by Grab your dice, boot up your rig, and brief your staff—it’s #TuesdayNewsday!
Let’s see what’s marching across the headlines this week ➡️
CSW Expo was last week. So was Historicon. WBC is next week. With all the bigger wargame-focused/-friendly cons going on, it’s no wonder there wasn’t a lot of news on the wargaming front. So, “tonight’s top story” is . . . “there’s not much of a story”?
What was your top headline of the past week?
From the Homo Ludens Discord – how about a computer-playable version of the old VG/AH Fleet series of games?
Here’s the YouTube channel where you can also find the drive link
Details about the upcoming The 2025 Armchair Dragoons Fall Assembly, 10-12 October in Cary NC
Steve Jones from Blue Panther has confirmed that he’s going to attend, and he’s willing to deliver any orders placed ahead of the convention so you can save on shipping — which means more games you can afford to buy! Check out the latest releases here
Now our space this year isn’t really set up for vendor tables (we’ll eventually get that big, but not yet) so if you want something from Steve, get it ordered ahead of time since there’s not a space for him to bring a bunch of stuff to set up for regular retail sale.
Hot off the press and ready for your table—check out what’s new this week!
- Revolution Games are now shipping Gettysburg: The First Day in both boxed and ziploc packaging, and it’s on sale for the launch
- The 4th Ed of Under an Iron Sky was for sale and sold out in under 48 hours, but since it was technically “released” this week we still wanted to acknowledge it
- The newest Historic Wings solitaire air war book/game, Black Flight, is now available on Amazon
- Avalon Digital released Wars Across The World: Corsica 1764, which requires the original Wars Across The World to play
- Strike Mission is a new arcade/helicopter game on Steam that’s 40% off thru 1 August for the launch
- Precis Intermedia released the Iron & Gold Expanded RPG bundle with the original game, plus the enhancement pack, and the Amherth setting
- Some new sci-fi bounty hunters from Alternative Armies
- Some new Heroscape toys for you
- A couple of slightly-less-than-serious additions to Warlord’s Black Powder Epic Battles line
- Hessian Bear Regimental Mascot
- Townsfolk
- Heavy Cannon Battery (OK, this one’s actually kinda serious)
Get your wallets ready and your patience prepped—here’s what’s up for grabs now-ish (but really more later-ish)
- Trafalgar Editions launched Bailén 1808 on Kickstarter
- Compass Games has Seapower & The State on Kickstarter so it’ll be ready to ship in a couple of weeks
- The Asmo-borg has the new Star Wars: Battle of Hoth on pre-order; it uses the M’44/C&C system
- Bellica 3G has their Santa Cruz 1797 reprint on pre-order at €10 off
- METUS is a new PnP game on Gamefound that’s a cross between a tower defense game and some COIN elements; more importantly, there are distinct solo & 2p modes in the game, too
- Renegade Game Studios has launch Risk GI Joe: Special Missions on Kickstarter
- Dice Commandos is a new solo skirmish/card game that’s more “puzzle” than “combat”, on Gamefound
- Heroes of the Borderlands is a new D&D starter set that’s now on pre-order
- A bunch of minis for the Italian Wars from Warlord Games
- Italian Wars Swiss Commanders and Crossbowmen
- Swiss Crossbowmen Regiment
- Italian Wars Mounted Crossbowmen and Mounted Crossbowmen Regiment
- Italian Wars French Gendarmes Heavy Cavalry and Gendarmes Heavy Cavalry Command, plus a full French Gendarmes Regiment
- Italian Wars Artillery Train which can hook up to either Italian Wars Medium Cannon or Italian Wars Heavy Cannon/Bombard
Good news, commanders—your hobby budget just got a breather!
- There’s a special “Texas Flood Relief Feeding America” bundle on DTRPG right now that benefits the Feeding America charity to help provide food support in disaster-struck areas — over $250 of PDFs for $20
- WDS ‘Game of the week’ is Panzer Campaigns: Sicily ‘43 for $29.95
- Alongside the release of Gettysburg: The First Day, Revolution put most of their store on sale, too
- This week’s new release from Dice Envy are ‘CRITTLES’ and they’re 10% off with coupon code YAYSUGAR at checkout and yes, you’ll want them once you see them1
- Enterprise Games has copies of SPI’s Crimean War quad starting at $119 for the unpunched soap box
- 12mm dice are kinda small, but useful for buckets-o’-dice games and you can get a BOGO deal on 25pc sets of them from Easy Roller Dice with coupon code PIP25 at checkout
- OSG has Napoleon’s End on sale at 20% off
- SENET Magazine has a back issue sale right now: 3 issues for £20 with coupon code THREEKINGDOMS or 5 for £35 with coupon code FIVETRIBES at checkout
- Noble Knight has copies of Panzer Armee Afrika starting at $30
- Kraken Dice Summer Sale has 4 days left, and 25% off everything with no codes needed
- Hey 5% off is still 5% off, and you can save that 5% on Berlin 1945: The Fall of the Reichstag from NAC Wargames
- Miniature Market has 1941: Race to Moscow at over $20 off right now
- And if you need somewhere to store all those games you pick up on sale, there’s a few rooms here you could use
In case you missed it, here’s what the Dragoons have been up to this week!
- Origins 2025 Coverage – Exhibit Hall
- Saturday Night Fights ~ “General d’Armee 2”: D’Erlon’s Attack (IV)
- Saratoga – Volume I of the Battles of the American Revolution (BoAR) series
- AARs
- Gameplay this week
- “Eisenhower”: The Siege of Bastogne
- “Longstreet”: The Third Battle(s) of 1863
- Live Twitch streams of the new Destiny 2 Edge of Fate DLC launch & raid
The Best Thing We Saw On Another Site This Week Was
Reviewer 2’s Review of Red Dead’s History2
I received a review copy of the book at the end of December and started reading in January, after the winter break. It was at that point I realized that writing a review for this book was going to be very problematic. In the preface of Red Dead’s History, Tore explains the origin of the book, which began with playing Red Dead Redemption II during the pandemic. He decided to use the game as the basis for a history class in 2021 on American history from 1880 to 1920. Sounds great.
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 gave away that unpunched copy of Case Blue last night and congrats to Hi Flyer on winning it
Various news & notes from the business end of the gaming world
- The top 3 ways to tell your game is NOT ready to pitch or publish
- This week, Scott Thorne talked about the continuing fallout of Diamond’s bankruptcy, and some issues with DCC Day
- Speaking of which, the legal wrangling continues3 with both game publishers and comic publishers4 all getting involved in the lawsuit
- BoardGameWire has an article about Panda (the manufacturer) pressing ahead with a facility in Brazil even with the US tariff situation semi-permanently up-in-the-air
- Congrats to Friend-of-the-Dragoons Jodi Black (Carolina Game Tables, Studio 2) for her election to the GAMA Board
- Somehow, WDS still has games in their Panzer Campaigns series to update to the 4.05.3 engine; are we sure they’re not secretly releasing more of them just to have more to update?
- GMT updated their best-seller lists, both all-time and the last 12 months (as of 30 June)
- Avalanche Press sends a few more games to Valhalla
Yesterday made the first draft of a 4 page play example for True Command. While not a complicated game, there are a lot of new/unusual working mechanics that we think would benefit from a detailed action by action explanation.
— Catastrophe Games (@catastrophegames.bsky.social) 2025-07-22T14:25:36.685Z
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 ~ August 3 and September 7
- Next real-world/live event is The Armchair Dragoons Fall Assembly, 10-12 October 2025
- Next virtual event is the ACDC5, 16-18 January, 2026
Upcoming Conventions & Events
- 26 Jul-3 Aug World Boardgaming Championships (Seven Springs PA)
- 31 Jul-3 Aug GenCon (Indianapolis IN)
- 14-18 Aug Nashcon (Nashville TN)
- 22-24 Aug Dragonflight Con (Bellevue WA)
- 28 Aug-2 Sep DragonCon (Atlanta GA)
- 28-31 Aug Tacticon (Aurora CO)
- 29 Aug-1 Sep Strategicon: Gateway (Los Angeles CA)
- 19-23 Sep World Series of Board Gaming (Las Vegas NV)
- 10-12 Oct Armchair Dragoons Fall Assembly (Cary NC)
Focusing on the practitioner world ~ don’t forget about the dedicated area in our forums for the wargame professionals!
- Whether it’s the original Ender’s Game book, or the Sovereign fighters chasing the Guardians of the Galaxy 2, the idea of turning combat into a remote-control game isn’t new, but Ukraine is doing it with drone pilots and bounties
- South Koreans using C:MO for future / analytical scenarios, testing concepts and ideas around hardware that’s not even invented yet
- Table Media has an article about the Lithuanian Brigade that’s a part of a larger NATO command and the wargaming that’s exposed some issues
- Lessons learned from an Indo-Pacific wargame
- Trying to defeat drones “left of boom”
- This week, Mick Ryan’s ‘Big Five’ focuses on territory in Ukraine, governmental shuffles, and what’s happening in the Pacific
- 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
- Get Hired! WBSI has a posting for a Wargaming Analyst
- CSIS has an upcoming event — Breaking Out of Quarantine: Wargaming a Chinese Blockade of Taiwan — on 31 July
When we started Wargaming Lab at ISM last September, one of the aims was to build and foster international collaboration with our Allies. I'm extremely happy that last week we saw the first German-Lithuanian wargaming summer school organized together with The German Wargaming Center.
— Pijus Krūminas (@pijusk.bsky.social) 2025-07-22T06:50:33.028Z
Something neat from outside the wargaming world we thought was worth sharing
“. . . a bedlam of adolescent noise . . . ” 🤣
That’s all for this week!
Be sure to drop by our forums and join the fun, and next Tuesday we return with another intel 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.
Footnotes
- don’t eat the dice
- When Cole, Liz, and Stuart all recommend something, it’s time to pay attention
- mostly around the need to have an attorney present in the courtroom
- over two dozen comic publishers alone!
- Armchair Dragoons Digital Convention
