Get Your Orders in Early – #TuesdayNewsday 11/2/21

Every week, #TuesdayNewsday gives you a digest of what’s important in the strategy gaming world  >>>

This Week’s Headline:

If you’re looking at holiday orders for games, get things in early.  This Twitter thread from a tabletop industry insider lays out the bare facts about getting games to people – even if they are in stock and not floating in a boat off Long Beach – through the various shipping services on time.

 

Newly Released This Week:

• 

  White Dog Games have released Antietam for all your ACW gaming needs.  The map (Ramon Faura) is a thing of beauty.

• High Flying Dice have released Kind of a Drag about Westmoreland’s 1967 campaign in Vietnam.  They’ve also got an upgraded version of An Undeniable Victory with die-cut counters now available.
• Coupled with their upcoming launch (see below) the Flames of War folks have a new “Spearhead Force” starter box for the Bulge American launch: Pershings, Shermans, Chaffees, and more.
• Lock ‘n Load have a new DLC for their LNLT-Digital series.  Valor of the 13th covers battles near Kursk on the East Front in July of ’43.  It’s $5 off right now, too.
• Kickstarter copies of Twilight: 2000 from Free League are starting to hit people’s doorsteps.  They’ve said it’ll take at least until end of next week to get them all out.  Officially, the game launches on November 16.
• Snafu Games have released Santander ’37 on the Spanish Civil War.  It’s an update of a previously-published magazine game.
• Avalanche Press have a new SWWAS scenario pack, bundled with the necessary games to play it, covering a hypothetical Japanese attack on Australia that posits that the Japanese won the Battle of the Coral Sea as the starting point.  Australian Seas includes 4 different products in a single package that’s almost $40 off their cost individually.
• As we were preparing to go to press, the latest from Avalanche Press came in, announcing that Panzer Grenadier: River Battleships is now available, too.
• Columbia Games let everyone know that they’ve got a dozen scenarios for Combat Infantry available to download in PDF format.
• Day 40 Games have released 2nd Triumvirate: Anthony, Caesar & Lepidus, a pol-mil hybrid.
• Hollandspiele have a new train game shipping:  Westward Rails is now available.

 

On Sale This Week:

• Kraken Dice (who we’ve showcased before) have a couple of crazy deals in November. There’s dice at 80% off, free 5-packs with $60 purchase, and BOGO deals on liquid core dice.
• Draco Ideas has their Skull Tales pirate dice on sale.  They’re basic d6s, but with a pretty neat pattern to them.
• Look…  it’s nice that The Knowledge Company is offering a bundle deal for both their Barbarossa and Hakkaa Paalle “colonel’s editions” at around 30% off.  But when a 30% off discount still costs you a small mortgage payment (over £450) maybe it’s time to reconsider how much you’re asking people to pay for your games.  Oh yeah, they’ll throw in Foxhole for free with that order, but is that really enough to make you pull the trigger?
• New England Simulations has Dresden 1813 on sale for a few bucks off.  It’s not a big sale, but it’s still a sale.
• Revolution Games has a November Sale going with most games at least 20% off and some up to 40%.
• If you order the Pegasus Bridge set from Warlord Games to refight that famous D-Day battle, you a pair of boxed sets – British Airborne and German Grenadiers – to go with it.  It’s kind of like the back end of the Sears Wish Book with all the military play sets from when you were a kid.  Only (1) vastly more detailed, and (2) vastly more expensive.
• Decision Games’ “deal of the month” is an increasing discount on their GOSS series: 20% off of 1 game up to 35% off all 4.
• Paradox has most of the Cities: Skylines series on sale at 50-80% off
• S&T’s game-edition magazine sale this week is S&T #318, and the game is not Istanbul, it’s Constantinople, a solitaire game on the 7th/8th century barbarian attacks on the city.

 

Newly Launched This Week:

• As discussed in our interview with them back on Sunday, Sound of Drums have launched their History of the Ancient Seas campaign, with all 3 games available.
• Steampunky goodness awaits in the City of the Great Machine, an asymmetrical “overthrow the ruling computer” game that looks gorgeous.  Yes, it’s already ordered.  You really had to ask?
• Twin titles of Save Afghanistan, Comrade! / Save South Vietnam! are in a combined campaign by Fortress Games right now, and well past their funding goal.
• Trinity of Reign looks like it might be a really good game, or it might be just a game with really good components.  Hard to tell from the Kickstarter campaign, but probably worth a look.

 

This Week With The Armchair Dragoons:

• We ask “Five Questions” of Sound of Drums, conveniently coordinated for when their Kickstarter launched.
• Saturday Night Fights continued their Battle of Trafalgar.
• Our weekly AAR covering Canvas Temple’s Stalingrad Solitaire is still chugging along
• Mentioned in Dispatches dug into the 2021 Compass Holiday Catalog and pondered how many years in a row that “Wragam” has been mipsellde
• There are a couple of nice, well-illustrated AARs unfolding in our forums:
  • BanzaiCat is dicing his way through London’s Burning, a Battle of Britain game from over 25 years ago.
  • Hethwill got his hooks into Santa Cruz 1797 and when people talk about wargames being awesome because of the maps, this is the kind of game their talking about.
• Other online games with the Armchair Dragoons
  • Thursday night was The Battle of Ascalon for “Field of Glory: Medieval”
  • Still need some alpha testers for the TLC rules, using TTS.

 

News From The Wargame Industry:

• Battlefront minis are doing a live launch for the new Flames of War Bulge American expansion on 7 November. (See the top for the “Spearhead Force” deal).
• Does Clash of Arms have a webmaster?  Does the webmaster know this?  The site hasn’t been updated in about a year.  Battles! Magazine is running close behind, too.
• Not wargaming at all, but still gaming: if you want to watch a pretty cool kid in his upcoming college Esports tournament, check out this twitch stream over the weekend when the next FIFA tournament is being played.  Oh yeah, and last week, that school (Barton College) knocked off West Point in the collegiate Call of Duty tournament.
• WotC has a big D&D survey going on.  Of course there’s a 6th edition coming for the 50th anniversary.  Gotta re-sell all those core books!
• The current owner/webmaster at grognard.com (yes, it’s still around) is looking to hand over the reins.
• This week on Twitter, WargameHQ is asking about influential WW2 ETO titles

 

Something From Our Partners:

• Rocky talks about where he gets his wargaming news, and we’re not just highlighting this because he says nice things about us, although that definitely was a factor.
• Ardwulf’s counter clipping stream talked about wargaming the AWI, and he also has a great review of the new Dune movie.
• Moe had his monthly Whiskey Charlie show last week.

 

The Professional & Practitioner Wargaming World:

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

• Students at the Institute of World Politics in Washington, DC spent a day playing the ISIS Crisis matrix game, and you can read all about it.
• Thanks to Brian Train for bringing to our attention this article about the CAARNG standing up a dedicated urban warfare training environment for dealing with large cities and, uh…  well, the PLA.
• This week, GUWS is taking a break.  But next week, there’s How Diversity Won the War: the Western Approaches Tactical Unit Wargame and then after that, they’ve got Sand Tables: The Archaeology of a Platform
• PaxSims has an interesting wrap-up on the recent CNAS wargame on a Chinese attack on Taiwan, with links to the official report and the WaPo article about it.
• UK Fight Club is showing off some images of their upcoming Christmas tournament, using the Bravo game from OffWorld Defence Simulations.

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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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