by From cardboard tokens to kinetic training—if it’s wargaming, it’s in #TuesdayNewsday 🎲
The San Diego Historical Games Convention announced the winners of their awards at the convention last weekend.
The Summit Award went to War Story: Occupied France and the Bobby Nunes Memorial Award to Amabel Holland for Vonnegut’s Board Game: Preservation, Annotation, Context
Official statements below:
The San Diego Historical Games Convention (SDHist) is proud to announce the winner of the fourth annual Summit Award. The Summit Award aims to recognize a historical board game published in the preceding year that most broadened the hobby through the ease of teaching, ease of play, uniqueness of topic, novelty of approach, and/or effectiveness as a historical game. The 2025 Summit Award winner (for games published in 2024) is War Story: Occupied France.
War Story: Occupied France is designed by Dave Neale and David Thompson and published by Osprey Games. It features art from Kwanchai Moriya and development from Rhys ap Gwyn and Jordan Wheeler.
War Story: Occupied France is a 45-60 minute (for an individual mission) cooperative narrative game for one to six players. It captures the stakes and tension of espionage and resistance warfare in France during World War II. It features three replayable story missions that challenge players to exploit the specialties of their chosen agents to uncover information, enlist allies, and obtain weaponry.
The winner of the 2025 Summit Award was determined by members of the SDHist Board and SDHist Advisory Board. The judges praised War Story: Occupied France for its unusual and innovative mechanics, fresh approach to a well-covered topic, ease of teaching, uniqueness of play, approachability, and feel for the importance of every individual counter.
The San Diego Historical Games Convention (SDHist) is proud to announce Amabel Holland’s video essay “Vonnegut’s Board Game: Preservation, Annotation, Context” as the recipient of the 2025 Bobby Nunes Memorial Award. This award,launched last year in memory of our colleague and friend, Robert “Bobby Factor” Nunes, seeks to recognize exceptional gaming media published in the prior calendar year that reflects Bobby’s enthusiasm for and interest in discussing important cultural issues within the historical gaming hobby. It accompanies SDHist’s Summit Award, presented each year to a game that has broadened the historical gaming hobby.
The winner of the 2025 Bobby Nunes Memorial Award was determined by members of the SDHist board and the SDHist advisory board. (Nominated members were not present for the award selection discussion.) The judges praised Holland’s essay here for its commentary on originality and authorship, as well as its place in Holland’s overall body of work of insightful video essays on games on the Hollandspiele YouTube channel. This particular essay was also on a game (GHQ) that was a nominee for SDHist’s 2025 Summit Award, finishing second behind War Story: Occupied France.
You can nominate your favorite FL(W)GS for the GAMA Power Retailer Awards, and having seen some of the winners at past GAMA Expos, there are some pretty great stores out there. And while you’re nominating your favorite store, make sure you submit them for our FL(W)GS Spotlight, too!
Here’s what’s marching out of the release queue and onto your radar
- World at War issue #105, with Operation Ironclad: Madagascar 1942 is now shipping
- La Der des Ders – The War to End War is now in-stock with Hexasim
- Mike Lambo’s got a new book out! Lone U-Boat: A Solitaire Wargame is now available thru Amazon
- Dana Lombardy’s most recent version of NORAD 3 is now available through his site
- The Bloody Omaha D-Day 80th Anniversary Deluxe Bundle, which also includes the game with the book and all the rest, is also now available
- The new Fire & Dice WW2 minis rules are available for free from The Unlucky General
- Blood & Bayonets from Firelock Games is now available on Wargame Vault, giving you skirmish rules for 28mm Napoleonics
- Easy Roller Dice has some new should-be-registered-as-a-lethal-weapon 35mm metal d20s
- Mantic’s Halo: Flashpoint bundles are now shipping
- Yes, there’s a Napoleonic steampunk game, as Bonaparte – A Mechanized Revolution is on Steam, and on sale for the launch
- When you hit VUCA’s site, it’s showing all of these as now “in stock”
- Imperial Elegy: The Road to the Great War 1850-1920
- Traces of Victory (but still with the pre-order discount)
- Modern Tactics #1 – Afghanistan
It’s not buying, it’s “supporting a vision.” Totally different
- First Republic is a new game on pre-order from the Vae Victis team
- Some recent pre-orders for Compass Games
- Just launched today, Flying Pig’s new Rising Dragon — the sequel to Armageddon War —is now on Kickstarter
- L’Armee d’Italie – Buonaparte in Italy 1796-1797 Vol.1 is a new Kickstarter campaign from Acies Edizioni
- Warlord Games has a snazzy-looking Early Imperial Romans: Testudo on pre-order
- A pair of pre-orders for Free League’s The One Ring RPG
- Hands of the White Wizard – adventures around Saruman and his influence
- Hobbit Tales – lots of info on the Shire and adventuring as a Hobbit
- Pretty much all of the Battlefront/GF9 Checkpoint Charlie bundles are on pre-order now, so you can load up on any of these
The only thing better than new games? Cheaper ones
- WDS ‘Game of the week’ is Panzer Campaigns: Kiev ’43 for $29.95
- Noble Knight’s Fall/Holiday sale is going on right now, and they never advertise an end date, so hurry up and get your orders in
- In keeping with tradition, MMP dropped news on Tuesday night, but their Fall sale runs until 15 November so there’s still time and some good deals on a lot of their catalog
- Reminder that Blue Panther launched their annual holiday sale last week, for 15% off everything with coupon code BPN15
- If you already have Flashpoint Campaigns: Southern Storm, there’s a 50% deal on upgrading to the new Flashpoint Campaigns: Cold War that released in about 10 days
- Dice Envy’s “Boxvember” continues and this week it’s 20% off all their 10pc sets, including the new “Old Blood” set
- Miniature Market has The Epic Battle of Alesia and One Hour World War II both for about 20% off
- Noble Knight has copies of the old VG 2nd Fleet starting at $112
- We don’t normally talk about things until they’re actually underway, but we’re making an exception this week for Amabel1 and the gang at Hollandspiele, whose Hollandays sale starts on 14 November
Kraken Dice has their big Black Friday sale open already and remember that all these freebies stack
Here’s what we’ve been writing while you were waiting for your opponent to finish their turn
- Eutaw Springs – Bonus Game in Volume III of the Battles of the American Revolution (BoAR) series
- First Impressions of Master of Command
- Mentioned In Dispatches S15 E8 – How is the Wargaming Business Like the Music Business?
- Saturday Night Fights ~ “Fire As She Bears”: The Battle of Trafalgar (2)
- 12th Annual Board Game Marathon
- Wargaming with Serious People ~ A Conference Report
- Gameplay this week
The Best Thing We Saw On Another Site This Week Was
A crash course in tabletop game design over at Exeunt Omnes, run by the same smart folks behind Skeleton Code Machine, that’s normally focused on TTPRGs, but has a lot of applicability to wargaming, too
With the public library classes I’ve taught, I had four 90-minute sessions. I was able to cover a lot of material, taking participants from blank sheet of paper to published game by the end. That wasn’t going to happen here.
My plan was to instead give students just four design principles — core concepts that they could easily understand and immediately implement in their games.
I wanted to make it clear what they’d get out of listening to me talk for over an hour
The Second Best Thing We Saw On Another Site This Week Was
TTRPG Insider had a recent article about live/actual play streams, but this segment toward the end seems to apply to a lot of the wargaming YouTube shows, too
In other words, the ‘micro-streamers’ are enjoying streaming because the performance and practice itself is enjoyable to them, not because it’s the next step toward becoming the next Emiru or Hasan Piker.
The same principle could also apply to many of these smaller APs. Some of them may be using it as an opportunity to play and perform in the same way your aunt enjoys being in community theatre. Others use it as a way to ensure they get to play while also building a community around the love for their particular story. And some find the fact that they’ve recorded their TTRPG game on the internet to be valuable. Their art form may be recognized in award shows like the CRIT Awards or local Webfests. But for most, it is performing for the sake of the art.
Ardwulf’s counter clipping stream talked about Virtual Wargaming, and the usual other stuff
Various news & notes from the business end of the gaming world
- This week, Scott Thorne has some thoughts about the ongoing SCOTUS fight over tariffs impacting game publishers
- BoardGameWire reports on a . . . ‘weird’ launch on Gamefound for the Terra Mystica game
- Rascal also digs into some crowdfunding and the
weird. .dumb. . . awkward ways in which some companies set “goals” - ICv2 reports on the arguments over tariffs in front of SCOTUS
- Inside GMT has a long post about the Ancient Civilizations of East Asia to talk about different styles of play
- Some “action” about who is shepherding the Europa game series going forward, as dueling releases last week contradicted each other about who is “in charge”
- One of the Dragoons (Fedelis) has put together a mini-campaign of Memoir ’44 scenarios in the Steam Workshop for Tabletop Simulator
I sent this segment of Rules to Patrick, our artist, and upon looking at it later realized it could be mistaken for a ransom note…
— Catastrophe Games (@catastrophegames.bsky.social) 2025-11-06T23:03:57.416Z
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
- 14-16 Nov SCGCon 25 (Liverpool UK) <– THIS WEEKEND!
- 14-16 Nov U-Con (Ypsilanti MI) <– THIS WEEKEND!
- 14-17 Nov Kublacon Fall (Santa Clara CA) <– THIS WEEKEND!
- 19-23 Nov BGG.CON (Dallas TX)
- 21-23 Nov Pax U (Philadelphia PA)
- 24 Nov Eboracon (York UK)
- 16-18 Jan ConQuest Ventura (Ventura CA)
- 16-18 Jan Marscon (Virginia Beach VA)
- 16-18 Jan The ACDC (Armchair Dragoons HQ Online)
- 17-19 Jan Siege of Augusta Con (Augusta GA)
- 23-25 Jan MMP Winter Offensive (Bowie MD)
- 30 Jan-1 Feb Winter War Con (Champaigne IL)
Nope. Note jealous at all
A marvelous outdoor lunch with friends at SDHistCon. Where is @fredserval.bsky.social? 😀🌴#boardgames@sdhistcon.bsky.social @wargamestogo.bsky.social @beyondsolitaire.bsky.social @djackthompson.bsky.social
— Zilla Blitz (@zillablitz.bsky.social) 2025-11-10T01:31:54.897Z
Details about the upcoming 2026 ArmChair Dragoons Digital Convention
Planning meeting is tonight, so updates will have to wait for next week, but we’ve got some great talk shows lined up this year, including a couple of historians to give us some deep dives into some military conflicts.
Focusing on the practitioner world ~ don’t forget about the dedicated area in our forums for the wargame professionals!
- Wargaming: Unlocking a responsive path for turbulent times (PA Consulting)
- China’s simulated “sealing off” of Taiwan during its third day of wargames around the self-ruled island on Monday drew concerns around the world (UKNIP)
- This week, Mick Ryan’s ‘Big Five’ focuses on Russian casualties and the battle around Pokrovsk
- The next GUWS webinar is Wargaming at HMCS Venture: Enhancing Naval Officer Training on 18 November and then Idiosyncracy in Motion on 9 December
- Get Hired! SAIC has a posting for Wargame Analyst (in Hawaii!)
Just had a student ask me a question (about submerged stability) – I got halfway through the answer and was starting to think "I should really write a doc explaining this" when I noticed he had a PDF open on his laptop with a relevant diagram. Looking closer, that looks like my writing style. /1
— Nick Bradbeer (@nickbradbeer.bsky.social) 2025-11-10T09:54:58.456Z
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
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.
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