by Put down that rulebook for a sec—time to catch up on the #TuesdayNewsday headlines 📖
and get an advance look at the games that all those other sites will be talking about in another week or two 😆 ➡️
So this past week saw 2 rather significant stories in the overall hobby gaming world. The SCOTUS ruling on the original Trump tariffs was greeted warmly across most of the tabletop gaming world, but given the shenanigans about when/if/how other tariffs might come into play, it seemed premature to deal with this one.
However, Ryan Dancey provided plenty of headlines & talking points for the week with his comments about using generative AI in game design, as well as all the go-to-market tasks after the design. Dancey has been given a lot of leeway in the industry for two industry-changing moves in the late 90s/early 00s — brokering the deal to sell TSR to WotC, and shepherding D&D 3rd Ed and the OGL into being — which might be why he’s survived a few other moves that would’ve tanked the careers of almost anyone else. By the end of the week, Dancey was out of his job as the COO at AEG. Anyway, there are far better summaries of Dancey’s self-immolation so here are links to a bunch of them for you
Articles
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Social Posts |
And some screengrabs of the discussions
This whole line of humor is never gonna die, is it?
You can see @armchairdragoons.bsky.social , the father of modern logistical wargaming, watching in disbelief on the rear platform of the train, worrying where these pencil pusher, ledger lovers are going to place the company trains
There was an interesting discussion among the Homo Ludens denizens & Mark from Wargames-To-Go about this column from Chris Farrell about Unconditional Surrender: Western Campaigns and some choice comments about strat-level WW2 games
I’m left unclear what niche Unconditional Surrender is trying to fill. We have a million of these strategic WWII games now (Unconditional Surrender, Downfall, The Supreme Commander, Totaler Krieg/Dai Senso, A World at War, Europe/Asia Engulfed, Absolute Victory, Hitler’s War, Barbarossa to Berlin, World in Flames, even Axis & Allies — and that’s just a sampling — with all of them tracing back to 1974’s Rise and Decline of the Third Reich). Here’s the thing though: they’re all basically euros, albeit some of them are euros with 60-page rulebooks. They’re super-abstract and more a collection of genre tropes than a serious attempt to portray the war at a strategic level. It’s like we all got tunnel vision after Third Reich.
So what do you guys think about those national/global/strategic-level wargames? Are they all basically euros with big rulebooks?
We’re having a little fun this year with a new poll in the news at the end of each month. Here’s the February poll, and the results of January’s poll.
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Last month’s poll results
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New releases marching in with style—let’s take a look!
- Blue Panther has boxed versions of The Art of Wargames’ Death or Glory: The Battle of Rorke’s Drift in their store now
- Hey, did you know that you can play Kurt Vonnegut’s GHQ game online? Well now you know, and thanks to Delbert from HL for pointing it out
- Flying Pig are now shipping Broken Logic -A Long Road Expansion
- Hollanspiele released Rayroads for you to launch all the cosmic interstellar trains your heart desires
- Matrix Games released Warhammer 40,000: Battlesector – Black Legion DLC
- GMT Games’ most recent newsletter says these guys got charged at the end of January and should be shipping now
- A Distant Plain, 4th Printing
- Ardennes ’44, 4th Edition, plus the Ardennes ’44 4th Edition Mounted Maps and Ardennes ’44 4th Edition Update Kit
- Infernal Machine
- Men of Iron Tri-Pack, 2nd Printing
- Mr. President 2nd Edition and the Mr. President 2nd Edition Update Kit
- Purgatorio: Men of Iron Volume VI
- Simple Battalion System Module 08 : Battle of Korsun Pocket is now available
- MicroProse released Rise of Piracy on Steam
- Precis Intermedia released Holocaustic Dungeons 2nd Ed, a revival of the 1986 game
- This week on Wargame Vault
- Commander Challenges gives you 4 different “tower defense” sytle historical scenarios to fight through, in a pay-what-you-want scale
- Baylor’s Campaign 1861 and Invasion of the Arizona Territory 1862 are both system-agnostic scenario sets for ACW rules
- The Ground Between is a WW1 west front tactical game
- Like pretty much any other item ever mentioned as “new” in their emails, Avalanche Press says Great War at Sea. Jutland: Linienschiffe 1919 is ready to ship, but then you hit the product page and it says “This game is not yet available, but will be out soon. Please allow an extra six weeks for delivery.” so if you believe the email, it’s released and if you believe the website, you’ll get it for Spring Break ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- Perry Miniatures has their Napoleonic Spanish guerrillas on pre-order a few weeks ago and they are now shipping
- Serious Historical Wargames has a new Italian Wars Bundle – In the Footsteps of Francis I that seems to be available already with no pre-order period
- Hexasim’s The Fate of Reiters isn’t new, but this re-released English language version includes updated counter art, too
- Alternative Armies’ new War Crab Cavalry as exactly as awesome as they sound
- DICE!
- Black Oak Workshop has a new playful “Mimic” set of polyhedrals
- Dice Envy’s latest drop is the “Starsurge” 8pc metal set
- Kraken Dice’s new “Ostara” dice are very green
- Easy Roller Dice has a whole bunch of new ‘counter dice’ to keep track of +/- values
- New magnetic dice trays from Emberglow Gaming; this one is our favorite but there are other designs, too
- Wargames Atlantic released their new Quar: Clash of Rhyfles Hardcover Rulebook
- You can download all of Columbia’s wargame rulebooks in a single, very big, PDF (PDF download, duh!)
- “New” Flames of War sets – from their recent email, this might actually be new, but they don’t have the ability to sort their webstore by “new to old” so it’s impossible to know for sure
Feeling adventurous? Here are the newest projects seeking backers.
- Compass Games has their Kickstarter campaign for Mr Lincoln’s War up and running, so this combo pack of games (Army of Tennessee and Army of the Potomac) should be on final approach soon
- Dan Bullock talked about Penitent on our podcast last year, and now it’s available for pre-order
- S&T Press are taking pre-orders on their Modern War Annual 2025 Year In Review – magazine only with no game – which is projected to ship next month
- There’s a lot of historical books in this week’s newsletter from On Military Matters
- The previous crowdfunding campaigns for 1943 Race to Rabaul and Tora Tora Tora from Phalanx Games are now combined into a single pre-order through Gamefound
- This week on Kickstarter
- From the “WTF” files we bring you Napoleonica: Steel and Magic which seems intended to give AA’s Slaughterloo a run for its money in weirdness
- We tend to eschew STL-file campaigns, but these Halfling Tommies are just too f’n’ hilarious
- And this week’s hopeless campaign is Divided States: The Battle for America which hasn’t even cleared 1% of its goal with 3 days to go
- Pre-orders open for the upcoming Barbarossa Border Battles scenario book for the RAPID FIRE! game
- Free League has an illustrated version of Lovecraft’s The Shadow over Innsmouth on pre-order, but note that this is the novel, not a game product
- The latest GMT newsletter included the following new p500s
- Common Sense is an AWI game with a trick-taking card mechanic pushing the “will to fight” track back and forth
- Iron Triangle covers the late ’60s in Vietnam with a lane-battling motif
- Levy & Campaign solo system that’s been named the “Ost bot”
- Next War: Korea 2nd ed, 2nd printing
Sales like these pair well with a hot beverage and light self-justification. ☕
- WDS ‘Game of the week’ is Panzer Battles: North Africa 1941 for $29.95, on sale until Sunday
- Noble Knight has copies of Panzerkrieg starting at $35
- There’s a Neon City Overdrive collection on Bundle of Holding
- Red Dust Rebellion marked down to $78 over at Gamenerdz; By Swords & Bayonets is only $45
Your weekly reading stack from The Regiment starts right here.
- Wednesday War Stories ~ Battle of Eylau, 7-8 February 1807
- Space Empires 4X Replicators: Replication and Assimilation Part 2
- Mentioned In Dispatches S16 E4 – BoAR Gamers Invade Camden SC
- Saturday Night Fights ~ “Fire As She Bears 2”: The Battle of Cape St. Vincent
- FL(W)GS Spotlight ~ Meeples & Beyond of Phoenix, AZ
- Cuba Libre’s Calixto Bot – First Impressions
- Peter’s Crusades: Book II , an interview with WDS Game Designer Rich Walker
- AARs
- From The Armchair Dragoons Archives
- Back on 7 Sep 23, we published #TBT/Throwback Thursday ~ 1974 Avalon Hill Catalog from BBMike
- On 24 Nov 22, we released COSh22-6: Competition AI & A Splendid Failure (Andrew Olson & Matthew Kirchman) on our YouTube channel
- Gameplay this week
- This week in our forums the Draco dudes are showing off Skull Tales
- This week in our merch shop we’ve got our basic line art hoodie
The Best Thing We Saw On Another Site This Week Was
This is an excellent thread about the disconnect between a game’s marketing, and what’s actually in the rules
But here’s the irony: the game’s own rulebook—the actual simulation—is a brutal deconstruction of that very myth.
Marketing: “The honor does not surrender.” Rules: Desertion. Under Rule 11.1.2, if morale drops, your “heroes” defect to the Filipino side. The game admits the “spirit” was a fragile thing held together by officers who wouldn’t let their men leave.
Marketing: “Mystical feat of resistance.” Rules: The biggest killer in the game isn’t the enemy; it’s the Wear phase. If the infirmary is full, new sick soldiers “push” the old ones into the Cemetery. The game simulates a supply-chain disaster and logistical abandonment, not “glory.”
Marketing: “The Last Ones of the Philippines.” Rules: The Territorial Map. While you’re “heroically” trapped in a church, the Filipino player is winning the actual war. The game shows that Baler was strategically irrelevant—a tactical stalemate in the middle of a total imperial collapse.
Ardwulf’s counter clipping stream covered “dream games” and a bunch on the latest GMT newsletter
Various news & notes from the business end of the gaming world
- This week, Scott Thorne talks about news coming out of NY Toy Fair
- BoardGameWire reports on CMON’s continued sell-off to try to stay afloat
- Rascal talked about Mike Pondsmith’s “other” games and it’s almost like they’d never heard of any of them before
- ICv2 reports that Asmodee US sales nose-dived in 2025, while sales in Europe went the opposite direction
- Interesting article here about the rise of TTRPG cafes in Portland, OR
- Congrats to Jim for 150 issues of his RPG and Wargame Newsletter
- GAMA are looking to hire an Exhibitor Manager
- Company Updates
- Per an email to C3i list subscribers, Steven MacGowan is going to start work on another issue of C3i Magazine
- GMT’s monthly newsletter was released last week
- Wargame Design Studio released the new v4.03.4 version of their Red Victory game and you should update to at least 4.03.1 before applying this new update
Board gaming is weird as a media in how quickly people seem to date games. I saw a podcast put up Caverna as an example of an "old classic" game. Can you imagine a movie podcast saying that of Gravity? A music podcast of Thrift shop? Or a tv podcast of Brooklyn 99. All things from 2013.
— J from 3 Minute board games (@3mbg.bsky.social) 2026-02-21T22:44:48.409Z
Articles, advice, and ideas for those of you on the creative side
- Skeleton Code Machine talks about action dive and managing luck
- Matthew Dunstan’s latest game design video is How to do better at game design competitions
- Rules vs Rulings: I think we’re missing the real point (VI·VIII·X)
- Diana Jones Award nominations for the Emerging Designer Program are open
It's been a while since I put together a game dev bingo! Have you scored a bingo this month?#indiedev #gamedev #ttrpg 🎲✂️
— City Square Studios 🎲🃏♟️ (@citysquarestudios.bsky.social) 2026-02-23T05:02:14.493Z
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 ~ 1 March, April 5 and May 3
- Next confirmed live event is Buckeye Game Fest (Columbus OH), 12-15 March 2026
- Next virtual event is Connections Online 2026, 20-25 April
Upcoming Conventions & Events
- 27 Feb-1 Mar CincyCon (Hamilton OH) <– THIS WEEKEND!
- 27 Feb-1 Mar BottosCon Winter (Coquitlam BC) <– THIS WEEKEND!
- 27 Feb-1 Mar Cannes Festival International des Jeux (Cannes FR) <– THIS WEEKEND!
- 28 Feb Chronomaster: day of historical board games and historical simulation (Barcelona SP) <– THIS WEEKEND!
- 1-6 Mar GAMA Trade Show / Expo (Louisville KY) <– NEXT WEEK AND WE’RE NOT UPSET AT ALL THAT WE’RE NOT THERE
- 9-15 Mar The War Room at Buckeye Game Fest (Columbus OH)
- 11-15 Mar Dice Tower West (Las Vegas NV)
- 12-15 Mar AireCon (Harrogate UK)
- 12-15 Mar Buckeye Game Fest (Columbus OH)
- 12-14 Mar SaltCON (Layton UT)
- 13-15 Mar Game On Expo (Phoenix AZ)
- 13-15 Mar Terminal City Tabletop Convention (Vancouver BC)
- 19-22 Mar Breakout Con (Toronto ON)
- 19-22 Mar GameStorm (Portland OR)
- 19-22 Mar GaryCon (Lake Geneva WI)
- 20-21 Mar Cold Barrage (Havre de Grace MD)
- 20-22 Mar Hot Lead 2026 (Stratford ON)
The Annual Professional/Practitioner Wargaming Conference, Co-Sponsored & Hosted by the Armchair Dragoons
What are some of the topics we’re planning this year?
- “How to Introduce Games Without Losing Professional Credibility”
- Simulating Morale in Kriegsspiel
- Wargaming with High School Students
- Popularizing wargaming – the Sakarya Kriegsspiel
- Wargaming Civilian Harm Mitigation
and more . . .
Focusing on the practitioner world ~ don’t forget about the dedicated area in our forums for the wargame professionals!
- How Russia Turns Gamers into Fighters (RUSI)
- This week, Wargaming Weekly drops part 10 of the ongoing “Are we ready for AI-powered wargaming?” series
- Designing Historical Games with the Historical Problem Space Framework (Online slides on Canva)
- Students Wargame Current Events in the Caribbean (IWP) using a game that was discussed in our Connections US review last Summer
- Hybrid Threat, Hesitant Response – Inside the Controversial Die Welt Wargame (Georgia Today)
- ‘California jammin’: Wargames show Army’s electronic weakness — and a human fix (Breaking Defense)
- Enter the “gray zone”: Russia is already at war with Europe. Germany’s wargame missed it (Euromaidan)
- Indian Army holds seminar on enhancing military decision-making with wargaming (TNM)
- The next batch of courses from MORS
- 31 March–2 April Gaming Weapons of Mass Destruction Course – From Policy to Practice
- 13–17 April: Certificate in National Security Risk Analysis
- 4–8 May: Certificate in Wargaming
- This week, Mick Ryan’s ‘Big Five’ looks back on the anniversary of the invasion of Ukraine
- The next GUWS webinar is General Generative AI and Professional Military Education on 9 March and then Kingfish ACE: A Case Study for Application of Gaming and Leadership on 13 April
- PaxSims latest article covers the CEASEFIRE! toolkit for negotiation training
- Get Hired! SAIC has a posting for Modeling and Simulation Planner and Analyst
Our next webinar is on Data for Wargames with Christopher A. Lawrence from the Dupuy Institute.Most modern wargames, combat models, and planning tools rest on inherited assumptions:casualty thresholds, breakpoints, suppression effects, force ratios, and “combat effectiveness.”
Something neat from outside the wargaming world we thought was worth sharing
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.
You can also support The Armchair Dragoons through our Patreon, and find us at a variety of conventions and other events.
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