by Want to know what everyone else will be posting 🧑💻 on social media 3-5 weeks from now? Read it here first! ➜
A formal statement about the Charles S Roberts Awards from Gary Mengle
Folks, a lot of you have asked about the current status for the Charles S. Roberts Awards. It’s past time to reply with an official announcement.
This is not that announcement. However, while the awards are behind schedule, we do intend to award them this year. At this time, I cannot promise a release date, but the Awards are moving forward again and I should have some news for you soon. The cause of the delay lies entirely with me. Personal events and issues have throttled my bandwidth such that I’ve been unable to get the process rolling. But we are moving again.
I do expect to have a firm and full announcement in the next few weeks. So stay tuned – the CSR Awards will happen, one way or another.
The Solo Wargaming Survey results are starting to come out, and later this week you’ll get both Beyond Solitaire’s video about this year’s results, plus our podcast about the things we’ve seen & learned over the past 4 years.
2026 Solo & Solitaire Wargaming & Historical Gaming Survey Results
ANNOUNCEMENT | MASTER LIST | DATA DIVING | BEYOND SOLITAIRE YOUTUBE DISCUSSION
BGG GEEKLIST | MENTIONED IN DISPATCHES EPISODE | DEEP DATA DIVES
So look, it’s cute that the New York Times wants to parachute into the wargaming hobby and ask Can Two Friends Complete a Game No One Has Ever Finished? but there’s so much wrong with this it’s hilarious
- “No one” is bullshit. Plenty of people have finished it, with reports on BGG going back a decade-and-a-half and there’s a group in Seattle more recently
- Wargamer.com remembered that wargames exist long enough to cover these two guys a while ago
- Ardwulf & some of the Winterfest gang are gearing up to play in 2028 and here’s betting they get closer to finishing it in a week than these guys do in 2-1/2 years
- They’re barely acknowledging that it was as much as piece of performance art as it was a game
Another batch of new arrivals is reporting for duty 📄—let’s review them ➡️
- Bockholm Games started shipping their Armed Conflict game to backers from their Gamefound campaign
- They’re still not shipping the hard copies yet, but Modiphius did release the PDF/digital versions of the Haywire Modern core rules1
- Terminator: Dark Fate – Defiance: Evolution DLC just dropped from Slitherine
- Tumulus issue #8 is now shipping
- Strategemata released Festung Cherbourg 1944 using their Festung Breslau system
- Monstrous Mutations from Wargames Atlantic gives you a collection of arms, legs, horns, and more to make all sorts of changes to your existing minis
- This week on Wargame Vault, someone wasn’t paying any attention to what got submitted, as there are AI-slop games for hockey, bobsledding, and American football that are all showing in the “new games” queue
- Il Podestà is a 13th-century-Italy print-&-play game with some colorful maps & counters
- Classified Operations is a set of system-neutral sci-fi skirmish scenarios for man-to-man games or RPGs
- C’mon now, everyone needs a Zero G Sommelier like this one from Alternative Armies
- minION Bundle Vol. 1 is a 6-game subscription from ION Games that’ll make sure you don’t miss any releases
- Other new releases on Steam
- Meridian Strike is a hex-&-mechs mercenary game that looks a lot like Battletech with the serial numbers filed off
- Crown of Hispania lets you “rewrite the reconquista” across Medieval Spain
- The Ars Magica Definitive Edition is now available for customer purchase direct from Atlas for physical or digital copies, or on DTRPG
- 15 Minute Futures is a neat-o little print-&-play PDF and you can see some examples of the outcomes with podcast guest Sean Nittner here
- Free “starter pack” of Traveller PDFs from Mongoose? Yess, please!
- DICE!
- Dice Envy have a BOGO sale going on their “spooky dice” that are all collected here
- Kraken Dice just restocked a bunch of their busier color schemes, including the entire “slate” line
The pledge managers of tomorrow are being born today 📋—details below ➡️
- Napoléon 1870: The Collapse of the Second French Empire just launched this afternoon from the guys over at Shakos
- Last call on pre-orders for the big re-stock coming to MMP, with ASL Starter Kit 1, ASL Starter Kit 2, ASL Starter Kit 3, ASL Starter Kit 4, Decision at Elst, and On to Berlin!; they’ve landed and are awaiting customs clearance on the way to the warehouse
- Sapper Studio is already sending Battlegroup Clash: Baltics for a second printing, so if you missed it the first time around, you can get your pre-order in now for the next print run
- This week’s newsletter from On Military Matters includes a bunch of stuff for the upcoming No Easy Ground game, and a bunch of ‘new’ inventory in their used books category
- Pre-orders are now open for The Silver Bayonet: Venice: The Alchemist’s Legacy with Osprey
- There’s a consolidated campaign on Backerkit from Free League for The One Ring RPG with the Bestiary, Gondor Campaign, and Updated Rules that also includes solo rules
- Sound of Drums is showing No Retreat! Vol. 1: The Russian Front – Designer’s Edition as a pre-order on their site
- Avalanche Press have changed their language in their newsletters to indicate which games are not yet in-hand when you place your order, and one of those is the Far Side of the World: Guerre de Course campaign study about the French naval buildup of the late 19th century
- Osprey put A Billion Suns: Second Edition on pre-order with a projected December release
- This week on Kickstarter
- ALL OUT WAR : Welcome To The Front is a new modern-war digital game from a AAA studio veteran, but as of press time it’s got 1 backer for $1 toward a $25k goal and no advertising to get people enthused about it; there were 2 previous campaigns for this game in 2020 and 2021 that never took off, either
- Midway 1022: A solitaire Carrier battle game is off and running with a short window left to back it
- Dead Net is a solo hacker / cyberspace RPG with some interesting card-play mechanics
- And this week’s hopeless campaign is The Helpful Dungeon, which despite its lofty ambitions appears to have an unattainable goal and is way under-marketed with only 5 backers toward a $25k target
- New p500s from this week’s GMT update
- SpaceCorp Centauri (either standalone, or can be combined w/ the base game)
- VEKTYR: The Geopolitical Struggle for Central Asia, 1991-2020 is the post-Cold War contest over Central Asia and all the “–stans”2
- Empire of the Sun: China Expansion which kinda tells you what it’s all about
- Pax Romana – Genesis dual pack reprint
- Enemy Coast Ahead: Dambusters mounted map (yes, just the map)
Multiple bargains are now active 📍—review the list 📄
- WDS ‘Game of the week’ is Napoleonic Battles: Republican Bayonets on the Rhine for $29.95, on sale until Sunday
- 20% off GMT digital bundle that includes Rebel Fury, Saratoga, and SpaceCorp on Steam
- GIANT warehouse sale with Modiphius where you can get games like Dune, John Carter, and Mindjammer marked down 80-90% as they’re clearing out space and unloading inventory whose licenses are getting ready to expire; there’s also a bunch of minis for games with more recent releases
- Giant Traveller collection at Fanatical, with a top tier that has over 100 products
- Noble Knight has copies of Red Star Rising – The War in Russia, 1941-1945 starting at $50
- Miniature Market has Clash of Giants: Civil War on sale this week at over $15 off
New reports have arrived from headquarters 📡—details below 📋
- Wargaming Research: Solo War + Historical Gaming 2026 Data Deep Diving
- Mentioned In Dispatches S17 E2 — Convention Planning
- Saturday Night Fights ~ Snappy Nappy: The Marengo Campaign
- A Look at Cuius Regio: The Thirty Years War
- SHORTS!
- #CNXONL26 We cant prove the value of wargames
- Mentioned in Dispatches S17e2 Preview! How crossovers built our gaming community
- Mentioned in Dispatches S17e2 Preview! Why SES Portuguese Hall sold out—perks and limits
- #CNXONL26 Three practical AI uses for analytic wargaming
- Mentioned in Dispatches S17e2 Preview! How to run invite only house conventions
- #CNXONL26 Running the first event in a museum + player engagement
- #CNXONL26 Modeling relationships interests and dependencies in games
- #CNXONL26 How nouns and verbs shape game design
- From The Armchair Dragoons Archives
- Back on 19 Dec 22, we posted 5 Questions With… John Carnahan, Designer of Captaincy by bayonetbrant
- On 8 May 23, we broadcast What Surprised Me the Most… from CNX ONL 23 on our YouTube channel
- Gameplay this week
The Best Thing We Saw On Another Site This Week Was
Command Learning Series #2: How Matrix Games Develop Judgment over at PaxSims
To create a credible matrix game, you must understand the actors: their objectives, capabilities, relationships, culture, constraints and competing interests. Researching those perspectives often became as educational as facilitating the game itself. Playing the game develops judgment. Designing the game develops understanding. Facilitating develops both. Matrix games require participants to think beyond a single plan. They must consider competing perspectives, anticipate second- and third-order effects, justify their reasoning, adapt when events unfold differently than expected and appreciate that intelligent people can reach different conclusions from the same information. The argument mechanism is particularly important. Players do not simply announce what they want to happen. They must explain why an action should succeed, identify the conditions and circumstances that support their argument and expose their reasoning to challenge by other participants. The dice introduce uncertainty, but the learning occurs largely in the reasoning around them. That is the essence of judgment.
Ardwulf’s counter clipping stream (theoretically) talked about conducting research when designing wargames
Various news & notes from the business end of the gaming world
- This week, Scott Thorne’s column covers supply chain & delivery issues with WotC’s upcoming Magic the Gathering releases
- BoardGameWire talks about the UK Games Expo succession plan that includes bringing in AireCon co-founder Mark Cooke
- Rascal reports on getting ‘pitched’ a D&D module from an AI agent
- ICv2 reports that Toys ‘R Us is rising from the grave in time for the holidays, but seems uncertain how many will stick around for the long haul
- Company Updates
- The heir to the ModQuads? Sapper Studio are bundling 4 new scenarios into one Battlegroup Clash box and we’re working on some additional coverage coming soon
- HALO: Flashpoint rules update and info from Mantic about how to update your rules
- Price changes coming for Paizo core books
A few places are still available: www.spielworxx.de/2026/09/11/g… #Brettspiele #boardgames
— Spielworxx. Spiele. Iserlohner EC. Nachdenken. Füße hoch (@ulible.bsky.social) 2026-09-16T13:13:17.158Z
Articles, advice, and ideas for those of you on the creative side
- Skeleton Code Machine talks about taking damage as more dice
-
The Walden Paradox expanded into a full ‘zine with design ideas
- Tumulus issue #8 is now shipping
- Jamey Stegmaier talks about Marketable vs Aspirational Funding Goals
- Royalties earned, contracts signed, games playtested | Indie board game designer Q2 2026 report
What's the longest you've held onto a game idea?I have one that I've restarted multiple times over 13 years because the theme always makes me laugh! It's very ambitious design-wise but I'm about to try a new approach.Fingers crossed.🎲 ✂️
— Manuel Correia (@gamesbymanuel.bsky.social) 2026-09-20T22:13:02.005Z
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 4 and November 1
- Next confirmed live event is Buckeye Game Fest (Columbus OH), 25-28 March 2027
- Next virtual event is The ACDC 15-17 January 2027
Upcoming Conventions & Events
- 24-27 Sep 6ᵉ Open de France des Jeux d’Histoire (Bordeaux France) <– THIS WEEKEND!
- 27 Sep Revolutionary War Historic Miniature and Board Game Day (Ft Belvoir VA) <– THIS WEEKEND!
- 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)
- 24 Oct Eboracon VIII (York UK)
- 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)
- 15-17 Jan The ACDC (Armchair Dragoons HQ Online)
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
Wargaming News & Articles for the Pros
- “Wargames Aren’t Just For Generals” as the Compromising Positions podcast attends and reports on Connections UK4
- Distributed production wargame tests Arsenal of Freedom sustainment in future conflict scenarios (DLA)
- Step 3 of the United Nations Military Decision-Making Process (UN MDMP) (YouTube / AI)
- The Self-Aware Exercise: Giving Military Exercises a Nervous System (LinkedIn)
- Digitalization Of Military Education In NATO Countries As A Factor In Improving The Quality Of Military Personnel Training (Arabian Journal of Science)
- PaxSims latest article covers Russia–Ukraine Peace & Stability: A GPT-assisted negotiation game prototype
- Get Hired! Valiant Integrated Services has a posting for a Games for Training Lead
Wargame Events of Professional Interest
- The next GUWS webinars
- 22 September — Build Excel War Gaming Tools <– TONIGHT!
- 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
- 1 October — Anatomy of a Game – Games and Gaming Lab (WWN)
- 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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