by Gear up for the latest in new releases, crowdunding, and professional defense news—it’s #TuesdayNewsday! This week, lots of new stuff on Steam, wrapping up GAMA Expo, and a bunch of good content from other sites, too.
Per EnWorld, Ernie Gygax has passed away
Ernest “Ernie” Gygax Jr., son of D&D co-creator Gary Gygax and an early playtester of Dungeons & Dragons, has passed away. The Gygax family confirmed the news via Gary Con’s website today. Cause of death was not given, but Gygax had been hospitalized several times in recent years. Gygax is best known for the creation of Tenser, the first magic-user character, and whose name appears on several D&D spells used in current editions. Per Ernest’s bio, some of his contributions to the games include multiattacks for fighters, different hit dice for different character classes, and Cone of Cold being a 5th level spell.
Gygax often appeared at gaming conventions, especially Gary Con, and also collaborated on various TTRPG projects. He was involved with a failed attempt to “resurrect” TSR and take over several IPs controlled by Wizards of the Coast, but it failed after litigation and eventual liquidation of assets. During that process, Gygax alienated many with questionable views and also his choice in business associates.
There are also remarks at Goodman Games, Gizmodo, Dragonsfoot, and his brother Luke.
GAMA Expo follow-up
- ICv2 reports on the record-setting attendance
- Gaming Trend shows one of the weirdest things spotted at the Expo
- Scott Thorne has some thoughts on the retailer appreciation boxes
- BGG’s business-focused thoughts which do include some info on the ongoing political situation in the US with regards to tariffs
- A pair of great threads from Tabletop Bellhop on a bunch of more general-interest games he saw at GAMA Expo– first thread; second thread
- Collected hashtags for GAMAExpo (BlueSky, Facebook, IG), and GAMAExpo2025 (BlueSky, Facebook, IG), but at a certain point the former will start showing photos from previous years
- A bunch of GAMA Expo Plus live streams here from GAMAs production team
- BoardGameWire talks about the Power Retailer Awards1
Huge congrats to Mark over at Wargames To Go for hitting 20 years – 20 YEARS! – of podcasting with his show.
That’s fantastic!
And here’s the link to the 20th anniversary show
This is an intentionally-vague statement: beware of ‘designers’ who spend a lot of time bloviating on social media and treating their verbosity as a particular sign of breadth or depth of knowledge and experience. Especially beware of those who are just learning of game mechanics that have been around for decades and crediting them to the wrong innovator, or getting the ‘path of influence’ from one game to the next out of order, or other errors. It can be fun to watch someone explore the hobby in real time, but definitive statements that are demonstrably wrong undercut your credibility, and careful how you phrase statements as no-brainers when there are obvious counter-examples all over the place.
Maybe focus your time and energy instead on following and learning from designers with extensive publication track records across broader types of games and historical eras.
Hitting the shelves (and webstores) near you now!
- The digital version of Rebel Fury released on Steam last week and it was even a day early!
- Wargames Illustrated #447 is now available
- Lock ‘n Load Publishing has a new JU 87 Stuka Ace Companion Book thats now available
- Matrix Games released the new Fail Safe DLC for their Command: Modern Ops game
- A new solitaire book from Mike Lambo – Battles of the American Civil War June 1861 – July 1862: A Solitaire Wargame
- SGS released their new Battle for Dien Bien Phu game on Steam
- Warlord Games released a new Aztec Warband Starter Set
- Steve Jackson Games are now shipping Munchkin Shadowrun: Hack The Future
- Ares Games brings back the WW2 Wings of Glory Battle of Britain Starter Set
- Supreme Power is a 4X-y colonial flavored game that just launched on Steam and is 25% off for the rest of the week
- You know you want a baggage turtle for your fantasy minis army, right?!
- Clad in Iron: War in the Pacific 1879 just launched on Steam and is 25% off for a few more days
- There’s a new Samurai Army Command set from Wargames Atlantic
- The new issue of Senet Magazine is out, and includes an article tracking minis wargaming from Little Wars through today’s Frostgrave and such
- A new Panzer Grenadier campaign study – Uprising – has been released, and you only need 3 other games to play the scenarios!
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
- Tactical Workshop has relaunched a scaled down campaign for 1811: Albuera Second Edition on Gamefound
- Gamelyn launched the Tiny Epic Dungeon Adventures game on Kickstarter
- Free League has The Throne of Thorns II on pre-order; it’s a 5e-compatible scenario for their Ruins of Symbaroum game
- Warlord’s got a couple of new bundles on pre-order, around the upcoming Samurai book for their Pike & Shotte system
Looking for a deal? Getting more bang for your buck?
- WDS “Game of the week” is Campaign Jena-Auerstedt for $29.95
- Dice Envy has a new “fireball” set of dice and you can get 10% off with coupon code FUEGO at checkout
- Kraken Dice have a 2 for $32 sale on a bunch of their 14pc sets
- Miniature Market has Virgin Queen: Wars of Religion 1559-1598 (2nd Printing) at almost $20 off
- Big clearance sale through Barnes & Noble right now, and some good games in the mix
It’s been a busy week for the regiment; here’s what you might’ve missed!
- Saturday Night Fights ~ The Battle of Talavera (3) for “Lasalle 2”
- Mentioned In Dispatches S14 E5 ~ The Total War Series
- GAMA Expo
- Wednesday War Stories ~ The Battle of the Java Sea – 27 February 1942
- AARs
- Let’s Roll – Part 1 <– New AAR for Labyrinth: The War On Terror
- The Life & Times of I, Napoleon – Part 9
- Gameplay this week
The Best Thing We Saw On Another Site This Week Was
Cole Wehrle pointed folks to this article on To Kill a Dragon: Video Games and Addiction
Beyond the shamelessly predatory exploitation of players’ brains against the body, games’ relations to addiction lurk in other corners, too, in less overt forms. Sid Meier lays out his idea of “one more turn” (which he says applies “to almost every game”) in a 2010 GDC talk. “One more turn,” he says, is a state where “the player is constantly leaning forward; they’re anticipating things that are going to happen later…[and] wondering what’s around the next corner.” Meier says that “it all comes back to this idea of replayability.” Luke Plunkett describes the phenomenon aptly in a recent review of Civilization VII. Throughout the piece, he plasters the game with criticism, only to admit: “Despite everything I’m about to say [that is, the negative review to come], I have played this game almost non-stop for the past week, even when I haven’t had to.” Where “one more turn” may have appeared by mistake in something like Bokuto Simulator, it has been deliberately designed into the fabric of Civilization VII or Fortnite.
Ardwulf’s counter clipping stream theoretically talked about winnowing & purging but really talked about buying & selling, hoarding, lifestyle games, and some other stuff
Various news & notes from the business end of the gaming world
- Chaosium has launched their official Discord server
- ICv2 reports that sales at Hasbro in general, and WotC in particular, are down over 2024, but more growth coming this year
- BoardGameWire looks at this year’s Cardboard Edison nominees
- Rascal talks about big publishers looking for indie designers
- BGG finally acknowledged the passing of Rodger MacGowan, probably in response to our raising the issue at the Expo
- Matrix Games just released a free update to the engine for their Campaign Series: Middle East 1948-1985
- Latest releases and sales from the On Military Matters book folks
Don’t forget to check our consolidated event & convention calendar for more!
You can also submit your own events for our calendar here.
- Wargame Days at The Gamer’s Armory in Cary, NC ~ 6 April and 4 May
- Next confirmed live event is BuckeyeGameFest, 1-4 May 2025
- Next confirmed virtual event is Connections Online, 7-12 April, 2025
Other Conventions & Events
- 5-10 Mar Dice Tower West (Las Vegas NV) <– THIS WEEKEND!
- 12-17 Mar Escape Winter Con (Orlando FL)
- 20-24 Mar GaryCon (Lake Geneva WI)
- 21-24 Mar Hotlead (Stratford ON)
- 28-30 Mar CircleDC (Washington DC)
- 26-31 Mar Adepticon (Milwakuee WI)
- 3-7 Apr Game mORe (Albany OR)
- 4-7 Apr Game On Expo (Phoenix AZ)
- 10-13 April ChaosiumCon (Ann Arbor MI)
ICYMI – Looking Ahead to Origins
Here’s what’s submitted for the Wargame HQ, and note this is just the games in the main gaming hall and does NOT include our War College program, which we’ll post separately. Since we first dropped this on you, we can say that all of our events for Origins have been approved, but we still need the staff to “place” them on the tables we specified for them.
Look for our Origins countdown articles to start shortly after Connections Online is done.
(alpha by title, with publisher/source and number of iterations over the 5 days) |
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Focusing on the practitioner world ~ don’t forget about our dedicated area in our forums for the wargame professionals!
- A really good article from France24 about how wargaming is catching on with military organizations all over Europe
- Heave to, and Prepare to Be Board Gamed from the USNI
- Connections North 2025 report
- From Berlin With Love: Ukraine Is About To Fire Germany’s Best Cruise Missiles From Its Old Soviet Bombers
- This week, Mick Ryan’s Big Five is obviously heavily focused on Ukraine, but he does talk about the Pacific, and some grey-zone warfare going on
- The next GUWS webinar is TONIGHT – Professional Wargaming in France – followed by Tactical Wargame Design on 18 March
- PaxSims has a great article about immersion & wargame analysis
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 Regiment of Strategy Gaming and riding with The Armchair Dragoons.
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