by Set your status to ⛔ “do not disturb”—The #TuesdayNewsday roundup begins! ➡️
This story has evolved throughout the day, but there’s now an official version from the company that the King of Prussia location of The Compleat Strategist is closing this spring
You may have also heard our legendary New York headquarters at 11 East 33rd Street is closing as well. This one was just the rumor mill, at least for now. As it stands, we have not determined when or if the New York City location will be closing, and it will remain open beyond the closing date of the PA store on April 25th.
With plans for the future of the NYC store still taking shape, we are unable to give you concrete information about if and when the store will be closing. We can only say that continuing to shop with us until that day comes is the best way to show your love and support for the store. While waiting for a clearance sale may seem like the strategic move, we hope you’ll continue to shop at The Compleat Strategist until you receive word regarding official plans to close our headquarters.
Tabletop Bellhop has a great wrapup of the GAMA Expo here
RIP William C Dietz, who was a prominent author on HALO and Battletech content. You can see more about his long list of novels on his official site over here.
Minis, modules, mechanics—here’s what’s new across the board.
- Wargame Design Studio released Panzer Campaigns: Donbas ’43 and you can game out the Russians fighting the Donas region of the Ukraine; since “the Russians fighting the Donas region of the Ukraine” is insufficiently specific, they’ve helpfully appended the “43” to the end of the game 😆
- Against The Odds #63, with Trying Men’s Souls covering the 1776 New York campaign, is now shipping
- S&T Press cancelled their Modern War magazine some time ago, but they are still producing the Modern War Annual, which seems a reasonable compromise approach; the 2025 Annual – which does not include a game – is now shipping
- S&T Press also look like they’re shipping S&T Quarterly #33, focused on the armies of the dark ages
- G.I. JOE Heroscape: Rumble at the Rift Battle Box is available now in both unpainted and painted versions, plus there’s also . . .
- Some time after we stopped checking Para Bellum’s site every week they released XVI
- This week on Wargame Vault
- Rumors of Wars Unity in the Star Fleet universe, from ADB
- Medic! has you struggling to save your fellow soldiers in WW2
- W PIUS X sees you commanding the Austrian garrison in Milan during an uprising against the Pope
- Other new releases on Steam
- Logistics Battalion, managing supplies in early WW2
- Sherman Commander turns you into a platoon leader through a series of WW2 battles; looks good but kind of pricey even with the 10% launch discount
- The Last Fortress is a combination realm-builder/wargame with a lot of cartoonish fantasy action
- DICE!
- Sunlight Sigil is a new set of metal dice from Dice Envy with high reflectivity and an intricate design
- Not completely sure when Kraken ‘officially’ released their Last Dragon Egg 7pc dice set, but we hadn’t included it before and it looks damned cool
- Easy Roller Dice have a Prismatic Shard set that’s got some nice black in contrast
- Some new terrain packs from Warlord Games
- Normandy Terrain Bundle
- Beachhead Assault Terrain Bundle
- or get ’em all in the Normandy Terrain Mega Bundle
Hot ideas, cool prototypes—here’s what’s just launched.
- Compass Games put For the Motherland! on Kickstarter, so start the clock toward eventual shipping in a few short months
- OSG has The Marengo Campaign on pre-order now that the most recent ones are out the door
- This week’s newsletter from On Military Matters includes Trench Crusade, covert ops, insurrections, Norks, navies, and nukes
- Studio Agate is rebooting the 7th Sea TTRPG, and the campaign is blowing up; Studio Agate’s production values are excellent, and 7th Sea has a deep well of world-building to mine
- This week on Kickstarter
- Rebellion Unplugged finally launched their reboot of Tunnels & Trolls on Kickstarter
- Revolutions! is on pre-order direct with Fellowship of Simulations, but also now on Kickstarter
- Fort Douaumont is a print-&-play game set in WW1 that juggles a couple of elements you don’t normally see in these games, like dueling & negotiations
- And this week’s hopeless campaign is Secret Villain: The Card Game of Teamwork and Betrayal that’s up to 3 whole backers!
- Now that ATO #63 is shipping (see above), issue #64 is on pre-order, and will include Sharpsburg: Landscape Turned Red as the game
- Neva Game Press put Peking: 55 Days of Fury on pre-order
- Compass keeps ‘sneaking’ things onto the pre-orders on their site
- Man of War – fleet command at the turn of the 19th century
- Combat! Crete – standalone solitaire man-to-man combat
- Imperial Wars – 2 games in one, with Sihk War and Caucasus Campaign
- Per a discussion with Doc last weekend at BGF, the current arrivals from Decision are shipping right now, but only to pledge customers, so we’ll let you know as soon as they start shipping to everyone else
Hobby happiness costs a bit less today—here’s your list.
- Holy balls! This is an impressive collection in its own right, but Wayne’s Books is handling the auction of a complete set of Ardiun books/accessories for someone, and a bunch of them are autographed and personalized
- WDS ‘Game of the week’ is Sword & Siege: Crusades: Book I for $29.95, on sale until Sunday
- Age of Ambition bundle on Bundle of Holding is an interesting-looking fantasy world
- Noble Knight has copies of Forgotten War – Korea 1950-1953 from MMP starting at $145
- Miniature Market has Sensuikan: Japanese Fleet Submarines in WW2 on sale this week for $63
- GameNerdz has Absolute Emperor: Napoleonic Wargame Battles at 25% off
- Legion Wargames has Tanga 1914 marked down to $45
Here’s everything our team pushed out while you were rolling dice.
- A Look Through SCOPE Panzer
- Mentioned In Dispatches S16 E7 – Aerial Shooty-Bangy Stuff
- Saturday Night Fights ~ “Commands and Colors: Ancients”: The Battle of Ilipa
- How to Train Your (Non)-Grognard – Take That Hill!
- AARs
- From The Armchair Dragoons Archives
- Back on 22 Sep 25, we posted Short Rounds! Terminator – Dark Fate – Defiance – Uprising from the Armchair Dragoons PAO desk
- On 18 Jan 25, we dropped A Quick Look Around The 2025 ACDC on our YouTube channel
- Gameplay this week
- This week in our forums, talk of a collection of articles about John Tiller’s games
- This week in our merch shop, at least one Dragoons polo was spotted at BGF!
The Best Thing We Saw On Another Site This Week Was
WDS supported their release of Panzer Campaigns: Donbas ’43 with an interested post about “depth vs frontage”
Depth is different. It is not only “more trenches.” It is the distribution of combat power that allows the system to absorb shocks without making every local crisis an existential one. Defensive depth means layered resistance, planned fallbacks, and reserves positioned so that a penetration does not automatically become a collapse. Offensive depth means echelons that pass through each other: one echelon to breach the tactical zone, another to widen and deepen, mobile forces to exploit, and additional forces to secure the corridor and sustain momentum. Depth is therefore not only spatial, but organizational and temporal: it is the ability to keep choices after the enemy has hit you, and the ability to keep pressure after you have hit the enemy.
Ardwulf’s counter clipping stream covered Dark Ages wargaming, and a bunch of BGF discussion
Various news & notes from the business end of the gaming world
- This week, Scott Thorne has some additional thoughts about his time at GAMA Expo, including an interesting new ‘rotation’ policy from Armor Class 10 with their t-shirts (which are great!)
- BoardGameWire wraps up GAMA Expo, and also digs a bit more into the contentious membership meeting that resulted in an official GAMA apology
- Always fun to see a mainstream normie use a wargame graphic in a news article
- Has D&D “disappeared”? Rascal thinks so
- Noble Knight turns their spotlight on VUCA Sims
- Polygon’s report from GDC 2026 is focused on games that plug into walls, but there’s plenty of tabletop gamer designers floating around, too
- Apparently BoardGameQuest thinks “board gaming history” started in the 90s and is only quantifiable by BGG rankings; apologies if we sprain our eyeballs from rolling them so hard
- The war in Iran starts to have a direct impact2 on the hobby media world
- If you publish something in Summer 2025, and promise a quarterly publication cycle, we probably shouldn’t be waiting until Spring of 2026 for the next one, right? Maybe have 2-3 of them in the can ready to go first . . .
- Company Updates
- Tactical Workshop said they’re planning to attend CSW Expo
- Matrix Games released the first big update for their recent War In Spain 1936-39
- Fort Circle published their 2025 financial report
Oy!
Hi. If you learn well in a traditional educational environment and want a course about making dungeons that is $0 instead of, uh, $800, may I offer you the Designing Dungeons Course, or How to Kill a Party in 30 Rooms or Less: dungeons.hismajestytheworm.games
— Rise Up Comus – CASTLE AUTOMATIC Crowdfunding Now! (@riseupcomus.bsky.social) 2026-03-12T16:59:18.141Z
Articles, advice, and ideas for those of you on the creative side
- Designer Royalties with Real Numbers from Kevin Bertram over at Fort Circle Games
- Skeleton Code Machine talks about pie slices and ultimatums
- Matthew Dunstan’s latest game design video — Is the first game you design always terrible?
- Choose Your Own Ambition: print-on-demand, self-publishing, or pitching your game (Chris Backe)
- QA/digital playtesting — people are going to be better than the AI because people are crazier; best quote of this #TuesdayNewsday: “I am professionally stupid in a way that a machine could not even dream of.”
- Nick Bentley spitting hard truths about your game in the sea of games out there
Ah, the joys of having a very good (nitpicky) rules reader point out that you've used synonyms in rules and could you please standardize on one or two terms to remove ambiguity.#EditingWoes
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 ~ April 5, May 3, and June 7
- Next confirmed live event is The Wargame HQ at ORIGINS (Columbus OH), 17-21 June 2026
- Next virtual event is Connections Online 2026, 20-25 April
Upcoming Conventions & Events
- 25-29 Mar Adepticon (Milwakuee WI)
- 26-29 Mar PAX East (Boston MA)
- 3-6 Apr Conquest Melbourne (Melbourne VIC)
- 8-12 Apr Game mORe (Albany OR)
- 9-12 Apr Bellum Omnium: Wargamecon 2026 (Malaga ESP)
- 11-11 Apr Eboracon VII (York UK)
- 16-18 Apr Seven Years War (South Bend IN)
- 16-19 Apr GMT East 2026 (Schenectady NY)
- 18-18 Apr Mountain Lard Game Day (Hendersonville NC)
- 20-25 Apr Connections Online 2026 (Armchair Dragoons HQ Online)
- 23-26 Apr GMT Weekend at the Warehouse (Hanford CA)
- 15-17 May LexiCon 2026 (Lexington KY)
Afghanistan: Decades of Strife was the first game of the day, again with @djackthompson.bsky.social , Jim and another one of our designers, John Lapham. Tight to the very end
— Catastrophe Games (@catastrophegames.bsky.social) 2026-03-13T16:22:18.753Z
The Annual Professional/Practitioner Wargaming Conference, Co-Sponsored & Hosted by the Armchair Dragoons
Registration is opening a little later while we have a last-minute reshuffle of a few core sessions due to presenter scheduling. Apologies!
Focusing on the practitioner world ~ don’t forget about the dedicated area in our forums for the wargame professionals!
- For those of you operating in the professional space, we’re now on LinkedIn and you can more easily share our pro-focused content there
- Nato’s tabletop wargame projects moving forces, supplies and casualties across Europe (BFBS)
- This week, Wargaming Weekly asks “Is this the most controversial wargamer ever?”
- Redefining Strategy in the High North: Wargaming a Contested Arctic (High North News)
- Thoughts on the future of PME from someone who used to run it (Bluesky)
- A framework of large language model commander agent for spatial reasoning in combat simulation (Scientific Reports)
- This week, Mick Ryan’s ‘Big Five’ talks about three theaters of war
- The next GUWS webinar is Kingfish ACE: A Case Study for Application of Gaming and Leadership on 13 April followed by Games for Conflict and Resolution on 20 April
- PaxSims’ Simulation and gaming miscellany for March 2026 even includes us!
- Get Hired! SPA has a posting for a Wargaming/Military Operations Analyst
Maritime mines, unmanned boats, and unmanned mine clearing. All featured in my "Littoral Commander Indo-Pacific" #wargame! Might be relevant for current events… Or just sling some dice with your friends. #wargaming Purchase: dietzfoundation.org/bb-list/Review: boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/35…
— Sebastian Bae (@sebastianbae.bsky.social) 2026-03-17T12:02:23.076Z
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.
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