by Brant Guillory, 16 April 2026
CircleDC was held from 9-12 April this year, with the bulk of the events over the weekend. Games, games, and more games, with virtually no other distractions save a couple of special limited-seat tours at places like the US Supreme Court or the Folger Shakespeare Library.
Washington has long been a vibrant hub for historical game designers, while also serving as the place where America remembers and commemorates its own past. Circle DC brings those two traditions together in a way that creates a unique gaming experience. For Kevin and me, it is a chance to spend time with friends. For historical gamers from across the United States and around the world, it is an opportunity to celebrate history on multiple levels all at once.
— Jason Matthews, of Fort Circle Games
click images to enlarge
This event is all about playing games. Lots of games. There are tables in every nook and cranny — 1 museum room with wall displays everywhere, a library/archive room full of bookshelves and old maps, and a back hallways with rotating exhibits on the wall. Unlike last year, there were no game tables in the lobby, as apparently the Apple store below hates fun and/or may have whined about the noise wafting down off the balcony into their workshop space.
I’m moving overseas, so this was my last CircleDC for a while, and it did not disappoint! Not only did I get to demo my own games, but I also got to play forthcoming games by Alex Knight and Cole Wehrle, and as always had some of the best design conversations of the year.
— designer Brooks Barber
Circle DC provided not only an awesome gaming experience, but also an opportunity to showcase Wharf Rat Games’ first to-be-published game, A Forlorn Hope (designed by Hermann Luttmann) and my Urgent Commands- Battle of the Bulge real-time system, our second game to be published! Between my partner, Ryan Heilman, and me we demoed these games nearly constantly.
Circle DC provided a convenient opportunity for my co-design partner, Maurice Suckling, and I to meet to discuss, playtest, and demo our related games on the end of WW2 in Japan, The Emperor’s Choice and The Emperor’s Voice, to be published by Worthington Publishing.
— designer & publisher Wes Crawford
There’s no vendor area and pretty much nothing for sale. Fort Circle did have a few air-freighted copies of Hunt for Blackbeard but those were already earmarked for certain folks. There is a daily raffle with a revolving variety of games donated by both publishers and individuals.
Have to say that Circle DC was easily my favorite and most pleasant experience at a con to date. The bigger cons are fine but feel like such a “hustle and bustle” in comparison. Circle DC was a perfect crowd for actually playing games nonstop, getting to experience new games in the pipeline, and getting to pick brains among a real who’s who of interesting designers.
— Chris Barley
One of the major attractions of CircleDC is how many early-development prototypes and playtest copies you can try. Games as varied as Brooks Barber’s Spindletop or Liz & Paul’s Foxes & Lions or the already-on-preorder Littoral Commander: Space Force are all on offer. Volko’s new Masher and Fort Circle’s upcoming Peace 1905 shared tables with Revolution Paris and Catastrophe Games’ A More Perfect Union1 with Dan Bullock’s Fruit lurking as well.
“Don’t fall in love with your mental model” could become my tag line for Armchair Dragoons given how often I bring it up in writing for them, and Circle DC was no exception. I’ve run Star Wars: Rebellion a million times before, but the three games I ran that weekend fixed a rule misinterpretation I’ve apparently had for years and introduced me to Rebel players who had a level of ruthlessness in assassinating Imperial leaders that I’d never before encountered. I also got some great play-testing for a prototype UFO-hunting game which convinced me to take the game setting back to the World War II origins from whence it first sprang. Can’t wait to smash more mental models at Circle DC 2027!
— designer Ian Brown
I managed to squeeze in a couple of games around my picture-taking and other discussions. Compile was a set-matching and -manipulating game with a nice techno-utopia theme to it, and the negotiating cards of Peace 1905 may have cracked a long-wished-for mechanic for representing negotiation that doesn’t require role-playing the actual negotiations.
One of our favorite weekends of the year! Cole and I showed off the new expansion content for Arcs over the weekend at Circle DC and had some extremely productive playtests of An Infamous Traffic: Second Edition. We even snuck in a late night game Fort Circles upcoming Hunt for Blackbeard. Looking forward to next year!
— designer Drew Wehrle
True highlight for me was to finally meet and speak with the legend himself, Mark Herman.
In general though, it was amazing to see the number of fantastic designers all gathered in one place.— designer & publisher Ryan Heilman
As a player’s convention, CircleDC is pretty fantastic. It’s not all purely shooty-bangy kinetic wargaming2 but for a heaping helping of wargames, plus a variety of other historical and wargame-adjacent games, alongside things like a giant-size Diplomacy game and plenty of playtesting with folks like Kai Jensen, Non-Breaking Space, David Thompson, Dan Bullock, Alex Knight, Mark Herman, and everyone else listed above, it’s a pretty great gaming weekend.
photos from Brant, Drew, Olivier, Chris, Wes, and probably someone we forgot to credit.
You can chat about this event in the Conventions & Clubs section of our discussion forums
Thank you for visiting the Regiment of Strategy Gaming and riding with The Armchair Dragoons.
Rather than list a bunch of social media links, the easiest thing to do is to check out our LinkTree, which connects you to all of our various locales around the web.
You can also support The Armchair Dragoons through our Patreon, 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.
