by It’s Tuesday, and that means it’s time for #TuesdayNewsday! From the latest releases in tabletop games to cutting-edge developments in digital wargaming and professional defense simulations, we’ve got your weekly briefing covered.
Golden Geek Awards were announced last week. Your “wargame” category lacked anything resembling a classic wargame.
- Winner – Arcs
- Runner Up – A Gest of Robin Hood
- Runner Up – Dune: War for Arrakis
But Beyond Solitaire did win for best podcast, so that’s pretty cool 👍
Catalyst Games has purchased Iron Wind Metals, so the ghosts of Ral Partha are now in the hands of the Battletech and Shadowrun
There’s some personal motivation discussed in the press release also
“Last July marked my 42nd anniversary in the game industry, and I had no plans to quit any time soon,” said Mike Noe, President of Iron Wind Metals. “However, Melissa, my partner in life and in Iron Wind, has been battling health issues and now needs me with her as often as possible. So, after more than 40 years in the game industry and more than 20 with Iron Wind Metals, it was time for me to step back and take care of my family.
Let’s all wish Melissa well, and look forward to what Catalyst does with the legacy of Iron Wind Metals.
Reminder that the CSR Ballots are out and you can cast your votes here
- Mattel’s CEO says that toy & game manufacturing is not coming back to the US, but might end up moving out of China; if Mattel and Hasbro aren’t bringing manufacturing back to the US, how/why would small- and mid-size game publishers do it?
- How much do this week’s announcements of tariff “pauses” impact things? One publisher doesn’t think much
- BoardGameWire has a deeper dive into the pause and the race for shipping containers
- And Roger Miller (Revolution Games) is telling you that domestic capability is not there
- A column from Rascal that does talk some about the different categories that could apply to tariffs on games
- Matt Forbeck makes a good point about the volatility of the tariffs
- Pushing Cardboard reports that Revolution Games are trying to rush their next game out of China before the tariffs change again
From our perspective, 20% was pretty much fatal to our business. 30% is basically the same as 145% in terms of whether we can actually afford to order our games.
— Drayer Ink 🧡💛💚💙🩵💜🤎🖤🩶🤍 (@drayerink.bsky.social) 2025-05-12T17:25:30.389Z
Just a reminder
Y'all . . .We can tell by the comments on forum posts and on social media, who is/n't reading #TuesdayNewsday!
— Armchair Dragoons (@armchairdragoons.bsky.social) 2025-05-07T21:32:14.000Z
Hitting the shelves (and webstores) near you now!
- Wargame Design Studio has released Panzer Campaigns: Poland ’39, which includes the latest version of the engine and 77 different scenarios
- The Wargaming Company has released The First Battle Lost, 1809 in Germany, Series 3 campaign guide for Et Sans Resultat, and a pretty awesome bundle with their minis, too
- Worthington has released Modern Diplomacy: A Solitaire Bookgame through Amazon
- Blue Panther has released Off The Line: Expansion #1, which adds the Brits to the game
- Modiphius has released their new Forgotten Ruin “adventure wargame” that brings their Five Leagues/Five Parsecs system to modern & near-future skirmish wars
- MMP has Beyond Valor back in stock, as of about 1800 EDT on 5 May
- The new Flames of War focus is on the PTO, with the following products releasing this week, and more coming soon
- Warlord released a handful of single frames for their Bolt Action! minis that each include 3-6 minis but no assembly instructions
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
- Want to get in on a pre-order of TRL’s Under an Iron Sky 4th ed? Follow the cryptic instructions here
- Worthington just put 3 new “travel games” on Kickstarter together: Battles of the American Revolution, Battles of the War of 1812, and Battles of the Mexican-American War, and each small box has 2 battles, each with a double-sided mounted map
- Because Hermann Luttmann didn’t yet have a game with everybody he’s now got The Twelfth Battle: the Caporetto Campaign 1917 on pre-order with Hexasim
- OSR games claiming to be “white box” clones are a dime a dozen, even if they have off-the-wall artwork, but one that brings you classic Eastern/Asian fantasy tropes in an OSR feel might be different enough to get your attention
- Need a quick map for your adventure gaming? The Randice guys have you covered with another set of dice, for terrain and encounters
- Steve Jackson’s got a new set of micro-RPGs getting crowdfunded on BackerKit
Looking for a deal? Getting more bang for your buck?
- WDS “Game of the week” is Campaign Bautzen for $29.95
- Dice Envy has the new “Warp Speed Delta” dice and they’re on a launch sale with coupon code ZOOMER at checkout
- GMT’s big loyalty sale is going on right now, and they’ve added a bunch of copies of Great War Commander to the stock
- Miniature Market has Axis & Allies: Battle of the Bulge for under $50
- Looking for obscure stuff from Brian Train? Noble Knight’s got the old Fiery Dragon Productions version of his Algeria game
- Shadowrun 6th edition essentials bundle over at BoH gets you a lot of game pretty cheap
It’s been a busy week for the regiment; here’s what you might’ve missed!
- Saturday Night Fights ~ The Marengo Campaign for “Snappy Nappy”
- Buckeye Game Fest 2025
- An RPG space oddity? Space: 1999 – The Roleplaying Game
- Origins 2025 Countdown – Wargame HQ Events
- AARs
- Gameplay this week
- The Battle of Coronel for “When Dreadnoughts Rule the Seas”
- LC Baltic Vassal Tutorial – Basic Functionality
- Rebels Against Rebellion with David Thompson at Buckeye Game Fest 2025
- 8-Player Game of Littoral Commander: Indo-Pacific at Buckeye Game Fest 2025
- Island War Quad – Bloody Ridge at Buckeye Game Fest 2025
The Best Thing We Saw On Another Site This Week Was
Farewell to Lee Gold’s Alarums & Excursions, over at Chaosium’s site (guest column from Rick Meints)
In June of 1975 – the same year Greg Stafford founded Chaosium – Lee Gold published the first issue of Alarums & Excursions.
Sadly, I just found out that it has ceased publication just shy of its 50th anniversary, and over 590 monthly issues.
and in case you were wondering what A&E was1 here’s a primer
Each contributor wrote between 2-12 pages. Often, each contributor would write up some new material for whatever game(s) they were interested in, and also devote a lot of their page space, sometimes almost all of it, to commenting on what other people had published in previous issues. Each contributor typed up their article and mailed it to the APA’s editor.
Alarums & Excursions was one of the longest running, if not the longest running APAs ever. It won numerous “best amateur magazine” awards, especially in the 80s and 90s, including being inducted into the Origins Hall of Fame in 2022.
This week’s best written coverage from the wargaming world
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The best videos this week from our wargaming friends
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Ardwulf’s counter clipping stream supposedly talked about inspirational wargames
Various news & notes from the business end of the gaming world
- Big update for the mobile air-combat ‘board’ game Air Scarmush that you pick up at the different cell phone app stores
- ICv2 is reporting on the RAFM/Silver Fox shutdown, which we’d brought to you back on 8 April
- BoardGameWire talks to Ares Games about pushing ahead on signing import deals to bring games into US distro
- Rascal talks about how politics are now affecting tournament gameplay
- New update for MicroProse’s Ground Branch just dropped that includes AI enemy upgrades
- Pushing Cardboard is recruiting people to join the Discord server dedicated to the Blind Swords system
- Pacific Sky Games Launches New Publishing Model for Tabletop Wargame Creators
Found a dope game table today. It's 500 years old so hopefully they'll sell it to me on the cheap.
— Ross 💙🎲 MoreGamesPlease (@moregamesplease.com) 2025-05-11T17:26:36.064Z
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 ~ 1 June and 6 July
- Next confirmed live event is Origins Game Fair, 18-22 June 2025
- Next planned virtual event is the ACDC2, 16-18 January, 2026
Other Conventions & Events
- 15-19 May Compass Games Spring Expo 2025 (Meriden CT) <– THIS WEEKEND!
- 16-19 May CanGames (Ottawa ON) <– THIS WEEKEND!
- 16-19 May HexaCon 2025 (Rangiora NZ) <– THIS WEEKEND!
- 23-27 May Kublacon (Santa Clara CA)
- 23-26 May Strategicon: Gamex (Los Angeles CA)
- 30 May-3 Jun ConCarolinas (Charlotte NC)
- 18-23 Jun ORIGINS (Columbus OH)
- 20-23 Jun LibertyCon (Chattanooga TN)
- 20-23 Jun Southern Fried Gaming Expo (Atlanta GA)
- 28-29 Jun LuxConquest (Mondorf-les-Bains Luxembourg)
James fails again
Promised myself I wasn't going to buy any new games at PunchedCON this year… 😂
— James Buckley (@jsbuckley.bsky.social) 2025-05-12T15:22:06.583Z
Last week (and coming this week), we’ve shared the event titles, descriptions, and times/lengths of our games in the Wargame HQ, as well as all of the Origins War College (coming tomorrow). Bottom line: we’ve got over 170 wargame events set for the weekend, plus our Origins War College sessions. And those are just our wargame events, not counting stuff coming from other people. So yes, we’re basically running a mid-size wargaming convention nested inside of Origins.
Origins 2025 Coverage
Wargame HQ Events ~ War College Previews ~ Wargame HQ Previews ~ Exhibitor Spotlight ~ All The Wargaming Events ~ The Final Countdown ~ Setup & First Games ~ The Charles S Roberts Awards ~ The View From Above ~ WHQ Gameplay ~ AAR for A&A Arnhem ~ Random Tidbits ~ The AAR ~ Exhibit Hall
Focusing on the practitioner world ~ don’t forget about our dedicated area in our forums for the wargame professionals!
- A 1955 War Game Was NATO’s First Glimpse Into the Nuclear Abyss
- Time to update your operational-level modern-war-involving-China games?
- Making Wargame Discussions a Sharable, Analyzable Asset, with an AI tie-in
- A
brieflong history of US v Canada war plans, from FP - RAND was playing some interesting wargames and the result was “On the Extinction Risk from Artificial Intelligence”
- Update those ORBATs for the Singapore navy
- Michael Peck reviews Littoral Commander from a professional training point of view (paywall)
- This week, Mick Ryan talks about Russia & Ukraine with some stats
- The next GUWS webinar is Cobalt Rocks: Wargaming Seabed Operations on 20 May and the LARPing and Learning: Achieving Educational Objectives at CNN Academy on 3 June
- PaxSims looked into having students evaluate games involving AI
There is a fan organized "Littoral Commander: Baltic" #wargame online tournament! Gameplay begins June 1st, you can sign up for it below: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F…
— Sebastian Bae (@sebastianbae.bsky.social) 2025-05-07T13:13:18.763Z
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.
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.
Oh gosh, those old tin box edition Algerias!
Popular as it was, Fiery Dragon gave up on that packaging because too many boxes arrived from China dented.
They went to a larger cardboard box that fit the components better.
Fiery Dragon is now Platinum Dragon, but they haven’t put out any wargames in many years.
Meanwhile, the OSS edition is the definitive one, and the Microgame Design Group edition is the most obscure one as fewer were made of that than any other.
US-Canada war plans: unfortunately paywalled at Foreign Policy but my game “War Plan Crimson” (late 1930s invasion) is still available from Tiny Battles (Noble Knight is sold out of the earlier FDP edition).
You can either use 12ft.io or a private browsing tab to bypass the paywall