by Before you roll your first attack or click that next turn, get the latest headlines with #TuesdayNewsday! 🕹️
Chaosium’s 50th anniversary was this past Friday; here’s to 50 more!
Today, on Halloween, The Chaosium officially turns 50 years old. 🧵On October 31, 1975 our founder Greg Stafford went down to the Alameda County Clerk’s office and filed the paperwork to officially register the company…
GAMA/Origins announced a bunch of official date info on their social channels last week
The opening dates for Origins Game Fair 2026 hotel reservations, event submissions, badge reservations, and volunteer applications have been updated as follows:
Hotel block reservations open for exhibitors on Nov. 10
Event submissions open on Nov. 14
Badge reservation and volunteer applications open on Nov. 28
Hotel block reservations for Premiere Badge holders open Dec. 3
Hotel block reservations for all attendees open Dec. 10
Early bird badge discounts end on Dec. 26
We look forward to seeing you June 17-21 in Columbus, Ohio, for Origins 2026!
Raph Koster’s blog says that “Game design is simple, actually“. While we’re giving you his list, there’s obviously a lot more to it than this, so go read it all
Here’s a twelve-step program for understanding game design.
One: Fun
Two: Problems and toys
Three: Prediction and uncertainty
Four: Loops
Five: Feedback
Six: Variation and escalation
Seven: Pacing and balance
Eight: Games are made of games
Nine: Actual systems design
Ten: Dressing and experience
Eleven: Motivations
Twelve: It’s simple, but not
Is that new cardboard in the air, or are we just excited again?
- A Very Civil Whist, about the English Civil War, is now shipping from Phalanx
- Wargames Illustrated #455 (Nov 2025) is now shipping
- Dark City Games released their Battle of the Coral Sea game
- By the time you get the order placed Blue Panther will be shipping the Dawn of Battle: Epic Combat expansion for Mike Nagel’s wargame of pre-gunpowder battles
- Viking Chess from Mike Nagel is also available through Blue Panther
- Crusader Kings III: All Under Heaven DLC takes your games to the Far East
- SJ Games released the PDF version of GURPS Infinite Worlds: Gotterdammerung
- There’s a new French Ligne Command in Bearskins from The Wargaming Company
- BattleSynth is a new fantasy-themed wargame on Steam, and on sale for the launch
- Alternative Armies has a fun Krampus figure you can go pick up, and it’s on sale as a part of their Winter Mega Event
- Wargames Atlantic has a set of Civilians & Survivors : Women that you can use for modern wargames / RPGs
- New stuff from Wargame Vault this week
- On The Way! and the On The Way! 86 bundle for Cold War tactical tank commander action in the Fulda Gap
- Legions: Fantasy Battle for minis wargaming
Fresh from the future and heading for your doorstep—eventually!
- Not many games can truly say they’ve changed their genre, but Apocalypse World is one of them, and the 3rd edition just launched on Kickstarter today
- Worthington has launched a collected Kickstarter for reprints of several of their travel solitaire games: Midway Solitaire, Pacific War 1942, and Tarawa Solitaire
- This week’s newsletter from On Military Matters includes the Blood & Bayonets game among other pre-orders
- Compass is now putting their indiv issues of Paper Wars magazine on Kickstarter, too, and right now it’s #112 with Sinking Yamato
- Surviving the Apocalypse is a variable-path print-&-play game on Kickstarter right now, if you don’t think The Last Of Us was brutal enough
- Modiphius put Paranoia: Five Clones from Alpha Complex on pre-order and you can probably guess from the name that this is a Five Leagues-inspired set of minis skirmish rules
- Crown & War just launched on Gamefound for your 19th century warfare needs
- Warlord Games are going heavy on the PTO in this week’s pre-orders
This is your sign to stock up and not feel guilty about it
- Blue Panther launched their annual holiday sale, with 15% off everything with coupon code BPN15 at checkout
- WDS ‘Game of the week’ is Musket & Pike: Great Northern War for $29.95
- Decision Games’ deal of the month is a monster game sale, with 20% off 1 game, 25% off 2, and 30% off 3 or more
- Dice Envy also has a bonus ‘adventure kit’ they’ll send along if you pre-pay a subscription any time during November or December
- Miniature Market has the new Quartermaster General: South Front at almost $15 off
- Noble Knight has copies of D-Day (1st Edition) starting at $11
Articles so good, even your dice want to read them
- Guilford – Volume III of the Battles of the American Revolution (BoAR) series
- Games As Art Forms
- Mentioned In Dispatches S15 E7 ~ Designer James Day
- Saturday Night Fights ~ “Fire As She Bears”: The Battle of Trafalgar
- First Impressions of WEGO World War II: Overlord
- Like an (Air) Boss – A veritable Typhoon of Angels, Bears, Phantoms, Intruders and Mustangs all Fly(ing) to Fight and Win in a minis wargaming Danger Zone
- Gameplay this week
The Best Thing We Saw On Another Site This Week Was
Manoeuvre Warfare is a Social Construct
Or, we all want to be Napoleon
This directly translates into how western NATO militaries conceptualise themselves. Manoeuvre warfare as constructed is seen as requiring flair, initiative, intelligence and skill – the perfect art of war for a professional army of a liberal democratic nation of free-thinking individuals. This compares to ‘attritional’ warfare or even ‘positional’ warfare, which is therefore associated in such discourse with brutishness, wastefulness and unimaginativeness – the form of warfare used by, say, the conscript army of an authoritarian adversary. Indeed, one article describes ‘manoeuvrism’ as the ‘antithesis of attrition’. Whether this is true or not is less important than that is how it is seen. NATO militaries ‘do’ manoeuvre warfare; the bad guys, or incompetent militaries, ‘do’ attritional warfare. If western militaries find themselves fighting in an attritional or positional mode, they must ‘return’ to manoeuvre as the natural and desired state.
This is all well and good, and indeed effective tactical maneouvre can lead to rapid victory on the battlefield. The problem is that you can’t always realistically fight manoeuvre warfare in the way you’d like. As discussed above, context may dictate that you can’t – whether the military context or the political context. The latter is particularly important. Politics may require you to fight in a space and time not of your choosing, and one where the most suitable manoeuvre tactics are overridden by higher national demands. Cities that you would rather bypass require investment for political reasons; pieces of symbolically important but tactically useless terrain require defending above all else.
Ardwulf’s counter clipping stream talked about AmRev games, plus a bunch of company news
Various news & notes from the business end of the gaming world
- This week, Scott Thorne talked about tariff impacts
- Carl gives a detailed update about The Gamers’ ongoing projects
- BoardGameWire looks into how the Altered card game folks could raise over €500k for their game expansion and still be €2.5m short
- Rascal admirably reacts to Tom Vasel’s latest self-inflicted whine-fest
- ICv2 reports that the fees continue to mount in the Diamond bankruptcy case; they also have an article about the Toys ‘R Us stores that are coming back around the country
- Some more Essen Spiel followups
- MMP has some errata updates to the electronic version of the ASL rules
- WDS talks about the updates to their Squad Battles series, including both the 2d and 3d graphics
Good thread here from SNAFU
Tired of wargames always focusing on the same old conflicts and campaigns? Had enough of Waterloos, Gettysburgs, and Barbarossas? Check out the homegrown games we’re making at @SnafuDST (snafu.cat/SnafuDesignT…) 👇👇
— Team Snafu & SDT (@snafustore.bsky.social) 2025-10-31T11:29:18.230Z
The latest shenanigans to wring more out of you than you should be paying for your games
- ICv2 reports on US Senate votes to roll back tariffs
- GAMA’s amicus brief to SCOTUS about the tariffs
- ‘The U.S. Is Our Least Trustworthy Trading Partner’
GMT’s statement on tariffs from their newsletter
The impact of tariffs on our overall health is, so far, not a huge factor. As you’ve seen, the combination of larger print runs, re-working our international shipping process, and directly subsidizing the tariff amounts from GMT funds have allowed us thus far to keep all tariff surcharges on games well under $5 per game (that’s our goal). If tariffs rise substantially, of course this might change. As long as they stay roughly in the ballpark where they are now, we think that with this threefold approach of managing print runs, running direct-from-factory international shipping, and directly subsidizing tariff costs, together with our customers continuing support, we can manage the small extra per game costs even if they continue over a long period.
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 ~ December 7 and January 4
- Next confirmed live event is BuckeyeGameFest, 11-15 March 2026
- Next virtual event is the ACDC2, 16-18 January, 2026
Upcoming Conventions & Events
- 6-9 Nov Vet-Con (Auburn CA) <– THIS WEEKEND!
- 6-11 Nov Compass Games Fall Expo 2025 (Meriden CT) <– THIS WEEKEND!
- 7-9 Nov HMGS Fall-in! (Lancaster PA) <– THIS WEEKEND!
- 7-9 Nov RockCon (Rockford IL) <– THIS WEEKEND!
- 7-9 Nov SDHISTCON (San Diego CA) <– THIS WEEKEND!
- 14-16 Nov U-Con (Ypsilanti MI)
- 14-17 Nov Kublacon Fall (Santa Clara CA)
- 19-23 Nov BGG.CON (Dallas TX)
- 21-23 Nov Pax U (Philadelphia PA)
- 24 Nov Eboracon (York UK)
Details about the upcoming 2026 ArmChair Dragoons Digital Convention
We’re finalizing the registration site, so look for badges to go live soon. GM’s — be ready for submissions!
Focusing on the practitioner world ~ don’t forget about the dedicated area in our forums for the wargame professionals!
- The Coming Wave: Chinese Doctrine on the Tabletop? (War on the Rocks)
- Johns Hopkins APL Establishes AI Wargaming Lab to Boost Strategic National Security Analysis and Planning Support (JHU)
- US and Allies Obliterate a Chinese-Built Ship in War Game Near Taiwan: A Chilling Warning to Beijing (Video) (Dark Footage)
- Global Reflections: Insights from the Inaugural Wargaming Conference in Poland (SPA)
- Rocky inventories a bunch of the practitioner readings he’s been doing lateley
- This week, Mick Ryan focuses on lessons for military training in Ukraine
- The next GUWS webinar is tonight — Games for Conflict and Resolution — followed by Wargaming at HMCS Venture: Enhancing Naval Officer Training on 18 November and then Idiosyncracy in Motion on 9 December
- PaxSims latest article inventories the current issue of Simulation & Gaming
- Get Hired! Mission Technologies has a posting for Sr. Cyberspace Training Specialist
Anatomy of a rapid student TTX.One of my submarine design teams this year is working up a bombardment submarine, armed with their choice of rocket artillery (trading off range and capability with size, under a fixed procurement budget.)Today they asked me to run them a TTX. /1
— Nick Bradbeer (@nickbradbeer.bsky.social) 2025-11-04T16:41:48.333Z
Something neat from outside the wargaming world we thought was worth sharing
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
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