by Sound the trumpets and update your calendars—#TuesdayNewsday has landed with a fresh wave of intel ⚡️
* results not guaranteed
STEAM SALE TIME
- Microprose has a bunch of games that are part of the sale, from 20%-50% off
- The Avalon Digital collection includes their games, plus the SGS titles
- Bunch of stuff from gang at S&M
- Most of the wargames are grouped under the “strategy” category, along with a bunch of very-much-not-wargames
- Paradox games in the sale and it’s not a great selection
- Playdek’s titles include their GMT adaptations
- A whole lot of Civ titles under the Firaxis category
A Fast Game is a Good Game started poking around a bit on the effect that wargaming awards might have on publishers and game sales, and it feels like this might be building off of 2 of our previous pieces.
First up, Jonathon’s 2 articles that reached out to publishers to ask about how CSR nominations might impact their sales
- Feature: The Value Proposition of Wargaming Awards – the Publishers’ Perspective
- TL/DR: The Value Proposition of Wargaming Awards for Publishers
Short answer: not much.
This seems to be taking our question about wargame awards from the 2024 year-end survey and asking publishers instead of the audience, and then also expanding on some of the points we made in our Wargaming Awards episode of the podcast
Interesting video about converting a tabletop microgame into an online-playable digital version
h/t OJsDad
🎲✂️ #indiedev #gamedev
— City Square Studios 🎲🃏♟️ (@citysquarestudios.bsky.social) 2025-09-26T12:16:46.056Z
It’s been 3 years and a cancer recovery, but . . . HAMTAG IS BACK!
Clear the staging area—these fresh releases demand your attention
- S&T #355 is shipped to subscribers and now available on their store; includes 11 Days War: WWI East Front 1918
- Compass Games are now shipping Seapower and the State
- Strategemata released their first game (and first news item!) since December 2023, as A Full Measure of Devotion is now available
- Mike Lambo has Hellcat Tankers: A Solitaire Wargame on Amazon
- Modiphius released the latest set for Fallout: Factions — The Brotherhood of Steel can now join your tabletop battles
- Heiho: The Mass Battle Samurai Game has been released by Wargames Atlantic, and includes over 990 minis
- The Silver Bayonet: Britain: Bones of Albion is now available from Osprey Games
- As noted in the video above, Curtis has made Ambush from the Depths available as a browser-playable game
- Remember those classic Dragon Magazine minis ads that were just B&W line drawings of the figures because it was too expensive to pay for color ads, but that could kind of trace over to create your character sketches? Alternative Armies are bringing back a bunch of those sculpts! The latest ones are the
- While you wait for the digital version of GMT’s Mr President you can blow $5 on the launch sale for Shadow President instead and enjoy the state-of-the-art-of-1997 graphics as you rule your nation
- Look, they’re literally assembled out of spare parts, but if you’re OK with a bagged version and supplying your own dice, MMP has some ASL Starter Kits they can sell you; the first hit is always cheap, kids!
- Ryan Heilman has an actually serious postcard game – A Summer In Sarajevo – that you can go grab for free on BGG
- Matrix Games held their “Home of the Wargamers” annual press/launch event last week, and among the new games released you’ve got
- Tankies is a light-weight shoot-em-up you can grab for cheap on Wargame Vault
- We jumped the gun based on a GMT email earlier in the month, but can now say that yes, they are definitely shipping these (but we’re not putting them into the new release graphic montage again)
- Warlord just unloaded a bunch of new Konflict ’47 minis, and . . . yeah, it’s a bunch
Future classics in the making? You decide. Here’s what’s funding now
- It’s sort-of a pre-order, as you can get your deposit in for OSG’s upcoming Napoleonic Tour to Northern Italy next May and save one of the 25 available seats
- Dragon Rampant: Second Edition from Osprey is on pre-order
- This week’s newsletter from On Military Matters includes books ranging from coastal forts to Robert Rogers to the Canadian Theater in 1812, all scheduled to ship mid-October(ish)
- Against The Odds Magazine has their 2024 Annual on pre-order with the included game DOMESDAY and don’t think too hard about the quirks of the calendar
- We got yelled at last weekend for not including Dogs of War that’s over on Gamefound, so here it is
- Modiphius opened pre-orders for the Royal Flush campaign for their Fallout: The Roleplaying Game line
- Warlord couldn’t release everything for Konflict ’47 so they’ve got a few things on pre-order, too
- Phalanx has several different expansions for their Bretwalda game on pre-order
Stretch your hobby dollar like it’s a covering Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow!
There are always signs that Autumn is upon us: leaves changing colors, “pumpkin” flavored everything overrunning your grocery store, NC State football losing a game they shouldn’t because of dumb coaching decisions, sweater-dresses-and-knee-high-boots back in fashion at the local farmer’s market, and the arrival of the Compass Games holiday catalog with their sale prices.
Well, Compass Games are now showing their holiday sale prices on their website, so any of the above that haven’t happened yet1 should be imminent
- WDS ‘Game of the week’ is Panzer Campaigns: Philippines ’44 for $29.95
- Can’t get more “on sale” than “free!” — in prep for their coming launch of Kings of War 4th Edition, Mantic Games are giving away their remaining stock of 3rd edition compendiums, but you have to pay the shipping cost
- This week’s new release from Dice Envy is the very colorful ‘Morninglord’ and it’s 10% off with coupon code SOLONG at checkout
- If you’re stateside and worried about shipping/tariff costs for VUCA Sims, then you can place your orders with The Gamer’s Armory, who are now stocking their games and are always marked down from MSRP
- Easy Roller Dice has a big clearance sale where you can add 15% on top of sale prices with coupon code LOOT at checkout
- If you order $100 or more from Against The Odds Magazine, they’ll throw in a free copy of 1814 – Empire’s End into the package if you put code 1814 in the comments field at checkout but they don’t have a lot of copies
- Noble Knight has copies of Napoleon’s Last Battles Quad starting at $75
- Combat Mission bundle/collection of 10 games on sale on Steam; yeah, it’s $185 but it’s marked down from over $230 and you can also buy them individually
- Miniature Market has Hornet Leader: Carrier Air Operations marked down to $72
- Twilight: 2000 starter set from Free League on sale for $38
- We called out the Steam sale going on above, but just to reiterate:
- Mark Herman Rebel Fury Bundle (Rebel Fury, Gettysburg, Waterloo) for only $12.77 (‼️)
- Fort Sumter: The Secession Crisis at 50% off
- Labyrinth: The War on Terror at 50% off
- Conflict of Heroes: Awakening the Bear for 80% off (and the DLC is also 70% off!)
- Don’t forget that you can get FREE SHIPPING from Blue Panther to the Armchair Dragoons Fall Assembly, if you’re attending the convention; you need to get registered to get your discount code and place orders by Friday, so Blue Panther can have them ready for delivery to the convention
From tabletop tactics to digital doctrine, here’s what we covered this week
- Convention Coverage ~ Southern Front 2025
- Fall Assembly 2025 Operations Preview
- Mentioned In Dispatches S15 E2 – The 2024 Charlies
- Saturday Night Fights ~ “Snappy Nappy”: The Spring 1809 Campaign (V)
- Unhappy Birthday at Castle Slogar
- AARs
- Gameplay this week
The Best Thing We Saw On Another Site This Week Was
Churchill in the Classroom from Pjius Kruminas over on InsideGMT
So what are those decisions and what do we care about in the game? Churchill puts forward specific issues as the central to the simulated conferences. They range from production to accumulation of political influence to nuclear weapon research. Nonetheless, most of them affect progress and influence in the European and the Pacific theatres of WW2. On the one hand, it seems to be binding – we do not see the civilians and the local populations. But what the big three care about is first and foremost winning the war, even if focusing production on the military implies a tension between it and civilian spending. On the other hand, it focuses the game narrative well and helps players to engage more strongly with the economics of war.
Ardwulf’s counter clipping stream talked about THE TOPIC
Various news & notes from the business end of the gaming world
- Although this is about digital games, this is an excellent reading list for aspiring game designers of any ilk: Want to become a game designer? Start here. (Medium.com)
- Matrix Games are launching a tournament for Strategic Command WWII: War in the Pacific that’ll start on 7 October
- Legal fees in the Diamond bankruptcy case continue to mount as it seems that JP Morgan’s goal is to just spend the litigants into surrender, regardless of the legal merits of their case
- BoardGameWire covers a French unpublished-game competition and their 2025 winners
- Rascal asks “Why Do People Love To Hate Shadowrun?” and it’s the TV commercial, right? RIGHT?!
- A leveraged buyout of EA (by Saudi Arabian money) doesn’t directly affect much of our readership, but it might put a lot of game design professionals out on the street looking for work
- Battlefront has launched a new “made to order” program for their minis
- SGS has updated Heia Safari to their recent 1.5 engine, with the other games coming soon
- WDS have been updating their Napoleonic series of games to the 4.09.3 version of that engine
This bit of humor popped up on social media last week. Everyone go help Mike sell some more books!
If anyone is looking for a Kickstarter/Gamefound endorsement from 3 minute board games, just use this one"Of all the games in the world, this is one of them. Truly it is a game among games and no one can argue against that fact."
— J from 3 Minute board games (@3mbg.bsky.social) 2025-09-23T20:57:39.102Z
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 ACDC2, 16-18 January, 2026
Upcoming Conventions & Events
- 1-5 Oct Game mORe (Albany OR) <– THIS WEEKEND!
- 5-12 Oct ASLOK (Cleveland)
- 10-12 Oct Armchair Dragoons Fall Assembly (Cary NC)
- 16-19 Oct Millennium Con (Temple TX)
- 23-26 Oct EssenSpiel (Essen Germany)
- 6-11 Nov Compass Games Fall Expo 2025 (Meriden CT)
- 7-9 Nov SDHISTCON (San Diego CA)
- 7-9 Nov HMGS Fall-in! (Lancaster PA)
- 7-9 Nov Battlefront Dayton (Dayton OH)
- 7-9 Nov RockCon (Rockford IL)
- 7-9 Nov Foxcon (Dallas TX)
Details about the upcoming The 2025 Armchair Dragoons Fall Assembly
For those of you waiting to register until closer to the date: the Blue Panther discount code cutoff for delivery to the convention5 is 3 October. You don’t get the discount code until you get your badge, and you have to place your order by the 3rd or it’s not eligible for delivery.
For a rundown of the coverage & key links for the convention, here you go!
- Fall Assembly 2025 Operations Preview
- Fall Assembly 2025 Event Preview
- Official registration & event ticketing site
Focusing on the practitioner world ~ don’t forget about the dedicated area in our forums for the wargame professionals!
- Marine Corps Fight Club: Marines Use Wargaming to Hone Cognitive Skills (Military.com)
- Ed & Betsy will be leading another MORS open talk show / news segment on Friday 10 October, so if you’re not at the Fall Assembly, you can tune into their show, but you have to register
- The Submarine Force Needs More Flexible Training Tools (CIMSEC)
- The discipline of what-if: SETAF-AF wargames crisis scenarios (DVIDS)
- War game report says eastern flank vulnerable (Taipei Times) and Closing the Taiwan Strait Deterrence Gap (ChinaTalk)
- This week, Mick Ryan’s ‘Big Five’ asks “who is at war with who again?”
- The next GUWS webinar is The First Recorded Italian Wargames & Their Legacy on 7 October and then Games for Conflict and Resolution on 4 November
- Get Hired! USFalcon has a posting for Wargame Planner with US Space Force, but like most contractors, are too cheap to pay for the investigation for your security clearance, so you’ll have to apply with your own Top Secret/SCI clearance with Special Access Program (SAP) eligibility already in place, which should limit the applicant pool to about 9 people worldwide
The title of this discussion is pretty excellent
Something neat from outside the wargaming world we thought was worth sharing
Oh yeah, the lottery numbers! Powerball: 7, 18, 32, 44, 61, and 13
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.
What about La Der des Ders, from Hexasim ?
The game is on preorder until 11/11