by Your battlefield briefing is here! #TuesdayNewsday rounds up what’s hot in hexes, hotspots, and headquarters ➡️
Cube4Me is about to get boned by tariffs. This is your last call to get orders in before the tariffs kick in at the end of August, which is going to cost customers an extra 15% of the value of the package, PLUS a flat $80 per package regardless of value.
Now, Cube4Me has a plan to help bypass some of those headaches, which is explained at the link above. How much it’ll help? Remains to be seen. But given that the tariffs are being applied, um . . . let’s go with “inconsistently” for now, it’s hard to know when or if those costs will change, or how.
- Meanwhile, you can save 10% with coupon code 4YEARS at checkout until 20 August at Cube4Me
- Tariff impacts on a local game store in Kentucky
- Impacts on a local chain in Atlanta
- GAMA is inviting retailers and publishers to sign a petition about the tariff rates and the damage they are doing to their businesses
Over at Punchboard, Adam has an excellent column about how publishers / creators (especially new ones!) can reach out to reviewers and other content creators for coverage of their games. A key takeaway after the analysis of the approach
Don’t carpet bomb every creator whose contact details you get. Take your time to find people whose channels and content fit with your game. If you’re someone starting out, there’s a good chance The Dice Tower or Shut Up & Sit Down aren’t going to feature your game, so set your sights accordingly.
Be polite, be personable, take timeframes into account, and remember that the people you’re approaching are doing this in their spare time because they love the hobby. They aren’t professionals, they may not respond or act like professionals, so temper your expectations accordingly.
Interestingly enough, the author of the original letter that Adam uses as an example looped back around to his own analysis of what he did and how, and a look into his thought process.
This stuff is really important – it comes back to respecting the humanity of the reviewer. One of the things I love about the board game hobby is how it’s about bringing people together to play around a tabl
Good exchanges all around!
Jim Day, winner of this year’s Charlies for Best WWII Game, Best Tactical Game, and Wargame of the Year, gets some nice coverage from his local paper in Toledo.
Coming on the heels of our highlighted discussion last week about where the industry coverage for hobby wargaming is, there’s additional tidbits that popped up this week in various places on social media, such as this one from Amabel
Arts criticism & journalism being reduced to marketing is incredibly depressing, and I am thankful for the approximately six people/outlets in the BG space who actually do criticism and/or journalism. I don't condemn the rest but I do feel sorry for them.
— Amabel Holland (@amabel.bsky.social) 2025-08-12T08:37:53.488Z
but also
- Following up a panel hosted by Mike at Origins1, he’s looking for folks to join a similar discussion about written coverage in tabletop gaming at PaxU, too
- Dan Bullock is hurting people with the truth again
- Magazine editors: send your writers a copy of the issue!
- Although this is talking about book reviews, it is equally applicable to the depth, nuance, and quality of good wargaming articles, whether reviews, analysis, or comparisons
- Rascal News is running a membership drive to help fund an additional writer for their site; yes they are mainly TTRPGs and some minis games, but it’s still (potentially) a full-time game media person
It’s that glorious time of the week: new stuff you didn’t know you needed!
- Now that it’s shipped to subscribers, S&T #354 is available, with the included game Eagles of Rome: Caesar
- MMP’s HASL module Drop Zone: Chef-du-Pont has started arriving for those who pre-ordered
- White Dog Games has released Empire of Grass, The Conquests of Ghenghis Khan
- A new Wings of Glory starter bundle is available from Ares Games
- On The Western Front is a new WW1 game on Steam, and it’s on sale through 21 August for the launch
- New from The Historical Game Company: Battle of Borodino
- S&T Quarterly #31 is now available with a focus on mid-war ACW campaigns
- Hex General: Fantasy Edition – 5) The Siege of Caerlyon is on Wargame Vault
- The new Taming the Tigers DLC for Rise of the White Sun is now on Steam, and there’s a bundle where you can catch up on the entire game, too
- Osprey released their Frostgrave expansion book Advanced Spellcraft
- Alternative Armies has a new 15mm sci-fi faction for their Hordes of the Future line, the “OmniCops”
- David Cheng’s Simple Battalion System has released on Wargame Vault
- Worthington keeps updating their shop of currently-available games, and have added these guys for sale to the public
If only Napoleon could run a campaign like these
- This week’s newsletter from On Military Matters includes a whole lot of new stuff for By Fire and Sword
- It’s not a wargame, but any
gamepuzzle card titled Escape the Swedish Furniture Store deserves some attention - Free League has the new edition of Coriolis on pre-order2
- Take the Throne is a new multi-player card game on Kickstarter right now
- Littoral Commander: Indo-Pacific stuff from The Dietz Foundation
- Second edition is on pre-order right now
- There’s also an upgrade kit from 1st to 2nd edition, but apparently this is pre-order only and won’t be going to retail
Big savings, small excuses—let’s see what’s on sale!
- WDS ‘Game of the week’ is Campaign Vicksburg for $29.95
- As though they were listening to Ardwulf last night, Enterprise Games has copies of Ambush starting at $35
- Easy Roller Dice has all their 35mm metal d20
slingshot ammodice, at 20% off with coupon code 20METAL at checkout - Noble Knight has copies of Panzergruppe Guderian starting at $40
- Dice Envy doesn’t have a new dice set this week, but they do have mystery starter sets at $2 – yes $2
- You’ve got until 15 August to get your orders in at OSG, with 20% off all 14 games that are in print
- Interested in the Battles of the American Revolution Tri-Pack II: Monmouth, Germantown, Newtown after Rocky’s review of it this past week? Miniature Market has it on sale at about 15% off
ICYMI: The Dragoons have been busy—let’s recap the action
- Wednesday War Stories ~ Guadalcanal: August, 1942 – February, 1943
- Classic AARs ~ World War II Frontline Command, Mission 3
- Three…no FOUR very BOAR-ing battles for the better ~ Battles of the American Revolution Tri-Pack II
- Saturday Night Fights ~ “General d’Armee 2”: The Battle of Talavera (III)
- Announcing Fall Assembly 2025
- Inaugural SPI Alive in 2025! (Part Deux)
- AARs
- Gameplay this week
The Best Thing We Saw On Another Site This Week Was
Matt Forbeck’s Metaphor vs. Mechanics: Don’t Fight the Fusion
A game without mechanics isn’t a game. It’s a story. Or possibly a thought experiment.
A game without a metaphor isn’t a game. It’s a math problem. Maybe a puzzle. Or a toy.
Even the most abstract games wear at least a veneer of metaphor. That gives the players a way to wrap our minds around the various mechanics and give them meaning.
…So as a game designer, where do you start? With the mechanics or the metaphor?
Ardwulf’s counter clipping stream talked about games that need a new edition, and other stuff
Various news & notes from the business end of the gaming world
- This week, Scott Thorne takes a stab at predicting what’s going to be “hot” coming out of GenCon
- BoardGameWire reports on CMON continuing to bleed executives as they are still spiraling
- With the potential to be either illuminating or utterly cringeworthy, Rascal are attempting to review all of the D&D starter sets from 90s3
- After a big kerfuffle over some pretty racist artwork, Devir Games is recalling all the copies of Ace of Spades that are out there, redoing the artwork, and then printing new cards to go out with them, as well as offering free cards to anyone who has the original
- MMP news that requires you to have a FB account, and be a member of the private ASL group to read it all, even though they tease you with it on other social media (over here, too) (and here)
- Matrix Games pushed out an update for Rule The Waves 3; Slitherine also released the “anniversary update” for Distant Worlds 2
- WDS is rolling out an update for all of the Modern Campaigns series games and you can read all about it here
Expansion update! Thank you all for the continued support! We should be able to start moving product into the warehouse expansion soon!
— Noble Knight Games (@nobleknightgames.bsky.social) 2025-08-12T13:24:54.080Z
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 ~ September 7 and October 5
- Next confirmed live event is The Armchair Dragoons Fall Assembly, 10-12 October 2025
- Next virtual event is the ACDC4, 16-18 January, 2026
Upcoming Conventions & Events
- 14-18 Aug Nashcon (Nashville TN) <– THIS WEEKEND!
- 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)
- 27-28 Sep European ASL Championships (Rome Italy)
- 1-5 Oct Game mORe (Albany OR)
- 5-12 Oct ASLOK (Cleveland)
- 10-12 Oct Armchair Dragoons Fall Assembly (Cary NC)
Details about the upcoming The 2025 Armchair Dragoons Fall Assembly
Event submission is now open to the public to add your proposed games to the schedule
- Remember that GM’s with at least 8 hours of approved games get a free badge, which this year actually means something.
- Badge sales and event tickets are about 3 weeks out while we get the events loaded up first.
- You can check out the current approved event schedule here; it’s small but growing!
Other coverage of this wargame
- Simulated Chinese blockade of Taiwan reveals Singapore as lifeline (Reuters)
- Lights Out? Wargaming a Chinese Blockade of Taiwan (Small Wars Journal)
- A semi-sane and mostly-coherent Reddit thread
- South China Morning Post weighs in with How long would Taiwan’s energy supplies last under a PLA blockade?
Focusing on the practitioner world ~ don’t forget about the dedicated area in our forums for the wargame professionals!
- Long thread from Sebastian about AI in professional wargaming here
- 2025 Connections US presentations are online (Connections G-drive Archive)
- Johns Hopkins is building classified versions of its AI wargaming tools for DoD, IC (Breaking Defense)
- Space Force wargame could inform framework for allied info sharing (Defense News)
- US’ wargaming tool with classified details can reveal enemy weakness before real combat (Interesting Engineering)5
- An overly-broad / generalist view of how wargames are used by professionals— Leadership: Training With Wargames (StrategyPage)
- This week, Mick Ryan’s ‘Big Five’ looks at the chances for “peace” (whatever that means) in Ukraine
- 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
- PaxSims draws you attention to the “Educating Warfighters With Wargames” conference coming up in Copenhagen
- Get Hired! MANTECH has a posting for a Wargame Designer
Have you read our #EuroWarGames anthology @nutspublishing.bsky.social? I'd be glad to know how you liked it, what stood out for you, what you might be looking for in a second volume?#wargaming #gamestudies #boardgames
— Jan (he/him) | Let's Play History (@letsplayhistory.bsky.social) 2025-08-11T10:35:50.605Z
Something neat from outside the wargaming world we thought was worth sharing
This site is like scrolling through a Civ-style game’s tech tree, but pegged to actual human invention dates, and way more detailed (“sunglasses” for instance, aren’t going to move the meter in a 4X game)
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
- that Brant ended up crashing, too!
- it’s scheduled to release on 12 August, but as of 5pm Swedish time, it was still in pre-order
- ed note: it’s actually a pretty good column!
- Armchair Dragoons Digital Convention
- take this source with a grain of salt, however, as they’ve f’ed up open-source info before, like HIMARS/ATACMS ranges
