by Strap your brain 🧠 into its favorite command chair—it’s #TuesdayNewsday time! ➡️
Registration is now open for Connections Online, the professional wargaming conference, co-sponsored by The Armchair Dragoons, will be held from 20-25 April 2026. Core events will be held 21-23 April.
This year’s theme is Wargaming Soft Factors
Conference chair Chris Weuve says
“This year Connections Online is “Wargaming Soft Factors — Moving Beyond Kinetics.” This is one of those “wargaming fundamentals” topics, because if you don’t get morale and the other intangibles right, it’s hard to meet the objectives. And of course, like all Connections Online conferences, we’re including lots of other gaming related topics as well. I can’t wait to see what our presenters have to offer!”
Wargame Design Studio are now on Steam! There’s a longer announcement here talking about their rollout on Steam, as well as the updates to how they’re handling older Tiller-era titles sold through HPS and others.
Our plan will be to always launch new games on our site first, followed a few weeks later on Steam. So, in the future we will issue Steam Keys at time of purchase in our Store in the same manner you get your serial numbers now. Our continued primary focus will be our Store front and direct sales. Nothing will change in the service you have been receiving, how you access your purchases and so forth. If you aren’t a Steam user nothing needs to change for you at all.
How might it affect current WDS customers? Again, quoting from their announcement
here’s a recap:
- Not a Steam user – nothing changes.
- Steam user who buys direct – you will get a Steam key along with your purchase.
- Steam user who wants to only be on Steam, you’ll be able to do that too as games release.
- Pricing will be the same on both locations.
Each GAMA division (creators, publishers, manufacturers, etc – Armchair Dragoons are part of the “media & events” division) is represented by 2 members elected to the GAMA Board of Directors. Those board members serve 2 year terms and their elections are offset by a year so half the board seats are available in the annual election. The 2026 one just concluded and the winners of this year’s elections are
Board of Directors
- Production: Michael Maggiotto Jr., BEST Human Capital & Advisory Group
- Media & Events: Nicole Brady, SAHM Reviews
- Wholesale: Tiffany Reid, Southern Hobby Distribution
- Publisher: Heather O’Neill, 9th Level Games
- Creator: Eartha Johnson, LegalWATCH
Team Retail
- Jamie Mathy, Red Raccoon Games
- Lea-Anne Welter, Red Claw Gaming
- David Wheeler, Dragon’s Lair LLC
- Boyd Stephenson, Game Kastle – College Park
Note that Team Retail has their own set of directors specific to their division (the largest of them by far) and from that group they will select which one will serve on the larger GAMA board.
Last month’s poll results
New week, new boxes to obsess over—here they are!
- Compass Games’ site is loudly proclaiming that they are now shipping Mr. Lincoln’s War
- VaeVictis #185, which includes the Tempête sur le Ménez Hom game, is now available
- Slitherine & Matrix went on a bender this week
- The Field of Glory: Kingdoms – Burghers and Bombards DLC was released
- The Broken Arrow: Baltic Battalion DLC released just yesterday
- And today we’ve got the Command: Modern Operations – Tides of War DLC
- Stellar Tactics has been in development since pre-COVID and it’s finally here (h/t to Hethwill)
- This week on Wargame Vault
- Mike Lambo’s Commander: Romans v Dacians – A Solitaire Wargame is now available (and not showing on the Amazon store!)
- Hypersteel Meatgrinder expands the origina Hypersteel Nightmare with infantry, scouts, and cav
- Shoot First! is a solo spec-ops RPG-heavy game
- Wargames Atlantic released a set of French Resistance Women, but also a more-decorative-than-gameable 54mm sculpture of Patrick Harper from “Sharpe’s Rifles”
- Looks like The Coming Storm II and The Last Success from OSG are available for public purchase, now that pre-order shipping seems to be done
- How about free? Free sound good to you? Warfare Command System (WCS) game on Google Drive here for you
- Other new releases on Steam
- Industrial Legion is a combo FPS/RTS that’s 10% off thru 3 April for the launch
- Crown of Greed just released today, too, where you get all the success you can bribe
- Territorial Conquest is a combo RTS/4X game on the real-Earth map that starts in medieval times and history seems to run amok at that point; 40% thru 11 April and even at full price its less than a combo meal
- A Byte War answers the question “what if one of the games Encom stole from Flynn was an RTS?”
- Black Oak Workshop new dice releases
- New “Shadow” Kitty Clacks™ and let’s face it they’re way more ‘decorative’ than ‘functional’
- New “Cosmo” Kitty Clacks™ are also out and these you can kinda-sorta read from across the table
- The new Adventurer’s Pack 5 Dice Set set has a couple of different ‘decorative’ dice with limited utility but unlimited cool factor
Step right up and plunk down your pledge—this week’s picks are live. ️
- Catastrophe Games just launched Campaign: Bagration on Kickstarter, based on the Campaign: Fall Blau system they’ve had out for a few years now; it’s over 250% funded in the first few hours
- Compass Games has the next Air & Armor game on Kickstarter, so that’s starting the countdown toward ‘real’ release & shipping
- On Military Matters were busy at Adepticon this week, so no newsletter from them
- Modiphius put the new Paranoia: Five Clones from Alpha Complex book on pre-order, but there’s also a PDF option you can get right now
- Pre-orders are open for Jeremiah McCall’s upcoming book Designing Historical Games for Classrooms, A Practical Guide for Educators at Routledge
- This week on Kickstarter
- Dungeonrunner: Sands of Hagazan is the latest of the solo card adventures from Powercell games, with 3 new decks and a nice adventure map add-on
- Battle of the Seas, a pirate/naval game, is live on Kickstarter, but unlike many other projects this one’s already complete and ready to ship
- The first campaign from the new Buried Giant Studios1 is a reprint & expansion of ARCS
- And this week’s hopeless campaign is Deadly Metropolis, a superhero/Street Fighter mashup that didn’t even it make it to 5 figures of the 6 figures they were hoping for
- Unclaimed Victory: Glory & Empire is on pre-order through Old Guard Publishing
- Warlord’s got a bunch of Konflikt ’47 sets on pre-order
Your shelves won’t fill themselves—and sales do help.
- WDS ‘Game of the week’ is Napoleonic Battles: Campaign Waterloo for $29.95, on sale until Sunday
- Spring Sale on game-edition magazine subscriptions from S&T Press
- Alternative Armies’ Spring mega-sale is in progress right now
- Old World – Empires of the Indus DLC at GOG for 10% off
- Battalion S3: Operations and Training magazine on sale at Gamer’s Armory for under $45
- Renegade Game Studios has Nexus Ops at over 25% off
- Noble Knight has copies of ASL Starter Kit #3 – Vehicles (1st Printing) starting at $70
- Giant bundle of GM random tables books for a plethora of genres, with either 4 books for $1 or 47 of them for only $15
- BOGO sale on selected metal dice set from Dice Envy
- Kraken Dice have a B3G1 sale in conjunction with their appearance in WonderCon through next weekend
- Noble Knight’s “Penny Sale” is going right now, too – spend $20 on something and add another off their penny list
The Regiment’s latest dispatches are ready for review.
- First Impressions of Rules The Waves 3 : Expanded Battles DLC
- #TBT Classic Reviews ~ Theophrastus by Mayfair Games
- Mentioned In Dispatches S16 E9 – Sci-Fi Wargaming
- Saturday Night Fights ~ “General d’Armee 2”: The Battle of Eylau (Afternoon) (2)
- FL(W)GS Spotlight ~ Better Plays Gaming of Stow, OH
- First Impressions of Panzer Campaigns: Donbas ’43
- Connections Online 2026 – Registration is Open
- When and why RPGs and wargames split (video)
- AARs
- From The Armchair Dragoons Archives
- Back on 30 Jun 22, we previously published A wargame Spy Story from Len Deighton (Spy Story, Panther Books, 1974) by Rocky
- On 29 Apr 24, we live-streamed CO24 D2S2: Urban Warfare Wargaming: Past, Present, Future on our YouTube channel
- Something Else
- Gameplay this week
- Adepticon!
The Best Thing We Saw On Another Site This Week Was
This thread from Contrarian on BlueSky about figure scale and digging back through the source material to learn how they were measured
First, we have to realize that early gaming scales were retroactive: Wargamers measured their toy soldiers, guestimated the average height of a soldier, and called that a scale. The classic 54mm scale, for example, is based on Britain Ltd toy soldiers. www.wbritain.com
(It apparently took a while for wargamers to realize they’d accidentally based #miniatures scales on the average height of a 19th Century soldier. That’s a complication we’ll discuss later.)
Anyway, after Jack Scruby founded the first company explicitly manufacturing *gaming* miniatures, new scales were decided. Best I can tell, 20mm happened between 1959 and 1962. (I’m still researching!) “True 20mm” was already a term by 1967. fourcats.co.uk/mags/files/W… Note the mention of 25mm!
Ardwulf’s counter clipping stream covered traveling with wargames2
Various news & notes from the business end of the gaming world
- This week, Scott Thorne’s column talks about how all the recent minis releases are stretching customers’ wallets
- BoardGameWire’s report that More than half of board game designers in TTGDA survey have used generative AI in their work really deserves some much deeper follow-up given how harsh so many people are in speaking out about AI
- Rascal asks “What We Mean When We Talk About Crunch?”
- A bad bet by Epic Games on the future of Fortnight has now cost 1000 people their jobs
- Wargamers take to the tables for local tournament in Strathmore
- Matrix Games’ updates to their Nuclear War Simulator
Yesterday, the best job I ever had closed its doors for good and it was incredibly sad to part ways with the team. As you can plainly see in this video, the board game industry has truly suffered a major loss. I’m gonna miss y’all!#coworkers #worklife #boardgames
— Imagine All The Meeple (@toddpatriquin.bsky.social) 2026-03-28T16:12:15.995Z
Articles, advice, and ideas for those of you on the creative side
- Skeleton Code Machine asks “What is a degenerate game state?“
- Great article from Kevin here about the “iron triangle” of game development
- Thread from 42Ed about playtesting has some good process information
- Track this interesting-looking wargame map-making tool in pre-release discussions on BGG
most of the time you don’t want true randomness and/or simulation in a game. you think you do but you’re wrong and will get mad at us if you get it.
— Cat Manning (@catacalypto.bsky.social) 2026-03-29T06:38:21.072Z
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 12, 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
- 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)
- 1-3 May LexiCon 2026 (Lexington KY)
- 1-3 May PunchedCon (Conventry UK)
- 12-14 May King’s College London Wargaming Conference (London UK)
- 15-17 May CanGames 2026 (Ottawa ON)
Focusing on the practitioner world ~ don’t forget about the dedicated area in our forums for the wargame professionals!
- Five Wargames Every Force Design Process Needs (War on the Rocks)
- Kings College London Wargaming Week 2026: Wargaming Human Security (KCL) — to be held 12-14 May this year
- Think. Fight. Learn. Repeat. is the Fight Club podcast and you can find it on Spotify and other podcast platforms; something new to listen to on your morning walk!
- How do you wargame “Winning the War Before the First Shot” (Irregular Republic)
- This week, Wargaming Weekly got suspended from Substack and despite our chagrin that nothing new got published in time for #TN last week, we had nothing to do with Substack’s EW efforts here
- Pre-orders are open for Jeremiah McCall’s upcoming book Designing Historical Games for Classrooms, A Practical Guide for Educators (Routledge)
- Sixth iteration of Power Wargame provides strategic insights for leaders (USSTRATCOM)
- The Nuclear Aircraft Carrier Was ‘Sunk’: Australia’s Collins-Class Submarine Defeated A U.S. Navy Supercarrier In A Wargame (1945)
- Lithuania wargames security incident on Russian Kaliningrad transit train (EuroNews)
- War Gaming is Everything: Lessons from the Navy’s Golden Age of War Gaming (Hoover Institution)
- Cyber & Innovation Policy Institute Holds Multilateral Undersea Infrastructure Wargame (US Naval War College)
- This week, Mick Ryan talks about “boots on the ground” in Iran
- 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 latest article covers WHO guidance on National Health Simulation Exercise Programmes
- Get Hired! Anduril Industries has a posting for Senior Game Designer, Scenario Design (Sand Table)
Tonight, on Double-Entendre Theatre™ ——
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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