Fall Assembly is 2 Months Away ~ #TuesdayNewsday 8/22/23

The Armchair Dragoons brings you #TuesdayNewsday to read up on this week’s strategy gaming headlines

The Fall Assembly is 2 months away ~

Registration & events are both live for the Armchair Dragoons Fall Assembly 2023.
We’ve got around 20 scheduled events, with plenty of empty table-space for pickup games in between. We’d like to add another big event or two, but until we start filling up the existing ones, it’s not a priority.

The latest update? A couple of designers are going to be joining us! Hermann Luttmann is coming to town. So is Bruce Maxwell. And Keith Tracton is going to make the trek, too! We’ll let you know if any others commit, as well.

Current Confirmed Game Sessions NATO: The Cold War Goes Hot – learn with designer Bruce Maxwell Learn to play Great Battles of the American Civil War Playtest sessions of the upcoming Maneuver Warfare professional development / USMC card game All-day Saturday game of It Never Snows, split into two 5-hour sessions. You don’t need to play in both, but are welcome to if you’d like Triumph & Tragedy, with one session each day over the weekend Bayonets & Tomahawks, with one session each day over the weekend Littoral Commander, the USMC training-game-turned-hobby-game Brief Border Wars for some conflicts you’ve never heard of Gunfight Royale for a Wild West shootout and more coming!

Convention Details Badges are $40 for the weekend, which include some munchies, custom Armchair Dragoons swag, and whatever other prizes or giveaways we’re able to gather before the event. Attendance is capped on this one because of the limited floorspace we’ve got inside the store and we want to make sure every player gets plenty of time on the tables. Gamer’s Armory is planning to open early on Sunday just for us, so we can get an additional game session or two in, before the general public gets in the doors. As noted on the convention site, we do not have a hotel attached to the facility. You can find local hotels here. We’re looking into a potential block deal with some local hotels, but with the State Fair in town it’s tough. As a reminder, Regimental Patron-level Patreon supporters get a free badge for all Armchair Dragoons-hosted events.

 

Games released in the past week that you’ll want to check out

• MMP has released ASL Starter Kit Expansion Pack #3, with a pair of new maps and scenarios from Poland to the Marianas; save $11 if you order in the next few weeks
• Nothing Left to Bomb is the latest from SNAFU Design, covering aerial actions over Malta in WW2
• Avalanche Press has gotten a lot of mileage out of their Second Great War at Sea alt-history games and now comes a ground/land combat game in that same alt-history universe; Alsace 1940 is a p&p variant that requires Alsace 1945 to play, because you need the map
• By the time half of you are reading this, the digital version of War & Peace will be released on Steam
• Worthington Games are now shipping their Bismarck Solitaire boardgame, and it’s $5 off right now
• There’s a bunch of new terrain for Bolt Action from Warlord
• You want it all?  You can get it all for The Fantasy Trip as Steve Jackson’s made the über-Kickstarter box available for the public
• The next batch of the Team Yankee Nordic Forces line drops this week
  • Swedish Unit Cards
  • Swedish S-Tank Company Starter Force
  • Strv 103 S-Tank Platoon
  • Centurion Tank Platoon
  • PBV 302 Platoon
  • Pvpjtgb 1111 Platoon
  • Armoured Rifle Platoonx

 

Crowdfunding, p500, pledge programs, whatevs yo! ~ if you can order it now & get it later, here it is

• Compass Games are ginning up some pre-orders for Fall of Tobruk on Kickstarter
• New Bolt Action book – Campaign: Case Blue – on pre-order right now
• Fantasy-tinged Crusades-inspired setting for 5e on Kickstarter
• Delver issue #10, for OSR content, is on Kickstarter
• GMT’s latest monthly update includes some new p500s
  • Žižka: Reformation and Crusade in Hussite Bohemia, 1420-1421
  • The Last Hundred Yards Volume 5: For King & Country
  • Caesar: Rome vs. Gaul, 2nd Edition and the upgrade kit

 

Here to help you save a few bucks, or, y’know… spend more than you were planning if it wasn’t for a good deal

• Cube4Me is celebrating their second anniversary with a sale on their wargame box organizers, where you can get 10% off your order with coupon code TWO YEARS at checkout
• Easy Roller Dice has a BOGO deal on all their 10mm mini sets, with coupon code BOGOMINI at checkout
• Legion Wargames’ Hell Over Korea is $10 off right now
• Miniature Market has 1565 Siege of Malta on sale for almost $20 off
• Lock ‘n Load Publishing has Day of Heroes at half price right now
• S&T’s game-edition magazine sale this week is Modern War #3 with Somali Pirates

 

There’s always something going on with The Dragoons, so we’ve always got plenty to tell you about!

• Travels in Europe ~ Leipzig & The East, Part 1
• Saturday Night Fights ~ The Battle of Waterloo (V) for “Valour and Fortitude”
• #UnboxingDay!
  • A Most Fearful Sacrifice: The Three Days of Gettysburg
  • Banzai Magazine Vol. 18 charges in from overseas
  • Battles in the East Volume 2
  • The Russian Campaign, 5th Ed
  • Western Front Ace: The Great War in the Air, 1916-1918
  • BattleTech Essentials
  • A wargamer explores Expeditions by Jamie Stegmaier (Stonemaier Games, 2023)
• Going back through our Armchair Dragoons’ archives, check out our review of Forgotten Legions, one of the first reviews we published
• The Giant Civ 6 AAR: Nubia, Part 30 ~ and taking a break for a bit with this one
• The Grand “Champions of Krynn” AAR ~ Part Eighteen
• Gameplay this week
  • The Church on the Flank for “Chain of Command”
  • The Battle of Dresden (South) (III) for “Valour and Fortitude”
• This week in our forums
  • Talking about Cyrano’s road trips
  • Digging into the Blind Swords system
  • Digging into the Flying Colors system
• Upcoming Dragoons Events (and don’t forget to check the event calendar for everything else)
  • Wargame Days at The Gamer’s Armory in Cary, NC ~ 10 September (skipping ahead bc of Labor Day) and 1 October
  • Next #UnboxingDay¹ is 21 September
  • Next virtual event is The 2024 ACDC, 12-14 January 2024
  • Next live event is The Armchair Dragoons Fall Assembly 2023, 20-22 October 2023, The Gamer’s Armory, Cary NC

Don’t forget we are co-sponsoring a research project with Beyond Solitaire about your favorite solo wargames, and we’ve got over 150 200 participants so far.  We’ll be covering this one from several angles in September.

 

Don’t forget to check our consolidated event & convention calendar for more!
You can also submit your own events for our calendar here.

• 25 August – 2 September ConSimWorld Expo (Tempe AZ)
• 31 August – 4 September DragonCon (Atlanta, GA)
• 1-4 September Pacificon (Santa Clara, CA)
• 1-4 September Strategicon: Gateway (Los Angeles, CA)
• 15-17 September Southern Front (Morrisville, NC)
• 1-8 October ASLOK (Cleveland, OH)
• 20-22 October The Inaugural Armchair Dragoons Fall Assembly 2023 (Cary, NC)

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Our fellow content creators from the wargaming world

• Rocky looks ahead to his anticipated Fall/Winter gaming
• Moe will be on Whiskey Charlie tonight 8/22
• Digging through old issues of The General
• Brian Train has a couple of variants for some of his games, based on the Canadian “freedom convoys” of 2022
• We checked out SnapShips at the GAMA Expo; Gimpy gets his hands into the Kickstarter for the game
• Ardwulf’s counter clipping stream talked about Mark Herman’s designs

 

Various news & notes from the business end of the gaming world

• Matrix Games / OTS looking for some testers for Flashpoint Campaigns
• Asmodee Games had a monster $2bil investment coming from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund…  that all fell apart, for some reason
• Note to designers / publishers: if you’re at a convention, and advertising a game as a “tutorial”² then maybe don’t show up with the sequel, lead off with “I’m just going to point out the differences” instead of teaching the game, and ignore the purpose for which your attendees are there.  No one likes a bait-&-switch

 

 

Hey, we’d LOVE to have some more action in the dedicated area of our forums for the wargame practitioners.

• The UK DSTL recently held a major series of wargames focusing on future force design across a variety of scenarios
• User perceptions of computer vs manual wargaming
• Dungeons & Dragons & Military Intelligence
• The next GUWS webinar is Intelligent Cardboard: Implementing AI in a Board Game on 29 August³ and after that it’s
  Ender’s Legacy: Digital Wargames in Professional Military Education on 5 September
• PaxSims has a good article about developing a wargaming culture on naval ships while at sea
• From our Connections Online livestream archive

 

Something neat from outside the wargaming world we thought was worth sharing

 

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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Thank you for visiting The Armchair Dragoons and mounting up with the Regiment of Strategy Gaming.
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In a world of wargaming so grand,
Tuesdays, news spreads ‘cross the land,
Updates each week,
For battles we seek,
On the tabletops, forces will stand!

1. 3rd Thursday of the month
2. as in “we’re going to tutor you on how to play”
3. this one dovetails nicely with our podcast episode last season talking about tabletop AI