Welcome to Fall! ~ #TuesdayNewsday 9/5/23

Every week, #TuesdayNewsday sifts through the strategy gaming world to dig out the headlines

We told y’all last week to come join us for the show, and we had everyone from Ardwulf to Moe to Chris Weuve to Cyrano stop by and join us, along with a bunch of our fellow Dragoons, as Brant, Mike, and Rocky toasted to 5 years in the saddle on our anniversary happy hour

 

Connections UK 2023 is underway over in Merry Ol’ England and includes a guided tour of Sandhurst among plenty of other cool events

 

The Fall Assembly is coming!

Registration & events are both live for the Armchair Dragoons Fall Assembly 2023.
We’ve got around 20 scheduled events, with plenty of empty table-space for pickup games in between.  We’ve got multi-session monster games, smaller 2-player shootouts, playtest/pre-release games, and learn-to-play classics.

We’ve got designers Hermann Luttmann, Bruce Maxwell, and Keith Tracton all joining us and showing off their games, as well as playing some other games with us.

Current Confirmed Game Sessions

Convention Details We’re being hosted by The Gamer’s Armory, and they’re planning to open early on Sunday just for us, so we can get an additional game session or two in, before the general public gets in the doors Update: we’re over halfway sold out Badges are $40 for the weekend, which include some munchies, custom Armchair Dragoons swag, and whatever other prizes or giveaways we’re able to gather before the event. Attendance is capped on this one because of the limited floorspace we’ve got inside the store and we want to make sure every player gets plenty of time on the tables. As noted on the convention site, we do not have a hotel attached to the facility. You can find local hotels here. As a reminder, Regimental Patron-level Patreon supporters get a free badge for all Armchair Dragoons-hosted events.

 

Games released in the past week that you’ll want to check out

• The latest game from SGS has released on Steam, and you can get SGS Fall Weiss at 20% during its launch right now
• Per their post on social media, Europa Simulazioni are now shipping El Gran Capitan
• How about a free print-&-play game? Glory to the Heroes is a pretty simple grand-strat game of the ongoing Russo-Ukraine war from a current British Army major that current hosted on the Paxsims site
• Lords of Ragnarok started shipping this week; it falls well into that “box stuffed with toys” category that’s dominating the market these days but there weren’t a lot of other releases even remotely wargamey to talk about
• You might as well cave now; there are Iron Maiden-themed game packs for Zombicide starring Eddie¹ and MM has them cheaper than anyone else we’ve found
  • Zombicide 2E: Iron Maiden Pack #1
  • Zombicide 2E: Iron Maiden Pack #2
  • Zombicide 2E: Iron Maiden Pack #3

 

Crowdfunding, p500, pledge programs, whatevs yo! ~ if you can order it now & get it later, here it is

• Napoleon’s Eagles is the latest Compass Games Kickstarter campaign
• Avalanche Press has opened up the order page for Fleets: La Royale² here, and their most recent email promises shipping “in the next week or two”
• Moria™ – Through the Doors of Durin for The One Ring™ RPG from Free League now on Kickstarter and closing in on $1 million in pledges
• Warlord Games has some Bolt Action weapons teams on pre-order
  • German Heer Weapons Teams
  • French Resistance Weapons Teams
  • Australian Army (Far East) Weapons Teams

 

Here to help you save a few bucks, or, y’know… spend more than you were planning if it wasn’t for a good deal

• S&M are part of the GOG Autumn Sale going on thru 11 September (scroll down past the mass market games for the search grid with their specific titles)
• There’s about 5 days left in LNLP’s “Blitzkrieg sale” with a lot of titles at 50% off
• Steve Jackson Games have their “Back To School” sale still going for a few days
• Miniature Market has Fighting Formations: Grossdeutschland Division’s Battle for Kharkov at over $10 off

 

There’s always something going on with The Dragoons, so we’ve always got plenty to tell you about!

We’ll start recording new episodes of Mentioned in Dispatches in about 2 weeks and stack up a few before we start unleashing them

• Saturday Night Fights ~ The LGB Battle of Borodino for “Commands and Colors” Napoleonic”
• The 5th Anniversary of the Mustering of the Dragoons
• Travels in Europe ~ Leipzig & The East, Part 3
• Armchair Dragoons Fall Assembly Event Preview
• Going back through our Armchair Dragoons’ archives – Comparing Mobile Civ-Style 4x Games
• The Grand “Champions of Krynn” AAR ~ Part Nineteen
• Gameplay this week
  • The Church on the Flank 2 for “Chain of Command”
  • The Battle of Dresden (V) for “Valour and Fortitude”
  • The Robotyne Turkey Shoot, Part 1 and Part 2
• This week in our forums
  • Talking about fog of war in wargaming
  • It’s not the size of the dog in the fight…
  • War & Peace goes digital
• Upcoming Dragoons Events (and don’t forget to check the event calendar for everything else)
  • Wargame Days at The Gamer’s Armory in Cary, NC ~ September 10 and October 1
  • Next #UnboxingDay³ will be 21 September
  • Next virtual event is The 2024 ACDC, 12-14 January 2024
  • Next live event is The Armchair Dragoons Fall Assembly 2023, 20-22 October 2023, The Gamer’s Armory, Cary NC

 

Don’t forget to check our consolidated event & convention calendar for more!
You can also submit your own events for our calendar here.

• 15-17 September Southern Front (Morrisville, NC)
• 24-28 September World Series of Board Gaming (Las Vegas)
• 1-8 October ASLOK (Cleveland, OH)
• 5-8 October EssenSpiel (Essen, Germany)
• 19-22 October GameHoleCon (Madison WI)
• 20-22 October The Inaugural Armchair Dragoons Fall Assembly 2023 (Cary, NC)
• 27-29 October Carnage Royale (Dover VT)
• 3-5 November Rock-Con (Rockford IL)

---

Our fellow content creators from the wargaming world

• Rocky boxes up World at War ’85: Storming the Gap with his new Cube4Me trays
• Beyond Solitaire talked to Mike Nerdahl about gaming “ancient Rome”
• My Own Worst Enemy still going through Triumph & Tragedy, which will also be on the table at the Fall Assembly
• Gimpy is not holding back on another Kickstarter scam
• Ardwulf’s counter clipping stream talked about Advanced Squad Leader, and plenty more

 

Various news & notes from the business end of the gaming world

• Dicebreaker has an interesting article about increases in tabletop game play from before vs after COVID, but (1) they play a little fast-&-loose with some statistics, and (2) no mention from the original research about how tabletop gaming was trending before COVID
• Avalanche Press has an article making (ie, “physically constructing”) your own counters from print-&-play files
• Decision Games are looking for a graphics person
  Due to our plans to increase our boxed game publication schedule, a full-time in-house graphic design position is open. Ability and experience in creating magazine layout, magazine map graphics, game components, and web design is expected.
   Anyone interested can contact Callie at calliecummins@decisiongames.com for more information and how to apply.

 

 

Hey, we’d LOVE to have some more action in the dedicated area of our forums for the wargame practitioners.

 

• New TTPs for MEDEVAC, and how would you incorporate that into your wargaming
• Time to update your Chinese wargaming maps
• Most of Ukraine’s Leo 2’s are still in the fight
• The next GUWS webinar is Ender’s Legacy: Digital Wargames in Professional Military Education on 5 September, followed by The Curse Of The Perfect Prototype: How To Move From Idea To The Table? on 19 September and yes, pretty much every aspiring designer just died a little inside.  On 3 October they’ve got Luke Hughes discussing Cardboard Meets Bits, Designing a WWII Tactical Leadership cRPG where he’ll likely cover the long-discussed-but-yet-to-materialize Burden of Command⁴
• From our Connections Online livestream archive

 

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’ll drop some more news on you.

---

Thank you for visiting The Armchair Dragoons and mounting up with the Regiment of Strategy Gaming.
You can find our regiment’s social media on Mastodon, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and even Threads, if we could ever get an auto-post to it.
(We have an Instagram page and it’s really just a placeholder & redirect to our articles.)
You can support The Armchair Dragoons through our Patreon, also, 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.

---

In a world of wargaming so grand,
Tuesdays, news spreads ‘cross the land,
Updates each week,
For battles we seek,
On the tabletops, forces will stand!

1. can you name all the songs/albums featured on the box covers?
2. the third in their Fleets of the Second Great War sourcebook series
3. 3rd Thursday of the month
4. seriously, we first covered this game on another site in Oct ’17