by A fresh #TuesdayNewsday means fresh intel—let’s see what’s shaking across all the wargaming worlds! 🫨 ➡️
Details about the upcoming 2026 ArmChair Dragoons Digital Convention
The ACDC kicks off on Friday!
A few key things this year:
- Bunch of different talk shows throughout the weekend from published historians, student game design teams, and yes, our editorial director (but you can probably find a game for that time slot, too)
- Plenty of not-yet-published games from folks like Dr Wticz, David Thompson, and Catastrophe Games, among others
- Some special announcements on the Welcome Happy Hour on Friday night!
- Multi-player double-blind Kriegsspiel!
- Enough designers crowding into our Discord that the fire marshal is probably going to fuss about occupancy limits
- Tickets still available for the best value in wargaming
A variety of news on the Europa front, brought to our attention by Friend-of-the-Dragoons Lee.
First up, there’s a new publisher taking over the work, led by the legendary Marc Miller. Rich Banner has given Europa Series Wargames (ESW) use of the names and trademarks. The same release that introduces the new team also specified that their groups.io page is the ‘official’ info channel for them.
ESW has use of the Europa trademark and copyrights from owner Paul R. (“Rich”) Banner, who is co-designer of Drang Nach Osten, the original Europa game, and other Europa titles published by Game Designers’ Workshop. “I can’t express enough how pleased I am that the Europa Series will continue,” said Rich.
Marc also announces the appointment of veteran Europa experts to key ESW positions:
- John M. Astell as Chief Designer. John contributed to the design or development of over a dozen Europa games and modules, including award-winning or best selling titles Scorched Earth (1987 Origins award for Best Boardgame 1900–1946) and Second Front. John is also appointed Interim Editor of the Europa Series Briefing, a soon-to-be launched magazine devoted to the Europa Series. ”I have designed Europa games for 40 years. My immediate goal is to reimagine the Fire in the East experience as Barbarossa Unleashed, a working title, the ultimate Europa Eastern Front wargame.”
- Bill Stone as Chief Resources Officer. Bill provided GDW and the Europa Series with business direction, marketing, advice, publishing, computerization, and playtesting. “I’m thrilled to see Rich and Marc assemble a team to handle reprinted, updated, and new games and modules with the goal of integrating each component of the series into the ultimate Grand Europa package.”
One of John Astell’s first notes in the group included the following
My goal with Barbarossa Unleashed (BU, working title) and future titles is to return playability to its rightful place. I believe Second Front went too far down the road of adding complications to cover secondary and tertiary issues. The draft version of BU is currently at the SF level of complexity and like SF is somewhat slow and difficult to play. I believe Scorched Earth had a good balance between playability and complexity, and I am working on a core set of rules to make BU nearer to SE’s complexity than the SF’s. I want BU to be a living game, one that hits the right level of playability, historical details, and accurate but playable orders of battle.
And finally, there’s a note that a significant reason that Rich Banner is pulling back from active development with the Europa series is his fight through some health issues, including both Parkinson’s and MS. Our prayers for his continued health in the face of both of those 🙏
Cole Wehrle is leaving Leder Games and posted a farewell over on their site
In the coming weeks Kyle and I will be forming an entirely new company called Buried Giant Studios with my brother Drew, Ted Caya, and some of our longstanding collaborators. Leder Games has agreed to sell us ownership of both Oath and Arcs, and we look forward to supporting both titles while also developing new games. In the short term, we will be handling the fulfillment of Oath: New Foundations and will be working on a new expansion to Arcs. We will have much more to say about those plans soon.
You can find more about our new venture here. buriedgiantstudios.com
— Cole Wehrle (@colewehrle.bsky.social) 2026-01-13T21:15:12.844Z
New boxes, new books, new battles—here’s what just arrived!
- World at War #106, with the included France Overseas 1940 game, is now shipping; the game asks what would’ve happened if the French evacuated the army to North Africa and saved their navy from German hands, and the Germans brought Spain into the war
- Paper Wars #112, with the included game Sinking Yamato, is now shipping, and you can play a wargame about why battleships in contemporary naval warfare are a bad idea
- From its original appearance in the 2019 Compass Holiday Catalog to finally arriving in your mailbox, Battle Hymn Vol. 2 – Shiloh and Bentonville is now shipping! BBMike and Bill S are both rejoicing
- We might be a week late with this one, but Catalyst released their BattleTech: Mercenaries box set, and there’s an option to purchase the Kickstarter edition, or the standard one
- TS Wargames released Pegasus 1944 that looks at the airborne attacks in Normandy
- Ad Hoc Edition has released their Kolin 1757 game in their SYW system
- Vae Victis are shipping First Republic but arrival seems a little sporadic
- Other new releases on Steam
- Rising Front says it’s an “FPS WW1 & Revolutionary War battle simulator” and yeah, that’s probably a different revolution than you’re thinking
- Medieval Siege isn’t much for sieges, but it’s got plenty of cutesy chibi-looking Braveheart1 action
- Queendom is a conquer-the-realm game that’s not set in a historical milieu
- Mechastrike: Red War is big stompy robots on Mars, but it also offers side-by-side multiplayer where everyone uses their phones as controllers
- There’s a freebie PDF postcard-format game out there on the battle of Monte San Gabriele on September 4, 1917 from the designer of Ju87 Stuka Ace
- Kids in Capes is available from Renegade Game Studios; it builds off their Stranger Things-inspired Kids on Bikes game
- Another freebie from Brian Train, The Chair Is Empty
- Lots of different dice hitting the stores
- Bunch of new d20s from our friends over at Black Oak Workshop
- “Leviathan” is a new dice set from Dice Envy that’s not on sale, but also not giant-sized; the reference is to the deep-sea color scheme
- Kraken Dice released a new “snow fairy” color scheme in a variety of different sets (14pc RPG, d6 bricks, etc)
- New from Alternative Armies a bunch of 6mm sci-fi minis
- XR020 Beadle Missile Tank <– one included free with any order, too
- XR019 Fantomas Railgun MBT
- XR014 Halewyn Heavy AFV
- XR015 Breydel AFV
- XR016 Loebas AFV
- XR017 Isengrim APC
- XR018 Kludde APC
Here are the fresh campaigns and pre-orders currently begging for your attention.
- If you’ve seen the recent Kriegsspiel AARs on our front page, you’ve seen Battle Decisions: Kriegsspiel in action, as those are authored by the designer, and you can pledge your own copy on Kickstarter now
- The Wargaming Company has launched a set of pre-orders for their 1806 Campaign, including a hardcover book, a bunch of minis, and a bundle set
- Serious Historical Games launched their pre-order for Kawanakajima 1561, which is the 3rd game in their “Sengoku Jidai” series in medieval Japan, with a projected June ship date
- A bunch of great historical books on pre-order in this week’s newsletter from On Military Matters
- VUCA’s new pre-order is Operation Overlord and we’re pretty sure you don’t need us to tell you what it’s about
- Five Parsecs from Home: Planetfall on pre-order with Modiphius right now
- The Great Dark: Flowers of Algorab is an expansion for Free League’s Coriolis that’s on pre-order through the company, with immediate PDF access
- The BackerKit campaign is over but pre-orders are now open for Shannon Appelcline’s new Designers & Dragons: Origins book series that’s focused on the original D&D products and the people behind them
- Disimula Edizioni put their new Sicilia 1943 – Operation Husky on pre-order with a projected ship date this Summer
- New pre-orders from Compass Games
- Combat! Crete, Germans vs Brits in WW2 as a man-to-man solitaire game
- Imperial Wars collects 2 different Joe Miranda games, Sikh War and Caucausus Campaign
- Warriors of Mexico is a Starkweather design of the Mexican-American War
- The Battles of Burgoyne’s Campaign takes you through 1777 in the AWI
- Lords of the Seas covers a huge number of years, but it’s basically ramming-speed naval combat in the Med
- Boer War plays through, well, you can figure it out
Sales are live and savings are ready—let’s check out the discounts. ️
- WDS ‘Game of the week’ is Panzer Campaigns: Minsk ’44 for $29.95, on sale until Sunday
- The late Aaron Allston’s Strike Force superhero campaign is on Bundle of Holding
- Insanely good “build your own bundle” here for digital wargames, and get ’em at $5 each
- Noble Knight has copies of Andean Abyss starting at $125
- Miniature Market has Seljuk: Byzantium Besieged, 1068-1071 on sale this week
- Dirt-cheap clearance prices on some games from Avalanche Press as they’re not going to reprint any of these; all of them are $10 or below
- Worthington Games has Crusader Kingdoms Deluxe on sale
- Modiphius has their Fallout Vault 33% sale on all their Fallout products
Time to catch up—here are this week’s new pieces from The Regiment.
- Destroying Hitler’s Oil: Operation Tidal Wave: The Raid on the Ploesti Oil Refineries August 1, 1943
- #TBT/Throwback Thursday ~ Modern Battles Quads
- Thermonuclear Commentary on Not-My Twilight: 2000
- Saturday Night Fights ~ “Charlie Don’t Surf”: AIRCAV (again)
- Space Empires 4X Close Encounters: Combat on the Ground Part 1
- Cheerful Dracula -or- Old stories making great new boardgame memories with Plague of Dracula
- Your 2025 in Wargaming, Part 2 – Gameplay & Conventions
- AARs
- From The Armchair Dragoons Archives
- Back on 16 Jul 20, we published Armchair Dragoons Reviews Big Trouble in Little China: The Board Game by Michael Eckenfels
- On 8 May 23, we hosted CO23 Extended: Punching Above Their Weight: Microgame Design on our YouTube channel
- Gameplay this week
- This week in our forums we’re continuing to add to our “This Day In History” thread
- This week in our merch shop – the basic line-art logo t-shirt, with a black logo on a couple of neutral colors
We don’t know either, but they’re always worth reading
I don't know why every other month I wake up and think, "You know what? Why don't we write something today that will bring in the nasty emails?"
— Dan Thurot (@danthurot.bsky.social) 2026-01-13T15:16:26.819Z
The Best Thing We Saw On Another Site This Week Was
Games as Promises which focuses on digital games, but is equally applicable to tabletop ones
Knowing your promise helps you focus your efforts towards what matters. The guy behind Vampire Survivors knew that his game promised to throw tons of juicy VFX on-screen all at once; he wasted no effort polishing individual sprites. With this mindset, cutting features becomes effortless: anything that doesn’t reinforce the promise can be eliminated. We had many temptations, many suggestions to make Drop Duchybigger by adding a story or a PVP mode, but we kept its scope focused precisely because we knew what its central appeal was (placing pieces strategically on a rectangular grid). If there’s room to go beyond your promise, that’s good, though, because you’ll need it for step 3.
Ardwulf’s counter clipping stream covered lots of pre-orders
Various news & notes from the business end of the gaming world
- This week, Scott Thorne’s column covers a ‘turning point’ in WotC’s card/demand strategy from 30 years ago
- BoardGameWire talks with GW about their new policy on AI in their products (basically: “no”)
- Rascal looks into the secrets of Monte Cook Games’ success
- As ICv2 reports, it seems like the only people making money out of the Diamond bankruptcy are the lawyers
- Noble Knight offers “12 Great War Games3 From 2025″ on their site
- Behind the scenes at Warlord Games – the pioneers of tabletop historical gaming (Nottingham Post)
- Company Updates
- Warhammer World, Games Workshop’s pub-slash-hobby store celebrating the venerable wargame, is coming to the US (PC Gamer)
- Some predictions for the TTRPG industry (TTRPG Insider)
I would -love- to hear people’s takes on the board game version of this
— BoardGameWire (@boardgamewire.bsky.social) 2026-01-12T17:12:34.824Z
Articles, advice, and ideas for those of you on the creative side
- Skelton Code Machine’s Annual Review 2025
- Matthew Dunstan’s latest game design video is Stuck trying to design your first game? Watch this.
- Designing a one-shot scenario using D&D to play Animal Farm
- Geoff Englestein’s Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design: An Encyclopedia of Mechanisms is over 50% off on Amazon right now
- Matt Forbeck’s video from the Wisconsin Games Alliance talking about freelancing in the game biz
- Three weeks left to submit your design to the Cardboard Edison competition
- Nick Bentley talks about being “stuck”
Your regular reminder that you can in fact tackle sensitive and thorny political and societal issues with board games and they can even be fun to play, only thing is you need to actually give it some thought, care and attention
— Wyrd Science Magazine (@wyrdscience.bsky.social) 2026-01-13T09:47:41.389Z
Don’t forget to check our consolidated event & convention calendar for more!
You can also submit your own events for our calendar here.
Our Next Armchair Dragoons Events
- Wargame Days at The Gamer’s Armory in Cary, NC ~ February 1 and March 1
- Next confirmed live event is Buckeye Game Fest (Columbus OH), 12-15 March 2026
- Next virtual event is the ACDC4, 16-18 January, 2026
Upcoming Conventions & Events
- 15-18 Jan Niagara Boardgaming Weekend (Niagara Falls NY) <– THIS WEEKEND!
- 15-18 Jan Philadelphia Area Gaming Expo (Philadelphia PA) <– THIS WEEKEND!
- 15-19 Jan CascadeCon (Bellingham WA <– THIS WEEKEND!
- 16-18 Jan ConQuest Ventura (Ventura CA) <– THIS WEEKEND!
- 16-18 Jan Marscon (Virginia Beach VA) <– THIS WEEKEND!
- 16-18 Jan The ACDC (Armchair Dragoons HQ Online) <– THIS WEEKEND!
- 17-19 Jan Siege of Augusta Con (Augusta GA) <– THIS WEEKEND!
- 22-25 Jan Bellota Con (Badajoz Spain)
- 23-25 Jan MMP Winter Offensive (Bowie MD)
- 30 Jan-1 Feb Captain Con (Warwick RI USA)
- 30 Jan-1 Feb SquareBash ’26 (London UK)
- 30 Jan-1 Feb Winter War Con (Champaigne IL)
- 31 Jan SDHist Winter Quarters 2026 (Online)
We have exciting news of our 2026 convention dates, including the all-new SDHistNorth in the Twin Cities July 11-12! Jan. 31: SDHist Winter Quarters 2026June 27: SDHist AmRevCon 2026July 11-12: SDHistCon North 2026November 6-9: SDHistCon Summit 2026 Details: sdhist.com/save-the-dat…
— SDHistCon (@sdhistcon.bsky.social) 2026-01-08T23:32:22.728Z
Focusing on the practitioner world ~ don’t forget about the dedicated area in our forums for the wargame professionals!
- This week, Wargaming Weekly asks Are we ready for AI-powered wargaming?
- WW3 fears as war games show China delivering decisive blow to US fleet in minutes (Daily Express via MSN)
- Crisis in Caracas Matrix Game (LinkedIn)
- This week, Mick Ryan’s ‘Big Five’ talks about the “Oreshnik attack” and more
- The next GUWS webinar is Wargaming AI—Representing AI-Enabled Military Systems in Games on 19 January, and then Integration of Wargaming and Modeling & Simulation on 9 February and Decision making under uncertainty in educational gaming on 23 February
- Get Hired! George Mason University has a posting for Project Developer, Virginia Serious Game Institute (VSGI)
If you’re in our Discord you’ve already seen this; if not, enjoy!
That’s all for this week!
You can chat about the news in the Intel Dump in our discussion forums and next Tuesday we return with another update for you
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.
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