for Modern Campaigns – Danube Front ’85. The scenario is free; the game is not.
- Ares Games drops Last Friday (revised edition) this week, a 2-6 player game based on ‘slasher’ movies, with different “chapters” (think “scenarios”)
- The new issue of Wargames Illustrated is available from Warlord Games, among others.
- Osprey Publishing releases Frostgrave: Blood Legacy this week. It’s an expansion to their Frostgrave minis wargaming line.
- The Dark Crystal adventure game is single big hardcover book based on the old Henson movie. It’s finally gotten a halfway-decent game treatment.
- Catalyst has released a new BattleTech set for Wolf’s Dragoons, exclusively through Barnes & Noble.
On Sale This Week:
- Matrix Games’ sale this week is the Field of Glory II series, with everything at least 10% off and most of it 60% off.
- Assault Games is offering Red Horizon 41 at a holiday discount, so you can save €5 (or about ¥640 or £4.257)
- Worthington has most of their catalog on sale, and most of it cheap, too, like Stalingrad Besieged, which is over 50% off and has a variety of components to match your play style (cards / blocks / counters)
- Against the Odds Magazine is having a deal where they’re giving away a lot of their “Black Swan” games when pretty much any order of more than 1 game.
- Paradox has Magicka 2 on sale at 75% off
- S&T’s game-edition magazine sale this week is S&T #304 with The American Revolution in the South.
Newly Launched This Week:
- Hey look, if you want to fire up a new wargame Kickstarter, we’re among your biggest cheerleaders. We want you to succeed. With that in mind, if you launch a new wargame, as Cadet Games did for Nguyen Hue ’72 – The 1972 Easter Offensive in Vietnam, maybe – just maybe – you need to announce it in more places than just Grognard.com, like say, with us, Ardwulf’s Lair, ConSimWorld (news or social), The Player’s Aid, Moe’s Game Table, Big Board, BGG, any of the wargaming groups on Facebook, or, y’know, literally anywhere other than Grognard.com, which almost no one uses anymore.
- Free League launched their Kickstarter for Vaesen covering mythic Britain & Ireland, and they’re about 1700% funding with 15 days to go, so they’ll probably make it.
- The Gamer’s Armory is taking preorders on Operation Martlet, Objective:Barracuda for ASL, with a big map, a countersheet, and a bunch of scenarios, including a campaign game.
- We couldn’t tell you a damn thing about the content of this one, but the “Mag of Holding” just has one of the best RPG product names out there and might be worth supporting just for that reason. It’s a whole series of themed books of 5e-compatible RPG content.
- Free League also has the pre-order up for their recently-Kickstarted The One Ring bundle in case you missed it the first time around.
This Week With The Armchair Dragoons:
- Saturday Night Fights celebrated the anniversary of The Battle of Austerlitz using the Blucher rules
- My Own Worst Enemy continues Across 5 Aprils with Part 4
- This week’s classic article looked back at gaming-on-the-go with Sea Empire by BluePlop Games
- In our forums:
- You should keep an eye on our sales thread, as most of the Dragoons will share the deals they find and some come & go quickly
- There was a fun discussion of the symbols of secret societies, and the publisher told you that you had to figure it out yourself
- The upcoming Troy: Total War has been tracked closely by a bunch of our Dragoons
- Jim continues his AARs of the Project: Quatre Bras games, with the look at Snappy Nappy
- Mentioned in Dispatches looked at the evolution of some of our wargamers from where they started to where they are now.
- Other online games with the Armchair Dragoons
- Thursday Night Throwdown was Attack on the Hauptkampflinie for Chain of Command
- Jan talked at length about his experiences as a GM for online kriegsspiels.
News From The Wargame Industry:
- GMT Games are pointing folks to Wargameleague for their December PBEM tournaments. There’s a variety of games with ladders that you can jump into, from several different publishers.
- Avalanche Press have announced through the email newsletter that there are some price increases coming. Most pre-orders have been pulled down until the costs can be adjusted, but existing pre-orders are not supposed to be affected (you’ve already paid / they’re honoring that payment).
- Columbia Games are hosting a “block party” for their Julius Caesar game in early January. Details & registration are on Facebook.
- This week on Twitter there was a massive Chainmail appreciation thread, with some, um… interesting replies
It's come to my attention that some of you meatheads lack a critical appreciation for the beauty of the Chainmail game that spawned not just D&D, but also all of modern gaming. Well I am here to help. Also to insult you a little. Because this stuff really should be obvious. pic.twitter.com/l8pk8rZBXF
— Jeffro Johnson (@JohnsonJeffro) November 29, 2021
Something From Our Partners:
- Moe lined up a bunch of new videos, but they don’t start releasing until tomorrow! 😩
- The Blue Tweezers wrapped up RavenCon.
- Ardwulf’s counter clipping stream talked about the tragic news at NWS, and new editions of older wargames, and he also pimped My Own Worst Enemy as a part of the show. He also looks inside ASL expansions for both Corregidor and Objective Schmidt.
News From The 4X Gaming World:
We’ve also got a 4X-specific area in the forums to discuss any of these, too.
- Developer Silver Lemur Games announced that Stellar Monarch 2 has just launched into Steam Early-Access. The game is a follow-up to the original Stellar Monarch released five years ago, and will continue the previous title’s focus on macromanagement over micromanagement, asymmetric factions, and a theme of you as the emperor/empress personally ruing your own feudal space empire.
- Stardock has dropped the 0.65 update for the Galactic Civilizations IV alpha. Alongside the usual bug fixes, balances & UI improvements, etc., the update also adds two more player civilizations (Arceans and Drath), plus some significant features such as The Galactic Bazaar and Supply Ships.
(And yes, you read that correctly: GalCiv4 is still in alpha, not beta. Turns out Stardock made the proverbial last-minute decision to put off moving the game into beta until 2022.) - Illwinter Games has released the 5.12 “Apocalypse” update for Conquest of Elysium, their highly-regarded turn-based fantasy 4x(ish) title launched back in August. This appears to be one of the most significant updates the game has scene in a while, with a focus on the Apocalypse (natch), UI improvements, and the AI.
- On the heels of releasing an updated demo for their post-apocalyptic 4x Revival: Recolonization, HeroCraft PC announced they were pushing back the game’s release into Steam Early-Access until summer 2022, alongside a roadmap for ongoing/future development.
The Professional & Practitioner Wargaming World:
Don’t forget we’ve got a dedicated area of our forums for the professional wargamers.
- Hey look, things might get shooty in Ukraine, and someone should really make a game about it 15 years ago!
- JAMS Volume 12, #2, is an all-wargame issue.
- Connections NL was last week, and some follow-ups and photos are on their website.
- US Fight Club & UK Fight Club were both at IITSEC last week and we’re looking forward to seeing / hearing all about it.
- This week, GUWS has Hiding in Plain Sight: The Connection Between Commercial and Professional and next year, their first webinar is going to dramatically raise the intelligence level of the entire program, with Liz Davidson talking presenting Never Just a Game: What Our Board Games Tell Us About Ourselves
- PaxSims have noted that Connections UK are holding a 1-day wargaming meetup in March 2022.
Admin note: at one point we set all the links in the news to open in new tabs, but that was causing some weirdness with things like clicking to enlarge images also opening new tabs. For now, we’ve removed that feature until we can find a better way. Meanwhile, you’re going to need to right-click to open links in new tabs.
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.
We appreciate you visiting the Armchair Dragoons and hope that you enjoy our weekly news dumps!
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