by Yep, it’s #TuesdayNewsday and here’s what matters in wargaming this week >>>
This Week’s Headline:
Government think-tank RAND has long been at the forefront of the professional wargaming world, overseeing hundreds of defense- and security-related wargames for all levels of governments and international organizations. Now you can poke around with one of their designs, as they’ve released their internally-developed Hedgemony (spelling intentional) on the world. The game originally designed to help develop the 2018 US National Defense Strategy, as as such is very US-centric. Additionally, this isn’t a more common 4-friends-and-beer-and-pretzels wargaming weekend sort of game. It’s a more intensive multi-player affair that really needs a white cell and some experienced moderators/adjudicators.
So you can read about the game, and download the rules and players’ guides for free from the RAND website, but the full game is going to set you back about $250. As discussed in multiple places on the web, that price point isn’t aiming for the weekend warriors, but rather institutional organizations like college programs, government agencies, etc.
In the meantime, though, Hedgemony is getting media attention from all sorts of places: Foreign Policy Magazine, The Washington Times, PaxSims, among others.
Newly Released This Week:
- Hollandspiele has released Brian Train’s new District Commander Kandahar and also put the other District Commander series games on sale. There’s more on Brian’s blog, too.
- What’s the perfect die for this year? Behold, the d2020!
- Tiny Battles has released Aden
- High Flying Dice have released Long Hard Road
- ICYMI, the last issue of Against The Odds Magazine covered Operation Ichi-Go, the 1944 Japanese offensive in China. Includes a hypothetical of a large US ground force invading China instead of the Philippines.
- SJG has a new expansion tome for Dungeon Fantasy that’s a PDF download from the Warehouse 23 site.
- GMT Games is now shipping All Bridges Burning about the Finnish Civil War.
Newly Launched This Week:
- MMP is taking preorders on the reprint of Rising Sun, the ASL module for the WW2 PTO. Bison is weighing what he can rent out the kids for to cover the $170 pre-order cost.
- The guys that brought you 7th Continent have now launched another exploration game, 7th Citadel
- Worthington’s Hidden Strike: American Revolution is rounding the final turn for their Kickstarter funding.
- CSL is taking pre-orders on a trilogy of Afrika Korps games.
New from the Dragoons:
- Mentioned in Dispatches talked about the WW2 PTO, and covered a LOT of ground. Many thanks to Tolstoi in our forums for his continued Rosetta Stone work parsing through all the stuff we talk about in the episodes.
- This week, Design x Dragoons asked designers about ideas those, uh… ‘stolen’ from other games.
- Saturday Night Fights went back to the waves for the Battle of Santo Domingo
- Classic Reviews reprinted a look at the Red Raven classic Eight Minute Empire.
News From The Wargame Industry:
- Ardwulf walked GUWS through “How to VASSAL” and the video is very useful for anyone looking to start out with the platform.
- LNLP has updated the Lock’n Load Tactical core rules and players’ aid cards, and you can download them from their site.
- FFG has a set of rules updates for the L5R card game on their site.
- CMON and Asmodee are going to be publishing some comics based on the game worlds from Twilight Imperium and Android.
- Playdek has updated the digital version of Labyrinth: The War on Terror.
- A “mini-COIN” game? With Robin Hood? Sure, why not?
The Professional Wargaming World:
- The “headgeline” this week was the release of Hedgemony (spelling intentional) from RAND Corp. See above.
- There’s a “Pentagon” team that’s supposed to take on the “Slitherine” team in an ICBM game on Twitch on 10/1.
- Our very own Cyrano will be walking the GUWS team through the classic Men Against Fire game. There are open sign-ups available. Priority is to GUWS members, but after that, anyone can play.
- GUWS has presentations coming up about USAF Title 10 wargaming (Congressionally-mandated games), and Wargame Pathologies (when wargames fail)
Something From The Real World That You Can Use In A Game:
- For years, the US Army has used the maps for the “GAAT” region for training exercises, overlaying fictional nations and grievances on the real terrain. One of the CGSC wargame design students even built a basic wargame for class around the scenario. Well, that GAAT fight just got a lot more ‘real’. (GAAT = Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Turkey)
- USMC shooting cruise missiles across the Pacific?
- Army robots hunting tanks? The horror!
- The Venezuelans are installing Chinese anti-ship cruise missiles on their corvettes. No word on whether or not they were plotting a revenge tour and actually thought “cruise missiles” were for use against “cruise ships”.
Something From Our Partners:
- Moe induced all sorts of drool with a look inside MMP’s new Iron Curtain game.
- Ardwulf taught the folks at GUWS about How to Play Wargames on VASSAL.
- RMN takes a look at the Russian Way of War with a FMSO document about their current doctrine.
This Week’s Tunes:
This past week on Six Degrees of Radio ?
- Sure Shot by the Beastie Boys
- Take It Easy by Andy Taylor
- The Killer Instinct by Black Star Riders
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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