The Next ACDC is 14-16 January – #TuesdayNewsday 12/14/21

Every week, #TuesdayNewsday gives you a digest of what’s important in the strategy gaming world  >>>

This Week’s Headline:

Our next ACDC is coming up 14-16 January 2022. Schedule will be posted as soon as we lock down the events.  For now, a preview of what’s on tap:

• Pre-Kickstarter “learn from the designer” with David Thompson for his upcoming Lanzerath Ridge
• OCS Bootcamp with Ardwulf
• World at War ’85 and Lock ‘n Load Tactical with the development team
• At least 4 different Kriegsspiel sessions, including a mixed-echelon (operational/tactical) Battle of Guadalcanal
• Dogfights in space with Ad Astra Games
• White Eagle Defiant and Last One Standing with designers Shaw & Heilman
• Pre-publication sessions of Song for War (WW2 in the Med) with designers Seth & Chris
• Robotech Reconstruction with the design team
• Grognard-of-the-Year Jim O’s usual epic-scale Tabletop Simulator battle royales

And the best lineup of talk shows we’ve had at any ACDC ~

• Welcome & Closing Happy Hours with the ACD Team
• Designers Bruce Maxwell, Tim Densham, David Thompson, Fabrizio Vianello, Dr(s) Witcz,and Admiral SeaBass, plus printing wunderkind Steve Jones of Blue Panther
• Designer roundtables for both Modern Warfare and European Designers
• Designer & history professor Jim Werbaneth
• Student presentations from collegiate wargaming design students

We are still accepting submissions for game sessions.  See info above, or check back in a few days once the registration site is ready, to submit through there.

 

This Week’s Other Headline:

We’ve rebuilt the convention & event calendar.  Maybe this time around, more of y’all will use it!  Signs are good though, since within 24 hours of it going live (again) we had a half dozen submissions of new events through our online form.

It’s not just conventions, either.  We’ve got the live-streaming schedule for folks like Gary & Moe & our own Saturday Night Fights, as well as regular club meetings for wargaming (or at least wargame-friendly) organizations that have subscribable public calendars.  We’ve also got the Connections conferences, too.

 

Newly Released This Week:

• OK look, the idea of Soviet paratroopers intervening in the Six Day War in 1967 sounds really cool.  And good for Avalanche Press for giving you that option in an PG-Modern expansion for 1967: Sword of Israel.  But “boo” for locking it up for just their Gold Club members to get it!
• Steve Jackson Games has a new bundle of Hexagram back issues they just released.
• Ares Games has released the reprint of The Battle of Five Armies so you can spend you holidays refighting one of the more famous battles in Middle Earth.  Somehow, it’s a five-army battle in a two-player game.
• Against the Odds Magazine are now taking orders for Lee’s Greatest Victory / ATO #55.
• This War of Mine was a critically-acclaimed video game when it was first released.  Now Ares Games has a tabletop adaptation of it that’s finally shipping to customers.
• They aren’t “new” games but they are “newly-released” as this is the first time in forever that you can get Star Trek: Armada and Armada II as a direct digital download (from GOG) without having to order physical media copies.
• Who doesn’t want some WW2 flamethrowers, huh?  Of course you do!  That’s why Warlord has some new ones for you.

 

On Sale This Week:

• Wargame Design Studio / JTS has their usual holiday sale going on, where everything that’s more than 12 months old is 25%, which is basically everything but maybe 2 games.
• Worthington has a Revolutionary War bundle of 4 games for $100.  You get New York 1776, Trenton 1776, Saratoga 1977, and Philadelphia 1777.
• Iron Harvest is on sale on Steam right now.
• There’s a monster Assassin’s Creed bundle on Steam right now, with pretty much everything, which is why even at 75% off it’s still over $100
• S&T’s game-edition magazine sale this week is World at War #65, with Operation Typhoon.

 

Newly Launched This Week:

• Flames of War / Battlefront has a new M26 Pershing tank platoon on preorder as a part of their Bulge American line.  Why is this a big deal?  Because the M26 Pershing is the tank on the insignia of the US Army Armor Corps.
• Someone needs to have words with BBMike for having pledged Fleet Commander: Pacific without bothering to tell us the campaign was even live so we could include it in TN.
• We have no idea if Battle Royale the Board Game will be any good, but it’s trying to be an open-world shooter with a deck of cards, so give it a chance and see.  It’s interesting that the designer went from general board games to war-themed video games without even bothering to find out about tabletop wargames.

 

This Week With The Armchair Dragoons:

• ICYMI above, our next ACDC IS 14-16 JANUARY
• Saturday Night Fights continued the Battle of Austerlitz for Blucher.
• Our resident curmudgeon took on half of the internet, noting that “We Are All Styx Fans” when pondering wargaming in 1978.
• In our forums, Bob is continuing a very detailed look at Assault – Red Horizon ’41.
• Mentioned in Dispatches had our annual visit with Bison, and talked minis wargaming and arts & crafts.
• Other online games with the Armchair Dragoons
  • Wednesday Night Warfare went to Altdorf with the Shako 2 rules.
  • The next night, they took on Dunzling with the same rules.

 

News From The Wargame Industry:

• What got Cyrano all lathered up?  This 1998 article from Salon Magazine, that was shared online by Bruce Geryk.
• Brian Train tells you why he’s not writing a scenario for Ukrainian Crisis
• Fred Serval had a great talk on YouTube with some distinguished guests (including Volko!) about the Levy & Campaign series.
• Wyrd Games is hiring for a designer.
• Slitherine Games did their “Home of the Wargamers” show today – all virtual, of course – and there’s a lot of those kinds of ‘announcements’ that we don’t normally cover.  But Friends-of-the-Dragoons On Target Sims are part of the show, and we’re gonna pimp them every chance we get, so go check out the trailer for Flashpoint Campaigns: Southern Storm.
• MMP’s Winter Offensive registration is live.  If you’re not joining us at The ACDC, then you could always go hang out in Maryland.
• Wargame Design Studio has a survey out there about the recent transition from JTS to WDS, as well as some upcoming topics.
• You can sign up to get early access to Free League’s upcoming “Free League Nexus” distal toolkit.
• This week on Twitter, Dr Yuna Wong talked about the professional side and operational-level wargames

 

Something From Our Partners:

• Rocky’s been pretty busy, so it’s another Sunday Summary and not a lot of gameplay this week
• Moe’s Channel (without Moe!) talked Sacred Oil with the guys from Thin Red Line Games.
• Friend-of-the-Dragoons Peter Robbins has an interview with Bond & Carlson this weekend about developments in the Harpoon system live on YouTube.
• Here’s an interesting article from the Weapons Release blog, on the lack of digital wargaming renaissance to keep up with the current tabletop one.
• Ardwulf’s counter clipping stream talked about realism vs playability, and a lot about conventions, too.

 

News From The 4X Gaming World:

We’ve also got a 4X-specific area in the forums to discuss any of these, too.

• During this past weekend’s Games Awards 2021, developer Blackbird Interactive and publisher Gearbox officially announced Homeworld 3, the long-awaited sequel in the highly-regarded real-time strategy series.  The announcement comes two years after a successful Kickstarter campaign helped raise funds for the project, with the game currently slated to be released in late 2022.
• Also announced during the Game Awards was Dune: Spice Wars, a real-time strategy 4x set on the planet Arrakis in author Frank Herbert’s science-fiction universe.  The game is being developed by Shiro Games, and is launching into Steam Early Access in early 2022.
• Speaking of Dune — or rather, games that are openly inspired by Dune — Alliance of the Sacred Suns has been officially delayed until Q1 2022.  The apparent reason for the delay is so that developer Kathawk Studios has time to get feedback from an open playtest, which people can sign up for here.  Lead developer Steve Hawkins goes into more detail regarding the open playtest, along with the game’s development entering the “home stretch”, in the most recent dev diary.
• Creative Assembly has released the 2.0.4 patch for Total War: Rome – Remastered last week.  CA also announced that this was the last planned feature patch for Rome – Remastered, with future support limited to “minor stability and compatibility patches as required”.
• The Rhesus & Memnon DLC for Troy: Total War releases Tuesday, as does an accompanying big free content update (patch notes here)
• Amplitude Studios just dropped the 1.0.6.667 “Jigonhsasee” patch for Humankind.  In addition to bug fixes, the patch focuses on better AI and tweaks/improvements to player usability.

 

The Professional & Practitioner Wargaming World:

Don’t forget we’ve got a dedicated area of our forums for the professional wargamers.

• Connections Oz is going on right now.
• GUWS will be taking off for the Winter break, but next year, their first webinar is going to wow you, with Liz Davidson talking presenting Never Just a Game: What Our Board Games Tell Us About Ourselves
• PaxSims ripped Small Wars Journal a deserved new hole in their ass for a lazy and ignorant column about “wargaming”
• This is an excellent thread on Twitter about the benefits of wargaming in a military unit, that have nothing to do with training

 

 

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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