RIP Modern War Magazine – #TuesdayNewsday 8/10/21

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

This Week’s Headline:

As Ty Bomba reported on Facebook, Modern War Magazine is ending.

The End of Modern War Magazine
Issue No. 55 (Objective Hamburg) is the last and final issue of MW, for both its no-game newsstand and hobby editions.
About the “Central Front Curse” — I am sure the regular attendees in the Consimworld Central Front Series folder WILL be blaming my “Seven Days to the Rhine Series” for the magazine’s demise.
When I asked Dr. Cummins about that, however, he said they had chosen issue 55, and its completion of the 7DttR Series, as the final issue “in order to go out on a high note.”
The simple problem has been — since the start of MW — insufficient subscription sales, which was then compounded on the single-issue impulse-buy side by the effective demise of bookstores during the worst of the pandemic.
Dr. Cummins tells me there will likely be a reversion in S&T to the former practice of including a one-issue-per-year all-modern-era issue.

There have been many complaints about S&T not covering enough ‘modern’ topics, but that might have been because MW was the default option to push those articles into.  With MW going away, perhaps those modern-focused articles will find their way back into S&T?

 

Newly Released This Week:

• Dark City Games have released Grey Wolf and the Spirit of Death, a historical-flavored game in their line of TFT-inspired minigames.
• Avalanche Press has re-released their older Soldier Raj game as Soldier Emperor: Indian Empires with some updated rules and a separate expansion to link to the original Soldier Emperor game, too.
• The team behind Assault: Red Horizon 41 has released their VASSAL module for the game, in advance of fulfilling their Kickstarter.
• White Dog Games are shipping Bonaparte in Italy about the 1796 campaign.
• Ares Games are shipping Sword & Sorcery – Immortal Souls, a starter box for the S&S line of RPG-adjacent tabletop maps-&-minis games.
• Speaking of RPG-adjacent tabletop maps-&-minis games, FFG has released a new expansion to their Descent series, with Legends of the Dark.
• Modiphius has released the PDF version of the core rulebook for their Fallout RPG, based on the video game franchise.
• Catalyst Game Labs have released the new ilClan sourcebook for Battletech, with the fight for Terra. They’ve also re-released a handful of older books, too.

 

On Sale This Week:

• Multi-Man Publishing has a couple of big sales right now
  • Front Toward Enemy, their tactical Vietnam game, is on sale for $39(!).
  • ASL Action Pack #14 – Oktoberfest XXXIV, with 12 scenarios, is down to $20.
• CSL has a bunch of stuff on sale right now, but these two caught our eyes
  • 1950 about the Korean War, with a bunch of random combat chits to add some chaos to the battlefield.
  • 1995 about the struggles in the Balkans, at a very high level.  There’s a variety of ways for the Russians to get involved, too. Just don’t pay attention to the fact that the US unit designations are off.
• Paradox has Ancient Space (big RTS/spaceship combat) on sale at 75% off
• S&T’s game-edition magazine sale this week is S&T #324, with Fight The Fall: Faesulae A.D. 405 & Tricamerum A.D. 533

 

Newly Launched This Week:

• The Road Chosen is a solitaire game of WW2 with a focus on narrative campaigns and linked scenarios.  It’s a P&P set of PDFs, with some excellent artwork.
• The Uncharted Lands campaign includes a book and a bunch of .stl files for printing your own minis to go with it.  Some of the new races/classes in the book are a little off-the-wall, but the minis to support the adventures in the book are a great way to leverage your at-home print-on-demand, assuming you have a 3d printer, of course.
• The Gamer’s Armory is taking preorders for ASL-compatible scenario pack The Green Hell of Inor which will include a bunch of French Foreign Legion, colonial forces, 16 scenarios, and some maps, all from Le Franc Tireur and their usual historical detail.
• You can still pre-order the Sniper Elite boardgame through their backer kit.
• No shit, honest-to-goodness minis in a Kickstarter campaign?!  Seriously.  These are not .stl files! (OK, so you actually do get the .stl files, also)  They’re making real metal minis from their .stl masters, and you can pick and choose which forces you want from the Army of the Kingdom of Württemberg during the Napoleonic Wars.  Stretch goals include mounted commanders, and… casualties?

 

This Week With The Armchair Dragoons:

• Our new monthly “Focus On…” in our forums launched last week, with a focus on the venerable Advanced Squad Leader as our first game.
• This week’s classic article is the third in our series on 19th century wargaming, with a look back at Charles Totten’s Strategos, which was also a key influence on the Minneapolis game group from which the later Braunstein games, and eventually D&D, evolved.
• Saturday Night Fights finished up the Battle of Gettysburg with the Altar of Freedom rules.  More accurately, a thunderstorm finished the Battle of Gettysburg.
• Other online games with the Armchair Dragoons
  • Wednesday Night Warfare was the Battle of Abu Klea for Black Powder 2.
  • The Chain of Command campaign has rumbled on with our Thursday Night Throwdown.
  • Patrick is looking for players – and a co-GM – to participate in a large campaign covering the race for Tunis in WW2.
  • The multiplayer Stellaris game is still expanding across the cosmos, it’s not live-streamed, but there are some detailed AARs where you can follow along.  And no, Dave doesn’t sleep.
  • Hethwill’s recurring Friday game of Last Hundred Yards that you can join on VASSAL is out there.
  • Hazdrubal still has his standing offer for minis-based TTS gaming on Sunday evenings.

 

News From The Wargame Industry:

• MACE is open for registration & their swag shop has some great anniversary merchandise, too.  The convention is 12-14 November in Charlotte, NC, and it’s their 25th edition.
• Paradox’s Q2 report was announced to the public on a livestream.
• A review of Winning the Uncertainty Game from “There Will Be Games” on Medium.com
• This week on Twitter, Amabel Holland gives a peek behind the curtain on what makes a good Hollandspiele game.

 

Something From Our Partners:

• Ardwulf’s counter clipping stream talked about WW1 in wargaming, and last week, he also talked tactical wargames with Dashing Dan.
• Moe is previews the 40th Panzer Korps from Chris Harding.

 

The Professional & Practitioner Wargaming World:

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

• Get a job!  The Swedish Defence University is looking for PhD students in War Studies.
• Get a job!  MCWL is looking for a Wargame Manager
• Virtual reality and urban wargaming?  Sure!
• Reading the post-mortem of the UK mission to Afghanistan hurts.  It’ll be interesting to see if the US postmortems are this honest.
• This week, GUWS has their game for When Dreadnoughts Ruled the Seas and next week, they’ve got Malign Wargaming with the inimitable Stephen Downes-Martin
• PaxSims has the report from the Connection US 2021 Game Lab.
• Breaking Defense in surveying folks on military/space issues.

 

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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