by Armchair Dragoons PAO, 8 February 2026
This was our 7th ACDC and 9th overall online game convention1 thanks to the original Virtual Dragoons Assembly and the one-off MystaraCon.
As with all of our events, we ask the audience for their feedback, and share it with you to hold ourselves accountable to how we’re doing.
ORIGINAL OPORD ~ EVENT UPDATE ~ YOUTUBE PLAYLIST ~ AAR
Before we get into the participant AAR feedback, we need to give some huge thanks and appreciation to Marc M and Tom W, who both stepped up and volunteered to help with this year’s event and did fantastic work. Without them, the 2026 ACDC would not have happened. Tom brought in several of our seminar speakers, and a couple of GMs. Marc did a yeoman’s job of coordinating the GMs across the board, and was heavily involved in the outreach to previous GMs, as well as a variety of publishers, to keep the event programmed filled up. They really made this a great event.
Did You Have A Good Time?
Every year, we ask “Most importantly – did you have a good time?”
Last year we dipped under 50% for “Hell yes!” This year, we’re back up over that threshold. Also, unlike last year, there were no “meh” votes.
click charts & graphics to enlarge
We also ask “What did you think of the event selections”
You can see that “great variety” has fluctuated over the years, but took a significant hit last year. Looks like we’ve rebounded well enough that this was our second-highest total with that selection. Interestingly—as you’ll note below—the only year with a higher response rate for the top block, we had about 50% more events overall to choose from.
Another interesting caveat to this question: anecdotally, we had a variety of first-time attendees this year, so it’s tough to gauge this against the expectations of those attendees on their way in. We’re going to see about adding a question or two related to prior ACDC attendance or incoming expectations.
Events & Comparisons to other ACDCs
Thanks to a pretty full slate of talk shows, our event count went back up after a few years of slow decline. We’re still down quite a bit from our pandemic-era / no-in-person-convention-era high points, but if we can get ourselves back up consistently over 50 events, that would be a solid weekend of gaming for our attendees.
Our attendee count by number of badges was pretty much right in our mid-point. Again, this is down from our high points when online conventions were the only practical options, but with a bit more awareness and early evangelism, we should be able to get the total number of badges up over 100 on a consistent basis.
Your Turn to Sound Off
We’ve asked these same questions almost every year, but with the amount of population turnover we get each year, it’s not always a consistent sample over time.
We were also curious how the cost-to-attend question tracked over time.
A few things to keep in mind here:
1/ We did not ask this question back in 2020, so the data starts in January of 2021.
2/ The price has fluctuated over time, and you can see the cost noted with the year in the chart below.
3/ The numbers you’re seeing are percentages of responses for that year, since the raw number of respondents can vary widely from year-to-year.
So it looks like something in the $4-$5 range is about right, and anything below that is going to be too little. Going back to the point about events above, if we can get that event count up over 50, or even 60, and the total attendees up over 100, then $5 would absolutely be an appropriate value.
What did you play? What did you attend?
We asked the folks to select everything they attended from the lists of the events at The ACDC.
There was an “other” option because some folks created a pickup game or two.
These lists are alphabetical by event title.
| Count of games played by the survey respondents | Count of shows/seminars attended by the survey respondents |
| 4 – 12 Hours at Maleme 5 – A Forlorn Hope 1 – Air & Armor: Würzburg 3 – Catch-18 – The Battle of the Brenner 2 – China’s War 12 – GCACW tutorial 1 – Hammer Bastion 3 – Kriegsspiel: The Original wargame 4 – Littoral Commander: Space Force 2 – NATO: The Cold War Goes Hot 2 – Other 4 – Queen of Spies 1 – Raider Drop Zone 1 – Squadron Strike: Newton’s Cradle Intro 1 – Squadron Strike: Romance of the Seven Realms Intro 2 – True Command 7 – Unconditional Surrender! Western Campaigns 3 – Unconditional Surrender! World War 2 in Europe 2 – Washington’s War |
15 – ACDC 2026 Welcome Happy Hour 1 – Gaming the Missile Defense of Guam: Lessons from Guam 2030 11 – Guderian’s Panzers: From Triumph to Defeat on the East Front 11 – Learn to Play – Great Campaigns of the American Civil War 1 – Modelling the Korean Armistice Thru Gaming: A Bid for Peace 8 – Myths & Lessons of Indian Wars of the American West 6 – Overview of Drone Warfare Today 11 – Pearl Harbor: Japan’s Greatest Disaster 2 – Political/Military Gaming for A New Europe 7 – Saturday Morning Wakeup 2 – Sunday Morning Wakeup 10 – The 2026 ACDC Keynote 12 – The Chit Show & Closing Happy Hour 6 – The Northwest African Campaign 4 – Traveller: Martin Dougherty and Julian Corbett |
What are some specific quotes from the audience?
Last year was the first time we asked if people wanted to call out or recognize any specific GM or presenter, and we kept that in this year’s survey. The GCACW team racked up some kudos. Some select mentions:
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As always, we asked “If there’s one thing we need to make sure we sustain for next time, what is it?”
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We always ask “If there’s one thing we need to improve for next time, what is it?”
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These are all good comments, and they speak to something we didn’t get done last year, which was the help / assistance documentation for how to “get around” the convention. That’s still on the list of things “to do” and we’re going to try to work on it well ahead of next year’s convention.
The issue of awareness and advertising goes back to what we’ve talked about for years — we’re getting the word out, but people don’t seem to be paying attention.
- In 2024, people said “more advertising” and “more social media posts” and “get more attendees”.
- In 2023, we got multiple comments about lack of awareness, also.
- In 2022 we heard “publicity” and “more advertising” and “getting the word out”.
Back in 2023, we even tried to make the point with this gallery of screenshots of our online posts about the event:
On top of the half-dozen posts we dropped into each of the major wargaming Facebook groups (Wargamers, Board Wargamers, No Offense Wargaming, ConSimWorld, plus some in the Modern Warfare group b/c of the modern-focused sessions), we also hit several Discord channels (SDHIST, Homo Ludens, GUWS), our Twitter feed, our Mastodon feed, multiple pages on CSW (forums, community, Discord, etc), both the wargaming and general areas of BGG, two different professional Slack channels, 3 different io groups, Gary’s live show, and even posts on Gamesquad, Matrix, and Battlefront. Oh yeah, there were also emails to every attendee of the last 2 ACDCs, plus at least one through the professional wargaming distro. We felt like we were spamming the crap out of everyone and yet we still had people not know anything about it. Don’t believe us? Watch!
Now, if you guys have some suggestions for places we’re not already hitting2 then we’re all ears. But truthfully, the best way to get the word out to the public about this? You guys. Yep, if our attendees are evangelizing this event to their friends, then it’s going to be a LOT more meaningful than just the sponsoring organization spamming people with updates, notices, notifications, and advertising. The best way to boost attendance is for every one of y’all to bring a friend with you. And when should you do that?
The 2027 ACDC is scheduled for 15-17 January.
ORIGINAL OPORD ~ EVENT UPDATE ~ YOUTUBE PLAYLIST ~ AAR
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