Golden Geeks, Minis Pre-Orders, & more ~ #TuesdayNewsday

Stay in the loop with our comprehensive roundup of hobby (and practitioner!) wargaming headlines every #TuesdayNewsday

 

Golden Geek Awards for 2023 have been released.  Of the ones that wargamers care about, here are some key winners

Wargame Winner – Undaunted: Battle of Britain Runner Up – Halls of Hegra Runner Up –  The British Way: Counterinsurgency at the End of Empire	Best Podcast Winner – One Stop Co-Op Shop Runner Up – Beyond Solitaire Runner Up –  Talk Cardboard
Best Board Game App Winner – Unmatched: Digital Edition Runner Up – Twilight Struggle: Red Sea Runner Up – Fleet the Dice Game	Thematic Game Winner – Hegemony: Lead Your Class to Victory Runner Up – Sky Team Runner Up – Dune: Imperium – Uprising

Undaunted: Battle of Britain was also a 2nd runner-up in the 2-Player Game category, which was a rare appearance for a wargame in a non-wargame category.

 

 

Our Origins countdown articles will be starting this week, with a whole lot of coverage coming your way.  We’ll have our usual information about our events, other wargaming events at the convention, and key folks in the vendor/exhibit hall.  This year, we’ve got a very robust program at the Origins War College, too, so there’s plenty of things to keep a wargamer busy.

WARGAME HQ EVENT LISTINGS ~ MiD PREVIEW EPISODE

We still want to hear from you – what sort of preview coverage would you like to see leading up to Origins, and what sort of coverage would you like us to provide at the show?

Sound off in the comments below, or talk back to us in our forum thread for Origins 2024

 

Hitting the shelves (and webstores) near you now!

• Hollandspiele has released Striking Flint, a game about the organization of auto workers in Michigan in the 1930s, which probably still doesn’t do it justice
• Avalanche Press seems to have released Panzer Grenadier: Dragon’s Teeth as the order page does not say it’ll be another 6 weeks to ship after your order
• BattleCard #5 was released by Postmark Games and already available to the original Kickstarter backers
• Alternative Armies has a couple of 15mm value packs that are on a small launch sale
  • “Star Merc” platoon pack
  • Orc Warhorde, which brings back some classic 1980s sculpts
• Green Ronin have launched their own magazine to support their AGE system, and Engine #1 is available now
• GMT are shipping a couple of new games
  • A Gest of Robin Hood¹
  • Bayonets & Tomahawks, 2nd printing
• High Flying Dice dropped a pair of new games this past week
  • Blood and Oil: The 1985 Persian Gulf Tanker War
  • City of Blood: The Battle of Khorramshahr

 

Time to get those orders in now and then either (a) gripe that it’s not here already, and/or (b) be surprised when it gets here sooner than you thought

• The Dietz Foundation are taking pre-orders for a wood-block upgrade to the original Littoral Commander: Indo-Pacific game, which is how the original homemade/playtest games were built
• New on Kickstarter, Armoured Chariots: A WW2 Solitaire Tank Wargame, covering “D-Day to VE-Day” for only $15
• Dutch Resistance: Orange Shall Overcome is on Kickstarter and the campaign interestingly doesn’t mention its Zenobia Award roots at all
• Redline: Payday is on Kickstarter; looks like Battletech and plays as an expandable card game
• Aces High probably isn’t going to make its funding goal, but any time you’re making an aerial combat game and not advertising it to wargamers, you’re kind of asking for that to happen
• Decision Games has Back to Iraq in ziploc for only $10 this week
• The next big Flames of War product campaign is D-Day: Forces in Normandy, 1944 and they’ve got the following on pre-order with a projected release on 6 June 8 June (?!) Really?!?  WTF?
  • D-Day: Forces in Normandy, 1944 hardcover book
  • D-Day: Reinforcement Cards
  • Panzer Lehr Division 80th Anniversary Army Deal
  • 21. Panzerdivision 80th Anniversary Army Deal
  • 2nd Armored Division 80th Anniversary Army Deal
  • 7th Armoured Division 80th Anniversary Army Deal
• Warlord’s got a new Hail Caesar Epic Battles launch coming up, and a ton of stuff on pre-order
  • The Punic Wars Rulebook
  • The All-In Hannibal Launch Collection
  • The Punic Wars Launch Collection
  • The Carthaginian Launch Collection
  • The Roman Launch Collection
  • Carthaginian Commanders
  • Republican Roman Commanders
  • Allied Troops Division
  • Carthaginian War Elephants
  • Carthaginian Division
  • Republican Roman Division
  • Hannibal Barca’s Carthaginian Army
  • Scipio Africanus’ Roman Legions
  • Hannibal Battle-Set

 

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

• WDS “Game of the week” is Napoleonic Battles: Campaign Leipzig for $29.95; we doubt it’s likely to take as long to play as our Blucher games on Saturday Night Fights 🤣
• Dice Envy dropped their new “sea shanty” dice (10pc set) and you can save 10% with coupon code YOHOHO at checkout
• Gamelyn Games has a sale on The Last Kingdom – based on the TV show – so you can save about $20 right now, and include the sleeves for the cards
• GOG has World in Conflict for less than the price of a mediocre latte

 

This week’s best written coverage from the wargaming world

• Wargaming Esoterica digs into Operational Matters Vol 2, with the included OCS Luzon game (translated from Japanese)
• Space Biff digs the new expansion to Red Raven’s Sleeping Gods
• Avalanche Press has an article about the design decisions behind their new Dragon’s Teeth game

 

The best videos this week from our wargaming friends

• My Own Worst Enemy dives into Rebel Fury for the Battle of Chickamauga
• Bill Molyneaux edits together a video about the recent Sands of the Sudan 28mm minis game that he was unable to attend
• Justegarde played the Battle of Quebec scenario from S&T #340
• Meandering Mike’s 10 May channel update
• Beyond Solitaire talked to Eric Lang’s Mass Effect co-designer Calvin Wong Tze Loon (the board game, folks, not the digital series)
• Ardwulf’s counter clipping stream got kicked back a few days, so here’s last week’s show with Dan talking about game conventions

 

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

• Congrats to Renegade Game Studios for hitting their 10th anniversary and check out what they’re doing about it all year long
• InsideGMT posted an article about Illusions of Glory, Second Edition: A “Step” Too Far?
• Adepticon has announced that starting in 2025, they’ll be moving the event to Milwaukee
• Collins Epic Wargames announced in their latest newsletter that they’re going to be distributed to retail by Quartermaster Direct
• MMP is changing the Warriors of England pre-order to instead be the game included in their upcoming Special Ops #12  magazine, and you’ll need to update your pre-orders if you want it
• A new update from LNLP indicates that Blood & Fury is on the printing press now, and looks like late Summer for stuff to finally start shipping to customers, but we’ll have to see when it actually arrives

There’s a great thread on Twitter here, about how every interaction is a part of your “marketing” for your game, and by extension, your company

You can read the whole thread here, too

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

• Saturday Night Fights ~ The Battle of Eggmuhl for “General d’Armee 2”
• Mentioned in Dispatches wrapped up the season with The State of Hobby Wargaming, guest-starring Moe & Grant
• From dictator to…wargamer? A glimpse of KJU’s wargame tables
• Origins 2024 Countdown! The Wargame HQ Event Grid
• First Impressions of Field Of Glory: Kingdoms
• Gameplay this week
  • Flanking St. Germain de Pert (2) for “Chain of Command”
  • The Battle of Armageddon Map Moves One
  • The First Battle of Our Battle for Armageddon Campaign
• Next #UnboxingDay² will be this week!

 

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

Upcoming Dragoons Events

• Wargame Days at The Gamer’s Armory in Cary, NC ~ 2 June and 7 July
• Next planned virtual event is the ACDC³, 17-19, 2025
• Next confirmed live event is Origins Game Fair, 19-23 June, 2024

Other Conventions & Events

• 19 May 2024 Partizan (Winthorpe UK)
• 16-20 May 2024 Compass Expo (Meriden CT)
• 6-9 June 2024 GamemORe (Albany, OR)
• 8 June 2024 SDHISTCON Second Front 2024 (Virtual)
• 19-23 June 2024 Origins (Columbus OH)
• 25-27 June 2024 Connections (Carlisle PA)
• 12-20 July 2024 CSW Expo (Tempe AZ)
• 8-11 August 2024 SDHistCon East (Newport, RI)
• 15-18 August 2024 HistoriKC Fest (Kansas City MO)
• 27-29 September 2024 Czech Consim 2024 (Prague CZ)
• 11-13 October 2024 Armchair Dragoons Fall Assembly (Raleigh/Cary NC)
• 8-11 November 2024 FoxCon (Dallas TX)

 

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

• Mass “maskirovka” in action?
• The Lawfare media folks have a podcast about the practitioner utility of, and potential futures of, wargaming
• Canada sharing the load on future submarines?
• How is the M-10 “Booker” moving along?
• The next GUWS webinar is 21 May, with Clint Warren-Davey talking about Simplifying Large Scale Conflicts and followed by Daniel Hernández on 4 June to talk about The Political Struggle in Europe during the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648)
• PaxSims has a great article about the Readiness micro-game being used to show players some key considerations in mustering your force for combat

 

 

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.

---

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, Twxtter, 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.

---

1. the “g” is pronounced like the “g” in “gif”
2. 3rd Thursday of the month
3. Armchair Dragoons Digital Convention