Mentioned in Dispatches Season 13 Kicks Off! ~ #TuesdayNewsday

Happy #TuesdayNewsday! Let’s explore the latest developments in hobby & practitioner wargaming

 

Season 13 of our podcast – Mentioned In Dispatches – started this week, and will run for about 3 months before our holiday hiatus.

Topics this season include FOMO, SDHISTCON, our Fall Assembly, using AI in tabletop gaming, the worst of wargaming, and more

 

This article is about happiness and life in general, but a couple of particular snippets jumped out that are applicable to this wild and weird niche of the wargaming world in which we all find ourselves.  Rather than try to (badly) over-explain, we’ll just pull this quote directly and let y’all fill in the blanks with your thoughts either in the comments at the end of this article, or in our forums.

Follow your passions. “One of the easiest ways to make new friends is to do something you care about,” Waldinger says. Whether you’re volunteering or joining a club, focus on your interests. Don’t join a bowling league to meet people; join it because you lovebowling. “If you rub elbows with the same people again and again, you’re more likely to strike up a conversation,” he says. “And if you’re doing something you care about, you have an immediate subject in common to talk about.”

Many of us in the wargaming world definitely passionate about it, whether as a way to explore broader history or narrower conflict dynamics or the mathematical puzzles of maximizing inputs & outputs.
No matter what drew you to this community, it’s pretty rare to find someone reading our weekly news recap of the strategy gaming world who is not deeply enmeshed in this niche of the broader gaming hobby.  So congrats!  You’re already on your way . . .

 

• Both badge and event registration are open and we’ve still got some badges available
• We will be back at The Gamer’s Armory again this year, in Cary, NC (just outside Raleigh)
• Event flyers in both PDF and PNG format you can share
• Swag?  Sure.  Check out either of these two, and maybe some more to come?
  • T-shirt – in several different colors
  • Pint glass

Hitting the shelves (and webstores) near you now!

• Wargame Design Studio released the latest Panzer Campaigns title, Smolensk ’43
• Osprey has released Undaunted 2200: Callisto after its preview at GenCon
• Vae Victis #176 is now shipping; includes the game Cowpens 1781
• ASL Arnhem 2024 is a scenario pack released this past weekend at the ASL tournament weekend of the same name
• Rifle Squad US at Omaha Beach: A Solitaire Wargame is the latest Mike Lambo solo wargame book
• Scourge of War Waterloo – Ligny DLC just launched on Steam and is 10% off for a few more days
• Looking at their website, it appears as though TS Wargames released Suwalki Gap 2025 when no one was looking
• Steve Jackson released the Munchkin: Taken for Granite set with a bunch of golems and the usual punny humor
• September 14th is now behind us, so Battlefront Minis should be shipping their limited-released Market-Garden sets
  • 6th Airborne Army Deal – Limited Run
  • 82nd Airborne Division Army Deal – Limited Run
• Against The Odds magazine has a new “Way of War” pack with 3 ACW games in ziplocs for only $85
• Laboratory H has released an expansion for GMT’s Seas of Thunder, called Seas of Thunder – Blueprints, with a bunch of planned-but-not-built ships you can add to your game
• Warlord is rolling out the Young Guard!
  • Napoleonic French Young Guard Division (Advancing) (you’ll need to skip a pair of car payments for this one)
  • Napoleonic French Young Guard Brigade (Advancing) (you’ll only need to skip one car payment for this one)
  • Napoleonic French Young Guard Regiment (Advancing) (this one is affordable)
• Warlord also has a new Black Powder Epic Battles: American Civil War Iron Brigade in everyone’s favorite 13mm scale

 

 

Time to get those orders in now and then either (a) complain that it’s 2 years late, and/or (b) be surprised when it gets here sooner than you thought

• Thanks, Compass, for waiting until last Wednesday morning to launch the Kickstarter campaign for Golden Age of Piracy: 1718 instead of getting it to us in time for last week’s #TuesdayNewsday
• Europa Simulatzioni has pre-orders open on Caporetto 1917
• The Wings of Valour solo WW1 RPG is on Kickstarter, where you are a courier of carrier pigeons trying to get to the front lines to support the commanders up there; it’s all well and good until they start talking about flying in a plane at 30,000 feet, which no one did in WW1
• Renegade Game Studios is bringing back Risk: Godstorm, so you can sink Atlantis and wreck your opponents’ dreams with a single card; on pre-order now
• Modiphius has their new Space:1999 RPG on pre-order; this one’s based on the classic TV show
• Green Ronin just launched their new edition of The Expanse RPG, which updates the game to account for time jumps in the recent novels; currently on BackerKit
• Compass has another pair of games they’ve added to their pre-orders; notably, neither has a shipping date attached
  • Gladiators: Blood & Glory
  • World War 3: 1989, East Asia Front

 

Looking for a deal? Getting more bang for your buck?

• WDS “Game of the week” is First World War Campaigns – East Prussia ‘14 for $29.95
• S&T Press has a September sale on game-edition magazines, for $30
• Phalanx Games has an anniversary sale through 20 September that’ll get you 30% off just about everything
• Easy Roller Dice are doing a B2G1 on their mystery dice sets with coupon code MYSTERY24 at checkout
• Dice Envy has their new “Tidal Tidings” set on sale at 10% off with coupon code WAVE at checkout
• You can get LNLT: Day of Heroes on sale for only $32 right now and replay the battles of Black Hawk Down on your own
• Miniature Market has the new edition of Nexus Ops in sale for almost $20 off
• Thanks, Noble Knight, for saving folks a whole nickel off the retail cost of Death Ride Normandy – Utah Beach!
• Missed out on A Gest of Robin Hood from GMT?  No problem, you can just swap in the Robin Hood: Sheriff of Nottingham game on sale on Amazon right now!

 

This week’s best written coverage from the wargaming world

• Rocky talks about Taiwan and the recent book The Boiling Moat as well as challenges with wargaming the scenario
• Brian Train updates his travels through Europe as a part of his grand wargaming tour
• Pushing Cardboard’s latest podcast episode is out, talking with Dan Bullock and Rob Bottos
• The Wargaming Esoterica guys are digging into VUCA’s Red Strike (translated from Japanese)
• Avalanche Press has an article about Stalin’s KV5, dubbed “the Tiger Killer”
• Coordinating with their Market-Garden sets, Battlefront Minis has a nice article about allied airborne forces in WW2

 

The best videos this week from our wargaming friends

• My Own Worst Enemy goes back to Thunder on the Mississippi and continues the battle of Champion Hill
• Justegarde opens up Dawn of Battle
• Beyond Solitaire talked to Josh Fitzgerald about board games in 19th century Mexico
• Zilla dug into the new Corvette Command game
• Ardwulf’s counter clipping stream talked about “How Many Wargames Are Enough” and we don’t understand how that’s a question

 

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

• ICv2 reports that GameStop store sales tanked last quarter; time for another round of stock market shenanigans with them?
• The HippoDice Game Design competition is back for their 35th contest
• You can read more about Seas of Thunder – Blueprints over at InsideGMT
• Rascal doesn’t hold back with their thoughts about Hasbro CEO Chris Cocks’ recent announcements about AI in tabletop gaming
• The board game industry ‘insider’ podcast “Unboxed” is back with season 2

 

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

• Saturday Night Fights ~ The Battle of Teugn-Hausen, Yet Again
• Mentioned In Dispatches Season 13 Ep 1 ~ Wargame Motivations
• Wargame to History ~ First go at The Battle of Khalkhin Gol
• Project: Quatre Bras X AAR
• #TBT ~ Richthofen’s War: The Air War 1916-1918
• Gameplay this week
  • The Battle of Leipzig for “Bloody Big Battles”
  • Expanding the Meuse Bridgehead for “O Group”
  • Peter took some shots in Nebulous: Fleet Command 

Reminder than #UnboxingDay is on hiatus until 2025, when we’ll re-evaluate its potential return

 

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 ~ 6 October and 3 November
• Next confirmed live event is The Armchair Dragoons Fall Assembly, 11-13 October 2024 at The Gamer’s Armory in Cary, NC
• Next planned virtual event is the ACDC¹, 17-19, 2025

Other Conventions & Events

• 20-22 September 2024 Southern Front (Morrisville NC) <– THIS WEEKEND!
• 27-29 September 2024 Czech Consim 2024 (Prague CZ)
• 11-13 October 2024 Armchair Dragoons Fall Assembly (Raleigh/Cary NC)
• 17-20 October 2024 GMT Fall Weekend at the Warehouse (Middle of Nowhere CA)
• 17-20 October GameholeCon (Madison WI)
• 26-28 October 2024 Auck Con (Auckland NZ)
• 1-3 November  RockCon (Rockford IL)
• 6-11 November 2024 Compass Game Fall Expo (Meriden CT)
• 7-10 November BottosCon (New Westminster BC)
• 8-10 November 2024 MythicCon (Charlotte NC)
• 8-11 November 2024 FoxCon (Dallas TX)
• 8-11 November 2024 SDHISTCON (San Diego CA)
• 15-17 November 2024 SCGCon (Liverpool UK)

 

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

• The Mad Scientist Laboratory blog from TRADOC has a great interview with Brian Train about his professional work in urban and irregular combat
• Institute of World Politics dragged out RAND’s Hedgemony game for their students to wrangle with complex geo-political topics
• Roger Mason asks “Is your wargame complex or just complicated?”
• Chinese carrier strategy and Taiwan
• Update the stats for your M2-series BFVs
• This week, Mick Ryan talks about the usual Ukraine updates, but also talks quite a bit about Chinese aggression in the South China Sea
• The next GUWS webinar is The Challenges and Pitfalls of an ‘Authentic’ Medieval Wargame lined up for 8 October and followed by Dungeons and Dragons: Next Generation Interactive TDGs on 22 October
• Last week we told you about Quinns’ semi-hype video about “The Games Behind Your Governments Next War” and over the last few days, PaxSims has been collecting some ‘formal’ responses and reactions from folks in the professional wargaming space

 

 

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.
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1. Armchair Dragoons Digital Convention