August 27, 2026
News

Successful Fall Assembly, Tariffs Are Back, and Wow That’s A Lot of Pre-Orders ~ #TuesdayNewsday

Armchair Dragoons PAOby Armchair Dragoons PAO

Blast into Tuesday with a tactical advantage—#TuesdayNewsday brings the battlefield to your browser 💥

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This past weekend was our 3rd Fall Assembly, and it might have been the best one so far.  Around 30 games from Friday at noon through Sunday around 3pm, with attendees from as far afield as Ohio, Tennessee, Maryland, and New Jersey.  Plenty of folks played, learned, kibitzed, swapped games and die rolls and combat factors and trash talk in roughly equal measure.  We’ll have an AAR soon, once we get the feedback surveys completed, but if you’ve been watching our social channels you’ve already seen some of what we’ve had going on.

Meanwhile, SAVE THE DATE!  Next year’s Fall Assembly is going to be 9-11 October 2026, and held again in Cary/Raleigh NC.

 

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If you’re in the central PA area, or in commuting distance of it, Harrisburg University of Science & Technology is looking for some playtesters for their tabletop game design classes

Harrisburg University of Science & Technology (HU) is excited to announce an upcoming campuswide playtest, hosted by the students of Tabletop Game Design Studio (IMED 315), on October 17, 2025. Co-taught by Professors Greg Loring-Albright, Ph.D., and Anthony Ortega, Tabletop Game Design Studio challenges students to ideate, develop, and playtest a board game or card game as a semester-long project. The public playtest is an opportunity for HU students, staff, and faculty to experience the creativity of their peers and provide invaluable feedback to help improve the students’ designs. (Non-HU-affiliated members of the public are also encouraged to attend; please contact either Professor Loring-Albright or Professor Ortega in advance of the event.)

It’s nice to see another college offering a game design course that isn’t just teaching people how to write code

 

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Although he wasn’t connected to the wargame world, Rob Weiland was a well-known name in the wider world of hobby gaming.  He was a writer & designer as well as a journalist who wrote about hobby games for Forbes.com among many, many other places.  This article is probably the best memorial for him.

Gamers! If you're going to Gamehole Con, you can donate to help out Rob Wieland's wife and daughter by purchasing tickets to our memorial event there. If you can, please do!The link for those donations is here: www.gameholecon.com/events/event…

— Matt Forbeck (@forbeck.com) 2025-10-14T03:09:54.634Z

 

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We don’t want to yuck anyone’s yum, but at a certain point, if the only comments or feedback you’re leaving for a site are overwhelmingly negative, why are you bothering to continue reading that site?(!) It’s not like there are a limited number of sites out there to follow for wargaming reviews and playthroughs, and if one doesn’t suit your taste there’s absolutely -ZERO- cost to remove the bookmark from your browser and move one with your life.  Save everyone (and especially yourself) the headache and/or Excedrin.

 

Just when you thought we were done with the insanity

Quote from Avalanche Press’ most recent newsletter

Just as I was placing the most recent print orders for new game counters, Donald Trump threatened “massive tariffs” on imports from China and cancelled plans to meet with President Xi later this month. Later, after the stock markets closed for the long holiday weekend (surely a coincidence), the number (an additional 100%, making our rate 130%) and effective date (1 November, “or sooner”) were defined.

You’ll see this described in some media as “230 percent,” which is including the cost of goods. What the numbers mean is this: for every $100 worth of imported goods, the importer (NOT “China”) pays an additional $130 to U.S. Customs. So the cost is $230 total.

Of the counter sheets in question, only one would have been used by the end of this year; we’ll print that one and take the hit. The others were all being stockpiled for use next year. We were trying to get one last shipment in ahead of increased import taxes. We met our deadline, and we still lost that race when the goalposts suddenly moved.

As you’ve read here, we’ve been preparing Avalanche Press to weather this poop-storm since June 2024. The product mix has been adjusted. We have many game pieces stockpiled already. We expected something like this to happen, and we made the hard, necessary choices. And those choices are why I can tell you what other publishers in our niche cannot:

All releases continue as previously announced.

Thank you for your attention to this matter!

Mike Bennighof

President, Avalanche Press

 Quote from GAMA’s most recent newsletter

On Friday, October 10, President Trump announced a sweeping new 100% tariff on all Chinese imports, to become effective November 1, 2025. As usual the details are limited, with some seeing it as a negotiating tactic prior to the planned meeting between presidents Trump and Xi of China later this month. Either way we need to prepare for these tariffs to go into effect in a little over two weeks. It’s important to note that the proposed increase is in addition to existing duties, which are already 30 percent and, in some cases, much higher.

Legal Challenge Ahead
The U.S. Supreme Court is scheduled to hear several cases the first week of November that could curb presidential authority to impose unilateral tariffs. GAMA supports these efforts to restore checks and balances in trade policy and protect industries from unpredictable executive actions.

GAMA will continue to monitor developments, advocate for our members, and provide timely updates and resources as the situation evolves.

 

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Smells like freshly printed rulebooks and counters to be clipped—must be new release time

 

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You didn’t need that lunch budget this week anyway, right?

 

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Armies cost less when they’re on sale. That’s just math

 

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Inspiration, information, and maybe a little opinion—here’s what’s new from our Regiment

 

The Best Thing We Saw On Another Site This Week Was

This 4-part series goes behind the scenes at the Ennie Awards, which we did not talk about in our Wargame Awards podcast last season1; the author has been a judge with the Ennies for a while and has some great insight on the awards process
Why an Awards Debrief? • How Do the Ennies Work? • How Are the Ennies Designed? • Where Do Awards Go Next?

Most awards are not an “Industry Award.” They’re not about influence, craft, or even “art,” they’re just fun—like a party hat on a pigeon. It’s not something anyone needs, but we wouldn’t mind having it around, right? Entertainment is what most awards are purpose-built for. They’re a big yearly party where fans get together and celebrate some kind of superlative, like Weirdest Games, Prettiest Books, or Most Popular Product.

Cue the soundtrack from Moneyball, I’m about to make a thesis.

Some rpg awards want to be industry awards—the kind that create canon, culture, and focus on craft. The ones that cement games as bestsellers or classics. These rpg awards might look outside and see the big examples everyone knows like the Oscars and The Game Awards. And they might conclude, based on the curtains and graphics, that the best way to be an industry award is to be the biggest party. This is a mistake. It leads coordinators to focus on the wrong things and mismanage their awards. Rpg awards are monkey see, monkey do—miming the product thinking it’s the method.

 

This week’s best written coverage from the wargaming world

The best videos this week from our wargaming friends

Ardwulf’s counter clipping stream talked about the latest East Front wargames, weird YouTube user IDs, and cutting boards

 

 

5News 10 industry

Various news & notes from the business end of the gaming world

#ManeuverWarfare is finally hitting the streets! If you pre-ordered from @thedietzfoundation.bsky.social, copies are going out as we speak. And now that I’ve got my own official copy, I finally get the @sebastianbae.bsky.social card back that mysteriously wandered off at Modern Day Marine!

— Ian TB (@iantb.bsky.social) 2025-10-14T16:31:46.208Z

 

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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

Upcoming Conventions & Events

 

 

2026 ACDC Header

Details about the upcoming 2026 ArmChair Dragoons Digital Convention

We said after the last one that we needed some help if we were going to bring back the ACDC.  Well, we got a couple of volunteers who stepped up and offered to assist.

We’re convening our first planning meeting next week, so we hope to have some details soon.  Meanwhile, save the date!  16-18 January will be the 2026 ACDC.

 

5News 11 Pros

Focusing on the practitioner world ~ don’t forget about the dedicated area in our forums for the wargame professionals!

Cry "Havoc!", and let slip the dogs of war. Custom unit icons research phase is now over. I now have enough information to implement this as a feature.

— ORBAT Mapper (@orbatmapper.bsky.social) 2025-10-13T18:48:26.670Z

 

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Something neat from outside the wargaming world we thought was worth sharing

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Andy Thomas (@andythomasartist)

 

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.

Footnotes

  1. the Ennies are RPG-focused, not wargaming
  2. Armchair Dragoons Digital Convention

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2 thoughts on “Successful Fall Assembly, Tariffs Are Back, and Wow That’s A Lot of Pre-Orders ~ #TuesdayNewsday”

  1. Hello I’m Jose Neva from Nevawargames. I just wanted to explain something about how we operate.

    We actually operate with two distinct stages:
    Current Pre-Orders (Shipping Soon):
    Iwo Jima: Hell on Earth and Sea & Steel: Columbus Voyages—are fully funded and are the only two under active pre-order. They’re on their way to our US fulfillment center right now, with an expected release date in late November/early December.
    So they will be in stock soon.

    The P300 Program (Our Wishlist Pipeline):
    All our other titles are part of our P300 System. This is not a pre-order campaign, and we do not collect any money for these. I’m fact they are shown as out of stock in our store since they are just projects in different levels of development. The P300 is a community wishlist that acts as a thermometer:
    It is totally free to sign up and add games to your wishlist.
    There is no payment or commitment required.
    When a title hits 300 wishlists, we can guarantee its eventual release and move it into a formal pre-order phase.
    Essentially, the P300 is our way of gauging community interest to decide which games make it into the next pre-order campaign.

    We really value the support and the work you do for wargamers. Your Tuesday updates are great. Feel free to contact me at info(@)nevawargames.com if you have any other questions about our publishing company!
    Best regards,
    Jose Neva

    Reply

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