by #TuesdayNewsday is on the scene 🔎 let’s see what intelligence has reached the news desk ➜
It’s been a few weeks since we re-launched it, but #TuesdayNewsdayLive is now a regular feature of your YouTube schedule. Every week at 7pm US Eastern time, a couple of Dragoons will give you a quick live overview of this week’s #TuesdayNewsday so you can get a little discussion with your news update. We don’t cover every time in exhaustive detail, but skip through the highlights in each section as we run down this week in wargaming.
See you tonight!
Congrats on THE CHIT SHOW hitting episode #250
SPIEL Essen was held last week, and some of the headlines from the show include
- New attendance record (ICv2)
- Not looking to move or relocate (God Is A Geek)
- More about attendance (Toy World)
- Wargamer.com’s “best of” and (predictably) they don’t bother with any wargames
- Fan-driven voting and/or ballot-box stuffing led to some odd winners for TGC Awards, given out at Essen (The Gamer)
The latest batch of games has cleared the loading bay ⚙ let’s see what has arrived on the docket ✔
- Worthington Games got busy as they’ve put 5 ‘new’ games on their store1 and most on sale for their release
- Battalion Commander WWII Europe is a solitaire card game
- War of 1812 Solitaire Travel Game 2nd Ed swaps out the previous roll-and-lookup charts for a deck of cards
- Operation Dragoon Solitaire Travel Game is back!
- The American Revolution was on the table at our Fall Assembly
- Washington’s Secret Service Solitaire is a solo card game
- MMP finally confirmed that the ASLSK’s are back in stock and ready to ship
- Chopper Pilot Vietnam is starting to arrive in mailboxes
- A digital version of Votes for Women in the Apple App Store?!
- Osprey released The Silver Bayonet: Venice: The Alchemist’s Legacy
- New edition of the Wargame Developments Handbook is now available to download in PDF
- This week on Wargame Vault
- Brethren – The Fantasy Quick Start Guide for battles in an alternate 13th century
- Savage Blades: the Roleplaying Game based on the minis wargame
- Hostile Down is a modern/near-future minis game of close quarter battles
- Lock Horns Games has Penitent and a second printing of The Gods Will Have Blood
and they’re now shipping to Canada/Europe! - Mantic Games’ IP-themed advent calendars are now available to order/ship
- Allen Pattiselanno released the basic version of his Generic Wargame System for free
- Other new releases on Steam
- Nightmare Frontier – Wicked Harvest DLC from Slitherine expands their Western-themed looter/shooter
- Wars Across the World: Near East 1915is the latest expansion from Avalon Digital
- Empire’s Supreme Command looks like Civ 1 with some AI cutscenes
- General Tactics: An Shi Rebellion looks like Ancient Art of War from the late-80s, but in color
- Stellar Ascendancy tries to answer the question: “what if there weren’t enough space 4x games in the world?”
- And a new free demo of Sword & Siege Age of Longbow: Volume I from WDS
- EXODUS Roleplaying Game Traveler’s Handbook and Creature Catalogue were released by Renegade Game Studios
- GURPS Fantasy Folk: Fishfolk was released by Steve Jackson Games
- DICE!
- Dice Envy released their Luminol Space dice, a striking black metal w/ shimmery blue ink
- Our friends at Emberglow just launched some new “embers” series dice they’re tres chic
- You know you want a DefCon d6 to go with your Twilight Struggle games
The pledge board has fresh names on it ✉ let’s see which projects are opening for support ✔
- EPOCHIA – The Clash of Ancient Civilizations hasn’t fully launched on Gamefound yet, but there is a browser-playable version of the game you can play for free until 22 November ahead of the campaign launch, which is one of the first times we’ve ever seen something like this
- This week’s newsletter from On Military Matters includes a big 1918 starter set and a LOT of minis
- VaeVictis 189 is on pre-order with the included Budapest 1956 game
- Renegade Game Studios parted ways with their White Wolf licenses for the World of Darkness but they’re back in the vampire business with a new Immortal Universe RPG based on Anne Rice’s stories
- Almost out of time to get the discounted pre-order for the 2nd printing of Sapper Studio’s Battlegroup Clash: Baltics
- This week on Kickstarter
- Until the Bitter End Game 3 is a print-&-play game on WW2 that can play with 1 or 2 players
- Triads is a mech combat game that’s going to be released through Steam
- And this week’s hopeless campaign is WaterColor Wars: The Painted Pirate Sea Game – still stuck at 0%
- Avarice: The Project Morningstar RPG is on BackerKit; it’s a ‘grimdark’ scifi game using Modiphius’ 2d20 system
- MMP put both The Breaking Point (BCS) and Drive on Kharkov (SCS) are now on pre-order
in case you missed them announcing it last Wednesday morning 😑 - Pre-orders for Battlefront’s next Flames of War product line/campaign focus
- This month’s new p500s from GMT Games
(and stay tuned for an upcoming podcast talking about their p500 system with Kai Jensen!)- Commmands & Colors American Civil War which brings back Battle Cry but with blocks, and over 100 scenarios
- The Napoleonic Wars 25th Anniversary Edition has become a favorite at the Fall Assembly and is getting a fresh update
- C&C Ancients Expansion #1 reprint
- C&C Napoleonics Expansion #1 reprint
- Labyrinth 3″ Game Box so you can cram all the expansions in there
The bargain board has fresh figures ✎ let’s see which prices have taken a tumble $
- WDS ‘Game of the week’ is Panzer Campaigns: El Alamein ’42 for $29.95, on sale until Sunday
- Lombardy Studios are offering World War 1 Illustrated Magazine through Wargame Vault and they have a 9-issue bundle at 50% off
- Kraken Dice have 20% off all their dice with coupon code TREAT at checkout
- Noble Knight has copies of RAF – The Battle of Britain, 1940 4th ed starting at $115
- The Modiphius warehouse sale is still on and includes a bunch of sets at 50% off or more (mostly “more”)
- GMT’s latest newsletter includes a bunch of games they’ve put on their sale page2
The Dragoons’ publishing log has new entries ✉ let’s see what went live this week ✔
- 2026 Fall Assembly ~ Game Reports
- Catching Up With the Professional Gaming Society (PGS) – Q&A With Dr. Ed McGrady
- 2026 Fall Assembly ~ AAR & Survey Results
- Mentioned In Dispatches S17 E7 ~ 2026 Fall Assembly Wrapup
- Saturday Night Fights ~ “Snappy Nappy”: The Marengo Campaign (2)
- ICBM: Escalation — Assassin’s Mace DLC
- AARs
- From The Armchair Dragoons Archives
- Back on 6 Oct 22, we published History of Wargaming – Charles Grant by Robert Mosher
- On 10 Apr 22, we dropped Song For War at BGF APR 2022 on our YouTube channel
- SHORTS!
- Mentioned in Dispatches s17e7 Preview! Why our Fall Assembly feels welcoming and hands-on
- Mentioned in Dispatches s17e7 Preview! Why Kriegsspiel steals the show at conventions
- Mentioned in Dispatches s17e7 Preview! Bringing publishers & retailers to the convention
- Mentioned in Dispatches s17e7 Preview! Leaning into the convention’s small, friendly vibe
- Gameplay this week
The Best Thing We Saw On Another Site This Week Was
Ross Kennedy had a hell of a rant over on Facebook: The Wargaming Hobby Is Having a Midlife Crisis, and Everyone’s Making a Video About It
There was a time when being a wargamer meant something. Not necessarily something admirable to the outside world, admittedly, but something. You bought a game, opened the box, inhaled that intoxicating mixture of cardboard, ink and financial irresponsibility, punched the counters, learnt the rules, and actually played the bloody thing.Those were simpler times. Times when a new game was an event rather than another item in an endless conveyor belt of cardboard, plastic and YouTube notifications. You might spend three months fighting the Battle of Kursk, becoming intimately acquainted with the operational shortcomings of the Soviet Union, before finally emerging from the wreckage to consider another game.Today, we have somehow transformed a perfectly respectable hobby into a grotesque combination of shameless consumerism, pointless content creation, cultish brand loyalty and people photographing piles of cardboard as though they have discovered the Dead Sea Scrolls.Welcome to modern board wargaming. Please take your seats. There are approximately 47 new games arriving this week, and you will never play any of them.
… and oh there is so much more
Ardwulf’s counter clipping stream covered ancient-era wargames that Ardy felt deserved more love
Various news & notes from the business end of the gaming world
- This week, store owner Scott Thorne talks about catering to “kidults”
- BoardGameWire talks about people gravitating to the most expensive options on the King’s Gambit Kickstarter campaign
- Rascal tries to figure out what people mean when they say “OSR”
- ICv2 reports that for the first time ever, Magic: The Gathering sales hit over $600 million; while MtG isn’t a driver in the wargame space, sales like that continue to buoy hobby shops all over the country, providing more potential retail outlets for our corner of the hobby if we’re willing to engage with them and show a real value to them
- For the first time in forever, Palladium will not be publishing a TMNT RPG, and refocusing all their efforts on Rifts (GeekNative)
- We’re not really sure who this is intended for, but Kraken Dice creating an archive of all of the dice sets they’ve created and released since they started in 2018 is kinda cool
- Eric Martin is Reassessing Kickstarter
- Company Updates
- GMT’s newsletter indicates they’re looking for playtesters for A Hell So Terrible (Discord) and Checkpoint Charlie (Discord) and Combat Commander: Vietnam (Google form)
- Flying Pig Games will be taking part in BackerKit’s “Holiday Market” of sales of already-in-stock games at a variety of discounts
- S&T Press have a new first round Strategy & Tactics #363 Mega-Feedback Survey
- Wargame Design Studio updated all of their Civil War Battles series games to the most recent 4.05.6 engine, but finish all your in-progress games before updating or you’ll lose your saves
The latest installment in our series on board game publishing contracts is out now! We've been running these reports for more than 10 years, and this report focuses on how the process of signing a game has changed over the years! cardboardedison.com/reports
— Cardboard Edison (@cardboardedison.com) 2026-10-27T13:11:48.463Z
Articles, advice, and ideas for those of you on the creative side
- Skeleton Code Machine talks about How to care for a brain in a jar
- Random Booster Packs: Is There Any Way They Serve Customers?
- Design for the Scroll: How to Make Your Kickstarter Page Easy to Understand
- Another actual interesting thread on Reddit about the next frontier of game design theory
- Designers notes on Zolt Chess talk about game design patterns
- 10 things I learned from these board games (as a designer) from Pam Walls
Gamesters! I'm running the GAME DESIGN MASTERCLASS at Eclectic Games in Reading on Saturday 7 Nov, as part of the #BeingHuman festival and the University of Reading. It's a three-hour crash course in making and testing board games. Tickets are FREE but LIMITEDwww.eclecticgames.co.uk/s/being-huma…
— James Wallis (@jameswallis.bsky.social) 2026-10-27T16:03:43.176Z
Don’t forget to check our consolidated event & convention calendar (freshly updated with 2027 events!) 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 – event submission is open
Upcoming Conventions & Events
- 5-8 Nov BottosCon (Burnaby BC)
- 5-9 Nov Compass Fall Expo 2026 (Meriden CT)
- 5-8 Nov Games Ground (Berlin GE)
- 6-8 Nov HMGS Fall-in! (Lancaster PA)
- 6-8 Nov Rock-Con (Rockford IL)
- 6-9 Nov SDHistCon Summit 2026 (San Diego CA)
- 13-16 Nov Kublacon Fall (Burlingame CA)
- 13-15 Nov SCGCon 26 (Liverpool UK)
- 18-22 Nov BGG.CON (Dallas TX)
- 19-22 Nov Batalladores (Zaragoza Spain)
- 21 Nov Eboracon IX (York UK)
- 4-6 Dec Pax U (Philadelphia PA)
- 14-18 Jan CascadeCon (Bellingham WA)
- 14-17 Jan Niagara Boardgaming Weekend 2027 (Niagara Falls ON)
- 14-17 Jan Philadelphia Area Gaming Expo (Philadelphia PA)
- 15-17 Jan The ACDC (Armchair Dragoons HQ Online)
Just finished an epic weekend of events attended by Chaosium all over 🌎!The biggest was Spiel Essen in 🇩🇪. We were also at Armageddon Expo in Auckland 🇳🇿. And at Cthulhu in a Castle in PA 🇺🇸. And finally even the impending typhoon didn't dampen anyone's enthusiasm at Kaiju Con in Nagoya 🇯🇵.
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
- New edition of the Wargame Developments Handbook is now available to download in PDF
- Catching Up With the Professional Gaming Society (PGS) – Q&A With Dr. Ed McGrady
- Wargaming Weekly #087: Are we ready for AI-powered wargaming? (Part 16)
- You can join RAND’s Resilience and Foresight Forum: Europe’s Security Crisis Wargame from the form at the page
- Latvian politicians tested in TV wargame-style show (Lavtian Public Service Media)
- AI-driven war gaming as a tool for urban resilience: simulating conflict scenarios to enhance future city planning (Urban Transformations)
- PaxSims latest article asks How Would I Design and Play the Army’s Joint Warfighter Evaluation?
- GET HIRED! Booz-Allen-Hamilton has a posting for Warfighting Analyst, Junior in their McLean VA home office
Wargame Events of Professional Interest
- The next GUWS webinars
- 10 November — Emergency Management and Resilience Wargaming
- 17 November — Get to the Point: Designing for Clarity
- 1 December — Invisible Forces, Playable Wars: Radars, Weather, and Wargame Design
- Upcoming PGS/MORS courses
- 3–5 November – Designing Tactical Games Course
- 17–19 November – Gaming Space Operations Course
- 7-11 December – Certificate in Cyber Wargaming
- 25–29 January – Certificate in Wargaming
- 8–10 February – Certificate in Homeland Security Gaming
- 23-25 March – Gaming Weapons of Mass Destruction
- Upcoming wargaming events of interest
- 29 October — Preparing for the Next Mission: Wargaming, Modeling & Simulation, registration on LinkedIn
- 31 October — The Last Case: How to End a Decision Forcing Case Series
- 6 November — GameNation with Betsy and Ed, sponsored by PGS/MORS
- 15 January — Introduction to Professional Serious Games – One Day Course, registration on LinkedIn
- 4 February — asdfSerious Games For Insight & Analysis – Two Day Course, 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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