ORIGINS! ~ #TuesdayNewsday

Your weekly dose of wargaming excitement starts right here with #TuesdayNewsday

 

Origins is finally here, and we’ll be down at the convention center from  Wednesday 19 June through -Sunday 23 June with all sorts of coverage incoming for you.

Here’s everything we included in our preview coverage, and we’ll have plenty of reports from the convention center once we get down there

• WARGAME HQ EVENTS
• MiD PREVIEW EPISODE
• WARGAME HQ GAME PREVIEWS
• WAR COLLEGE PREVIEWS
• CONSOLIDATED ALL WARGAMING EVENT GRID
• EXHIBITOR SPOTLIGHT & MAPS
• ORIGINS OF ORIGINS

 

As announced by Cole Wehrle on Leder Games livestream yesterday on Twitch, Friend-of-the-Dragoons Liz Davidson (of Beyond Solitaire fame) is joining Leder Games full-time to focus on their solo game projects.  Yes, we bugged her about it while she’s on vacation, but she did offer us this thought:

“I feel very lucky to be starting my dream job, and I can’t wait to bring more solo/cooperative games into the world.”
–– Liz Davidson

Best of luck to Liz and we can’t wait to see what comes from Leder Games with her on board.

 

Hitting the shelves (and webstores) near you now!

• White Dog Games released ¡Viva Mexico! about the Mexican revolution of the early 1900s
• Air & Armor: Würzburg, Operational Armored Warfare in Europe, Designer Signature Edition is finally shipping from Compass Games and starting to land around the US
• Warlord Games has released their Black Powder Epic Battles: The Waterloo Campaign Rulebook, so you can fight those giant 13mm battles
• Avalanche Press’ newsletter seems pretty emphatic that Java Sea: Royal Thai Navy is released
• Slitherine Games has released the new Urban Onslaught module for Starship Troopers: Terran Command
• Hollandspiele get the latest “release something significant right after our weekly news release” as City of Six Moons has (1) been released, and (2) already sold out while they wait for more new wood bits to come in
• The Gale Force Nine / Battlefront minis collaboration Clash of Steel has launched the first 2 intro packs, with a US v Sov and a Brit v German box up first; each box has over a dozen tanks in it
• There’s a new Solo Wargaming: A Practitioner’s Guide out of the UK, so it’s probably minis-focused, but don’t let that stop you 🤠
• Chaosium released the Pendragon core rulebook, as well as their first campaign, The Grey Knight
• It looks like Ad Hoc Edition has released their first 2 games, covering some Seven Years War battles
  • Minden 1759
  • Torgau 1760

 

Time to get those orders in now and then either (a) gripe that it’s not here already, and/or (b) be surprised when it gets here sooner than you thought

• OSG have opened pre-orders for Napoleon’s Counterstrike and we all know Cyrano is trying to corner the market on them
• They just wrapped up One Hour World War 2 but Worthington are already back at it with their reprint of Boots on the Ground that’s now live
• Osprey has the new Stargrave: Dead or Alive campaign book on pre-order
• While we all wait for the relaunched Heroscape sets to land at GenCon, Renegade Game Studios are already launching pre-orders on wave 2, with several expansions
• Compass has the 2nd edition of Zeppelin Raider on Kickstarter
• Gamer’s Armory has the Orange Blossom upcoming ASL scenario pack from Lone Canuck Publishing on pre-order
• It’s only a $20 goal, but there’s so little info about Scramble: Battles Through History that you just have to wonder if this is even a real campaign; is seems to be a WW2 minis rules set?  Maybe?
• The Colonial Crucible – Rules for Colonial Wargaming is a set of 28mm minis rules that will probably hit its goal by the time you read this
• Europa Universalis: The Price of Power – Defying Destiny Expansion is live on Gamefound

 

Saving money? Spending just as much but getting more for it?

• The WDS Summer Sale has started and runs until July, and all but 3 games¹ are marked down to $29.95
• Dice Envy just released a new “Armored Artificer” set and you can save 10% with coupon code KADABRA at checkout
• Free League has a big Summer sale going on right now, too, with 50% off a LOT of their titles through 1 July
• Gamer’s Armory has A Gest of Robin Hood on sale for about $11 off
• Noble Knight has the new reprint of Here I Stand on sale for about $15 off
• Ultimate General: American Revolution is on early access on Steam, but still $45(!)

 

This week’s best written coverage from the wargaming world

• Rocky’s first look inside the new Air & Armor: Würzburg notes some, er… ‘corrections’
• Brian Train loves ChatGPT
• Space Biff goes deep on Striking Flint from Hollandspiele
• Coming to play Twilight Struggle: Red Sea with us at Origins?  GMT has a “how to win” article for you
• Thin Red Line Games has an interesting look in the US VII Corps area of operations in their upcoming In A Dark Wood game in their C3 series
• Avalanche Press has an article about US destroyer development leading up to WW1

 

The best videos this week from our wargaming friends

• Moe cracks open Air & Armor: Würzburg for a first look
• My Own Worst Enemy is playing the classic US Civil War on his channel
• Zilla looks at Deitz’s upcoming Chicago 68 game
• Justegarde plays Polar Storm from Three Crowns Games
• Beyond Solitaire interviewed David Thompson, Trevor Benjamin, Roger Tankersley, and probably a few David Thompson clones on her most recent podcast
• Ardwulf’s counter clipping stream covered his annual Origins preview

 

 

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

• ICv2 reports that adults are now the largest market segment for “toys” and surpassed preschoolers in that race; games are a part of that market segment, and, well, we adults tend to buy a lot of them
• Atomic Mass Games has discontinued both Star Wars Armada and Star Wars X-Wing minis games, focusing instead on their Legion and Shatterpoint games in the same universe
• WDS announced a big upgrade to their First World War Campaigns games, but these are not in-place patches, but full installs and you’ll need to uninstall the old one before installing the new engine; if you already own the games, the updater is in you store account
• Fort Circle Games got hosed when the port of Baltimore got closed by the bridge collapse and screwed up their distro for their current games, and now Kevin gives you an update on the rest of their fulfillment plans
• BoardGameWire has the story of how Hans im Gluck – the publisher of Carcassonne – is trying to globally trademark the term “meeple” despite not having even invented the term themselves

It’s been a busy week for the regiment; here’s what you might’ve missed!

• Saturday Night Fights ~ The Battle of Eggmuhl (6) for “General d’Armee 2”
• Canon Plus or Minus for Twilight: 2000 4th Edition
• Origins 2024 Countdown! The Origins of Origins
• Gameplay this week
  • A first stab at “O Group”.
  • The Third Confrontation (2) in Our Battle for Armageddon Campaign
  • Peter streamed WDS’s Thirty Years War

 

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

Upcoming Dragoons Events

• Wargame Days at The Gamer’s Armory in Cary, NC ~ 7 July and 4 August
• Next planned virtual event is the ACDC², 17-19, 2025
• Next confirmed live event is Origins Game Fair, 19-23 June, 2024

Other Conventions & Events

• 19-23 June 2024 Origins (Columbus OH) <– THIS WEEKEND!
• 25-27 June 2024 Connections (Carlisle PA)
• 12-20 July 2024 CSW Expo (Tempe AZ)
• 20-28 July 2024 WBC (Seven Springs Resort, PA)
• 8-11 August 2024 SDHistCon East (Newport, RI)
• 15-18 August 2024 HistoriKC Fest (Kansas City MO)
• 20-22 September 2024 Southern Front (Morrisville NC)
• 27-29 September 2024 Czech Consim 2024 (Prague CZ)
• 11-13 October 2024 Armchair Dragoons Fall Assembly (Raleigh/Cary NC)
• 6-11 November 2024 Compass Game Fall Expo (Meriden CT)
• 8-11 November 2024 FoxCon (Dallas TX)

 

Focusing on the practitioner world ~ don’t forget about our dedicated area in our forums for the wargame professionals!

• Connections UK registration is live
• Safety issues with Hellfires on Strykers?
• Uncomfortable lessons from Red Dawn back in the 80s?
• Ukrainian ATACMS Rockets Are Blowing Up Russia’s Best S-400 Air Defenses As Fast As The S-400s Can Deploy To Crimea
• The next GUWS webinar is previous MiD guest Pijus Kruminas TONIGHT talking (War)game theory: wargaming and modeling in social sciences and on 9 July they have Jorit Wintjes talking about Kriegsspiel – Past and Present

 

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.

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Thank you for visiting The Armchair Dragoons and mounting up with the Regiment of Strategy Gaming.
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Feel free to talk back to us either in our discussion forum, or in the comments below.

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1. Orel ’43, Thirty Years War, Spring Awakening ’45
2. Armchair Dragoons Digital Convention