by Every week, #TuesdayNewsday gives you a digest of what’s important in the strategy gaming world >>>
This Week’s Headline:
We’re always looking to bring in new sources of information for our weekly news dump. This week, we mined Twitter a bit for some interesting discussions & exchanges about the wargaming industry (such that it is) and found some pretty cool exchanges. We’re also going to make it a point to tell you more about the online games being played by The Dragoons right now, especially the ones looking for more participants.
Newly Released This Week:
- Catastrophe Games are now shipping their USS Laffey game to Kickstarter backers, and we also showed off the game in a recent bonus unboxing video.
- SJ Games are shipping the GURPS 3e games as the reprints are ready, and this week, GURPS Space is taking off.
- Canvas Temple does non-canvas, too. They’ve got their 3D printers working overtime, and a bunch of nice new Japanese-inspired terrain for sale, like this gigantic 6-level Samurai Castle.
- WH40K: Battlesector goes live on Steam on 7/22.
- Columbia now has their Harnmaster RPG available for the Roll20 platform.
- The Gamer’s Armory has issue #10 of From the Cellar for ASL aficionados now available, which is the “Sand & Snow” themed issue with the USMC in the Pacific, and Korea.
News From The Wargame Industry:
- Hobby game sales are blowing up post-pandemic, from ICv2
- The Dutch Open wargaming convention is open for registration. 23-24 October in Klundert.
- If ever you needed a reason to stop printing games in China, freight costs might be the final one.
- Profession Phil Sabin (formerly of King’s College, London and now retired) has posted a bunch of his game designs – including some from his Lost Battles book – online for free.
- An interesting discussion about wargaming at hobby game conventions.
- Can you “make money” in wargames? Sure. Amabel Holland breaks down how.
Newly Launched This Week:
- Another ‘generic’ RPG system? The Anyworld RPG system is up on Kickstarter right now.
- Compass Games can’t give you enough of their solo aerial games. This time, it’s Defending America, the ‘other’ side of Amerika Bombers that’s on preorder.
- Spire’s End: Hildegaard is a solo/co-op card-based adventure that’s kid-friendly and pretty good-looking. And waaaaay past its funding goal.
- Here’s something different: a Kickstarter to help the African Boardgame Convention fund & run their 5th iteration of the show.
This Week With The Armchair Dragoons:
- We ask “Five Questions” of Mitchell Land, the key designer of GMT’s Next War series.
- Last Thursday was #UnboxingDay here with the Dragoons!
- Saturday Night Fights went back to Gettysburg to try to wrap up day 2 of the battle, using the Altar of Freedom rules.
- Other online games with the Armchair Dragoons (find your own here!)
- Hethwill has a standing Friday game of Last Hundred Yards for folks to join him on VASSAL.
- Hazdrubal is still looking for more players to join another game of Rebels & Patriots on 7/25.
- Last count had us up to 7 simultaneous multiplayer play-by-cloud games of Civ6 going on right now. Let’s hope someone’s taking screenshots for the AARs.
- Thursday Night Throwdown is back! Playing a Kursk scenario for TFL’s Chain of Command rules.
- A Friday night shootout using Rebels & Patriots resulted in the American cavalry leaving the battlefield on turn 1! Clearly, someone had found a brewery just off-map.
Something From Our Partners:
- RMN is playing catch-up on his wargaming.
- Ardwulf’s counter clipping stream talked about Normandy games, and he also still has some games for sale.
- Moe dug into The Final Frontier from Microgame Design Group.
On Sale This Week:
- Contrary to what some pretend journalists have spouted off about elsewhere, the Command Ops series has not been abandoned by its developer. It is alive and well and with a different publisher, and most of it’s on sale right now through Steam.
- Avalanche Press has a big Summer sale going on with themed packages, like the “Kursk Package” or the “Plan Z Package”
- Paradox has damn near all things Magicka 2 on sale at 50-75% off
- S&T’s game-edition magazine sale this week is World At War #70, with the Great Pacific War covering War Plan Orange in WW2.
- The Bradley Miniatures 6mm series is 20% off right now at Alternative Armies. You have to paint them yourself.
The Professional & Practitioner Wargaming World:
Don’t forget we’ve got a dedicated area of our forums for the professional wargamers.
- Uh, yeah. Don’t leak classified specs just to win an argument in a gaming forum.
- Want to play with the Defense Budget? Go right ahead.
- This week, GUWS has Wargame Design: The Marine Corps’ Operational Wargame System and next week, they’ve got CSBA Wargaming & Wargaming’s Utility to the Defense Practitioner. This weekend, they also have a live game of Fleet Marine Force you can jump into.
- PaxSims has an interesting paper about Wargaming the use of intermediate force capabilities in the gray zone that you can download as a PDF from their site.
- War on the Rocks is looking ahead at US military force structure for the 21st century, and noting that…
Getting to this point will require realistic assessments, wargames, and simulations that account for the military, political, and diplomatic consequences of various balances between combat and supporting capabilities.
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!
Please leave us your feedback in our discussion forum, or in the comment area below.
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