by The weekly situation report is ready for review📝 let’s see what’s happening across the hobby 🎲
With a Facebook post, the folks at Marshal Enterprises have announced that they are winding up the company and their LaBat titles are going to pass out of print. Eggmuhl is the only one left at their site, and the site shuts down in December and everything will be gone.
The news broke shortly after we went to press last week, but there’s been some shakeups at GAMA, and BoardGameWire has a great summation of the changes themselves. ICv2 also has a wrap-up of the current status. What’s unclear is “why” and both Melinda Prickett (originally COO/ later interim exec director) and Ross Thompson (elected board member from the Media & Events Division) will have distinctly separate reasons for stepping away.
Prickett’s departure, in particular, is a painful one as she’s done a ton of behind-the-scenes work to stabilize certain parts of the organization (esp the finances) and professionalize many of the organization’s activities to bring it more in line with a true trade organization rather than an events management team masquerading as a trade org. Apparently, she was up for consideration as the permanent exec director, and at least one GAMA member was “sorely disappointed” that she was not retained.
Her departure spawned a few different discussion among GAMA members, including this quote
I won’t deign to speak for other GAMA staff members, but I can say that, having worked with and for Melinda for nearly a year, she’s one of the best bosses I’ve had in my 35+ years of professional life. Her moving on is GAMA’s loss, but she’s left a far, FAR better trade association in her wake.
Ross Thompson has made no public statements or comments about his resignation. We did reach out to Ross, as well as the GAMA Board1 but did not get any responses before we hit “publish” today.
‘In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death, taxes, and GAMA resignations.’ – Benjamin Franklin
— Scott – Minerva 🦉 (@minervatabletop.co.uk) 2026-10-29T21:11:08.842Z
Game Store Day is this Saturday. Yeah, we know that a lot of wargamers are down on their local game stores, but if you don’t show up, you make it easier for them to blow you off. Show up and evangelize your wargaming hobby and bring in some converts! Find a local participating store at the map at the link.
New releases are ready to leave the showroom ✉ come browse the latest additions ⌕
- Falklands – Malvinas 1982 is now shipping from NAC Wargames
- Wargames Illustrated #467 is now shipping
- ALEA #44 is now shipping, with the included La Coruña-Elviña 1809 game and remember that they have English-language rules for all their games
- Three new titles from High Flying Dice this week!
- This week on Wargame Vault
- Deadlock 235 is another ‘grim’ scifi game but with a side dose of some science-fantasy, too
- Dominion of the Spear Big Battles is another in the “dominion” line of wargames
- Minute Might gives you another set of medieval skirmish rules
- Club1813 – Napoleonic Wargame Rules from Alternative Armies
- A fun, free download for Thin Red Line’s First Man in Rome is this PDF guide to the characters in the game
- Second editions of games from Mike Nagel through Blue Panther
- Guadalcanal: Second Edition
- 1914 Deluxe: Second Edition
- Other new releases on Steam
- Veterans: Napoleonic Wars is a new RTS release where formations matter and cannons can apparently fire through your own formations without consequence
- Imperium, a space 4X game which some of the Dragoons have said is a spiritual successor to the old Ascendancy game
- Search for Sol, that just launched is another space 4X game more in the vein of Master of Orion
- New horselords minis from Wargames Atlantic for their “classic fantasy battles” line that look a lot like the Riders of Rohan
- Emberglow Dice has their new Viva la Dirt line of dice, boxes, and trays out now
- New toys from Mantic Games for their Epic Warpath game2
- GMT started shipping all of these on 30 October
New pre-orders have appeared in the queue ⚙ your future game shelf may be interested $
- Compass Games has Eastern Front Operational Battles on Kickstarter to scare up some additional pre-orders
- This week’s newsletter from On Military Matters includes Victrix and WH40K boxed sets, some games from Compass, and new Osprey books
- Napoleon 1870 funded on Kickstarter and is now available for pre-order on Shakos’ site
- DiSimula Edizioni has their In The Desert on pre-order on their site; it’s WW2 in North Africa
- New pre-order from Free League with the Death of Songs for their Vaesen RPG on their site; get the PDF immediately with your pre-order
- This week on Kickstarter
- Pro Patria Mori: High Seas puts you in charge of a u-boat in the waning days of WW1
- And EDC pouch for gamers? Packed with stuff? Someone needs a wargame version of this, too; you know you’d buy one!
- Ye Vile Game of YARRR lets you pirate your way around the ocean
- And this week’s hopeless campaign is Castle Nations, which has mustered $105 from 4 people toward a $25k goal
- Some new(ish) Compass pre-orders
- The Struggle for Union, a grand strategy ACW game
- Ten Years of Glory, covers part of the Eighty Years War with the No Peace Without Spain system
- Brotherhood & Unity reprint
Your wallet has been notified of today’s briefing ✉ the current deals are ready to inspect ⌕
- WDS ‘Game of the week’ is Musket & Pike: Great Northern War for $29.95, on sale until Sunday
- Blue Panther’s holiday sale runs through 15 November and you can save 15% on everything3 with coupon code 26BPN15 at checkout
- Flying Pig Games has a ‘ding and dent’ sale on some damaged-but-playable copies of their games, for whom you could presumably find some damaged-but-playable opponents with which to sling dice
- Dark City Games is doing B3G1 sale through the rest of this month, no code needed
- DICE!
- BOGO sale at Dice Envy for their Rollvember promo
- Dice Envy also have their Christmas Surprise Stocking now available, with $60 of goodies for only $30 and you get a knitted stocking, too4
- A couple of branded dice sets on sale at Q Workshop
- Double sale over at War Diary Magazine with both the ziploc version of Rommel in Italy on sale, and a bundle deal with Rommel in Italy and Battle of the Bismarck Sea
- Noble Knight has copies of Fast Carriers starting at $12!
- Old School Essentials bundle on Fanatical for a pretty sweet set of prices (31 books for $15?!)
A computer crash and some techie issues slowed down our publishing a bit this past week, but we should be back to full steam soon
- The ACDC 2027 ~ Call for Events
- Short Rounds! Terminator: Dark Fate – Defiance – Evolution
- Mentioned In Dispatches S17 E8 — Using AI for Professional Games
- Saturday Night Fights ~ “Snappy Nappy”: The Marengo Campaign-in-a-Day (3)
- AARs
- From The Armchair Dragoons Archives
- Back on 25 Oct 20, we published Armchair Dragoons Reviews The Shores of Tripoli by Fort Circle Games by bayonetbrant
- On 29 Apr 24, we streamed Challenges with Online Multiplayer Events from CNXONL24 on our YouTube channel
- SHORTS!
- #CNXONL26 AI in Wargaming Cautions and Practical Uses
- #CNXONL26 How AI and SMEs produced live materials during the game
- #CNXONL26 How to do a net assessment top guides
- #CNXONL26 Pattons intelligence led rapid counterattack
- Mentioned in Dispatches s17e8 Preview! AI playtesting and how I made a cybersecurity wargame play it
- Mentioned in Dispatches s17e8 Preview! AI built a playable wargame in 20 minutes
- Mentioned in Dispatches s17e8 Preview! How do you validate AI adjudication in wargames
- Gameplay this week
The Best Thing We Saw On Another Site This Week Was
SDHISTCON’s announcement of the games at their Night Market, focused on small print runs
Here are the 10 games we have for this first-ever edition of the SDHistCon Summit Night Market. They’re listed in alphabetical order by game title (click the links to jump to a longer description for any game): COINTELPRO: The Assassination of Fred Hampton (designed by Keith Donaldson), Deny or Punish (designed by Akar Bharadvaj), Iberia: Kings and Emirs (designed by Ian and Sarah Curtiss), Operation Cobra: Normandy Breakout or Bottleneck? (designed by Trevor Bender), Party and Protest (designed by Moe Poplar), Penitent (designed by Dan Bullock), Rex Regnat (designed by Edward Damon), Skybirds (designed by Andy Schwarz), The Underground War(designed by Christopher Thomas), and Throw Down That Flag (designed by Liz Davidson and David Thompson). Read on for a description of each game! (And also check out our companion piece, with famed game designer Mark Herman’s thoughts on the value of this Night Market.)
click through for descriptions of the games
Ardwulf’s counter clipping stream talked about the Great Battles of History series
Various news & notes from the business end of the gaming world
- This week, store owner Scott Thorne explains what accessories they stock, and why
- BoardGameWire reports on Anthropic trying to keep people from pirating games, with at least one wargame publisher being affected
- Rascal talks about the tightrope being walked by itch.io with “spam” vs “AI slop”
- ICv2 reports on the new head of WotC coming from within the ranks (head of their D&D brand); Dan Ayoub started the new role yesterday
- WotC hires a union “avoidance”5 law firm to “negotiate” with their unionizing employees
- In other GAMA news, applications are open for their Horizons Fellowship to help aspiring game designers get off the ground; deadline is 6 November!
- Is the Diamond bankruptcy saga finally coming to a close? The bankruptcy court has approved the part of the settlement that impacts Green Ronin and Paizo getting their inventory back
- Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 is causing some consternation in South Korea
- Company Updates
- Fort Circle Games describes the changes they’re making to their use of Kickstarter
- A massive free update for the Master of Command game from Armchair Interactive for the game’s 1-yr anniversary
- Wargames Atlantic is warning customers about some scam sites claiming to have their merch on sale
- Canvas Temple Publishing are no longer printing games but have set up a site to support those that they did, including the latest rulebooks & errata
A local glossy magazine is including First Monday in October in its holiday gift guide and asked which picture we prefer. Thoughts?
— Fort Circle (@fortcircle.bsky.social) 2026-10-29T21:23:20.238Z
Articles, advice, and ideas for those of you on the creative side
- Skeleton Code Machine talks about A 2d6 combat system with a tough choice
- Over at Stonemaier, Jamey talks about all the comments that came in on a recent column about crowdfunding vs completed games
- Fun discussion over here asking “Board game designers: what makes a convention playtesting experience actually valuable for you?“
- Protospiel North w/ Joe Slack and Kevin Carmichael
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 ~ December 6 and January 3
- Next confirmed live event is Buckeye Game Fest (Columbus OH), 25-28 March 2027
- Next virtual event is The ACDC 15-17 January 2027 and 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)
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
- This week, Wargaming Weekly asks Are you looking for a matrix game about Al-Shabaab’s resurgence in Somalia?
- Navy Wargames Always Assume the Oiler Shows Up (USNI)
- De Agricultura II Prototype Ready + A Brief Recent Dev History (Gaming The Past)
- The City as a Battlefield: (Re)Thinking Urban Warfare in the Wake of Ukraine (Oxford Academic)
- PaxSims latest article is Command Learning Series #5: How Staff Rides Develop Judgment
- GET HIRED! CACI International has a posting for Wargaming Analyst at Ft Bragg NC
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
- 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
- 6 November — GameNation with Betsy and Ed, sponsored by PGS/MORS
- 15 November — GUWS Playtest Day, register here
- 21 November — GUWS Kriegsspiel Day, register here
- 15 January — Introduction to Professional Serious Games – One Day Course, registration on LinkedIn
- 4 February — Serious 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
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.
