by New releases, fresh rumors, and future plans 📡—the whole package is waiting below ➜
SDHistCon announced the nominees for this year’s Summit Award, which will be awarded at SDHistCon in November
The San Diego Historical Games Convention (SDHist) is proud to announce the four finalists for the fifth annual Summit Award. The Summit Award aims to recognize a historical board game published in the preceding year that most broadened the hobby through the ease of teaching and/or play, uniqueness of topic, or novel approach.
The four finalists for the 2026 Summit Award (for games published in 2025) are (in alphabetical order, with links to and information from their BoardGameGeek pages):
Battlefields of the Napoleonic Wars: This design from Paolo Mori and Alessandro Zucchini is a 60-120 minute game for one to two players. It thrusts players into the roles of Napoleonic-era generals, presenting quick-playing but detailed versions of some of the period’s key battles (with four different battlefield maps of different sizes provided).
Battlefields of the Napoleonic Wars is published by Ingenioso Hidalgo. The designers have utilized classic art from famed illustrator “Job” (Jacques Onfroy de Brévilleille, 1858-1931) and pioneer of the study of uniform Richard Knötel (1858-1931), plus counters and die icons from Fabio Maiorana and maps and editing from Mori. Judges praised its accessibility and approachability.
Chicago ‘68: A one-to-four player 60-180 minute game designed by Yoni Goldstein, Chicago ‘68 pits revolutionary spectacle against civil order around the events of the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. The design pits the Establishment against the Demonstrators (but with two groups with different powers and roles on each side: the mayor’s office and the Chicago Police Department on the Establishment side, and the Yippies and National Mobilization Committee To End The War In Vietnam on the Demonstrators side).
Chicago ‘68 is published by the Dietz Foundation. Beyond Goldstein’s design work, it features art from John Biggs and development work from Ronen Goldstein and Joe Dewhurst. It was the most-selected game during our public nomination process this summer, with nominators praising the historical detail it provides on an undercovered topic, as well as its ease of teaching and play.
Molly House: This 2025 publication is a thorough revision and expansion of Jo Kelly’s 2021 Zenobia Award finalist design. It credits Kelly for the original concept and design, and Cole Wehrle for additional design. In it one to five playerstake the roles of the gender-defying mollies of early eighteenth century London, drafting hands of “vice” cards representing behavior frowned upon by the Society for the Reformation of Manners. Those cards can help them host festivities together with their fellow mollies to create joy, but they can also lead to issues with the society’s enforcers, and perhaps even to a tough decision to turn informer.
Molly House is published by Wehrlegig Games. In addition to the design work from Kelly and Wehrle, it features development work from Kelly, Wehrle, and Drew Wehrle, research and historical notes from Kelly, solo-mode design by Richard Wilkins and art from Rachel Ford. Summit Award judges praised its original topic and its novel approach.
Onoda: This design from Francisco “Pako” Gradaille looks at the experiences of soldier Hiroo Onoda during his stay on Lubang Island. Onoda engaged in guerrilla warfare there from 1944 until 1974. It is a 25-minute solo game that seeks to immerse players in the ethical and practical dilemmas that Onoda faced.
Onoda is published by Salt & Pepper Games. Beyond the design work from Gradaille, it features illustrations from Javi de Castro and graphic design from João Duarte-Silva. Judges praised its uniqueness of topic and the way it lets players wrestle with Onoda’s story and decisions.
You can follow the link above for the rest of the announcement, including some honorable mentions.
#TNLive is back!
Through the end of 2026, we’re going live on Tuesday nights at 7pm US Eastern for a quick video rundown of that day’s news, with a bit of discussion about our key highlights, too. We’ll have a rotating cast of Dragoons giving you the news & reactions, as we start to expand the team that’ll be on the broadcast (so it’s not all Mike & Brant!)
DTRPG, and by extension, Wargame Vault, is now offering filtering tools to explicitly in/exclude AI-generated content. Steam’s had a similar feature for a while now, too
Take control over what you see on DriveThruRPG. You can now manage your AI-generated content preferences from your Account page or the newly added option on the bottom left of the front page. This new option should work whether you are logged in or not.
Not strictly “wargaming” but close enough —
Baen Books Establishes New Writing Award Named in Honor of David A. Drake
Riverdale, New York, July 2026—Baen Books is pleased to announce its newest short story award, the David A. Drake Memorial Award.
As with the two current writing awards sponsored by Baen—the Jim Baen Memorial Award and the Baen Fantasy Adventure Award—the “Drake” will seek to find new writing talent and will reward winners with professional publication contracts for their stories as well as a lovely trophy. In the spirit of military science fiction and fantasy written by David Drake, especially the Hammers Slammers and RCN/Lieutenant Leary series, the contest will seek engaging stories with military themes.
David A. Drake (24 September 1945–10 December 2023) was a U.S. Army veteran of the Vietnam War, a lawyer, and a pioneer in the field of military science fiction and fantasy. His work often focused on the lives of ordinary soldiers, and featured a high degree of realism with respect to military life and battlefield conditions.
Baen will be looking for works of great science fiction or fantasy with strong military themes central to the characters and plot, not mere window dressing. The contest is open to all forms of science fiction and fantasy. Authors do not have to be veterans or active military members to participate, but veterans and those in the military are certainly encouraged to submit; we expect their experience and knowledge will undoubtedly lend their stories a certain verisimilitude. Baen will be looking, in sum, for the kinds of stories David Drake and Jim Baen would have loved to read.
Submissions of original, unpublished short stories of up to 8,000 words will be accepted from 24 September 2026 until 10 December 2026. As with Baen’s other two awards, submissions will be judged blindly by a panel of Baen Books editors and a widely published military science fiction author. Details of the submission process will be released at a later date.
Baen Books plans to announce the finalists of the inaugural award in February 2027, and present the award in June at Baen Books’ Traveling Roadshow at the LibertyCon science fiction and fantasy convention in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
Baen Books is an independent publisher of fantasy and science fiction, in business for over 40 years. They are known for publishing the works of New York Times best-selling authors David Weber, S.M. Stirling, Jerry Pournelle, Larry Niven, Lois McMaster Bujold, Elizabeth Moon, Mercedes Lackey, John Ringo, and many others. Baen is distributed by Simon & Schuster.
Fresh content detected 📡—details follow below ➡️
- Wargames Illustrated #465 for September 2026 is now available to order
- TS Wargames released Śląsk 1939, covering part of the Nazi attack on Poland
- You can order the latest issue of Schwerpunkt (#26) from Gamer’s Armory
- New toys from Wargames Atlantic
- First Empires: Warring States Armored Infantry
- Imperial Conquests: Sepoy Mutineers
- Footsore’s website says Cry Havoc is still in pre-order, but it also lists a 28 August ship date, so in the absence of info to the contrary, we’re putting it here in the “new releas
- This week on Wargame Vault
- Medieval Command: Battle of Varna 1444 is a solo print-&-play wargame
- The Drone Front games are new modern battlefield games, in 2 scales: Operations (6-10mm) and Skirmish (28mm); note that they’ve got AI-art in them
- A Fleet Torn Asunder – The Spanish Civil War at Sea and yeah, there were naval battles in that conflict
- Tactical Drone Warfare is a solo game that can be played a single missions or in an RPG-like campaign mode; focuses on 2022-24 with a heavy inspiration from the Russian invasion of Ukraine
- Flying Pig Games had 2 new sets hit Wargame Vault that were previously published: Old School Tactical Vol. V: Battle for France 1940 and ’65 Kickin’ Ass Scenario Book
- Colonial Williamsburg1 has launched a pair of online games designed to help immerse schoolkids in the history of colonial Virginia
- Other new releases on Steam
- Broken Front is a new platoon-level WW2 game that looks a LOT like LNLP’s Nations at War series
- Veterum is a tactical battle / exploration game that just launched into early access w/ a discount
- The digital version of Worthington’s Archies War (Battle of Guadalcanal) is now available on Steam
- Acceptable Losses goes behind the WW1 trenches as you manage your troops and aren’t just run through endless shoot-’em-up missions
- Nine Space Games is a new set of tabletop RPG/LARP games with a shared universe and similar rules that are designed to be heavy on the drama and the feels
- Community Radio is an improvisational game that feels a lot like you’re running WSQK with a dose of mundane small-town life
- DICE!
- Order an advent calendar from Dice Envy and you get a free set of dice, too
- B2G1 Labor Day sale at Kraken Dice
- New dice from Black Oak Workshop: Skull & Axe d6, Rose Petals d6, and Gelatinous d6, plus the Flaming Eye d20
- A couple of new characters from Alternative Armies
Campaign season remains in full swing 📅—here’s the newest wave ➡️
- Chopper Pilot Vietnam from Compass Games is on Kickstarter
- The new/updated version of Tim Densham’s Lines of Effort: Zurmat is launching imminently on Kickstarter
- This week’s newsletter from On Military Matters includes a bunch of Black Powder Epic and Death Fields minis, among the usual goodness
- So, uh . . . Osprey is getting rid of their boardgames? Weird that they’ve got Undaunted 2200: Revolution on pre-order then
- Panzer Grenadier: Ardennes 1944 is on pre-order with Avalanche Press; it’s a linked narrative campaign of Peiper’s fiasco of an ‘offensive’
- Fallout: Wasteland Warfare – Into the Wasteland Starter Set & Dogmeat with Goggles on pre-order with Modiphius
- This week on Kickstarter
- OK, The Nights of King Ludd from The Dietz Foundation is now officially launched
- Project Blue Book is a solo gamebook that lets you hunt UFOs
- Dead Draw is a print-&-play game of Wild West gunfighting
- And this week’s hopeless campaign is Siclen Valley, which you’ve never heard of, and has all of 5 backers in a window that should’ve had a lot more launch hype
- Two different preorders from Free League through their partnerships with smaller presses: Twilight Sword and Outgunned
- Forgotten Paths is a new print-&-play solo game with a bunch of different hexcrawl maps and a variety of quests and characters, on Gamefound
The sale signals are coming through clearly 📡—follow them ➜
- WDS ‘Game of the week’ is Musket & Pike: Seven Years War for $29.95, on sale until Sunday
- Big sale on hardcover books from Troll Lords as they’re trying to clear warehouse space for new product
- The “War Child Charity Bundle” at Fanatical starts at $8 and has a wide variety of games in it
- C3i Labor Day sale that started on Monday and runs the rest of the week; 30% off with coupon code LABORDAY at checkout
- A LOT of licensed stuff that Renegade Game Studios are clearing out at 80-90% off, so if you’re looking for GI Joe Mission Critical product (among plenty of others) at rock-bottom prices, here you go
- Noble Knight has copies of Berlin ’85 starting at $60
- Miniature Market has Axis & Allies & Zombies on sale as a pre-order even though it’s been shipping for weeks now
- Big Humble Bundle for Goodman Games and their DCC line, plus other stuff
- Some sales on Steam2
- Sale on all Stardock games on Steam for the rest of the week
- Knights of Honor is an older Paradox title and on sale for less than a cup of coffee right now
Several new pieces are now on file 📁—review follows 📋
- 5 Questions With . . . Designer Derek Roberson of Outside The Wire
- #TBT — Classic Car Wars Revisited – Part 1 (new monthly series!)
- Mentioned in Dispatches is back this week!
- Saturday Night Fights ~ “Valour and Fortitude”: The Battle of Friedland (2)
- 2026 Fall Assembly ~ Event Preview
- FL(W)GS Spotlight ~ Game Kastle College Park MD
- Show me your hands (of cards)! – Card-play wargames considered
- From The Armchair Dragoons Archives
- Back on 8 Dec 25, we published “We choose to go to the Moon” ~ Space Racing in One Giant Leap by Rocky
- On 15 Apr 21, we released Connections Online 2021 D3S2: Distributed Campaigns Over the Long Haul on our YouTube channel
- SHORTS!
- Gameplay this week
The Best Thing We Saw On Another Site This Week Was
Three Afghan Wars: A Distant Plain, Kandahar, and District Commander: Kandahar3
Afghanistan held more consequential actors than a board game can seat. They did not share information, did not share objectives, and in some cases did not agree on which war they were in. All of that had to be dropped, merged, or abstracted before any of it reached a table.
Kandahar makes the problem worse. It was the birthplace of the Taliban and the political home ground of Hamid Karzai. It connected Afghanistan to Pakistan and sat at the center of a dense belt of villages, compounds, orchards, canals, and roads. The categories used to describe participants in the war kept breaking down. A provincial official might also be a tribal powerbroker. A police commander might serve the state, run his own armed network, and work as a valued Coalition partner. A road-security contract might strengthen the government, enrich a local strongman, and help finance the political economy that kept the war going.
That makes Kandahar a useful place to compare games. Each design has to commit to an explanation of why the war was so hard to win. Pakistan? The Afghan state? The conflicting goals of the Coalition and the government it supported? The failure to turn battlefield success into lasting local authority? Or the problems on a commander’s desk, meaning poor intelligence, limited capacity, and orders from above that did not match the war in front of him?
Ardwulf’s counter clipping stream went deep on Gettysburg
Various news & notes from the business end of the gaming world
- This week, Scott Thorne’s column covers potential gifts for the upcoming holiday season, as a part of a gift-themed week at ICv2
- Rascal announced their second anthology of their content
- ICv2 rounds up multiple reports of game store thefts with a lot of rare CCG cards being the targets; no one’s ever after GCACW games when they break in
- Here’s some actual number-crunching based on survey data of OSR role-playing groups, talking about how deadly their campaigns are5
- Quackalope is hanging it up? The video is couched as the classic “spend more time with my family” but it could also be that extorting publishers for favorable media coverage just wasn’t a winning business strategy
- Why a Summer PAX Unplugged in Texas? Why not?; BoardGameWire also has some more about it— PAX doubles down on Unplugged growth with new Houston show – just 12 days after Origins. And maybe some pushback?
- Analog Game Studies v13 n3 was just released
- Company Updates
- Amabel explains why Hollandspiele doesn’t do print-&-play anymore
- GMT charging/shipping update that’s pushing the p500 charge in September back a week
- Thin Red Line Games released the latest version of their living rules for their UAIS series games (PDF)
Something else to ponder:1990 Arkham: 160 pages, B&W, $17.952026 Arkham: 272 pages, color, $59.95Take that $17.95 to an inflation calculator and see that the B&W book would cost $45.96 today.If you're asking "Why aren't RPGs more expensive?" that's the right question.(That's industry wide.)
— Shannon Appelcline (@shannonappelcline.bsky.social) 2026-09-05T00:14:26.189Z
Articles, advice, and ideas for those of you on the creative side
- Skeleton Code Machine asks What can Nim teach us about game design?
- Amabel, and Cole, and others, talking about how the “page” or “spread” is a discrete unit to be considered when writing game rules
- How to create a great TTRPG elevator pitch with advice that applies to other kids of gaming, too
- A Week in the Life of a Board Game Designer, Developer, Editor, and so on and so on (Chris Backe)
Look a MVP boardgame prototype to test.Is it ugly and devoid of theme? Yup. Is it a playable game? IDK⁉️Will it be fun? IDK⁉️But it's something at least.🎲✂️
— Perpetual Ploy (42% cardboard) (@perpetualploy.bsky.social) 2026-09-03T16:37:31.069Z
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 136, October 4, and November 1
- Next confirmed live event is The Armchair Dragoons Fall Assembly (Cary NC), 9-11 October 2026
- Next virtual event is The ACDC 15-17 January 2027
Upcoming Conventions & Events
- 18-20 Sep Southern Front (Morrisville NC)
- 24-27 Sep 6ᵉ Open de France des Jeux d’Histoire (Bordeaux France)
- 27 Sep Revolutionary War Historic Miniature and Board Game Day (Ft Belvoir VA)
- 4-11 Oct ASLOK (Cleveland)
- 9-11 Oct Armchair Dragoons Fall Assembly (Cary NC)
- 16-17 Oct WintiCon (Winterthur Switzerland)
- 15-18 Oct GMT Weekend at the Warehouse (Middle of Nowhere CA)
- 22-25 Oct EssenSpiel (Essen Germany)
- 5-9 Nov Compass Fall Expo 2026 (Meriden CT)
- 6-8 Nov HMGS Fall-in! (Lancaster PA)
- 6-9 Nov SDHistCon Summit 2026 (San Diego CA)
- 13-16 Nov Kublacon Fall (Burlingame CA)
- 18-22 Nov BGG.CON (Dallas TX)
- 4-6 Dec Pax U (Philadelphia PA)
Headed to GMT’s Weekend at the Warehouse? Here’s a geeklist to help arrange your games
Event schedule for Fall Assembly, updated as of 6 September 2026; Register here!
| Event Name | Max # | Starts | Mins |
|---|---|---|---|
| Battles of the American Revolution: Rhode Island | 1 | 10/09 (FRI) at 1200 | 240 |
| Kriegsspiel Scenario | 10 | 10/09 (FRI) at 1200 | 120 |
| Raider Drop Zone (Full division!) | 6 | 10/09 (FRI) at 1400 | 300 |
| Red Baron’s War—WWI Air combat a remake of Richthofen’s War | 10 | 10/09 (FRI) at 1400 | 240 |
| Off the Line: The Winter War | 2 | 10/09 (FRI) at 1500 | 180 |
| King of the Tabletop | 4 | 10/09 (FRI) at 1900 | 120 |
| Combat Commander | 4 | 10/09 (FRI) at 1900 | 240 |
| Sails of Glory | 10 | 10/09 (FRI) at 2000 | 180 |
| Grand Tactical Series Beach Landing Scenario | 4 | 10/10 (SAT) at 0900 | 240 |
| BCS- Danger Forward | 2 | 10/10 (SAT) at 0900 | 180 |
| Cracking the Hammer Bastion (Saturday) | 6 | 10/10 (SAT) at 0900 | 240 |
| Air & Armor: V Corps Learn To Play | 5 | 10/10 (SAT) at 0900 | 360 |
| Eagles in the Sky | 2 | 10/10 (SAT) at 1000 | 180 |
| Wings of War/ Wings of Glory: WWII | 10 | 10/10 (SAT) at 1000 | 120 |
| From Rappahannock to Bull Run – (rolling game part 1) | 4 | 10/10 (SAT) at 1300 | 240 |
| SPI’s Würzburg | 4 | 10/10 (SAT) at 1300 | 180 |
| Anaconda: Gray Skies, Blue Water | 4 | 10/10 (SAT) at 1400 | 240 |
| Red Baron’s War—WWI Air combat a remake of Richthofen’s War | 10 | 10/10 (SAT) at 1600 | 240 |
| The Napoleonic Wars by GMT | 4 | 10/10 (SAT) at 1900 | 240 |
| From Rappahannock to Bull Run – (rolling game part 2) | 4 | 10/10 (SAT) at 1900 | 240 |
| MASS Impact | 4 | 10/10 (SAT) at 2000 | 180 |
| Cracking the Hammer Bastion (Sunday) | 6 | 10/11 (SUN) at 0900 | 240 |
| Air & Armor: V Corps Learn To Play | 5 | 10/11 (SUN) at 0900 | 360 |
| Musket and Pike Battle Series – Naseby | 4 | 10/11 (SUN) at 0900 | 240 |
| Off the Line: The Winter War | 2 | 10/11 (SUN) at 1000 | 180 |
| Wings of War/ Wings of Glory: WWI | 10 | 10/11 (SUN) at 1000 | 120 |
| Die Atom Bombe (by Against the Odds) | 5 | 10/11 (SUN) at 1200 | 240 |
| Brief Border Wars 2 | 4 | 10/11 (SUN) at 1200 | 120 |
Focusing on the practitioner world ~ don’t forget about the dedicated area in our forums for the wargame professionals and the separate “practitioner” category for articles on our site
Dueling thoughts on “scientific” wargaming
First, this recent article about expanding the use of AI in wargaming from War on the Rocks
Wargaming is in the midst of two revolutions: analytic-style games designed for multiple playthroughs and AI integration. But we will only reap their full benefits by taking a more scientific approach to the field. We focus on analytic wargames, by which we mean games designed like scientific experiments: carefully constructed to control variables, run at scale to quantify statistical significance of findings, and used to test specific hypotheses. Other game types, such as teaching or exploratory — see Andrew Reddie and Beth Goldblum’s Lawfare article for an explanation of wargame types — are useful, but we see the first of our two revolutions in the analytic wargame subfield.
Then Evan D’Alessandro has an issue with the “scientific” characterization
So, there are other ways to do rigorous science that I think fit most wargames better, such as treating them as cases and applying those methods. This is (major simplification) functionally what we do for the most part now and its a perfectly legitimate way to create rigorous scientific knowledge.Functionally using things like process tracing is what analytic wargames are doing in practice. This idea of overlimiting to “only if we can apply stats to it” in many cases would deprive us of useful data we could otherwise collect from wargames because stats can only tell you certain things.
Wargaming News & Articles for the Pros
- Want to create your own Littoral Commander counters? Here’s a webapp where you can do just that
- This week, Wargaming Weekly asks Are we ready for AI-powered wargaming? (Part 15)
- I ‘Vibe-Coded’ a Wargame in 30 minutes (FCI)
- The Classroom Is A Battle Lab (Marine Corps Association)
- How the Navy’s Black Sea standoff became a wargame over Russian disinformation (ForcesNews)
- PODCAST Episode 172 Sebastian Bae on Littoral Commander (UniversityXP)
- Where Does AI Escalation Come From? We Don’t Know. We Should Find Out. (War on the Rocks)
- Russia defeated NATO, captured Swedish island in secret war games (Geo News)
- Five Powers, One Crisis: Unfolding the Challenge of Fighting ISIS Without the U.S.
(Homeland Security Today) - Simulating a Russian Attack for a high-level exercise (WaPo)
- PaxSims latest article covers Command Learning Series #1: How Tactical Decision Games Develop Judgment
- Get Hired! JANUS Research Group has a posting for Exercises, Experimentation, and Wargaming Analyst
Wargame Events of Professional Interest
- The next GUWS webinars
- 22 September — Build Excel War Gaming Tools
- 6 October — After AlphaZero: Human-Machine Teaming from Games to the Battlefield
- 20 October — Wargaming in the French Army: Duel Tactique
- 10 November — Emergency Management and Resilience Wargaming
- Upcoming PGS/MORS events
- 22–25 September – Wargaming Emerging Technologies Workshop
- 19–23 October – Certificate in Wargaming
- 3–5 November – Designing Tactical Games Course
- 17–19 November – Gaming Space Operations Course
- 7-11 December – Certificate in Cyber Wargaming
- Upcoming wargaming events of interest
- 11 September — Playing the nation: Identity, culture, and power in video games, register here
- 19-20 September — Connections Suisse, more info here
- 19-20 September — Iron Tide virtual wargame/exercise (Taiwan Straits scenario), register here
- 10 October — Wargaming with AI: What Can We Actually Claim to Know? (WWN)
- 18 October — Designing Historical Games for Classrooms – A Practical Guide for Educators, register here
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
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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.
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Thanks very much for drawing attention to Gary Romano’s comparative review of three of my games on Afghanistan. It is quite the best review writing and analysis I’ve seen this year.
He posted the same item to the BGG discussion areas for all three games.
The most interesting exchange of the three threads is the one for “Kandahar”, here:
https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/3762326/three-afghan-wars-a-distant-plain-kandahar-and-dis