by Prepare for a low-stakes briefing with high-fun energy—#TuesdayNewsday awaits! ⏺️ ➡️
The word “legend” is over-used in the hobby gaming world, but it seems insufficient to describe Lou Zocchi, who passed away late last week. Most folks know him for his Gamescience dice1 but he also founded the first distribution company for RPGs, designed award-winning wargames and one of the first Star Trek based ship combat games, invented the d1002, and manned one of the most entertainingly-eclectic convention booths you’d ever seen. He’s been in the CSR Hall of Fame since 1986. Lou had recently hit his 91st birthday.
Reports on his passing from
- ICv2’s news article and a nice memory of lessons learned from Lou
- Chaosium’s memoriam
- Reddit thread in r/dice
- ENWorld news & discussion thread
- Old School FRP
- Lou’s own history of Gamescience
Yeah, there’s no real “second story” after that one….
New games incoming—try not to add everything to cart.
- Wargame Design Studio released their new American Revolutionary War game and right now you can only get it from them, and not yet on Steam (see below)
- No Retreat! The Russian Front – adapted from the board game of the same name – is now on Steam from Avalon Digital
- Looks like Compass Games started shipping The Great Hunger even if they hadn’t informed their website yet
- New for Crusader Kings III on Steam from Paradox
- Crusader Kings III: Chapter V
- Crusader Kings III: Symbols of Authority
- Crusader Kings III: Songs of the Realm music pack, if that’s your jam
- Halcyon Miniatures Set 7 from Alternative Armies
- The Shepherds Transit is a scenario for a new TTRPG called Outside the Wire that’s coming soon, over at DTRPG; quickstart includes basic rules info, too
- This week on Wargame Vault
- Scrap Hounds: A Solo Mech Skirmish Game of Gritty Survival pretty much answers “what’s it about” in the title
- Dragon and Republic – The Sino French War 1884-85 has both tactical and campaign rules for naval warfare
- Ad Astra Games has a couple of new releases
- Abbreviated Architect of Worlds for Traveller that condenses a 180p book into about 8 pages, at their site and on Wargame Vault
- Attack Vector: Tactical Ship Book 2, at their site and on Wargame Vault
- Other new releases on Steam
- Death by Scrolling is a new release from MicroProse and you can get it on the Nintendo Switch, too
- City States: Medieval just released as a part of Steam Medieval Fest and is on sale until 4 May
- Frontline: Afrika Korps dropped last week and c’mon, you know what this is about, right?
- Cthulhu meets the Boy Scouts in the new Call of Cthulhu: Campfire Tales book from Chaosium
- RISK G.I. JOE: Special Missions is now shipping from Renegade Game Studios
- DICE!
- Lock Horns games started shipping Penitent and fulfilled the crowdfunding early‼️
- Per GMT’s April newsletter, these all started shipping this week
A fresh wave of “should I back this?Of course you should!” has arrived.
- New p500 games from GMT’s April newsletter
- Foxes and Lions – Renaissance City States in the Age of Machievelli co-designed by FotD Liz Davidson, with Paul Wright
- Chariots of the Gods, a module to expand the BGOH Chariots of Fire game with battles in India’s “Vedic” era
- Liberty! A Military History Survey of the American Revolution, the book from Mark Miklos
- Cuba Libre 5th printing
- Panzer 4th printing
- These “Landmark Dice” on Kickstarter are incredibly cool, and they’ve got a LOT of funding, too
- This week’s newsletter from On Military Matters includes a bunch of historical books, especially from Pen & Sword and Savas Beatie
- The relaunch of the skirmish minis game Butcher & Bolt launched on Gamefound; this is an example of a company taking backer feedback to heart and shutting down an earlier campaign to rework & relaunch based on customer comments
- Four new pre-orders from Compass Games went up in the past week or so
- Pirate Hunter: 1718 is a solitaire game that gives off heavy vibes of Rocky’s “adventure wargames”
- To Kyiv! covers the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine
- Iberian Tide adapts the “tide” system to the Spanish Civil War
- Combat! Blitzkrieg takes the series to early WW2
- This week on Kickstarter
- Battle Box – Age of Sail launched as a ship-to-ship wargame that fits in the equivalent of an Altoids tin
- The 80s classic of man-to-man medieval mayhem is back, as Cry Havoc is on Kickstarter and already doubled its goal
- The latest Hârn book is on Kickstarter, as HârnWorld: Kingdom of Evael is over 10x the funding goal with over 3 weeks to go
- Ares Games launched Mega Empires: The Far East just today and we actually watched the funding amount roll over past its goal while grabbing the link for the news
- Big batch of Warlord pre-orders
- Soviet Naval Brigade Weapon Teams, Anti-Tank Rifle Team, Medium Mortar Team, Anti-Tank Team, and Forward Observer Team
- Soviet Naval Platoon and a ZiS-3 DIvisional Gun With Soviet Naval Brigade Crew
- Crossing The Volga Bundle and the Defence Of Sevastopol Bundle
- German Heavy Weapons Platoon and German Pak 40 Anti-Tank Gun
- Cross Of Iron – German Grenadiers Starter Army
- The Reich’s Praetorians – Waffen-SS Starter Army
Savings spotted—let’s take a closer look.
- WDS ‘Game of the week’ is Modern Campaigns: Middle East ’67 for $29.95, on sale until Sunday
- Age of Wonders 4: Collector’s Bundle is 20% off at GOG right now
- Big Humble Bundle deal on Modiphius’ DUNE game, in both physical and digital formats
- RBM Studios has a 30% off sale3 thru 24 April with coupon code SPRING at checkout
- Gloomhaven PC game at 70% off? Wow
- Noble Knight has copies of Canadian Crucible – Brigade Fortress at Norrey starting at $160 and ranging up to $330
- Miniature Market has Bretwalda on sale this week for about $30 off
- Some bundles from Tiny Battle Publishing
- Platoon Commander bundle with 4 games in there
- Dark War bundle with the RPG and pair of novels
- The Republic’s Struggle is 10% off NAC Wargames right now
A full week of content in one handy list—enjoy!
- 5 Questions With. . . Brandon Rospond of On Military Matters
- Space Empires 4X Endgame: All Good Things Part 2
- Convention Report ~ CircleDC 2026
- Mentioned In Dispatches S16 E12 – Summer & Convention Lookahead
- Saturday Night Fights ~ “Lasalle 2”: “A Peninsular Folly” (2)
- Little Wargame with Italy ’43
- Armchair Dragoons Reviews Sea & Steel
- Connections Online 2026 – Starts Today
- AARs
- From The Armchair Dragoons Archives
- Back on 31 Dec 18, we released 2018 – Looking Back and Looking Ahead, part 1 by bayonetbrant
- On 18 Jun 25, we released Song For War North Africa in the Wargame HQ at Origins 2025, Wednesday early evening on our YouTube channel
- Gameplay this week
- This week in our forums we’re asking what’s on your table?
The Best Thing We Saw On Another Site This Week Was
Not specifically about gaming, but this article from The New Yorker talks about “Our Longing For Inconvenience” and it might seem relevant to the boardgame-minded among us living in a digital world
Pining for Walkmans and VCRs is, of course, an offshoot of a larger obsession with the not so distant past. People revel in the nostalgia of ten or twenty or thirty years ago by digging up old photos and posting them—photos from birthday parties or career milestones or from a moment spent sitting under the final sparks of daylight on a beach. For many of us the year 2016 wasn’t exactly ideal, but at least it wasn’t this nonideal time. There is a longing for some previous era, if not actually a desire to return to it. I want my childhood back, even if I don’t necessarily want to be a child again. In some backward way, this reminds me of Sun Ra, who spent a lifetime insisting that Earth was not the place for him, and that he had to get to an unknown elsewhere, an elsewhere that would be better simply by virtue of being somewhere else.
Ardwulf’s counter clipping stream covered the recent GMT monthly update and North Africa WW2 games
Various news & notes from the business end of the gaming world
- GAMA are looking to hire a Marketing & Communications Director—their 1893746193rd in the last 8 years—and you don’t have to be in Columbus since it’s hybrid
- BoardGameWire sums up the changes on the GAMA Board following the most recent annual board member elections at GAMA, the new board of directors was also elected, with former VP Meredith Placko replacing Nicole Brady as the President of the Board, and Ross Thompson being elected as the new VP of the Board; Tiffany Reid (Secretary) and Jamie Mathy (Treasurer) were both re-elected to their seats
Now, your next question is probably “why wasn’t there a press release from GAMA about this that you can find on their website?” and that’s probably best answered by the bullet immediately above this one - This week, Scott Thorne’s column covers the impact of across-the-board discounting on a retailer’s bottom line
- Rascal has an extended interview with Monte Cook
- ICv2 reports on the next round of lawyers getting involved in the Diamond bankruptcy; seems like the lawyers are the only ones coming out ahead here
- Runeworks Games is using their profits to pay off school lunch debts in Madison, WI (h/t to TTRPG Insider for making us aware of this story)
- Fort Circle’s wrapup of CircleDC and a look at 2027 plans
- BAFTA pulled this trailer from their 2026 game awards because it contains “challenging material” but has no problem with an endless litany of stylized violence and death as long as it’s a shooter/war/assassination game 🤷
- Record-breaking attendance for SALUTE 53 in London, as topped 7000 attendees for the day
- Company Updates
- Armored Brigade changelog from Matrix Games
- Army of the Potomac: Fair Oaks/ Seven Pines’ the McClellan Gambit by Mark Herman, from InsideGMT
- Wargame Design Studio is now on Steam!
Evil Hat Quarterly Sales Numbers Q1 2026 docs.google.com/spreadsheets…Folder of past reports (dating back to 2016) drive.google.com/drive/folder…
— Fred Hicks (@deadlyfredly.bsky.social) 2026-04-14T17:18:10.190Z
Articles, advice, and ideas for those of you on the creative side
- Skeleton Code Machine talks about clearing up “markets” in game’s tableaus
- Gen Con Behind the Scenes: Training the Next Wave of Tabletop Designers
- A podcast about teaching board game design at the university level
- This thread on BGG about your most unusual game design ideas
- Follow along with the designer of Jungle Command as it winds its way toward Kickstarter launch
- Influential game designers have roots at Hampshire College (Daily Hampshire Gazette)
I find the most common miscommunication when playing a prototype I’ll ask the designer why a particular feature is in the game And they’ll explain the feature and how it works or whatever development problem is solving And I’ll have to say “I understand how it works, but why is it here”
— Eric Lang (@ericlang.bsky.social) 2026-04-20T14:31:04.185Z
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 ~ June 7 and July 5
- Next confirmed live event is The Wargame HQ at ORIGINS (Columbus OH), 17-21 June 2026
- Next virtual event is The ACDC 15-17 January 2027
Upcoming Conventions & Events
- 1-3 May LexiCon 2026 (Lexington KY)
- 1-3 May PunchedCon (Coventry UK)
- 1-3 May Stack Académie (Montreal QC)
- 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)
- 22-25 May Gamex 2026 (Los Angeles CA)
- 24-24 May Tre Kronor (Haverhill UK)
- 29-31 May ConCarolinas (Charlotte NC)
- 29-31 May UK Games Expo 2026 (Birmingham UK)
- 5-8 Jun Bordercon (Albury NSW)
- 12-14 Jun Travcon UK 2026 (Bedford UK)
Come join us at the Wargame HQ as we bring wargaming back to best of the big game conventions
Our Origins countdown articles start tomorrow (22 April) and will continue weekly until we get to Origins. Look for more info from us each week as we get closer to our big wargaming showcase at one of the country’s biggest tabletop gaming conventions
Origins Details ~ Wargame HQ Events ~ War College Events ~ Wargaming at Origins ~ Exhibitor Spotlights ~ Origins History ~ Q&A ~ Final Countdown
Focusing on the practitioner world ~ don’t forget about the dedicated area in our forums for the wargame professionals!
- This week, Wargaming Weekly asks “Are you looking for a wargame about Russia’s shadow fleet?”
- War Game Exercise Demonstrates How Social Media Manipulation Works (Dark Reading)
- A Russian space nuke was focus of US wargame, Space Command says (Defense One)
- US Air Force debuts operational AI wargame system (DefenseNews)
- The US Air Force Employed Its AI-Enabled ‘WarMatrix’ System in March Wargames (National Interest)
- This week, Mick Ryan’s talking about strategic momentum
- The next GUWS webinar is Evaluating Wargaming as a Methodology on 27 April followed by An all-threat approach to improved decision-making through games on 4 May
- PaxSims latest article explains why a “wargaming czar” would be a bad idea
- Get Hired! Hackajob has a posting for a Wargame Developer
Exciting news! We are partnering with Hex War to digitize some of our analogue games. Starting with the GOAT that is Phil Sabin's 'Take That Hill!'. Look out for this wargame primer hitting the app stores on 18th May. Game demo showing today at Modern Day Marine.
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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Best summary site on the interwebs!
thanks!
Thanks for the update,did not know about Combat! Blitzkrieg going up on preorder.