by This is #TuesdayNewsday, your go-to source for all things wargaming. And yeah, right now a bunch of us are ground into dust from our busiest Origins in years.
Origins broke 19,000 attendees this year.
| In the latest GAMA newsletter
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Jason talks a bit about the real world, but especially how Origins can help you escape from it |
This was just one of our designer panels at Origins!
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Meeple Lady joined us at the Wargame HQ!
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The Charles S Roberts Awards were announced at Origins this year — as they should be! — and we were the first to bring them to you.
As per usual, the feedback and responses to the CSR’s take up at least as much bandwidth as the awards themselves, so here are a few selected reactions for you
ignore the typo in their article headline
Hitting the shelves (and webstores) near you now!
- From Doc Cummins himself at Origins, Battles in the East #4 is available to be ordered direct from Decision, but hit general distro for a few months year
- Hexasim’s site says they’ve got The Twelfth Battle: The Caporetto Campaign 1917 available to order; you can also get it from GMT in the US
- MMP threw us a bone and released something before we went live! The Electronic HASL rulebook is now available
- Tactical Workshop is now selling 1811: Albuera direct to customers
- Victoria 3: Charters of Commerce is the latest Paradox DLC for one of their big titles, now on Steam
- Mike Lambo’s newest game book is E Squadron: A Solitaire Game that covers skirmish fights with a British covert ops team
- Wargames Atlantic has a, uh . . . “Sharpe” new set of licensed minis available
- We told you about the early-bird “Vanguard edition” last week, and this week, the everyday-normal version of Broken Arrow was released by Slitherine
- General Command is a new “Napoleonic” game, but the battles are abstract even if the commanders are over-RPG’ed
- Combat Miniatures released World War II on the Western Front
- New game design books from Routledge
- Busy week for our friends at TS Wargames, with 3 new releases
- The latest wave of releases for The Pacific 1942-43 for Flames of War
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
- Black Oak Workshop has their next batch of Advent-ure calendars on Kickstarter and we saw the prototypes at Origins and they’re suh-weeet
- In this week’s newsletter, On Military Matters has a bunch of figure sets for the PILLAGE! rules on pre-order, plus a bunch of lady gunslingers from the Old West
- We appreciate Rascal News bringing the Backerkit relaunch of the digital Rifts: Promise of Power to our attention, but the article’s early questions of “what is Rifts and what in the fuckity-fuck is a Nokia N-Gage?” just kicks more dirt on our ever-deeper old-folks’ graves
- Liberation — a resistance/occupier game of France in WW2 by a French design team — is now on Kickstarter
- OK look, it’s more “historical” than “wargame” but you gotta love any game on Kickstarter called Molassacre
- Warlord Games’ mystery boxes are back on pre-order
- Dice Envy has their advent calendars on pre-order
- SGS has some digital games on pre-order, but might not be out for a while
- SGS Avalanche
- SGS Battle for Verdun (could be early 2026)
- GMT’s June newsletter landed while we were at Origins and included some reprints going to p500
Looking for a deal? Getting more bang for your buck?
- With the Wargame Design Studio Summer Sale underway there’s no game-of-the-week sale on top of that
- Easy Roller Dice has a Summer clearance going on right now – no codes needed
- Avalanche Press has a “Tunisia 1943” package deal with 5 different things in it that covers the Americans, French, and (seriously) the New Zealand forces
- There’s a big new update for Forgotten but Unbroken from MicroProse, and it’s on sale on Steam thru 4 July at 25% off
- Alternative Armies is having a big sale with the launch of their new website
- Save yourself over $10 on The Last Hundred Yards: Vol 5 For King & Country at Miniature Market
- Big B2G1 sale at Noble Knight right now
It’s been a busy week for the regiment; here’s what you might’ve missed!
- Saturday Night Fights ~ D’Erlon’s Attack (3) for “Lasalle 2”
- Origins Coverage!
- Origins 2025 Coverage – Setup & First Games
- Origins 2025 Coverage – The Charles S Roberts Awards
- Origins 2025 Coverage – The View From Above
- Jim Werbaneth was one of our War College speakers and had his wrapup too
- The week’s battle! The Battle of Bunker Hill – June 17, 1775
- First Look: Kevin Zucker Releases the Motherload on Napoleonic wargames, game design, and SPI
- AARs
- Gameplay this week
The Best Thing We Saw On Another Site This Week Was
“My Time with the TVCWRT” over at the Wargame Design Studio site
As part of their continuing efforts to better understand this nation’s greatest conflict and challenge, including how others are interpreting the war, the TVCWRT initially contacted WDS’ Rich Hamilton in an effort to determine if a representative would be willing to attend one of their monthly meetings and make a presentation on how a historic battle can be represented in the form of a computer game. And that’s where I entered the scene. Rich asked me if I would be willing to represent WDS in one of their monthly meetings and make a presentation that would explain the process of taking a Civil War battle and represent it in the form of a computer game. I was only too glad to accept.
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 wrapped up Origins
Various news & notes from the business end of the gaming world
- The latest GMT monthly newsletter
- ICv2 proposes a couple of big initiatives for GAMA
- BoardGameWire reports on staffing changes at Asmodee and Restoration Games
- Very cool “25 for 25” sponsorship from Panda Games (manufacturer)
- Rascal reports on the Tabletop Workers Union at several stores in NYC winning their fight for recognition for collective bargaining
- Scott Thorne talks about this year’s FreeRPG Day at his store
- Wargame Design Studios’ 4.05.3 engine continues its inexorable rollout and this week it updates to the Panzer Campaigns games in the WW2 PTO, plus the modern ones in Asia
Moe T got f’ed over by the Meta-twats. He’s not often in the wargame space, but his channel on Bluesky for sales & deals is a must-subscribe, and their podcast is good fun, too
We don't actually know how much we've lost due Meta deleting our account so far. It's not insignificant. So here's a reminder that we've got a very cool Patreon where you get our show notes, links to all our new content, first thoughts reviews, bonus audio, etc. www.patreon.com/c/tabletopbe…
— The Tabletop Bellhop (Moe T) (@tabletopbellhop.com) 2025-06-23T21:37:49.409Z
- Hasbro laid off about 3% of its workforce as a result of rising prices with the tariffs
- Rocky talks about GMT tariff surcharges from their latest newsletter
- Several toy companies2 have tried to speed up legal challenges to the tariffs, but the SCOTUS said ‘no’
- Meanwhile, stores are closing because they can’t survive with the price hikes; some are trying to stock up before prices go back up
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 July and 3 August
- Next confirmed live event is The Armchair Dragoons Fall Assembly, 10-12 October 2025
- Next planned virtual event is the ACDC3, 16-18 January, 2026
Other Conventions & Events
- 11-20 Jul Consim World Expo (Tempe AZ)
- 11-14 Jul Human Wave (Washington DC)
- 11-14 Jul Twister Lords (Midwest City / OKC)
- 16-21 Jul Historicon (Lancaster PA) which includes Historicon yet again running off with our ideas4
- 26-4 Aug World Boardgaming Championships (Seven Springs PA)
- 31-4 Aug GenCon (Indianapolis IN)
- 14-18 Aug NashCon (Nashville TN)
- 22-25 Aug Dragonflight Con (Bellevue WA)
- 28 Aug-2 Sep DragonCon (Atlanta GA)
Focusing on the practitioner world ~ don’t forget about our dedicated area in our forums for the wargame professionals!
- War on the Rocks has a new column about Putting the Defense Industry Through Wargames
- Someone needs to stat out a porcupine tank
- “Can War Games Prevent Actual War?”
- It’s still expensive as all hell, but the MORS Certificate in Wargaming class is coming back around this Fall
- This week, Mick Ryan talks about the US attack on Iran
- The next GUWS webinar is Reinvigorating the use of Manual Wargaming in the Australian Army on 5 August and Wargaming and the Just War on 19 August
This game exploring how to evacuate civilians in Okinawa and the Sakashima Islands definitely has my attention. I cannot wait for its release.
— Sebastian Bae (@sebastianbae.bsky.social) 2025-06-22T15:06:04.081Z
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.
Footnotes
- who actually has a PhD in history, unlike most of the people who get mad at him on a regular basis
- the larger category that includes games
- Armchair Dragoons Digital Convention
- they announced their digital/online convention back in 2020 after we rolled out ours, and we just ran a whole SPI series as a part of BGF with Ardwulf & MOWE
