by Grab your dice and join us every #TuesdayNewsday as we roll out the latest updates, strategies, and community highlights in the world of hobby wargaming.
Origins will be held 19-23 June in Columbus OH; Armchair Dragoons hosts the Wargame HQ there.
We got our Origins events submitted this past week, and while they aren’t officially approved yet, we’ve never had anything rejected, so while we’re not going to post the entire schedule w/ dates & times in case any of those change, we will tell you that we’ve got the following games planned over the course of 4-1/2 days:
Brazen Chariots – 6- PicoArmor Panzerblitz – 6
- Quatre Bras for Charge! – 6
- #ManeuverWarfare – 5
- Votes for Women – Play with the Designer – 5
- Halls of Montezuma – 4
- Normandy ’44 – 4
- Air & Armor – 3
- Arabian Struggle – 3
- Command Post Exercises (The CPX) – 3
- Crisis in Korea – 3
- Symphony of Destruction – Dash to Daugavpils, June 1941 – 3
- Sadr City – 3
- Shakespeare’s First Folio – 3
- Symphony of Destruction – Shove to Shavli, July 1944 – 3
- Space Empires 4X – 3
- True Command – 3
- We Are Coming Nineveh – 3
- Song for War ~Allied Invasion of Italy – 3
- Song for War ~Battle for North Africa – 3
- Campaign Bagration – 2
- Campaign Fall Blau – 2
- Empire of the Sun – 2
- Kriegsspiel (200th anniversary) – 2
- Night Witches – 2
- Shores of Tripoli – 2
- A Distant Plain (Team COIN) – 1
- CPX Bootcamp – Decision Support – 1
- CPX Bootcamp – Recon Planning – 1
- CPX Bootcamp – Sync Matrix – 1
- Hunt for Blackbeard – 1
- NATO ~ The Cold War Goes Hot – 1
Note that this is just the games. We’ll have our War College events listed for you next week.
Worthington Games just announced (like just today) that they’re now carrying VUCA Simulations’ games for US customers, so you can get their games through a stateside vendor.
Shop the VUCA page on Worthington’s site here.
Wargame Design Studio has started a new “Game of the Week” program that’s going to put a different game on sale each week (except during store-wide sale months). The plan is to rotate through a bunch of different titles throughout the year, and the first one in the hopper is Civil War Battles: Campaign Antietam. Note, this is the entire campaign, and not just the battle of Antietam itself – all for $29.95
This week’s releases that you’ll want to know about; there were a lot last week, so it’s a little lighter this time
- Paper Wars #105 with Ebb & Flow: The Final Communist Offensive in Korea, 22 April – 10 June 1951 now shipping
- Compass also released The Enemy is at the Gates: Berlin, the next game in Starkweather’s Modern War series
- Avalanche Press has a double-sized book on 1940: Polish Exiles covering their fighting in France, but you also need half of all the PG stuff that’s in print to be able to play everything that’s in here, so don’t just dive right in without being warned
- Draco Ideas has a limited run of 2nd ed copies of Skull Tales: Full Sail! and they don’t plan to reprint it again before 2025 at least
- Warlord Games has a big (seriously – 6ft x 4ft) fleece battlemat of Midway for your naval minis battles
- Steve Jackson Games released Tabloids for you to fake your own ‘news’
- A free download expansion to the old AH Air Force just hit BGG, with a bunch of new aircraft and some advanced rules
- Another download freebie is Evan’s Hex Encounters, designed to be a bare-bones intro for new hex-&-counter wargamers
Getcher orders in now and then either (a) wait for it impatiently, or (b) forget your ordered it and be surprised later!
- Worthington has Pacific War 1942 / War of 1812 Solitaire Travel War Games on Kickstarter
- Pocket Air War – Definitive Edition is on Kickstarter, and includes an option for an upgrade kit if you have the older version
- No idea what these guys were thinking on Kickstarter, but they’re looking for over $20,000 for a card game; yes, it’s $20k for Uno with swords ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- Legion Wargames still needs some pre-orders to push Werwolf over the line
- Thin Red Line Games kinda does their own thing, so if you want to pre-order The Fate of All you have to email them at info@TRLGames.com
Saving money? Spending just as much but getting more for it?
- As noted up top, WDS is starting their new “Game of the Week” series with Civil War Battles: Campaign Antietam for $29.95
- Collins Epic is offering 5% off this month with coupon code FEB2024 at checkout
- Decision Games has all their boxed & folio games on sale in February, for anywhere from 20%–50% off
- Draco Ideas wants to give you 14% off for VD Day with coupon code SanDracotin at checkout
- Dice Envy has a BOGO sale with coupon code LUVDICE at checkout
- Miniature Market’s got For Glory on sale over $10 off to satisfy your need for gladitorial bloodlust
- City of Patriots on sale at Noble Knight
- Cold Waters is on GOG for 80% off
- S&T might’ve discontinued their game-edition magazine weekly sale because there’s been nothing new since the start of the year
This week’s best written coverage from the wargaming world
- Rocky won’t give up on defining “wargames” or “war gamers” or anything in between
- Avalanche Press has an article about the earliest American battleships
- Space Biff is working thru The British Way and comparing the games to what historically happened
The best videos this week from our wargaming friends
- Moe shows you how to actually get all of Red Strike back in the box
- My Own Worst Enemy opens up Prelude to Vicksburg
- Beyond Solitaire’s podcast is back this week
- Brian Train and plenty of others were part of a discussion about wargaming Africa at SDHIST Winter Quarters
- Ardwulf’s counter clipping stream talked about “our favorite wargames and why we hate them”
Various news & notes from the business end of the gaming world
- WDS announced a new “game of the week” program – see the top of this column for more
- Matrix Games has a ship design context for Rules The Waves 3 with a 12 February deadline
- Thin Red Line Games released their designer notes for The Fate of All and there’s also the link in there to email to reserve your pre-order copy with them
- Kevin lays out Fort Circle’s plans for Circle DC coming up in April
- Dicebreaker looks at the now-free-to-play version of Dominion for mobile/online play; you get the base game, and all the expansions are your add-on DLCs
- Mythic Games has completely shit the bed, failing to deliver on a variety of Kickstarters, and finally dumping some of their more successful IPs onto CMON, but death threats & doxxing are a bit much
The printers proof for General d’Armee is here and what a beauty it is. Really chuffed to bits to see this approaching publication. pic.twitter.com/StOkYwJTqo
— TooFatLardies🇺🇦 (@TooFatLardies) February 6, 2024
It’s been a busy week for the regiment; here’s what you might’ve missed!
- Saturday Night Fights ~ “Sniper!” for “Charlie Don’t Surf!”
- Draft history in The Battle of Kyiv: The Fight for Ukraine’s Capital by Christopher A. Lawrence
- Your 2023 in Wargaming, Part 5 – Favorite Games
- The CSR Awards – Not For Wargames – Should Modernize
- This week in our forums
- Gameplay this week
- 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 ~ 3 March and 7 April
- 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.
- 10 February 2024 The Battle At The Crossroads (Cambridge OH) – THIS WEEKEND!
- 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)
If you missed it over the weekend, Ardwulf hosted both an opening & closing show for SDHISTCON Winter Quarters 2024
Focusing on the practitioner world ~ don’t forget about our dedicated area in our forums for the wargame professionals!
- Pijus talks about using John Company in his classroom (he’d previously joined us on the podcast, too)
- Time to break out those old T-55 counters!
- Everyone wants UCAVs, which means everyone wants to build UCAVs for everyone else
- The next GUWS webinar is tonight! Saga: A Sub-threshold Conflict Wargaming System, followed by Integrating Scientific Experiments with Wargaming Mechanics (Feb 20) and Wargaming Urban Conflict: A PhD in Progress (Feb 27)
- PaxSims looks at what’s coming up in Rex’s “Conflict Simulation” course
- Counting down to Connections Online, looking back at last year’s discussion of microgame design
Something neat from outside the wargaming world we thought was worth sharing
View this post on Instagram
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.
Thank you for visiting The Armchair Dragoons and mounting up with the Regiment of Strategy Gaming.
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(We have an Instagram page and it’s really just a placeholder & redirect to our articles.)
You can support The Armchair Dragoons through our Patreon, also, and find us at a variety of conventions and other events.
Feel free to talk back to us either in our discussion forum, or in the comments below.
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!
