Inaugural Summit Award from SDHISTCON – #TuesdayNewsday 12/13/22

Each week, #TuesdayNewsday dives into the strategy gaming world to fish out what’s important

SDHISTCON announced their inaugural Summit Award winner, Red Flag Over Paris
The official verbiage:

The San Diego Historical Games Convention (SDHistCon) is proud to announce the winner of the first annual Summit Award. The Summit Award aims to recognize a historical board game published in the preceding year that most broadened the hobby through the ease of teaching and/or play, uniqueness of topic, or novel approach. The winner of the 2022 Summit Award (for games published in 2021) is Red Flag Over Paris.

Red Flag Over Paris is designed by Fred Serval, with art from Donal Hegarty, development from Jason Carr and Joe Dewherst, and solitaire mode design by Jason Carr. It is published by GMT Games. It is a 20-40 minute card-driven game for one to two players, depicting the two months of intense confrontation between the Communards and the government in Versailles during the 1871 Paris Commune. Players take control of one of those factions and battle not just for physical control of the city, but also for the hearts and minds of the population. Solitaire variants are included for both factions.

The winner of the Summit Award was determined by members of the SDHistCon Board and SDHistCon Advisory Board. The judges praised Red Flag Over Paris for its ease of teaching and play, novelty of topic, and effectiveness as a historical game.

Red Flag Over Paris was one of four Summit Award finalists announced in October following a three-month public call for nominations (sent out in Conflicts of Interest #1) that produced more than 48 submissions. Red Flag Over Paris received the highest public nominations of any candidate. The other three finalists, selected by members of the SDHistCon Board and SDHistCon Advisory Board in October, were (in alphabetical order) Atlantic Chase (designed by Jeremy White, published by GMT Games), Nicaea (designed by Amabel Holland, published by Hollandspiele Games), and No Motherland Without: North Korea In Crisis and Cold War (designed by Dan Bullock, published by Compass Games). Each of those four games was taught and demonstrated at the Nov. 11-13 San Diego Historical Games Convention. Following that, members of the SDHistCon Board and SDHistCon Advisory Board met for a final selection of the 2022 Summit Award winner.

The Summit Award will return in 2023, with games published in 2022 under consideration for that award. A call for public submissions will go out in the summer of 2023. More information can be found on the Summit Award page on the SDHistCon website.

This Week’s Other Headline:

It sucks having to bring you the news of the passing of game industry luminaries.  For those of us of a certain age, Kim Mohan was a far more influential figure than almost anyone realizes, as he was the editor of Dragon Magazine for a significant number of our formative years growing up.  So sorry to report that he, too, has headed to the great game table in the sky.  Hoist an extra shot for him at your next adventure.

 

• High Flying Dice release A Scourge of Stone And Spirit about the siege of Harfleur back in 1415; it’s pretty cool how HFD constantly unearths obscure battles for their games
• Tears of Tyranny is a print-&-play game that’s a free download, and billed as an “irregular wargame”
• Big release from Matrix Games in support of Strategic Command: American Civil War, as they give you a free DLC for the Franco-Prussian War, too
• Osprey Games released Pulp! a new book of “skirmish adventure wargaming” from famed game critic (and target of Bruce Geryk’s ire) Marco Arnaudo
• Yes, there’s a Street Fighter Miniatures Game and yes, the figs look as cool as you’d expect
• Warlord Games has an “army muster” pack of Spartan Hoplites that come with some free generals, and none of them look like Gerard Butler
• Warlord Games also has the Irish Brigade for their Pike & Shotte rules; in this case, literally split into “Pike” and “Shotte“

 

• Another Worthington Publishing “bookgame” – Coral Sea Solitaire in either the regular or ‘midnight‘ edition
• Compass Games has a set of mounted maps for Bitter Woods on pre-order
• Mafia: Reign of Terror manages to bring an Italian term to the French Revolution for a social deduction that really needs at least a half-dozen to play, and moves about as fast a British melodrama and it’s all on Kickstarter

 

• WDS has announced their Winter sale, starting 12/16, with most games 25% off, and a stacking 20% off if you order over $200 of stuff
• There’s a Team 17 sale over at Humble Bundle right now, that includes King of the Seas at 75% off
• Yes, it is cartoonish, but Divine Knockout is also free on Steam right now
• S&T’s game-edition magazine sale this week is S&T #290, with Angola, covering the 87-88 campaign
• Don’t forget that Lock ‘n Load Publishing’s Christmas sale started this week, so you can use coupon code SANTA22 at checkout for up to 40% off

 

Slow week here in Dragoon-land, as everyone’s going into low idle for the holidays

• Saturday Night Fights The Battle of Dresden (part 2) for “Commands and Colors: Napoleonics”
• My Own Worst Enemy ~ The Battle of Midway 1942AD – Part 1
• This week in our forums
  • Undaunted!
  • Looking back at The Falklands
  • What are some of your favorite accessories and doodads
• 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 ~ 8 January¹ & 4 February
  • Next #UnboxingDay is this week!
  • Next Virtual Convention is The ACDC on 13-15 January, and look for volunteer & registration info to go live soon
  • Next Real-World Convention is going to be Buckeye Game Fest, in Columbus OH, 28-30 April (with the War Room opening up on 24 April for extended wargaming)

 

• The Outskirts of Colleville II for “Chain of Command”
• The Battle of Soltanovka (part 3) for “Shako 2”

 

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

With the holidays coming up, the conventions we’re tracking are mostly after the new year, so you’ve got some time to plan!

• 3 different conventions on 13-15 January!
  • The ACDC (virtual) (more details coming soon)
  • MarsCon (Norfolk, VA)
  • MMP’s Winter Offensive (Baltimore, MD)
• 8-12 February GameON! (Seattle, WA)
• 17-26 February Winterfest (Sandusky, OH)
• 17-20 February DunDraCon 46 (Santa Clara, CA)
• 20-26 February Prezcon (Charlottesville, VA)

 

• Rocky’s holiday shopping!
• Moe take a look at Skyhawk from Legion Wargames
• Brian Train gives us a sneak peek at the graphics for his upcoming Brief Border Wars II²
• Ardwulf’s counter clipping stream talked about the best of Victory Games

 

We’ve also got a 4X-specific area in the forums to discuss any of these, too.

• This past week saw the release of Knights of Honor II: Sovereign from publisher THQ Nordiq and developer Black Sea Games (trailer).  The long-awaited sequel to the original game (which was released back in 2005) aims for an improved experience across the board, with an emphasis on accessibility (the first Knights of Honor is known for its “quirks”).
• Distant Worlds 2 received a major update (v1.0.8.6) this past week; you can read the patch notes here.  This update improves the game across all areas, from bug-fixes to performance issues, UI work, ship/fleet behavior, research, exploration, diplomacy, and more.
• The Stellaris team dropped a hotfix patch — version 3.6.1 — last week as well (patch notes are here).  The update largely addresses bugs/issues that cropped up the previous week after the public release of the Orion update.

 

• Avalanche Press tells you all about the Manx going to war in WW2
• Minden Games’ site is back online after their hiatus last month, but there’s still nothing new over the past 2 years on it
• On Thursday, Compass Games will have their year-in-review episode of their Town Hall
• Picking fights on Twitter again, with a sprawling set of conversational tendrils that spread off of this

 

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

• The now-annual ISIS Crisis matrix game was recently held at IWP and here’s the wrap-up
• M-55S tanks now arriving in Ukraine; it’s a T-55 with a British L7 gun and a lot of armor & fire-control upgrades. Go ahead and stat one out for your preferred tank game!
• The next GUWS webinar is December 17th – and it’s at noon US EST! – titled Crossing the line: The Hidden Realm of Non-linear Simulation and in January, Ed McGrady brings you Gaming Climate Change: Challenges and More Challenges on the 10th
• Job listings!
  • Strategic Planning and Gaming Specialist with the State Department
  • R&D Systems Research Analyst with some wargaming responsibilites
• PaxSims spent the weekend playing around with ChatGPT and ruining wargaming, in roughly equal measure

 

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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1. pushed back a week b/c of New Year’s Day
2. just please, for the luv’o’Pete, do not Google “BBW” to look for this or it’s predecessor title, unless you have 4 layers of safesearch turned on.  just…. no