by This week’s updates have officially reached the front page 📰—let’s get started ➡️
The Fall Assembly wrapped up on Sunday and the final count was over 30 games played by over 2 dozen people in just 2-1/2 days. There’s already planning afoot for a much bigger and snazzier Fall Assembly next year for our 5th Anniversary.
Our participant survey is out there already and we’ll include those results in our AAR coming in a few days, which will also have a whole bunch of photos of games in action.
Meanwhile, Rocky already a wrapup of the games he played over the weekend that you can check out, and we’re recording the podcast about it all in a few days.
SAVE THE DATE for 2027 — 8-10 October, back in Cary NC.
A Fast Game Is A Good Game surveyed a bunch of designers about what inspires them to make their games: Where Do I Begin? Inspiration and intent in wargame design
The primary reason for pursuing this project was finding out the “why”; what prompts somebody to choose a particular battle or campaign, put in the hours doing the research, checking the orders of battle, reading the first-hand accounts and well as the secondary sources, then embark on the relatively thankless task of designing a set of rules that, to the best of their ability, presents the situation on a 22- by 34-inch map, some counters and an instruction booklet. We can assume that at the beginning there is an impetus, a desire to create. But that motivation needs a focus, a fixed point at which to channel that creative drive.
This is a really cool real if you’re interested in the behind-the-scenes design work, or if you’re a data nerd, or both.
Playing games at CERN? The guys from ENWorld got one of the coolest field trips in gaming.
Well, it turns out that particle physicists are nerds (who knew?) and they enjoy a tabletop game as much as the rest of us
The trip ended up with a special CERN Gaming Club event that included over 70 players over a variety of tables, slinging dice in the same facility where Vance was creating black holes just a few short years ago.
Inventory update: plenty of shiny new things 📦—continue reading ➜
- MMP released Kharkov in Flames, the HASL module, to coincide with ASLOK and announced it on Wednesday1; the launch sale is over but you can still buy it now (order from Gamer’s Armory and save 10%)
- MMP also has he latest ASLSK rulebooks on their site for download, too
- VaeVitctis #188, with the included game Operation Licorne 2002-2011 is now available
- After seeing them on their homepage for months, Legion Wargames finally got their next 2 games up for sale and will start shipping on Friday
- Following up their Home of the Wargamers event, the new releases are rolling out from Matrix Games
- BattlePlan is now out, so you can sketch your plans on the map before unleashing your forces to execute
- ICBM: Escalation – Assassin’s Mace DLC
- Distant Worlds 2: Shadows Rising DLC gives you pirates and other scoundrels as factions
- Modern Tactics: British Forces Expansion is now shipping from VUCA Simulations; they’re also working on In Fours to Heaven but still just packing & prepping pre-orders right now
- This week on Wargame Vault
- Dawn of Iron: New Madrid & the Siege of Island No. 10 for ACW naval wargaming
- Arthurian Adventure looks like a basic skirmish minis game whose rulebook author doesn’t know how to turn off caps lock
- On Warfare & Glory: Mass Combat Brought to Your Table is a set of fantasy mass battle rules
- The Sentence: the one line wargame delivers what it claims
- Modiphius released the hardcovers for Fragged Kingdom 2 that include both a rulebook and a setting book
- New from Alternative Armies, Ruddle and Gruddle, which both kinda look like hockey mascot gone rogue
- A very busy week for new releases on Steam; here are some highlights
- Winter War is an FPS set in the 39-40 unpleasantness, from the Finnish POV
- Glory To The Heroes covers the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine
- Tank Commander: Major FOE follows a German tank crew from the Spanish Civil War into WW2
- Wings of the Western Front flies you around WW1
- War From Above is maddeningly vague in both image and description but it’s WW2 PTO carrier/air operations
- Teryon Crisis looks like 2020s-era ground combat, until a giant mech walks through your tank formation
Fresh launches have officially left the starting line 🏁—right this way ➜
- We don’t normally talk about things that haven’t launched yet, but 1806: Auerstädt from Tactical Workshop is set to launch tomorrow because that’s the anniversary of the battle, so we’re going to assume they’re not cribbing from MMP’s notes and just messing with us on their launch dates
- This week’s newsletter from On Military Matters includes pre-orders for a bunch of shield decals, minis for Silver Bayonet, and a new game about warring Indian tribes in the Eastern (not quite yet) US
- Ares Games are taking pre-orders on Quartermaster General: West Front and some associated bundle packs (game mat, all the “Front” games)
- Osprey put Stargrave: Acceptable Losses on pre-order; it’s a rare series that has a LOT of post-pub support from them
- This week on Kickstarter
- Aces & Armor – Spitfire: Battle of Britain & North Africa blew through its funding goals on launch day and it’s all about stretch goals at this point; note that there’s 2 separate games in this campaign that can be backed individually or as a bundle
- Blood in the Sands is a campaign supplement covering Napoleon’s Egypt expedition, where we all remember him shooting cannons at the Sphinx
- Something for Hethwill here— WaterColor Wars: The Painted Pirate Sea Game
- And this week’s hopeless campaign is is actually a competition between Shock of the dynasties – Zaman al Siba and A World At War: Build Your Legacy2, which are both at 0% with different numbers of days left, but both going down faster than Bill Belichek’s chances of being hired by an NFL team
- Folks down under can pick up any of the following pre-orders from GaP Games at actual reasonable prices
- A bunch of Black Powder Epic Battles: Zulu pre-orders from Warlord Games
Several prices have taken a strategic reduction 📊—we approve 💵
- WDS ‘Game of the week’ is Panzer Campaigns: Scheldt ’44 for $29.95, on sale until Sunday
- S&T Press has game edition magazines on sale, mostly at $33 each; includes issues from S&T, World at War, and Modern War
- GMT Games added some more games to their ongoing sale and you can see them all over on their site
- Noble Knight has copies of Dark Emperor starting at $38 and all the way up to $125
- Miniature Market has Men of Iron Tri-Pack (2nd Printing) on sale this week for over $20 off
- PicoArmor has a sale this week on the Seven Years War, Napoleonic, and ACW lines of 3mm minis and some are already sold out
- ATTACK! Deluxe Bundle from Eagle-Gryphon Games for over 60% right now
New entries have been logged in the archive 📝—review them 📚
- 2026 Fall Assembly ~ Convention Is Open
- First Impressions of Flashpoint Campaigns : Lowland Lions DLC
- Scenario Galleries for Flashpoint Campaigns : Lowland Lions DLC
- Mentioned In Dispatches S17 E5 – Buried Giant Studios
- Diving Into Combat Mission: Cold War – Battle Pack
- AARs
- From The Armchair Dragoons Archives
- Back on 23 Jun 22, we published First Impressions of Starship Troopers: Terran Command by Slitherine Games by Michael Eckenfels
- On 27 Mar 25, we dropped Podcast Preview: Are Game Awards Just Popularity Contests on our YouTube channel
- SHORTS!
- Mentioned in Dispatches s17e5 Preview! Why card-driven games need “what if” historical events
- Mentioned in Dispatches s17e5 Preview! Our audience as partners, not just consumers
- Mentioned in Dispatches s17e5 Preview! Why I tear games down—destructive iteration explained
- #CNXONL26 Train adjudicators in analysis not just game design
- #CNXONL26 Creative megacorp roles that spark player imagination
The Best Thing We Saw On Another Site This Week Was
Out of Reach: What Sanctuary Changes in Insurgency Games
Among its findings was the importance of cutting the insurgents’ tangible support, meaning the people, money, weapons, information, and refuge that keep a movement fighting. All 28 government wins in that study involved successful interdiction of tangible support, although that is a broader finding than one about sanctuary alone. Border control appeared in 25 of those 28 wins.
Ben Connable and Martin Libicki’s How Insurgencies End (2010) examined 89 insurgencies and made sanctuary more explicit. Prepared for the Marine Corps Intelligence Activity, it tested the conventional wisdom about how insurgencies end against the historical record. Of 52 decided wars in which insurgents had sanctuary in a neighboring country, insurgents won 23. Of 22 decided wars without such sanctuary, they won three. More interesting was the distinction within the sanctuary cases. Insurgents did better when a neighboring state wanted them there than when they had merely found a place a weak government couldn’t police. State backing appeared to matter more than the patch of ground by itself.
These are associations, not instructions for winning a war. The studies don’t show that every insurgency rises or falls on sanctuary, and the coding tends to give each war one answer even when the situation changes midway through. They also leave out much of what might be called internal sanctuary: inaccessible countryside, a network of safe houses, or the protection insurgents receive from the law and politics of the state they’re fighting.
Ardwulf’s counter clipping stream (theoretically) covered Wargaming Ancient Rome
Various news & notes from the business end of the gaming world
- This week, Scott Thorne’s column talks about WotC’s changing strategy on booster packs that seems to favor collectors over players
- BoardGameWire reports on the troubling signs coming from Steamforged Games about their recent crowdfunding campaign fulfillment woes
- Rascal has a pretty cool article about Playtest Material Is For The Writers
- Talking about PeopleCon with Gene Koo
- Eric Martin has his Survey Results: What Kind of Board Gamer Are You?
- Playing the nation: Identity, culture, and power in video games | Curious festival 2026 (YouTube)
- Jamey Stegmaier asks “Is Growth Good?“
Congrats to Fred!
Another milestone today for Homo Ludens, 9k subscribers reached! 🙏The Discord community is working on a revolutionary trial style livestream where I'll have to justify all my worse takes… 😔
— Fred Serval (@fredserval.bsky.social) 2026-10-13T10:57:35.735Z
Articles, advice, and ideas for those of you on the creative side
- Skeleton Code Machine talks about Games, lookups, and the science of interruptions
- Good discussion thread here about “what makes a good rulebook”
- An insightful article here from Restoration Games about Building a Visual Language: The Graphic Design of The Lord of the Rings: The King’s Gambit
- Is Board Game Design Even Worth It? | Your YouTube comments… and my responses. (Adam in Wales on YouTube)
- Sunday Stream! Chatting and updating my prototype with Pam
Devastating / depressing thread here
I fear we’re ignoring the reality that there are people who think it’s a fine idea to throw our rulebooks into an LLM and have it spit out a vibe-coded version of our gamesPlayers will take advantage of opportunities to “try the game” and form their opinions based on these… things
— Marceline is Racing Dinos (@marcelineleiman.bsky.social) 2026-10-08T16:49:26.083Z
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 ~ November 1 and December 6
- 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
- 15-18 Oct GMT Weekend at the Warehouse (Middle of Nowhere CA)
- 22-25 Oct EssenSpiel (Essen Germany)
- 24 Oct Eboracon VIII (York UK)
- 5-8 Nov Games Ground (Berlin 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)
- 15-17 Jan The ACDC (Armchair Dragoons HQ Online)
- 15-18 Jan AdamCon (Cincinnati OH)
- 29-31 Jan SquareBash ’27 (London UK)
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
- Aggie Hirst’s latest column is Wargaming in the US Military: Ludic Militarism and the Production of Warfighters
- This week, Wargaming Weekly asks “How should we use AI in wargaming?” in an interview with Sebastian Bae
- Dont Hold Your Breath On AI-Driven Wargaming (The Duck of Minerva)
- OpenAI Is Wargaming Its Response in Case of Public Revolt After Catastrophic AI Disaster (Futurism)
- Operationalizing deterrence theory: Deterrence assessment for the real world (JDM&S)
- Episode 172 Sebastian Bae on Littoral Commander (Experience Points podcast)
- Connections Germany 2026 – Flow Security: Why Wargaming Matters More Than Ever (LinkedIn)
- PaxSims latest article talks Teaching Stability Policing decision-making
- Get Hired! Booz Allen Hamilton has a posting for Wargaming Specialist in El Segundo, CA
Wargame Events of Professional Interest
- The next GUWS webinars
- 20 October — Wargaming in the French Army: Duel Tactique
- 10 November — Emergency Management and Resilience Wargaming
- 17 November — Get to the Point: Designing for Clarity
- Upcoming PGS/MORS events
- 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
- 18 October — Designing Historical Games for Classrooms – A Practical Guide for Educators, register here
- 29 October — Preparing for the Next Mission: Wargaming, Modeling & Simulation, registration on LinkedIn
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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