by The dice have spoken—and so has the newsfeed. Here’s your weekly #TuesdayNewsday rundown! ↘️
This is a fun read about the John Company megagame crossover at GenCon
We were split into various families, each sitting in a circle of chairs occupying a nook of the room. There were five such groups, mimicking the format of a five-player game of John Company. At the far end, opposite my family’s homestead, was an enormous board. I could make out huge miniature ships, oversized pawns, a ton of really impressive componentry. It was the type of thing typically reserved for those descending into the dark alleys of crowdfunding. It was impressive.
My family was Hastings, the blueys if you will.
This was a funny thing. While I was attending Gen Con with a group of friends, none of them were as enamored with the idea of this event. So, I was navigating these choppy waters solo, ready to win some hearts and stab some backs. It was John Company, I expected it to get messy.
What’s interesting is that I’m a somewhat reserved individual. I’m an introvert at heart, often quiet and unsure of myself around people I don’t know. My expectation was to feel this out, observe, and help my family where I could.
Then the head of our family decided I was going to be the company Chairman.
Interesting video from Slitherine’s new “Hot Seat” web series, interviewing Tomas Sala, and he talks a bit about how audience feedback shapes developer activities
The latest round of tariff/reaction updates from publishers and manufacturers
- Tabletop Designers Rush To Prepare For Another Looming US Tariff Storm (Rascal)
- Perry Miniatures are shipping to the US again
- ICv2 has some perspective on the tariff situations from the store owner point of view
- Tactical Workshop has stopped shipping from Japan1 to the US and aiming for January for the bulk of stock to be available
- “We’re trapped” – producers describe product being stuck overseas because of tariffs
- 404 Media is reporting on a lot of hobbies being impacted by tariffs
New minis, maps, and mayhem? Yes please
- World at War #104 has shipped to subscribers and is now available to the public, with included game The Path to Victory: Middle East 1941
- Wargames Illustrated #453 is now available
- Because “more magazines” is (almost) always a good thing, the new issue of Engine: The AGE Magazine from Green Ronin just dropped and it includes the complete rules for SAGE2
- Per the latest “newsgram” from Against The Odds, 2023 Annual – La Bataille de Kulm should be shipped to pre-order customers now and you can order it here
- Osprey Games released their new aerial combat game Voidfighter
- Compass Games started shipping British Tank Ace but if you hurry you can still get it over $10 off at pre-order price
- MicroProse released IF-16 Fighting Falcon and it’s 20% off until 14 September for the launch
- There’s a new Pilots & Squadrons update for Slitherine’s Scramble: Battle of Britain
- Warlord has a rather snazzy Argloth Rivelwyr Destroyer Of Empires – Fantasy Dragon figure3
- A bunch of new figs from The Wargaming Company for their Et Sans Resultat games
- Accurate Simulations has launched a new magazine called Centurion, and billed as “The Journal of Military Studies”; it’ll be a quarterly mag, and the website makes it a point to say “Please note that the Centurion is not a wargaming magazine; rather, it is a dedicated military review journal devoted to a panoply of topics related to warfare and/or strategic topics at all levels throughout history, particularly modern subjects, all intended to give readers a succinctly broad touchstone of variously related subjects”
- Renegade Game Studios released Diplomacy: Era of Empire for a Victorian-flavored variation on the Diplomacy game
- Wargames Atlantic has a box of Boneblades in their Classic Fantasy Battles line
- Alternative Armies released a new like of 6mm minis for their sci-fi games
Put your name in early and feel smug later—these campaigns just kicked off!
- Free League has a new T2K campaign on pre-order, as Operation Reset just launched today
- Divine Right is finally getting The Omega Expansion, 7 Presidential administrations later; there’s also a ‘travel’ microgame that’s focused on a single battle, to give you some combat flavor in a 2p game without the multi-player political overhead
- This week’s newsletter from On Military Matters includes pre-orders for scenario books on Chickamauga and Atlanta campaigns of the ACW, and a lot more
- Old School Tactical vol 5: Battle for France 1940 is now available for pre-order
- Crusade: Road To Jerusalem is a roll-&-write game on Kickstarter right now (h/t Danny!) and Justegarde seems to be interested
- This might be one of the weirdest Kickstarter campaigns we’ve seen, but for now it’s the only way to get the Shock Tactics expansion to David Thompson’s War Chest
- Dreams and Machines: Setting Guide – Broken Steppes is on pre-order from Modiphius
- Big pre-order savings on Mantic’s upcoming Epic Warpath games, which look like a reincarnation of the old WH40K Epic
- SGS’s next 2 releases are on pre-order
- Epic Battle Chess is on Gamefound and it looks like an amped up Stratego with a hex grid and some narrative campaigns, and creators than don’t understand the term “grand strategy”
- This reprint of War & Peace 7th Edition is open for pre-orders
Spoils of war? More like spoils of clearance!
- WDS ‘Game of the week’ is Panzer Campaigns: Salerno ‘43 Gold for $29.95
- This week’s new release from Dice Envy is a metal set called ‘Pretty in Punk’ and it’s 10% off with coupon code TRUSTME at checkout
- Easy Roller Dice Company has everything at 25% with coupon code LABOR25 at checkout
- Noble Knight has copies of the naval wargame Battlegroup from Lost Battalion Games starting at $38
- Ventonuovo has a sale that’s over 50% off Blocks in Africa but there’s only 10 of ’em on sale thru 5 September
- Miniature Market has Boots on the Ground: Deluxe Edition at $15 off
- The Napoleon Collection on Steam gets you a couple of fairly rudimentary wargames, but the price is right!
Mentioned in Dispatches starts recording again this week!
Here’s the good stuff we dropped while you were plotting your next game night
- A Promise is a Promise — Review of 2045
- Saturday Night Fights ~ “Snappy Nappy”: The Spring 1809 Campaign (II)
- Brandywine – Volume II of the Battles of the American Revolution (BoAR) series
- AARs
- Gameplay this week
The Best Thing We Saw On Another Site This Week Was
Rocky turning some RPG gaming into a novel-like narrative over on his own blog
Koenig looked up and smiled as he waved him into the office and hit the switch to close the partition doors behind them both. Koenig had a reputation for being direct and even intimidating at times. Having a closed door session with the Commander was not what Cubby expected—nor did he necessarily want—when he awoke this morning.
Koenig kept his seat but steepled his fingers as he looked up at Cubby. “I understand you were once in the movie business. Early 1980’s, yes? In England?”
Cubby caught himself and immediately assumed his best poker face. He took a small breath before answering. He was now wary; it had been a long time since he needed to use that cover story. “Not an actor, sir, but a production assistant.”
Koenig smiled disarmingly. “You were a movie production assistant for several years yet, when the Third World War started, you somehow showed up as a Lieutenant and a fully rated pilot that quickly trained to fly Hawks. What am I missing?”
Ardwulf’s counter clipping stream took the night off
Folks, a personal matter has come up, and I am forced to reschedule tonight's Counter Clipping Show to Next Monday, Sept 8. We will be back next Sunday, however, with the Chit Show at 7:30 PM Eastern!
A general plea to all publishers about your websites: pay attention to the content you file under “new” or “news”. It’s now September of 2025. If your “what’s new” is from March, or if your “news” is from 2023, just take it down. You’re better off with nothing than something that stale.
Various news & notes from the business end of the gaming world
- This week, Scott Thorne eulogized Dave Wallace, a St Louis area hobby store owner and longtime GAMA retail member whose industry-wide advocacy for retail professionalism still impacts the business today
- ICv2 reports on the insane legal fees being racked up by the ongoing Diamond bankruptcy
- Free League released an Open Game License for their Coriolis game, so you can create & distribute your own content within their guardrails
- Should You Get a Degree in Game Design? (Endless Mode)
- Europa Simulazioni has their new webstore up & running and thank the webgods that they included the ability to sort games by “new releases”
- The SGS folks have updated a bunch of their games to their 1.5 engine, including Fall Weiss
- WDS has updated 5 of their Civil War Battles series games to v4.05.5 of their game engine
- GAMA are looking to hire a web developer and you can see the RFP here (PDF)
First playtest of the BelloLudi pirates game. Www.belloludi.nl
— BelloLudi (@belloludi.bsky.social) 2025-09-01T21:39:59.701Z
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 ~ October 5 and November 2
- 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
- 19-23 Sep World Series of Board Gaming (Las Vegas NV)
- 20-21 Sep Connections Suisse (Pully and Lausanne Switzerland)
- 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)
- 23-26 Oct EssenSpiel (Essen Germany)
- 6-11 Nov Compass Games Fall Expo 2025 (Meriden CT)
- 7-9 Nov HMGS Fall-in! (Lancaster PA)
- 7-9 Nov RockCon (Rockford IL)
Circle DC 2026 will be held on April 10-12, 2026 here in lovely Washington, DC. The convention will be capped at 250 attendees and we have opened up badge registration this morning. tabletop.events/conventions/…
— Fort Circle (@fortcircle.bsky.social) 2025-09-01T18:59:22.490Z
Details about the upcoming The 2025 Armchair Dragoons Fall Assembly
Registration is now open for the 2025 Fall Assembly
You are now able to purchase badges and register for events for the Fall Assembly, 10-12 October 2025.
Here’s our current schedule, with another couple that might still be coming in. We’ve also got open space for pick-up gaming; don’t think this is all that will get played!
| Event Name | Seats | Day / Time | Mins |
|---|---|---|---|
| Simple Great Battles of History | 4 | Friday at 12:00 | 180 |
| Off the Line Demo | 2 | Friday at 12:00 | 240 |
| Battles of American Revolution – Savannah | 1 | Friday at 13:00 | 180 |
| Fading Glory (Napoleonic 20 game system from VPG) | 4 | Friday at 13:00 | 120 |
| World at War ’85 Team Game | 6 | Friday at 17:00 | 300 |
| Combat Commander | 4 | Friday at 18:00 | 240 |
| Air & Armor: Wurzburg | 4 | Saturday at 09:00 | 300 |
| By Swords and Bayonets | 4 | Saturday at 10:00 | 240 |
| Fading Glory (Napoleonic 20 game system from VPG) | 4 | Saturday at 10:00 | 120 |
| Dawn of Battle Designer’s Edition | 2 | Saturday at 10:00 | 240 |
| Battles of the American Revolution – Brandywine / Guilford | 4 | Saturday at 13:00 | 180 |
| SAS: Rogue Regiment | 5 | Saturday at 13:00 | 240 |
| LNLP’s Dawn’s Early Light | 4 | Saturday at 14:00 | 120 |
| Dawn of Battle Designer’s Edition | 2 | Saturday at 14:00 | 240 |
| The Napoleonic Wars by GMT | 4 | Saturday at 18:00 | 300 |
| Plague of Dracula Demo | 4 | Saturday at 18:00 | 240 |
| Saar: Strike-Counterstrike (MMP’s Grand Tactical Series) | 4 | Sunday at 09:00 | 300 |
| We Are All Mortal, The Cuban Missile Crisis | 2 | Sunday at 10:00 | 180 |
| Off the Line Demo | 2 | Sunday at 10:00 | 240 |
Focusing on the practitioner world ~ don’t forget about the dedicated area in our forums for the wargame professionals!
- How Board Games Are Used in the Classroom (Endless Mode)
- Military Gaming to Stay Ahead, But Not the Kind You Think (War on the Rocks)
- AI tools accelerated battle management decisions during latest Air Force DASH wargame (DefenceScoop)
- Command AI embed in the UK defence ahead of DSEI 2025 (Naval Technology)
- Wargaming With Machines (Pakistan Navy News)5
- This week, Mick Ryan’s ‘Big Five’ talks about the situation in Ukraine, but also goes to the Pacific and looks at some maritime ops
- The next GUWS webinar is Naval Wargaming and Quantitative History on 16 September, followed by What do you mean they had a Uboat? Wargaming integration in the German Navy on 23 September
- PaxSims goes deep on the Shifting Sands matrix game
- Get Hired! The US Naval Academy has a posting for Wargaming Fellow
Working on some more cards for Jaws of the Dragon. Did some tweaks, and added two new ones: Intel agency deep-strike operations against enemy high value aircraft, and cards to represent the effect of the Chinese gaining the ability to have loitering UAV's over Taiwan.
— Evan D'Alessandro (@evandalessandro.bsky.social) 2025-08-30T19:37:43.307Z
Something neat from outside the wargaming world we thought was worth sharing
This one’s a little longer, but (if you’re in the US) you’re just coming off a holiday weekend and not fully motivated to start working again anyway, right?
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
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