by The dice of destiny 🎲 are rolling 🔄 —it’s time for #TuesdayNewsday. ➡️
Ouch
Current status.
— Sebastian Bae (@sebastianbae.bsky.social) 2026-04-05T17:26:12.964Z
“Native Americans were making dice, gambling, and exploring probability thousands of years before their Old World counterparts” from Colorado State University via EurekAlert tells you all about how there were rudimentary dice and other randomizers present in North America hundreds of years before the ones we know of in Europe.
The research conducted by Colorado State University Ph.D. student Robert J. Madden indicates that dice, games of chance, and gambling have been a persistent feature of Native American culture for at least the last 12,000 years, with the earliest examples appearing at Late Pleistocene Folsom-period archaeological sites in Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico. These artifacts predate the earliest known Old World dice by more than 6,000 years.
“Historians have traditionally treated dice and probability as Old World innovations,” Madden said. “What the archaeological record shows is that ancient Native American groups were deliberately making objects designed to produce random outcomes, and using those outcomes in structured games, thousands of years earlier than previously recognized.”
Image details: Late Pleistocene (13,000 to 11,700 BP), Early Holocene (11,700 to 8,000 BP), Middle Holocene (8,000 to 2,000 BP), and Late Holocene (2,000 to 450 BP) diagnostic and probable prehistoric Native American dice: (a, d) Signal Butte, Nebraska (Middle Holocene), NMNH-A437076, NMNH-550791; (b) Agate Basin, Wyoming (Early Holocene), UW-11327; (c, f) Agate Basin, Wyoming (Late Pleistocene), UW-OA111, UW OA448; (e, g) Lindenmeier, Colorado (Late Pleistocene), NMNH-A442165, NMNHA440429; (h) Irvine, Wyoming (Late Holocene). (Figures 1a, d, e, and g courtesy of the Division of Anthropology, Smithsonian Institution, American Museum of Natural History. Figures 1b, c, f, and h courtesy of the Department of Anthropology, University of Wyoming.)
The Annual Professional/Practitioner Wargaming Conference, Co-Sponsored & Hosted by the Armchair Dragoons
Although our core events are set to run TU-WE-TH from 1000-1600 US Eastern time, we’ve got a remarkably robust slate of extended events, including our busiest Monday ever. We have presenters literally around the world (Poland to Australia and many points in between). Most professional military conferences require some travel for attendance, so this is your best way to sample that world if you’re looking in from the hobby side. For those of you already in the professional space, you can bring all sorts of value back to your organizations without ever filing a travel voucher.
These releases are ready to deploy straight to your table.
- S&T issue #358 has been shipped to subscribers and is now available to the public, with the included Pensacola 1779-1782 game
- Paper Wars issue #113, with includes Jim Werbaneth’s game Inchon, MacArthur’s Gambit, is now shipping
- Wargames Illustrated #460 is now shipping
- VUCA Sims has moved Operation Overlord off their pre-order page and into their shop, so we’re counting this as “released”
- The Battle of New Market is a new ACW game from Bill Molyneaux, available through Blue Panter
- Dawn of Battle Scenario Pack #5 includes 20 battles from almost 500 BCE up through Cerignola in the 16th century; you need the base game to play
- White Dog Games’ site says that La Conqueste is now available, as you play the French holding off the English during the French & Indian War in North America
- This week on Wargame Vault
- One Page Rules has a new “card wargame” version that replaces the models needed for most OPR games with flat cards, similar to Battlegrounds or ONUS!
- Hill 226 is a print-&-play WW2 game set during the Battle of Kursk
- Big EZ Armies WW2 bundle of print-&-play paper armies
- Free League released the City of My Nightmares campaign for their Vaesen game
- Asturias 1936-1937 The Spanish Civil War is new from NAC Wargames
- DICE!
- Dice Envy’s new 10pc set is the “Summon Elemental” acrylics
- Another big stacking-freebies sale from Kraken Dice; there’s literally no reason to ever pay full price or not get any bonus products from Kraken as often as they put things on scale
- 2 new “way of war” theme bundles from Against The Odds Magazine/TPS, each with 3 games
Here’s what’s gathering backers across the hobby.
- VaeVictis #186 is on pre-order and includes the Battle of the Marne 1914 game
- Multiple pre-orders now open over at Fort Circle Games, conveniently-timed for their CircleDC convention
- Night Witches is finally out there
- Peace 1905 on the treaty ending the Russo-Japanese War
- A More Perfect Union — note, not the game of the same name from Catastrophe Games that’s on our Origins program — about wrangling your way through the Constitutional Convention
- Dark City Games removed the “coming soon” label from The Towers of Ilium on their site but don’t be fooled – their social media posts are saying 15 April for shipping; it’s a solo RPG/adventure wargame starring Achilles
- This week’s newsletter from On Military Matters includes a bunch of minis for Marcher, Empires at War and a bunch of magazines
- Jersey New Jersey & A Strong War from Form Square Games are on Gamefound
- Ares Games has The Hunt on pre-order; it’s a WW2 espionage & intel game
- Modiphius has Sovereign – Fall of Wormwood on pre-order2 and it’s a sci-fi card game that is built around a bunch of different factions and includes 6 out of the box
- VUCA Sims has replaced Operation Overlord on their pre-order page with…
- A “revised first edition” of Imperial Elegy that gets players from the colonial competitions of the mid-19th century until WW1 breaks out
- The Far Seas, which covers “German cruiser operations at the onset of World War I” — so commerce raiding, evasion, and a long journey home3
- Saga: Vikings vs Anglo-Saxons is on pre-order from Phalanx, but don’t ask us to speculate on when it might finally arrive
- Pre-orders from Steve Jackson Games
- Munchkin Warhammer 40,000: Grudges And Gore is an expansion on, well, the obvious and it’ll start shipping next week
- Brigand’s Bluff is mostly dice & bullshit, but the pirate theme might appeal to some folks
- Europa Simulazioni has a couple of new pre-orders out there
- The Final Campaigns I (1814) covers the late Napoleonic campaigns
- Monte Grappa 1917 covers a WW1 battle in Northern Italy, as another game in their series of WW1 games to go with things like Strafexpedition 1916
- A couple of new WW2 figs from Warlord Games
Time to deploy some smart shopping strategies—here’s what’s marked down.
- WDS ‘Game of the week’ is Squad Battles: Eagles Strike for $29.95, on sale until Sunday; this version includes all the latest engine/graphics updates to the late-war ETO WW2 game
- Europa Simulazioni has Custoza, Fields of Doom on sale over 25% off
- Big collection of classic Tunnels & Trolls material on Bundle of Holding
- For “First Contact Day” Modiphius is offering 10% off their Star Trek Adventures Second Edition Core Rulebook with coupon code FIRSTCONTACT26 at checkout, until 10 April
- Noble Knight has copies of The Greatest Day – Battle for Utah Beach starting at $220
Here’s your weekly intel packet from The Regiment.
- Armchair Dragoons Reviews Brief Border Wars II
- CincyCon 2026
- Mentioned In Dispatches S16 E10 – Getting A Job in the Tabletop Industry
- Saturday Night Fights ~ “A Fistful of TOW 3”: To the Beaches Beyond
- Armchair Dragoons Reviews Unconditional Surrender! Western Campaigns
- Lissa Takes Two ~ The Two Faces of There Must Be A Victory
- Falling Stars A hybrid wargame/RPG that deserved more
- AARs
- From The Armchair Dragoons Archives
- Back on 1 Nov 23, we dropped My Go-To Game: Lock ‘n Load Tactical Digital by Marc M
- On 15 Jan 24, we dropped 2024 ACDC Welcome Happy Hour on our YouTube channel
- Gameplay this week
- This week in our forums we’ve got a new member talking about a design in progress
- The merch shop should be getting some new things soon
The Best Thing We Saw On Another Site This Week Was
Ray Weiss released an online version of his book A Contemporary Guide to Wargame Design with a printed version coming before too long
What makes wargames unique among strategy games is the narrative they produce. Any game can be strategic. A euro game can demand hard optimization decisions. But wargames offer a kind of operational freedom that generates stories. Not scripted narratives handed to the player, but emergent ones built from the interaction of historically plausible forces, terrain, logistics, and human decision-making. When you play a good wargame, you are not just solving a puzzle. You are participating in something that feels like history, and the decisions you make create a narrative that is believable because the simulation underneath is honest about its constraints.
Ardwulf’s counter clipping stream covered strategic-level ACW games
Various news & notes from the business end of the gaming world
- This week, Scott Thorne’s column covers WotC inducing heart failure among store owners
- BoardGameWire’s latest is German Mensa unveils full slate of nominees for this year’s MinD Spielepreis
- Rascal points out that AI Can’t Replicate My Terrible Sense of Humor
- ICv2 is going to be launching a “Game Store Week” with their coverage in 2 weeks
- If you want to be the flagship news source for the hobby industry, shouldn’t your “channel checks” of general retail outlets range farther afield than a 10-minute drive from your house? Your staff are on the road all the time; check local stores around the country while you’re out there!
- How a minister and a GP created the UK’s biggest tabletop gaming event (BBC)
- This New Game Convention Is Trying To Make It Fair For Indie Creators, But Maths Is Hard (The Gamer)
- Compass Games are surveying the audience about boxed games being reprinted from former Command Magazine games
Articles, advice, and ideas for those of you on the creative side
- Skeleton Code Machine talks about borrowing from dungeon crawls for combat in other games
- ButtonShy games has a card game design challenge for you — 18 cards, no shuffling
- From “Playing a Role” to “Role-Playing Games”: The Genealogy and History of the Term “Role-Playing” (Int’l Journal of Role-Playing)
- As noted above, Ray Weiss released his book A Contemporary Guide to Wargame Design on itch.io
I've been ratting away for the last while on a Python program to render world data in map for, largely to support my own universe-building project.This thread will document that effort.
— Ardwulf the Traveller (@ardwulf.bsky.social) 2026-04-06T17:59:26.576Z
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
- 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)
- 16-17 May Chimera Con (Dublin IRL)
- 21-25 May BGG.Spring (Dallas TX)
- 22-24 May Enfilade (Tacoma WA)
Who here is headed to Circle DC this week and what are you playing or showing off?
— Dan Bullock (@danbullock.bsky.social) 2026-04-06T20:09:52.235Z
Focusing on the practitioner world ~ don’t forget about the dedicated area in our forums for the wargame professionals!
- The Canadian Army is leaning heavily into wargaming as part of their modernization efforts (Canadian Army)
- Wargaming Weekly is back on the ‘net so now we just need some new content!
- First Sergeant Academy sharpens readiness through wargaming, data-driven leadership (DVIDS)
- USSPACECOM executes inaugural APOLLO INSIGHT commercial integration wargame series (USSpaceCom)
- Where the army does not use AI (Algorithm Watch)
- War gaming in the age of AI (Politico)
- A couple of good articles & notes on LinkedIn4
- The next GUWS webinar is today! Wargaming Lessons for Intelligence Analysts & What I’ve Learned Playing Red is at 4pm US Eastern, and then there’s 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 Facilitating Learning in Tabletop Exercises and Wargames: A Field Guide Grounded in Adult Learning Science
- Get Hired! SAIC has a posting for Wargame Analyst
Picking away at cards and playtesting updates for Brigade Commander. This is really going on the backburner as I have much larger fish to fry right now, but hopefully it'll get there in the next few months.
— Evan D'Alessandro (@evandalessandro.bsky.social) 2026-04-02T21:04:34.679Z
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.
Feel free to talk back to us either in our discussion forum, or in the comments below.
Thanks Brant for the point to the Avalanche Press satirical piece. I found it insightful, humorous, and useful. Keep up the great work with Tuesday Newsday and all of the other Atlas-like work you are doing for the wargaming hobby/industry.