by Coffee? Check. Curiosity? Check. Wallet? Uh, check? #TuesdayNewsday? Absolutely. ☑️ ➡️
There’s a lot of ways you can engage with us here at Armchair Dragoons, and most of them are connected to our LinkTree. One of our keys is that we’re going to do our best to meet our audience where they are. So while our articles are going to be posted to our website, we’ll share the links / covers to some combination of (deeeep breath) BlueSky, our Facebook page, Instagram, our forums, Mastodon, Threads, our Discord server, at least 4 different wargaming Facebook groups, ConSimWorld, Grognard,com, and LinkedIn, as relevant. Most of our social media posts for our articles will repeat a week later, just in case you missed it the first time.
In addition to comments directly on the articles on our site, we have a forum where you can chime in and chat about our content or any other games you’ve got going on. Same thing with our Discord server, that’s linked to any of the pages on our site. We’ve got a Steam group for those of you looking to square up in some games over there.
You can find the podcast in a lot of places — all the major platforms like Spotify and PocketCasts and Apple Podcasts and the rest — and also on our YouTube page. And you should watch our YouTube page these days because not only are we sharing some clips and excepts of the podcasts (including some bits that might’ve been clipped from the final shows) but we’ll also have all of our live hits from the conventions streamed there. And before we get to Origins? Well, there might be a new wrinkle on our YouTube channel starting next week.
How can you support the Dragoons? Share, share, share, share! Link to the articles and posts and conversations for our content. Make your own comments on our articles and posts, or (even better) on the ones you share, to tell your readers what you liked about it. That’s what draws them into the discussions around the content and keeps people engaged. We’ve got a crazy-smart audience and you folks have excellent insights into the games, and the designers, and the industry, and when you share those the whole ecosystem is that much richer.
If you’d like to go a little deeper in supporting the Dragoons, we’ve got an online shop for some branded merchandise that helps spread the love of the Dragoons around a bit. We make almost no money from that shop so we can keep prices as low as possible and logo merch in your hands. Finally, we’ve got our Patreon, where you can support the Dragoons and help us with shipping games to our reviewers, or covering broadcast & hosting costs for our channels, and other overhead. And there are some perks for our supporters, too, an area we’re looking to enhance over the rest of this year.
Come join us at the Wargame HQ as we bring wargaming back to best of the big game conventions
Send us your tired, huddled Origins ❓questions❓ yearning to be answered ‼️ Drop them in the replies & we’ll get ’em answered for you in our countdown column on 3 June!
Add these to your wishlist… or, let’s be honest, your order.
- Vae Victis #186 is now showing “add to cart” on their website; it includes Battle of the Marne 1914 game
- Flying Pig Games are now shipping OST Volume 5: Battle for France 1940 and the First to Fight Poland 1939 Expansion
- Free League released the Replicant Rebellion and Asset Pack for their Blade Runner RPG
- Matrix Games’ Modern Naval Warfare has hit Steam after a brief delay; you can read more here
- Per GMT Games, they’re charging the following today, which should mean they ship within the week; grab ’em at p500 price while you still can1
- This week on Wargame Vault
- FNG “Roll the Dice” from Two Hour Wargames puts a twist on their FNG Vietnam rules – you’re counting down your 100 days left in-country and don’t even know how many missions you’ve got left before rotating home
- Battle Drive is a Car Wars clone, with a heavy dose of Canadianisms; it’s got so AI artwork, so some of you might want to avoid it
- Battleline is a print-&-play card game for Ancients combat up thru 500AD
- A couple of new ones from Slitherine on Steam:
- Other new releases on Steam
- Beyond Enemy Lines – Vietnam is in early access and on sale for the launch
- First Sino-Japanese War is a free-to-play minis-based dreadnought game, but without the actual minis
- WDS has release Sword & Siege Age of Longbow: Volume I on Steam; read our first impressions here
- DICE!
- New pixel hearts infinity d4’s from Dice Envy
- For your western-themed games, Black Oak Workshop’s got the Six Shooters d6 High Roller and Six Shooters d6 Gambler
- Through the end of the day (26 May) Easy Roller Dice will throw in a 7pc plastic set of dice with every 7pc metal set you order2 with coupon code MEM at checkout (up to 3 free sets)
- Free-to-use in your browser, the Dungeon Scrawl map generator lets you build some nice building and underground layouts with a pretty intuitive user interface
- New Ottomans available from
WayfairWarlord Games - New minis from Alternative Armies
Brand-new pre-orders are open—time to secure your copy.
- New pre-order from Vae Victis is Dernières Gloires (Last Glories) covering the 1813 campaign and is 15% off until 21 June
- This week’s newsletter from On Military Matters includes a couple of books on the Crusades and a couple of the US Army Rangers, and more
- New “Forces of Nature” line for Kings of War available to pre-order from Mantic
- This week on Kickstarter
- The Poly Card Deck gives you about 293045872034985 different things to resolve on each card and rules for a bunch of different card games, too
- Olivier Revenu is back with Xnoo #1, a fantasy / sword-&-sorcery comic
- Ides of March is a group card game about assassinating Caesar that could use some more people stepping in to participate
- This week’s not-doing-great campaign is the Scouts Out! hybrid STL/actual minis campaign that’s just over 60% of the way, but only 3 days left
- And this week’s truly hopeless campaign is Mafia Born: A Crime Strategy Game You Can Play Right Now that’s been live for a week and still has -ZERO- backers
- Warlord also put some stuff on pre-order
- GMT’s latest newsletter announced the following new p500s
- Combat Commander: Adversary (solo kit)
- Dinant ’40 (early days in France)
- War Galley, Deluxe Edition (reprint that adds Salamis module + C3i content)
- MBT Expansions Tri-Pack (BAOR, FRG, 4CMBG in one box)
- Ukraine ’43, 3rd Ed Mounted Maps (seems self-explanatory)
Some sales are subtle, others bold—here are both.
- WDS ‘Game of the week’ is Napoleonic Battles: Campaign Bautzen for $29.95, on sale until Sunday
- 30% off most games for Osprey’s May sale that runs until 8 June4
- Ventonuovo will have Waterloo 200 on sale from 27-31 May at 50% off
- GM’s Apprentice Decks are wicked cool, and there’s a Bundle of Holding campaign with a LOT of them right now
- Noble Knight has copies of A Fearful Slaughter from MMP starting at $50 and all the way up to $115
- Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War – Definitive Edition on GOG for 30% off
- Bunch of Cry Havoc stuff from HistoricOne5 on sale
New week, new perspectives—here’s what we shared.
- Origins 2026 ~ Exhibitor Spotlights
- #TBT/Throwback Thursday ~ Convention Tournaments
- Wargaming, Misunderstood: Practitioner Perspectives on a Recent Critique of U.S. Military Wargaming
- Saturday Night Fights ~ “Commands and Colors: Napoleonics” — The Grand Battle of Salamanca
- To Build a Fishboat: My Infernal Machine First Impressions
- Don / Onto Stalingrad: A Review of Taktyka i Strategia’s WB-95 Stalingrad 1942
- AARs
- From The Armchair Dragoons Archives
- Back on 11 Oct 23, we published Plotting Ops at Goose Green in the Tactical COMMAND Series from Multi-Man Publishing by Rocky
- On 27 Oct 24, we broadcast SPI’s Bundeswehr at the 2024 Fall Assembly on our YouTube channel
- Gameplay this week
- This week in our forums we’re chattering about the new version of Air & Armor
The Best Thing We Saw On Another Site This Week Was
So do we need younger reinforcements? A next generation of future wargamers to take up in our stead and inherit our musty SPI flatpacks to keep the hobby alive? I’m sure the majority of us have tried recruiting our kids into playing wargames. Whether this is to purposely cultivate a “worker replacement” force or simply to have an opponent inside the house, the results can be hit or miss from the stories I’ve heard. Some kids accept and will accompany their Dads to conventions, others reject it and do the current kid things, video games and what not.
In my case, I did want my son to get into wargaming, but that occurred organically. Having all the wargames on the shelves when he was a toddler got him interested in looking at the counters (he called them “punchies”). Then came the moment two years ago when I bought him an original 1984 Milton Bradley copy of Axis & Allies. Last year I got him Memoir ’44. He also got into military history by looking through my library. We’ve explored plenty of military-related things like battlefields and museums, culminating in travelling to Omaha Beach and Pont du Hoc last year. Recently, he’s moved into his Pokémon phase, and hasn’t played wargames with me in some time.
Oh noes, I’ve lost him!
Ardwulf’s counter clipping stream covered the future of the show and how to juggle topics
Various news & notes from the business end of the gaming world
- This week, Scott Thorne’s column covers stupid-low initial “funding” goals for crowdfunding campaigns
- The kerfuffle around the BGG rejection of the ad for the Gamefound campaign for Possess Me, Satan! was moving too fast for us to keep up with last week, never mind including it in the news; fortunately, BoardGameWire has a good wrapup of what went down now that it seems to be over
- Rascal chronicles the efforts to save a giant database of actual play history
- ICv2 reports that the US is the only market where Asmodee’s sales went down
- For you RPG folks out there, The Stygian Labyrinth is conducting a “Campaign Reliability Survey” you can join
- Wyrd Science Magazine talking about announcements at conventions
- Tabletop Sentinel rounds up all the Chaosium announcements at the recent UK ChaosiumCon
- Join the open beta for Hearts of Iron IV
- Why would you post an AI slop image that doesn’t even look remotely real as a “progress” update on your crowdfunded game being “printed”??
- Company Updates
- New bug-fix/enhancement update for GG’s WitE2 from Matrix Games, and you don’t have to pay for this one
- Blue Panther’s got some news about pre-orders and printing schedules for the upcoming Dawn of the Zeds from Hermann Luttmann
- Modiphius is discontinuing active development of new Achtung Cthulhu products but leaving it available for continued community development within their World Builder’s Program
- Updates on Alternative Armies’ rewards & freebies program
Articles, advice, and ideas for those of you on the creative side
- Skeleton Code Machine asks “What would I want in an area control game?”
- Panda’s p20: A No-Brainer for Indie Game Designers? from Jamey Stegmaier
- Psychgeist: I Have Thoughts On… Fandom
One of my favorite things about working in board games is how years of work often collapse into a little pile of paper that you can easily hold in your hand. It's a lot like writing, but then you have to spend a couple hours with scissors and glue to get it into shape.
— Cole Wehrle (@colewehrle.bsky.social) 2026-05-26T01:40:04.210Z
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, July 5, and August 2
- 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
- 29-31 May ConCarolinas (Charlotte NC) <– THIS WEEKEND!
- 29-31 May UK Games Expo 2026 (Birmingham UK) <– THIS WEEKEND!
- 5-8 Jun Bordercon (Albury NSW)
- 12-14 Jun Bayou Wars (D’Iberville MS)
- 12-14 Jun BottosCon Spring (New Westminster BC)
- 12-14 Jun FriedrichUK26 (York UK)
- 12-14 Jun LuxConquest 2026 (Mondorf-les-Bains Luxembourg)
- 17-21 Jun ORIGINS (Columbus OH)
- 19-21 Jun LibertyCon (Chattanooga TN)
- 25-28 Jun Unthirl Your Banners Summer Gathering 2026 (Keswick UK)
- 27-27 Jun SDHist AmRevCon 2026 (Online)
- 10-16 Jul Consimexpo (Tempe AZ)
- 11-12 Jul SDHistCon North 2026 (Minneapolis MN)
- 15-19 Jul Historicon (with SPI’s Alive!) (Lancaster PA)
Focusing on the practitioner world ~ don’t forget about the dedicated area in our forums for the wargame professionals!
Also, look for this section to evolve a bit over the next few weeks as we develop a couple of partnerships that are in early discussions.
New Releases / Pre-Orders / Wargame Events of Professional Interest
- Fight Club’s Baba Yaga game covers drone ops vs dismounts
- Signups are open for the Littoral Commander – Online World Championships 2026, which will start 1 July.
- Sign-ups in progress for Fight Club’s Flashpoint Campaigns “Command Exercise” to see how well folks can produce an order that others can follow
The Other Professional Headlines
- Kill Zone Probability Field Theory Applied to a Simple Fire and Maneuver Wargame (Intechopen)
- Interesting post from Osprey Books about how the 1983 invasion of Grenada shaped the US military for the next several decades; how to incorporate these ideas into wargames, either as an example of paths to explore or possible lessons learned from analytical wargames (Osprey)
- Mind the drone gap: war games begin inside secret Nato bunker in London tube station (The Guardian)
- I solved the Strait of Hormuz crisis with videogames, simply by creating an even bigger Strait of Hormuz crisis (PC Gamer)
- Media Representations of the Trojan War: Iliad, Troy, Troy: A Total War Saga (Gaming the Past)
- Simulated Battles, Real Lessons: Analyzing The Impact of The U.S. Navy’s Fleet Problems on Battle in The Pacific War (Univ of Southern Mississippi)
- The next GUWS webinar is Five Wargames Every Force Design Process Needs on 1 June and then LEXICON: Elements of Strategic Competition, an Educational Game on 15 June as they slow down over the Summer break
- PaxSims latest article covers CNN Academy 2026 simulation at Georgia Tech
- Get Hired! SPA has a posting for Wargaming & Operations Analyst in Cape Canaveral
Morning #Wargaming Fight Club session trying out BattleGroup Clash Baltics at CGSC. @jsbuckley.bsky.social @fight-club-intl.bsky.social
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.
