As the battle rages on both on the table & the screen, join us for this week’s roundup of wargaming news, releases, sales, pre-orders, and more, serving the passionate community that fuels our favorite pastime.
Judd Vance over on BGG has a 2025 challenge for all wargamers
Last year, I bribed wargamers to see their favorite wargames. It was fun. So I thought I’d do something like it again.
We need more wargame geeklists. Plus I got a crapton of Geekgold and I’m ready to start spending it like Scrooge on Christmas day.
So here is my plan.
1. Think of 12 wargames you want to play this year. It doesn’t have to be your favorites, just 12 that you really want to play this year and that you’ll make some sort of effort to play.
2. Go make a Geeklist with them. Don’t know how to make a Geeklist? I created a tutorial. It’s easy: even I can do it.
3. Put a link to your Geeklist in the comments below. I’ll probably make a metalist with the lists in them.
5. I’ll tip your Geeklist 10 Geekgold. Others may chip in. This may make you wealthy beyond imagination and you end up being the Wolf of BGG! Top that with the 10s of 20s of thumbs you’ll receive, and well… how COULDN’T you????
note, #4 was missing in the original post at BGG
Here’s Brant taking a swing at “walking around” the ACDC as games were in action
Other follow-up to the ACDC includes Hethwill’s coverage of his gameplay and some other folks chiming in on social media
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Hitting the shelves (and webstores) near you now!
- Strategy & Tactics #351 shipped to subscribers last week and is now available to the public
- SGS has a new expansion for Carrier Battles as Hailstone ’441 is now on Steam
- Another Mike Lambo solitaire game is up on Amazon – Solacia 2 – The Ice Demon: A Solitaire Fantasy Game
- Steve Jackson Games released Last Shot about Cold War-era agents/assassins
- Free League has released a free Dragonbane quickstart that you can download on Drive-Thru RPG
- Kraken Dice has released a new Tropic Blast 14pc dice set, and it glows in the dark, too
- The Platoon Commander demo from Slitherine is on Steam (for free!) and you can read about it here
- Government Contractors: Arms of Influence just launched on Steam and is on an intro sale
- Warlord Games just dropped a bunch of bundles for Bolt Action! and they’re not all stupid expensive
Time to get those orders in now and then either (a) complain that it’s 2 years late, and/or (b) be surprised when it gets here sooner than you thought
- Trafalgar Editions just launched Poland ’39 on Gamefound
- They also just launched Afrika Korps 1941 over on Kickstarter, because neither platform will let you run 2 simultaneous campaigns
- 1811: Albuera Second Edition is now on Gamefound
- Old School Tactical Volume 1, 2nd Ed, expansion (Stalingrad) is now on Kickstarter
- TS Wargames has Narvik 1940 “in progress” (ie, on pre-order)
- Stalin’s Lost Chance is on pre-order with Three Crowns Games and close to its number
- Warlord has the new Bolt Action! Compendium And Operation Rösselsprung (1944) Special Figure on pre-order
- A couple of bits of pre-order news from OSG
- Napoleon’s Counterstrike will be headed to the printing press soon, so the 30% pre-order discount will expire 30 January
- Pre-orders are now open on The Coming Storm II, which will be the next game in the queue
Looking for a deal? Getting more bang for your buck?
- WDS “Game of the week” is Campaign Ozark for $29.95
- Attack at Dawn: North Africa is on sale for the Steam RTS Fest right now, at 60% off
- Battlefront Minis/Flames of War are launching a new website and have a 30% off sale right now on all on-stock products
- Carolina Game Tables has a warehouse sale going on, so their need for space is your gain in the wallet
- As a part of the Steam “RTS Fest” going on right now, Regiments is on sale; you can read what we think over here
- Miniature Market has Napoleon’s Eagles: Storm in the East on sale
- Noble Knight has Desert Rats 1940-42 on sale
It’s been a busy week for the regiment; here’s what you might’ve missed!
- Saturday Night Fights ~ “Playing the Beanball” (4) for “Charlie Don’t Surf!”
- The 2025 ACDC
- The Battles for the Ardennes Deluxe Edition by Decision Games
- Wednesday War Stories ~ The Battle of Rivoli, 14 January 1797
- AARs
- Gameplay this week
The Best Thing We Saw On Another Site This Week Was
Stuart Ellis-Gorman’s review of Wargames According to Mark certainly gives the reader a lot to chew on, and two particular parts of it stood out:
The CDG discussion is also the aspect of the book that is probably the most useful to designers looking for actionable advice from Wargames According to Mark – anyone thinking about designing their own CDG could probably benefit from reading this book even if they ultimately reject Mark’s advice and make different choices for their design.
and
Perhaps more frustrating, to me at least, is that there is also no substantive discussion of historiography or the work of historians on the subject’s Herman discusses, even those areas where he considers himself an expert. While Herman frequently refers to where in the design process he does his research, there is no detailed breakdown of what his research process looks like. For a historian’s view on design, I would have hoped for a lengthy discussion of what makes good vs. bad historical research, particularly on subjects that might have a challenging historiography (like, say, the American Civil War).
![]() This week’s best written coverage from the wargaming world
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![]() The best videos this week from our wargaming friends
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Ardwulf’s counter clipping stream talked about the Best of GMT from ’08-’10
Various news & notes from the business end of the gaming world
- Slitherine Games are looking for a brand manager for their wargame lines
- ICv2 has a decent analysis/recap of the Diamond bankruptcy from last week, and it looks like PRH might be eating the most of the damage; it’s likely that Universal Distribution will scoop up the Alliance Game Distributors sub-division
- BoardGameWire also has a report on the ‘bail out’ coming for Alliance Game Distributors
- Rascal looks at the relationship between journalism and marketing
- Layoffs hit Wargaming, the developer/publisher for World of Tanks and World of Warships
- Wargame Design Studio is starting their updates to the Napoleonic Battles series
- Osprey Games has some info on this year’s games coming from Joseph McCullough, as he’s got several in the queue for 2025
- Here’s another round of the Decision Games deluxe editions survey, with options narrowed from previous surveys
- Designers & artists – need some public domain images you can use? Check out Picryl and thank us later
- We’re all pretty certain that not a single goddamn wargame is going to make the BGG “Hall of Fame”, despite being the underlying inspiration for RPGs and hobby games as a whole, right?
Very much here for the staff of IKEA inventing fake board games for their room display
— Matt Thrower (@mattthr.bsky.social) January 20, 2025 at 4:08 AM
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 ~ 2 February and 2 March
- Next confirmed live event is BuckeyeGameFest, 1-4 May 2025
- Next planned virtual event is Connections Online, 7-12 April, 2025
Other Conventions & Events
- 23-26 January MMP Winter Offensive (Bowie MD) <– THIS WEEKEND!
- 24-26 January Winter War Con (Champaign IL) <– THIS WEEKEND!
- 30 Jan-2 Feb CascadeCon (Bellingham WA)
- 31 Jan-2 Feb Captain Con (Warwick RI)
- 8 February SDHistCon Winter Quarters (Online)
- 5-9 February Game-on (Bellevue WA)
Focusing on the practitioner world ~ don’t forget about our dedicated area in our forums for the wargame professionals!
- US Naval War College course in Wargaming Design
- A deep dive into the US Navy’s “Halsey Alfa” wargames
- Another bullet
- Ukraine trying to proactively disrupt the Russian bomber force
- This week, Mick Ryan talks about those bomber disruptions and more
- The next GUWS webinar is tonight – Wargaming for the Social & Cognitive Sciences and then Nuclear Wargaming: It shouldn’t just be Game Over! on 4 February
- PaxSims monthly(ish) miscellany ends up collecting a bunch of articles in the serious gaming space
I designed “The Beachhead” as a simple, educational micro game highlighting the “tactical will to fight.” Players must try to manage the precarious cohesion of a unit together as they fight on contested beaches. #wargaming
— Sebastian Bae (@sebastianbae.bsky.social) January 18, 2025 at 10:44 AM
Something neat from outside the wargaming world we thought was worth sharing
You’ve got about a week-&-a-half before one of the wildest sporting events in the US: run 2.5 miles, eat a dozen Krispy Kreme donuts, run the 2.5 miles back to the start. Do it in under an hour, and you’ve completed The Krispy Kreme Challenge2. The best part of the story? While it started as a bit of a dare between some college friends, the guy came up with the idea actually slept through the first one and missed it.
And yes, our editor actually completed the challenge back in 2008 when he still had 2 functioning knees that could handle a 5k on asphalt.
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 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.
You can also support The Armchair Dragoons through our Patreon, 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.
Footnotes
- requires the base game Carrier Battles 4 Guadalcanal – Pacific War Naval Warfare on Steam
- and it’s a charity fundraiser, too