ConSimGameJam 2022 Wraps Up – #TuesdayNewsday 8/23/22

Each week, #TuesdayNewsday is essential reading for all your strategy gaming headlines

ConSimGameJam was last week, and with “design a card-drive game without a board” as the key focus, there were some interesting projects.

Ending the Russo-Japanese War, the Kingdom of Kandy, Seleucid king Antiochus III, the Cold War not going hot, and West Virginia Mine Wars, among others

Friend-of-the-Dragoons Jan Heinemann shared some of their work in progress on their Spanish Civil War game

We can’t wait to see if any of these get published!

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And don’t forget that we’ve got the online form for you to submit your FL(W)GS for our spotlight series.  We’re 2 stores into it, and getting ready to launch our directory page once we publish our 3rd store, too.

• Volters Lead The Way from White Dog Games has started to escape into the wild
• World at War #86, which includes The Chaco War about the 1930s conflict in South America, is shipped to subscribers, and now available for the public to order
• The new issue of Wargames Illustrated (#417) is now available to order
• There’s a new scenario pack for Command that focuses on the new Royal Navy aircraft carrier, the Queen Elizabeth patrolling the South China Sea
• Ares Games released the US/English-language versions of This War Without An Enemy, and FITNA, Global War in the Middle East; these have been available as imports for a while, but Ares now has them in formal US distribution channels
• Dark City Games released their latest game/book hybrid, Desperadoes, that lets you go hunting outlaws in the Wild West
• Osprey has released Gran Meccanismo for your da Vinci-inspired ‘clockpunk’ role-playing fun
• If our man Doug were still around, he might be going gaga over Warlord’s new Marlborough’s Wars Starter Army, with a free “Marlborough At Blenheim” command figure

 

• It’s so new in Compass Games’ queue that they haven’t even updated the website yet, but Brief Border Wars II is up for pre-order now, and Brian always designs great games
• Compass Games has pre-orders open on Seapower & The State, a strategic-level naval game of a potential WW3 with some very oddly-shaped land masses on the map
• The Kickstarter is over, but the pre-orders for Alliance from Columbia Games are still open thru their site
• UA Bravery Time is a co-op card game about defending Ukraine, currently on Kickstarter
• Steve Jackson Games put a cool d6 set on pre-order, with an Eye of Horus theme
• Steve Jackson Games also has a couple of new dice games on Indiegogo
• Halfling. Snipers.     that is all
• GMT Games’ latest monthly update included 3 p500 additions
  • American Revolution Tri-Pack #2
  • Falling Sky 2nd Edition, 2nd Printing
  • Iron Storm: The First World War, 1914-1918

 

• MMP has Special Ops #10 on sale at 25% off right now
• Osprey Games has a bunch of their stuff on sale, but you have to scroll thru the entire catalog(ue) to find them all b/c they don’t give you a separate sale-only listing
• Again, “sale” is always relative when talking about games from TKC, but you can “save” £206 on their new PTO bundle
• It looks like an arcade game. but….  TANKS!  War Tanks is on sale on Steam
• GOG has North & South on sale for about 80% off
• There’s a big-ass¹ Pathfinder bundle on Humble Bundle right now
• S&T’s game-edition magazine sale this week is World at War #74, with a game that postulates that WW2 started in ’38

 

• Saturday Night Fights ~ Somewhere in Stalingrad for “CrossFire”
• #UnboxingDay!
  • Volters Lead The Way by White Dog Games
  • Reality Shift from Apollo Games/Academy Games
  • Battle of Yorktown by The Historical Game Company
  • Flashpoint: South China Sea by GMT Games
  • Donnerschlag by VUCA Simulations
  • Hitler’s Stalingrad: Breslau ’45 from Against The Odds Magazine
• FL(W)GS Spotlight ~ Future Pastimes in Sarnia, ON and don’t forget our online form for you to submit your own local store!
• This week in our forums
  • All kinds of chatter on Medieval Total War going on
  • Talking about the “One D&D” announcement from WotC
  • We’re always talking about what you’re playing over the weekend
• Upcoming Dragoons Events (and don’t forget to check the event calendar for everything else)
  • Next #UnboxingDay is 15 September
  • Next Virtual Convention is The ACDC in January; on 19 October, we’ll have a 1-day showcase of professional wargaming projects under the Connections Online banner with details coming soon
  • Next Real-World Convention is probably ForJeffCon (The Last MACE) in November

 

• Somewhere in Stalingrad for “CrossFire”
• Armchair Dragoons Club Game (part 4) for “Lasalle 2”
• The Battle of Achdorf for “Shako 2”
• Rebooting the 1807 Kriegsspiel – if you want in, pipe up now!

 

• DragonCon, Atlanta GA 1-5 September
• StrategiCon: GateWay, Los Angeles CA 2-5 September
• Southern Front 2022, Morrisville NC (RTP area) 16-18 September
• GMT Weekend at the Warehouse, Hanford CA 13-16 October

 

• Rocky asks a good question about “what do you read in a wargame?” and it sparked some interesting discussion on Twitter, too
• Moe has his next Whiskey Charlie episode tonight
• Justegarde has a nice 2-part look at Death of an Army: Ypres 1914:  part 1 and part 2
• Ardwulf’s counter clipping stream talked about wargaming between ACW and WW1, but spent a bunch of time talking about the latest GMT update, too

 

We’ve also got a 4X-specific area in the forums to discuss any of these, too.

• The “Co-op and Conquest” update has dropped for Airships: Conquer the Skies, the steampunk-themed RTS from developer David Stark.  Along with a slew of various small features and improvements, the update also includes several significant new features.  The most impactful of these is the addition of diplomacy, allowing the game to be played as a grand-strategy experience for those who wish to do so.  It’s perhaps also worth noting that is the last planned major update for the main game, as the developer plans to begin work on a future DLC (though not before he’s had time to rest and work on some bug-squashing).
• Another game receiving a massive & significant patch is NEBULOUS: Fleet Command.  The sci-fi fleet combat simulator, which continues its development in Steam Early Access, has just seen the release of the Modular Missile update (watch the trailer here).  As can probably be guessed, missiles have been completely overhauled, and a number of other weapon systems have been heavily revamped as well.  (Those interested can watch/listen to the dev video blog here.)  Naturally, these are all in addition to the absolute crapload of bug-fixes, balance tweaks, quality-of-life improvements, and more.
• Last week, developer Resistance Games released an updated & improved demo for Great Houses of Calderia, their Crusader Kings-like game that’s totally not set in an alternate/fantasy version of Renaissance Italy.  The demo is only available until Sunday, August 28, however, so get it while it’s hot!
• August 17 marked the one-year anniversary of Humankind, the historical 4x from developer Amplitude Studios and publisher Sega.  In celebration, Amplitude released a patch that permanently unlocked all in-game events & challenges (there’s no longer any time limit constraints), plus added a new One Hundred Years War scenario challenge.
• Sliver Lemur Games released both the 0.80 update and follow-up 0.81 patch for Stellar Monarch 2, their space grand-strategy title currently in Steam Early Access.  The developer notes that this version is almost feature-complete, and that the full game may release by the end of the year still.
• Arcen Games released version 5.507 for AI War 2, their unique (but excellent) space grand-strategy/tower-defense/4x hybrid.  This latest patch includes numerous bug-fixes, balance tweaks, updates to official mods, and some fairly hefty fixes to some issues affecting multiplayer (see the full list here).

 

• Avalanche Press has leaned hard into some alt-history campaigns, and their upcoming Afrika ’44 continues that genre by giving the Afrika Korps some late-war German military toys, and letting you expand An Army At Dawn with some new pieces and scenarios
• WotC is reviving Spelljammer
• MMP held their “Playtestathon” last weekend, which inspired all sorts of social media users to ask “is that in playtesting?”  No, we just call it a Playtestathon for games that have been released for 6 years and you’ve never heard of²
• This meme is taking over teh interwebz, and our Discord server, but this is the best one we’ve seen yet

 

Don’t forget we’ve got a dedicated area of our forums for the professional wargamers.

• A big podcast on wargaming from the Army Mad Scientist Podcast series with a high-powered cast of guests
• Space Force wargaming!
• Designing some wargames for training, with a standard military map
• Drone-based target acquisition needs be addressed in future wargames, as it’s becoming more and more important
• It’s nice to see the Washington Post finally catching up to the issue of classified data leaking into online wargames, which we started talking about last year
• The next GUWS webinars is weeks away, with Merlin Cyber Wargaming Module: Beyond Magic Bullets and Fairy Dust on 9/20 and Naval War College: Educational Wargaming on 10/4 good buddy
• UK Fight Club asks a key question about the integration of wargaming – “who trains the trainers?”   Seems like we’ve asked this about 6 years ago.

UKFC, this week

Brant, 6 years ago

The more telling marker, however, is going to be how (or if!) institutional wargaming takes hold by training the trainers.  It’s one thing to simply start incorporating wargames into basic instructional contexts.  It’s a whole new level of commitment when the military starts developing multiple road shows to train the instructors in the schoolhouses, and creates a block of instruction that teaches not just how to play the games, but how to properly incorporate them into the lessons being taught.  The true nature of the military’s commitment is going to be measured by the ways in which wargaming is not merely pasted on to existing activities, but in the ways in which the next generation(s) of leaders and instructors are “raised” with wargaming as an expectation in their careers, not merely an occasional sideshow or one-off distraction.

 

That’s all for this week!
Be sure to drop by our forums and join the fun, and next Tuesday we’ll drop some more news on you.

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We appreciate you visiting the Armchair Dragoons and hope that you enjoy our weekly news dumps!
Please leave us your feedback in our discussion forum, or in the comment area below.
You can also find the regiment on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, and occasionally at a convention near you.

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