Zenobia Semi-Finalists, RIP Jim Ward ~ #TuesdayNewsday

Gear up for our weekly #TuesdayNewsday, where we unpack the excitement, strategy, and camaraderie that define the hobby wargaming community.

 

Zenobia Awards semi-finalists announced.  You can view the chart below in a much bigger, expanded form here.
We also have a presentation by the Zenobia Awards at Connections Online, too.

 

Jim Ward passed away.  Folks who grew up on 70s/80s adventure games will remember him as the designer behind things like Gamma World and Metamorphosis Alpha as well as countless rules, supplements, articles, and more at TSR for over 20 years.  He once checked himself out of the hospital against doc’s orders so he could attend GaryCon.  He was so productive over the early years of the RPG hobby that he has spent more years in the life of the hobby in the AAGAD Hall of fame (35) than not (15).  His “linked items” list on RPGGeek runs out to 15 pages; the BGG credits run another 32 items.

 

Seems like every week, there’s another fund-raiser for a game-industry luminary with a serious medical condition.  Last week, Moe’s Game Table held an auction for Mark Ruggiero.

This week, there’s a huge bundle on DTRPG raising money for Owen KC Stephens, who is fighting cancer.
If you’ve been around adventure gaming in the past 25 years, odds are good you’ve played something he had a hand in, as he’s the one of the key designers on Starfinder and the Star Wars Saga Edition, and also worked on (deep breath) d20Modern, Gamma World, EverQuest, The Black Company, Call of Cthulhu, the 4e reboot of Blackmoor, Dragon AGE, Fantasy AGE, Everyday Heroes, The Song of Ice & Fire, Thieves World, and Wheel of Time, as well as most editions of Dungeons & Dragons, and both editions of Pathfinder, and somehow found time to throw in around 50-odd magazine articles and the 52-in-52 card decks, too.

The bundle is a stupid-crazy pile worth over $1000 and on sale for only $30, of which $27 goes straight to Owen’s fund-raiser.

 

Gamesurvey.org is rolling along, with responses coming in from all over the globe.  As we’ve noted in our informal announcements

This study is being conducted as an online survey. The web address for the study is http://www.gamesurvey.org

The survey takes approximately 20 minutes to complete, and there’s a bunch of demographic data at the front because the university requires us to collect it. Please note that 20 minutes is a realistic time frame for this, because like most academic surveys, there are a lot of questions, for statistical validity.

Gamesurvey.org is planned to stay open until 15 April 2024

Any and all hobby gamers are welcome to participate and submit their responses.

No survey is perfect, but we’re building on what’s come before and trying to push the field a bit further forward.

Look for more discussion as the survey continues, and we’ll have plenty of wrap-up as we roll along!

 

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

• Hollandspiele released Beware the Ides of March and you can probably guess when this takes place, huh?
• The War of 1812: Designer’s Edition from BMG through Blue Panther Games
• Room decor!  Kai Jensen has an Etsy store where she’s selling Combat Commander maps as throw blankets
• Modiphius released Star Trek Adventures The Federation-Klingon War Tactical Campaign for their Star Trek RPG
• Looks like Gift of the Nile from White Dog Games started to land in mailboxes
• Avalanche Press released a “campaign study” book for SWWAS, Java Sea: Wicked Sisters that needs (checks notes) four(!)¹ other games to play it all
• Another solitaire book game from Mike Lambo – Lone Sherman: The Pacific is now out
• Two new releases from High Flying Dice Games!
  • Maneuvering to War: The US 1941 Louisiana and Carolina Maneuvers
  • Operation Ikarus: The Invasion of Iceland June 1940
• Compass Games moved both of these to the “recent released” column on their site
  • Storm of Steel: Ju-87 STUKA, Eastern Front
  • Bismarck: The Last Battle
• Some new weapons teams for the Korean War (the original, not the next one) for Warlord’s Bolt Action! games
  • Korean War: Chinese PVA SMG Squad
  • Korean War: North Korean KPA Weapons Teams
  • Korean War: Chinese PVA Weapons Teams

 

 

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

• A Most Fearful Sacrifice is on Kickstarter for a second edition
• There’s a new pre-order for the 2nd edition of Skull Tales: Full Sail! that’s limited to 100 copies in English
• Free League blew through the target for re-release of their Coriolis RPG in about 12 hours and it’s approaching 1000% funding with 3 weeks still to go
• Avalanche Press want pre-orders for their new Panzer Grenadier: Dragon’s Teeth covering the US Army crossing the Siegfried line
• Ventonuovo are looking for pre-orders for Blitz in the East
• Reliquary calls itself a “roleplaying tabletop wargame” and scores a hit on “buzzword bingo” on Kickstarter
• Ares Games has a pre-order for a bundle that includes the new War of the Ring Card Game – Fire and Swords expansion, shipping this Summer
• GMT’s monthly update dropped late last week and there were some new P500’s announced
  • Coast Watchers (as introduced / discussed on Pushing Cardboard during January’s ACDC)
  • North Africa ’40 (expansion for North Africa ’41)
  • Arquebus: Men of Iron Volume IV, 2nd Printing
  • Plains Indian Wars, 2nd Printing
  • The Russian Campaign Deluxe 5th Edition Mounted Maps
• MMP decided to clown us last week and put not one, but TWO games on pre-order starting Tuesday afternoon . . .
  • Reluctant Friends Bitter Enemies: the Battle for Sicily 1943 
  • Thunder on the Mississippi: Grant’s Vicksburg Campaign (GCACW)

 

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

• WDS “Game of the week” is Naval Campaigns: Midway! for $29.95
• Dice Envy dropped a new coffee-themed set, and you can save 10% with coupon code CURDLE at checkout
• The digital version of Root is on sale on Steam, for all your counterinsurgency-in-a-petting-zoo follies
• Easy Roller Dice has a B2G1 sale on their mini sets with coupon code B2MINI at checkout
• The Modiphius sale on Dune RPG stuff ends on the 25th
• Victory & Glory: Napoleon² on sale at Miniature Market for $54
• Deterrence is 20% off on Steam right now

 

This week’s best written coverage from the wargaming world

• Rocky dug into the Commonwealth Navies / Aircraft books from the Admiralty Trilogy Group
• Wargaming Esoterica is playing through a Taiwan invasion scenario for the Area Battlefield 01-B (Taiwan Edition/Land Battle), translated from Japanese
• Space Biff looks at Courtisans and go ahead and snicker
• Avalanche Press has an article about the ships that would’ve fought in the Spanish-American War, if it had started 5 years later

 

The best videos this week from our wargaming friends

• Great job by Moe’s Game Table in collaboration with Sound of Drums to auction off a special edition of Eylau 1807 as a fund-raiser for Mark Ruggiero
• My Own Worst Enemy goes back to Eutaw Springs for turn 8
• Justegarde goes inside C31 #37
• Beyond Solitaire talked with Jason Carr from GMT about their development process
• Ardwulf’s counter clipping stream talked about a bunch of company updates and lots of dice, even though the title of the topic was (theoretically) “traveling with wargames”; also, this happened

 

 

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

• ICv2 reports Stonemaier Games sales dropped
• BoardGameNewsWire covered the launch of gamesurvey.org
• Wargame Design Studio updated their Panzer Battles engine to 4.02

 

 

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

• Saturday Night Fights ~ The Battle of Vimeiro (II) for “General d’Armee 2”
• Mentioned in Dispatches Season 12 Ep 6 ~ “Live” From GAMA Expo
• Second Impressions of Headquarters WWII from Matrix Games
• #TBT ~ The General Magazine Special Edition, 1988
• This week in our forums
  • Getcher brackets in!  (and who knows, there might well be a prize for the winner in there)
  • Someone finally got around to watching Greyhound
  • Still talking about Longstreet Attacks
• Gameplay this week
  • OK. This Time for Real. The LAST Game of “General d’Armee” 1st Edition
  • Action at Galmanche for “I Ain’t Been Shot Mum”
• 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 ~ 7 April and 5 May
  • Next #UnboxingDay³ will be this week!
  • 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.

• 4-7 April 2024 Circle DC (Washington DC)
• 26-28 April 2024 Conscripts! 2024 (Kleineibstadt, GE)
• 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)
• 8-11 August 2024 SDHistCon East (Newport, RI)

 

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

• The Red Sea is getting crowded; crank up the Harpoon updates
• Pro-Ukrainian Russians on the march?
• The next GUWS webinar is TONIGHT!, covering Wargaming at the Peruvian Naval War College and then on 2 April they’ve got
  Wargaming in the Brazilian Navy
• PaxSims gives you the rundown of the latest issue of Simulation & Gaming (April 2024)

 

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.
You can find our regiment’s social media on Mastodon, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and even Threads, if we could ever get an auto-post to it.
(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.

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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. Bismarck 2nd Ed, Horn of Africa, Eastern Fleet, Java Sea
2. yes, the one with the purple Prussians
3. 3rd Thursday of the month