RIP Peter Perla, a Giant of Wargaming ~ #TuesdayNewsday

#TuesdayNewsday mourns the loss of one of the real giants of the wargaming world

 

There is no other headline this week.  Peter Perla, the man who literally wrote the book on The Art of Wargaming, passed away over the weekend.  Funeral services will be in DC on Friday, January 26 and the obituary from the funeral home can be found here.  The wargaming world, both commercial and professional, weighed in all over the place, including a memorialization at PaxSims, and Brian Train’s note on his site.  His article about “Why Wargaming Works” with Ed McGrady is still referenced by many today.

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Nope.  That’s pretty much it.  No other story comes anywhere close.

 

This week’s releases that you’ll want to know about

• It’s finally on the way!  New England Simulations is now shipping Winter’s Victory
• Thanks to Friend-of-the-Dragoons Fred for alerting us to the fact that the Dunn-Kempf minis rules are now available on Amazon
• Hollandspiele released But Then She Came Back, an horror-themed came that is not for kids
• Stalingrad Roads is starting to arrive around the world, so if you ordered it, look for it soon
• Warlord has Cruel Seas: HMS Medusa – Harbour Defence Motor Launch as a charity fund-raiser to help restore the actual HMS Medusa
• Blue Panther has released a set of ACW 15mm rules, Mini Men with Minnie Balls
• The Art of Wargames now has a collected pack of their Men of War series over on Amazon, so you can get a bunch of their games all at once (Rhodesia, French Foreign Legion in Indochina, and Contras)
• Osprey Games are now shipping With Hot Lead and Cold Steel, their ACW rules
• MMP started shipping their Winter Offensive releases to pre-orders, with everyone else presumably to follow soon(-ish?)
  • ASL Winter Offensive Bonus Pack #15
  • ASL Twilight of the Reich

 

Getcher orders in now and then either (a) wait for it impatiently, or (b) forget your ordered it and be surprised later!

• WWII Campaigns from Compass Games is on Kickstarter
• The next D-Day Dice – To Do Or Die – game is on Kickstarter
• Warlord Games have their 2024 mystery boxes on pre-order with an early February shipping date
  • Mega Mystery Box 2024 – for $240
  • Mystery Box 2024 – for a mere $120
• Worthington has a giant neoprene map for their Gettysburg 1863 live on Kickstarter
• Operation Meteor lets you try to save the Earth
• Sankoré is on pre-order from Osprey Games
• Green Ronin’s Valiant Adventures RPG, based on the comics universe, is now live on Kickstarter
• Norse Mythology comes (back) to the tabletop with Fate: Defenders of Grimheim
• GMT’s monthly update dropped last week, with some new p500s
  • Musket & Pike Dual Pack 2, containing Under the Lily Banners and Gustav Adolf the Great
  • The Plum Island Horror: More of a Bad Thing
  • At Any Cost: Metz 1870, 2nd Printing
  • The British Way: Counterinsurgency at the End of Empire, 2nd Printing

 

Saving money? Spending just as much but getting more for it?

• Miniature Market has The Last Kingdom on sale at about $15 off
• Can’t get much cheaper than ‘free’!  Green Ronin’s Valiant Adventures RPG quickstart is free on their site to check out before you back the Kickstarter (see above)
• Humble Bundle has Holdfast: Nations at War on sale for over half off
• Order something from Alternative Armies and they’ll throw in a barrel of bottles for you
• BeachHead, which includes a VR version, is on sale on Steam at over half off
• S&T Press has a sale on magazine games starting at 10% for orders under $100 and going up to over 30% with a big enough order (note this is games only, not the magazines)

 

This week’s best written coverage from the wargaming world

• Rocky digs into a Master’s thesis from Fort Leavenworth to help inform his explorations of War Stories
• Space Biff checks out Wyrmspan on his site
• Avalanche Press tells you about the Imperial Russian navy in their alt-history Second Great War series

 

The best videos this week from our wargaming friends

• Moe has a great interview with the VUCA guys about Red Strike
• My Own Worst Enemy goes back to Federation Space
• Peter Robbins visits with Chris & Larry from the Admiralty Trilogy Group
• Beyond Solitaire reviews Troyes Dice on her channel
• HissyCat looks at Bloody April – Air War over Arras France, 1917
• Ardwulf’s counter clipping stream talked about the GMT update, his table construction, and wargame ‘time’ footprints

 

 

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

• Here’s a pretty cool game company ‘project’ – Columbia Games is organizing a trip to Quebec in September for a tour of the 1759 battlefields, in honor of the 50th anniversary of their Quebec 1759 game
• Counterfeiters are shipping fake copies of games before the Kickstarter campaigns are done
• This month’s update from WDS talks about their upcoming changes to the Panzer Campaigns series

 

It’s been a busy week for the regiment; here’s what you might’ve missed!

• Our articles featuring Dr Perla
  • 5 Questions With… Dr. Peter Perla
  • Peter Perla is Taking Over – Tuesday Newsday 1/26/21
  • A Rio-listic view of PRC Professional Wargaming
  • What’s a Wargame? A Historical Review
• Saturday Night Fights ~ The Battle of Isandlwana for “The Men Who Would Be Kings”
• The 2024 ACDC After Action Review
• Battle Lab ~ Professional Cheerleading Gone Wrong, or “Why Did CIMSEC Even Publish This?”
• Your 2023 in Wargaming, Part 3 – Conventioneers
• #UnboxingDay!
  • We Are Coming, Nineveh!
  • Origins of WWII
  • Realms of Elghrune
  • Remembering David Drake with Hammer’s Slammers: The Crucible
  • Kesselring’s War
  • The Fall of Tobruk: Rommel’s Greatest Victory
• This week in our forums
  • JD does a nice run-thru of a turn of Red Strike to give you a sense of how it rolls
  • Updating the listing of the Battle Lab columns
  • Talking about the digital version of War & Peace
• Gameplay this week
  • Gross Gorschen (III) for “General d’Armee”
  • Yeah, we needed another ruleset. So we’re playing the Battle for Mouen for “Rapid Fire: Reloaded”
  • The Great Rice Hunt (II) for “Charlie Don’t Surf!”
• 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 ~ 4 February and 3 March
  • Next #UnboxingDay¹ will be 15 February
  • Next virtual event is Connections Online, 15-20 April 2024
  • Next confirmed live event is Buckeye Game Fest, 29 April – 5 May, 2024

 

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

• 3 February 2024 SDHistCon 2024: ‘Winter Quarters’ (Online)
• 10 February 2024 The Battle At The Crossroads (Cambridge OH)
• 17 February 2024 Connections North (Montreal QC)
• 4-7 April 2024 Circle DC (Washington DC)
• 2-5 May 2024 BuckeyeGameFest (Columbus OH)
• 16-20 May Compass Expo(Meriden CT)
• 19-23 June 2024 Origins (Columbus OH)
• 25-27 June 2024 Connections (Carlisle PA)

 

Focusing on the practitioner world ~ don’t forget about our dedicated area in our forums for the wargame professionals!

• First look at the UK Challenger 3 prototype that didn’t sneak out through Discord
• Brian Train offers some thoughts about the war in the tunnels in Gaza, with some rules mods for some of his games to explore the current situation
• We’ve talked plenty about how important the broad world of “logistics” can be in modern warfare, and Ukraine are learning their lessons about take repair parts
• The next GUWS webinar is Wargaming’s Influence on U.S. Navy Tactical Doctrine, 1906-1941 (Jan 23), followed by Saga: A Sub-threshold Conflict Wargaming System (Feb 6) and Integrating Scientific Experiments with Wargaming Mechanics (Feb 20)

 

 

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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On Tuesdays, the wargamers convene,
For news on each strategic scene,
With updates in tow,
They’re ready to go,
In battles on both tables and screens!

1. 3rd Thursday of the month