by Today’s mission: Catch up on the latest intel briefing. Welcome to #TuesdayNewsday! ↘️
As we were prepping the news, we got the press release from SDHISTCON about this year’s Bobby Nunes Memorial Award finalists
- Amabel Holland video essay: Vonnegut’s Board Game: Preservation, Annotation, Context
- Homo Ludens: Unpacking the Clean Wehrmacht’s Legacy in Wargames – Wargame Ethics
- Player Elimination: Philosophy and Board Games
- Space-Biff!: Space-Cast! #42. The Twilight Cardboard
Amabel’s got another deep dive into the history of an older game
- US Postal Service traffic drops 80% after the de minimus exception goes into place (NPR)
- It’s not just games that are getting disrupted as hobby stationery companies are feeling the pinch (Rascal News)
- And there’s dozens of other hobbies getting screwed, too
- RAPID FIRE! is the latest European company to stop shipping to the US
- Turgalium Games stopped shipping to the US because their carrier, DHL, has stopped for now
- They’re changing Wehrlegig’s production schedule
- The Houston Press talks about the local effects on the tabletop game biz there
- Manufacturing does not appear to be coming back
Your wallet might cry, but your game shelf will thank you
- We’re not sure anyone has ever uttered the words “Oh thank God the halfling cavalry have arrived!” but just in case, Wargames Atlantic has you covered with their latest release in their Classic Fantasy line
- C3i #38 – the last Rodger MacGowan issue – is now shipping
- Avalanche Press’s website and newsletter both insist that SWWAS: North Cape is released and available now
- GMT started charging these on 6 September and are shipping now
- Senet Magazine #20 is now out
- Paradox release the Crusader Kings III: Coronations DLC on Steam
- New minis from The Wargaming Company! French Légère Command in Shako
- New DLC from Avalon Digital! Wars Across the World: Balkans 1912
- NAC Wargames has a new giant neoprene mat for The Planet King
- Steve Jackson Games released Our Haunt, an RPG where you get to play the ghosts
- Knights of the Crusades is new on Steam, and 20% off through 19 September for the launch
- Emberglow has “Misfit Mimics” – a plush mimic masquerading as a d20, that doubles as a dice pouch
- Microprose dropped some new games through Steam over the last week
- Exploration
- iM1A2 Abrams (which looks like a 90s-era UCOFT environment) – 20% off for the launch, though
- HIND (which somehow looks even less low-tech than the Abrams game above)
- Neyyah (on intro sale at 20% off thru 16 September)
Pre-order now, panic about delivery delays later! (Just kidding) (mostly)
- This week’s newsletter from On Military Matters includes the first appearance of GW products from them, with a 10% discount on pre-order
- Wight Box is another 70s-era revival game and their schtick is trying to meld both the original D&D system with the Chainmail combat system and not run afoul of copyright while doing so
- Nagashino 1575 & Shizugatake 1583 is a new(ish) pre-order from Serious Historical Games; this is a reprint of a previous game that sold out quickly, but they’re taking pre-orders for the reprint
- Exodus from Reynoldsworld is a new roll-&-write on Gamefound in a sci-fi alien-invasion setting
- VUCA Simulations put several new games on pre-order over the last week
- There’s a bunch from Compass that’s on pre-order now; some of these are more recent than others
- Torpedo Junction: Beneath The Southern Cross, Volume 1
- Island Infernos
- White Death: Velikiye Luki, the Stalingrad of the North
- Brothers at War: 1861
- The God Kings: Warfare at the Dawn of Civilization, 1500-1250 BC
- The War in Russia, 41-44: Proud Monster Deluxe 2nd Edition
- Panzer Ace: 1939-45
- Combat! Tunisia & Sicily
- A bunch of pre-orders for Warlord’s Konflikt ’47 game
The dice gods have smiled upon your bank account
- WDS ‘Game of the week’ is Civil War Battles: Petersburg for $29.95
- This week’s new release from Dice Envy is their trick-or-treat mystery bags that are 10% off with coupon code MONSTER at checkout
- Blue Panther’s got a sale right now on all Catastrophe Games titles at 20% off with coupon code CAT20 at checkout
- Noble Knight has copies of Ranger starting at $150
- Miniature Market has the new Capstone edition of Meltwater on sale for 20% off
Want to sound smart at your next game session? Read these
- An ACE Wargame – Air Force Wargame Indo-Pacific by Air Force Wargame Institute
- First Impressions of Age Of Longbow I – Sword & Siege Series by Wargame Design Studio
- Mentioned in Dispatches has started recording! See below 🤠
- Saturday Night Fights ~ “Snappy Nappy”: The Spring 1809 Campaign (III)
- Bonus Gallery of Age Of Longbow I – Sword & Siege Series by Wargame Design Studio
- First Look: Poland ’39 from Wargame Design Studio
- AARs
- Gameplay this week
Coming up mid-September!
The Best Thing We Saw On Another Site This Week Was
Gaming the Post-Apocalypse: ‘Gamma World’ and ‘Paranoia’
Yeah, it’s so hard to pin GW down because, as you note, it was part of an overall zeitgeist of post-apocalyptic media in the late ’70s/early ’80s: Mad Max and The Road Warrior, of course, even the first volume in Stephen King’s Dark Tower series, The Gunslinger (all five parts of the novel had been serialized in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction between, yes, 1978 and 1981). I think King and other creators of this period saw in the post-apocalypse a chance to tell epic stories, to set up quests, to explore that very “post-apocalyptic swords and sorcery” theme in a way that the modern world doesn’t allow.
Ardwulf’s counter clipping stream talked about monster games
Various news & notes from the business end of the gaming world
- This week, Scott Thorne talked about good gaming gifts at the FLGS and emphasizes smaller products
- BoardGameWire has a report on Asmodee launching a kid-focused line that adapts popular titles for young’uns
- Rascal notes that the Tiny Table Index for small, indie, & solo RPGs has been shut down
- ICv2 reports on further shenanigans in the Diamond bankruptcy, with new owner Sparkle Pop pushing the blame for consignment inventory sales back to the previous owners for not stopping them
- WotC’s new CEO is making googly-eyes at digital game products again, like wanting a D&D MMORPG
- Iranian mobile game Shahin: True Promise unveiled (Tehran Times)
- BattleTech looking for some playtesters
- ICv2 also reports that GalaxyCon has banned AI art and those peddling it
- WDS’s latest engine-update spree gets a bunch of First World War Campaigns, Modern Campaigns and Panzer Campaigns games onto the same update cycle
Every time I have had a hit, it's been taking a risk on something strange and new. Again, it doesn't mean that every time I have taken that risk I have had a hit! But you can't knock it out of the park if you don't try a big swing.
— Amabel Holland (@amabel.bsky.social) 2025-09-04T10:12:56.346Z
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 ACDC1, 16-18 January, 2026
Upcoming Conventions & Events
- 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)
- 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)
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.
Designers currently attending? Mike Nagel, Bruce Maxwell, and Keith Tracton, plus developer Dick Vohlers. Also, Blue Panther will be providing a custom discount code for attendees to get their orders in ahead of time that’ll zero out the shipping costs (and maybe a little bit off?) for orders ahead of the convention.
| 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!
- There’s a new online-based incident response training game aimed at c-level and similar execs that you can find here
- MORS has an upcoming Designing Tactical Games course
- AI wargame simulations show language models struggle to understand or model de-escalation (The Decoder)
- This week, Mick Ryan’s ‘Big Five’ talks a lot more about the Pacific, and with more granularity, than he has before
- 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
Taking part in the Green & Pleasant Land mega game at ConnectionsUK. I'm the National Security Adviser. War with Russia looms. The UK govn is preoccupied with fire fighting mini crises. The PM is chairing regular cabinet meetings, but I fear Russian destabilisation efforts are proving effective.
— James Buckley (@jsbuckley.bsky.social) 2025-09-09T13:53:00.763Z
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 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.
You said UCOFT, give yourself 2 points!