by It’s #TuesdayNewsday time! From the thrill of tactical tabletop combat to the high-stakes world of defense wargaming, we’ve gathered the most important updates you need to know. Let’s take a look at what happened this week.
This time next week, Connections Online will be in full swing. Register now for the best distributed professional wargaming conference out there.
This is a seminar/presentation-focused event for wargaming in the NatSec, academic, intel, NGO, etc fields. It is held entirely online, with a custom Discord server as the ‘home base’ very similar to the way we run our ACDCs.
Current agenda includes the following, with additional events to be added shortly (especially the game events)
| Event Name | Starts |
|---|---|
| Matrix Pro Sims Spotlight | Monday 1100 |
| Dietz Foundation Spotlight | Monday 1300 |
| Fight Club Spotlight on Games | Monday 1400 |
| Group W Spotlight | Monday 1500 |
| Professional Wargames on Demand | Tuesday 0900 |
| Dr Ezra Sidran Opening Talk | Tuesday 1000 |
| Wargaming the Far Future | Tuesday 1100 |
| Wargaming AI | Tuesday 1300 |
| Measuring the Value of Situation Awareness | Tuesday 1500 |
| Welcome Happy Hour | Tuesday 1600 |
| Professional Wargaming in Poland and Hungary | Wednesday 0900 |
| Gaming Neglected Aspects of the Operational Environment | Wednesday 1000 |
| Recent Books on Wargaming | Wednesday 1100 |
| Using AI in Wargames | Wednesday 1300 |
| Kriegsspiel Dice or Why there is no Luck in Wargaming | Wednesday 1500 |
| Battlegroup Wargame System to Battlegroup Clash: Baltics | Thursday 0800 |
| Wargaming the Future in PME | Thursday 1000 |
| Creating Future Scenarios for Modern Wargames | Thursday 1100 |
| Fight Club International – A Different Approach to Wargaming | Thursday 1300 |
| Liftoff 2.0 | Thursday 1600 |
| Battlegroup Clash: Baltics demo | Thursday 1600 |
| Wargaming in Civic Education | Friday 0900 |
| National Security Decision Making Game Scenario Development | Friday 1000 |
| Neustart – The Blackout Simulator | Friday 1200 |
all times US Eastern
GMT Games’ Spring sale launches today, and there’s a boatload of great deals available on their site. It’s basically 40% off of everything at the sale page on their site. Unlike some other GMT sales, this one’s open to everyone, and not just people who placed p500 orders.
Use coupon code GMTSpringSale2025 at checkout
GMT published their own buyers guide for the sale on their InsideGMT blog.
RIP to Paul – not just a long-time editor at White Dwarf, but also worked at Warlord Games for a number of years
RIP to the legendary Paul "Fat Bloke" Sawyer.*The* defining White Dwarf editor for many in the hobby.And a genuinely good bloke too.Rest easy.#RIPPaulSawyer#Nerdlings
— Toy Soldier Tom (@tomwd68.bsky.social) 2025-03-28T11:25:34.042Z
Holy balls that’s a LOT of new stuff!
- Wargames Illustrated issue #448 is now available
- Arete is now on Steam! We’ve covered the mobile OS version of it, but you can play it on the desktop now, too; it’s on sale until 8 April for the launch
- A couple of new releases through Blue Panther
- Midway 1981 will either make you nostalgic for old-school ASCII graphics, or thrilled that we’ve evolved beyond it
- New DLC released – Napoleon’s Eagles: Game of the Napoleonic Wars – Kosciuszko
- New to Microprose’s Arms Trade Tycoon: Tanks game – a WWII update that let’s you build and sell AFV’s in the 1940s; on sale through April 7th, too
- Each of these new sets from Warlord are pretty all-inclusive; they also all carry price tags north of $400
- A
coupleridiculous amount of other new releases from Warlord Games1- Start Collecting: Pike & Shotte: Thirty Years War
- Hail Caesar sets from Cutting Edge minis
- Later City State Of Akkad Army
- Elamite City-States Army Deal
- Early City-State Of Ur
- Early City-State Of Lagash
- Late Mycenaean Trojan Army
- Sea Peoples Army
- Later 18th & Early 19th Dynasty New Kingdom Egyptians (Late Bronze Age)
- Early Achaeans Or Mycenaeans Army
- Middle Kingdom Assyrian And Middle Kingdom Kassite Babylonian Army
- Mitanni Army Deal
- Old & Middle Kingdom Hittite Army Deal
- Pike & Shotte Wars of the Samurai sets
Time to get those orders in now and then either (a) complain that it’s 2 years late, and/or (b) be surprised when it gets here sooner than you thought
- An new 2-pack from Worthington Games, with that 60s-era boardgame aesthetic, as they’ve got both The American Revolution and American Civil War in a combined Kickstarter campaign
- New pre-order from Compass Games: Mr Lincoln’s War; it’s an actual pre-order, too, not a last-minute-orders-masquerading-as-a-Kickstarter, so it might be a little while before this one ships
- Skull Tales: Full Sail v2 just launched on Gamefound and you can see what’s in the box here
- Just launched today! Battles of Napoleon Volume II: Quatre Bras 1815 / Wartenburg 1813 from Sound of Drums is on Gamefound
- Free League’s got the Alien RPG “Evolved” edition on Kickstarter
- DVG has Huey Leader on Kickstarter, and since it didn’t rip off anyone’s game system name, we’ll include it
- Catastrophe Games has added Lonely Cairn on pre-order on their site
- A metric crapload of new pre-orders for Warlord’s Black Powder Epic Battles: Revolution! line
- Black Powder Epic Battles: Revolution! With George Washington Special Figure
- Black Powder Epic Battles: Revolution! Rulebook
- Commanders
- British Army Brigade
- Continental Army Brigade
- Hessians & Allies Brigade
- Continental Army Bundle
- Loyalist Army Bundle
- Casualty Markers
- All In Bundle (assuming you’re OK skipping a car payment)
Looking for a deal? Getting more bang for your buck?
- WDS “Game of the week” is Bonaparte’s Peninsular War for $29.95
- Nothing from OMM this week since they were goofing off at Adepticon all weekend
- Autumnatic Success is the new dice set from Dice Envy, and you can save 10% with coupon code HARVEST at checkout
- MM’s got Wolfpack: The North Atlantic Convoy Struggles on sale
- Some Europa series games on Noble Knight right now: Narvik and Fall of France and Case White
It’s been a busy week for the regiment; here’s what you might’ve missed!
- Adepticon 2025, part one of ??
- Mentioned In Dispatches S14 E9 ~ US Army Command & General Staff College Wargaming Students
- Podcast Preview: Are Game Awards Just Popularity Contests
- Blue & Gray Deluxe Edition – A Faithful Deluxe Reprint of Two SPI Quads
- First Impressions of Congress of Vienna by GMT Games
- Wednesday War Stories ~ Cunningham’s Greatest Victory…or Massacre? The Battle of Cape Matapan, 28 March 1941
- AARs
GameplayConvention gaming this week
The Best Thing We Saw On Another Site This Week Was
Rob Salkowitz’s column about comics journalism, where everything here is also applicable to the (war)gaming journalism world, too
Social media is piling on to the problem. Google isn’t our only false friend here. X, né Twitter, has been going through some things, as we probably know by now. But one of its less flamboyant offenses is actually one of its worst: it is deprioritizing tweets with links to external content in its algorithm, throttling the ability of promotional posts to reach a wider audience. Facebook has done something similar.
Again, they have business reasons for doing this. Neither X nor Facebook wants people leaving its ecosystem to go clicking off into the wilderness, because that hurts their own metrics and ability to generate ad revenue.
The net effect has not only killed traffic referred by those sites, and thus ad revenue to publishers and writers, it is also threatening crowdfunding because of diminished ability to reach an audience of potential supporters.
This week’s best written coverage from the wargaming world |
The best videos this week from our wargaming friends
|
Ardwulf’s counter clipping stream talked about prepping for wargaming, and the usual other stuff
Various news & notes from the business end of the gaming world
- eSim Games has temporarily pulled access to Steel Beasts while they sort out some of the features for the game, given the “changing geopolitical situation””2
- Tied in with Adepticon, this week was “miniatures week” at ICv2; as a part of their coverage, they’ve also got an interview with Loren from Catalyst Games Labs
- BoardGameWire has the scoop on the Alliance Game Distributors outcome after the Diamond Comics crash-&-burn
- Rascal reports on the Free5e “system”
- Decision Games’ latest feedback survey for S&T #353 is up; they have another on for their upcoming 30YW Quad reprint
- Nice short video here from PBS on a US military veteran-turned-minis-wargamer
You may know me as the Solo Games Specialist at @ledergames.bsky.social, but I was actually brought on for my expertise in Latin. The team has been working day and night to translate two of our titles–Root and Oath–into Latin! I can't wait to make our games more accessible to a broader audience.
— Beyond Solitaire (@beyondsolitaire.bsky.social) 2025-04-01T14:10:31.902Z
Don’t forget to check our consolidated event & convention calendar for more!
You can also submit your own events for our calendar here.
- Wargame Days at The Gamer’s Armory in Cary, NC ~ 6 April and 4 May
- Next confirmed live event is BuckeyeGameFest, 1-4 May 2025
- Next confirmed virtual event is Connections Online, 7-12 April, 2025
Other Conventions & Events
- 3-7 Apr Game mORe (Albany OR) <– THIS WEEKEND!
- 4-7 Apr Game On Expo (Phoenix AZ) <– THIS WEEKEND!
- 7-13 Apr Connections Online 2025 (Armchair Dragoons HQ Online)
- 10-13 April ChaosiumCon (Ann Arbor MI)
- 24-28 Apr HMGS Little Wars (Naperville IL)
- 25-27 Apr Spring Offensive 2025 (Burlington NC)
- 26 April GUWS Kriegsspiel Game Day (Washington DC)
- 28 Apr-5 May The War Room at Buckeye Game Fest (Columbus OH)
- 1-5 May Buckeye Game Fest (Columbus OH)
Thanks to participants for a fulfilling demo-test of "Drachen" (Recon Series Volume II after "Coast Watchers") including none other than @heavycardboard.bsky.social!
From our friend-of-the-Dragoons, Ed Bryan
Origins is bringing back the consignment store. A great way of getting rid of old games, and acquiring new to you games. The Gen Con auction team is running it. It’ll run Friday and Saturday 10 to 8. All items must be preregistered. They can be dropped off Thursday 12 to 5. Pick up for leftovers is on Sunday along with payouts. This is the first year back after a many year hiatus, so come on by and find some great deals.
Hit this link for more info!
Focusing on the practitioner world ~ don’t forget about our dedicated area in our forums for the wargame professionals!
- Bringing wargames into an ROTC program
- Bundeswehr Wargaming Handbook (PDF DOWNLOAD)
- This podcast episode on “The Zelensky Playbook” discusses some professional wargames that examine the situation in Taiwan
- A podcast discussing bout to “revolutionize” wargaming with AI
- The Triple Tap Raid On the Engels Bomber Base Cost Russia $960 Million
- Are the Russians breathing new life into the MiG-35?
- Sweden Is Rearming For War With Russia
- This week, Mick Ryan’s Big Five focuses on the Pacific
- The next GUWS webinar is Spyships, Satellites, and SAMs on 8 April, followed by Modeling Urban Warfare: how can we model the complexity of urban space? on 6 May
Exercise Support Officers #wargaming in progress using LandPower, a #wargame #Simulation for running a student staff exercise here at CGSC
Something neat from outside the wargaming world we thought was worth sharing
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.
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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