More on Tariffs, and the Signal for Everyone to Announce New Products! ~ #TuesdayNewsday

It’s time for #TuesdayNewsday, which means there will be flurry of new announcements from MMP, Compass, and more . . .  tomorrow, natch.

The Trump Administration’s tariff war continues to devastate the tabletop gaming industry, and some of the companies are starting to fight back

click images to enlarge

This is from the latest GMT newsletter (much more on Gary’s Monday show, embedded below)	This from AEG
From over on BlueSky	Fred Hicks from Evil Hat Games isn’t very happy, either
posted to Facebook So they’re not completely shuttered, but severely reduced	From a Portal Games email about their current products Race to Berlin on GameFound started this week. We have 200 backers as of now. For the U.S. players we decided to not collect regular pledge due to uncertainty with final tariffs and asked them to put $1 Pledge in and see how the things develop later.  We don’t want to leave them behind, but at the same time I am responsible and respectful – I am not going to charge you $40 for a game that may cost you $200 later with crazy tariffs added.

Plus, Cephalofair has over $1 million in inventory stuck in China that they can’t afford to import, even after a record-setting crowdfunding campaign that has largely run to plan and on schedule, but got the tariff kicked out of them between the close of the campaign and the time to ship.

Backerkit is rolling out a beta version of a new “tariff manager” that lets creators put separate line-item tariff costs on fulfillment to backers based on the tariffs between country-of-origin and country-of-receipt.  If it works, you’ll like start to see others doing something similar.

Also, is by equal measure hilarious, tragic, and insanely arrogant to see so many comment-section Reply-guys¹ trying to tell seasoned industry professionals how they should be running their already-thin-margin businesses.  These publishers are already investigating many alternatives for sourcing & procurement, production, shipping, warehousing, and more, as they have been for years, given that their literal mortgages depend on getting these answers right.
Print-on-demand, print-&-play, VASSAL/TTS-only, or whatever cheap-&-easy consumer-level retail option is not a viable scalable business model for a full-time company trying to keep multiple people employed, and those are among the more reasonable suggestions you’ll see offered.
It’s unlikely those Reply-guys know any more about highway interchange design, optimizing database table structures, difference in flavor profiles of varying shapes of salt molecules, or public health preparedness information campaigns, but they’ve probably weighed in on all of those at some point, too 🤷🏻‍♀️

 

Congrats to The Player’s Aid for hitting 9 years!

 

ht/ to the folks at Homo Ludens for sharing the link to the translation/publication of Metromachy, an Elizabethan-era game that talks both geometry, and wargaming.  Here’s the original manuscript.

And you can play it online!

 

Truthfully, this section might get a little sparse for the next couple of months, unless you’re an international reader

• Compass Games started shipping Burma, 1942-45
• They also started shipping Chaco: Bolivia vs. Paraguay, 1932-35
• MMP’s new ASLSK-focused magazine, Basic Training, is now available
• Precis Intermedia released Iron & Gold: The Chronicles of Amherth
• ICE BASE ZERO: A Rogue Warriors Narrative Campaign released last month; sorry we missed it!
• Siege of Shadows just dropped on Steam, save 10% thru the 29th
• Flames in Modern Europe just launched on Steam in Early Access with 15% off

 

 

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

• These crowdfunding campaigns all launched last Wednesday.  Yep, multiple people decided “f%#$ those guys and their #TuesdayNewsday!”
  • Compass is doing the last-minute-pre-orders-disguised-as-a-Kickstarter again, this time for Desert Blitzkrieg
  • Race to Berlin from Portal Games
  • Solo Wargame launched War In The Pacific: A WW2 Roll & Write Game
• With that in mind, we are getting slightly ahead of ourselves and pointing out the Song for War Kickstarter relaunch on Wednesday 4/23²
• Dominus Rex is trying hard to get over the funding line on Gamefound, but hasn’t seemed to get much traction so far
• Grognard Sims are taking pre-orders for Armored Knights Case Blue – Don Bend, a base game in the Armored Knights series
• Go back TINFOIL: A Game of Conspiracies, Myths & Legends so they can hire a real marketing person to help them promote a game that looks like it could be a hoot
• Battleground Fantasy Warfare is back with Ancient Enemies, on Gamefound right now
• GMT’s latest newsletter only put 2 things on p500
  • Drachen: Reconnaissance at Verdun, the next game in Volko’s new series that started with Coast Watchers
  • The US Civil War, 3rd printing
• Somehow, Warlord managed to not announce these pre-orders at Adepticon³
  • Rome’s Conquest Of The East – Hail Caesar Supplement With Young Caesar Special Figure
  • Roman Generals Lucius Cornelius Sulla & Gaius Marius
  • Mithridates VI Eupator King Of Pontus
  • Marius’s Mules
  • Glory Of Pontus

 

Looking for a deal? Getting more bang for your buck?

• GMT’s loyalty sale is still running and you can save 25% on anything in-stock with coupon code GMT25 at checkout, even gift certificates
• WDS “Game of the week” is Panzer Campaigns: Smolensk ‘41 for $29.95
• This week’s On Military Matters newsletter includes a bunch of 15% discounts on some pre-orders due in April/May
• The new “Cruel Observer” metal dice set from Dice Envy would probably work well for a supers game, or an alt-history sci-fi one, or even a slightly mystical game, and save 10% with coupon code BEHOLD at checkout
• Divine Right on sale at MM for $76
• Easy Roller Dice Company has everything on sale thru Wednesday with coupon code SPRING30 at checkout; check out their new releases here
• A World At War – Second World War in Europe and the Pacific (4th Printing) at Noble Knight right now for over $45 off
• Avalanche Press has a special running for their Gold Club membership – until the end of April, you get two years of GC membership for the price of one, and they run a lot of Gold Club-only deals, too
• Boardlandia is having a “tariff sale” with 20% off everything in stock and they do have some wargames to check out

 

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

• Saturday Night Fights ~ A Grave Day of at the Canal (2) for “I Ain’t Been Shot Mum”
• Mentioned in Dispatches S14 E12 ~ Whatever (!) <– SEASON FINALE!
• First Impressions of World at War ’85 Blood and Fury
• The week’s battle!  The Battle of Culloden, April 1746
• AARs
  • How (Not) to Win the Battle of Guttstadt – Part 2
  • The Destruction of Vimayapura – Part 2
• Gameplay this week
  • “Longstreet” 1861 (4)
  • Attack on Malon (4) for “I Ain’t Been Shot Mum”
  • Jan is playing The Wars of Marcus Aurelius

 

The Best Thing We Saw On Another Site This Week Was actually another tariff article

Tariffs: Rolling Against American Game Publishers

Loren Coleman is the head of Catalyst Games, among many, many other things that he’s done —

I’m not an economist. I don’t have a business degree. What I have is over thirty years of small business experience, including (currently) a very successful games publishing company and a chain of toy & game retail stores. I understand overseas and domestic manufacturing, cash flow, and profit margins. I’ve personally coordinated millions of dollars’ worth of international shipping. I am a specialist in intellectual property licensing. And I’ve built a dozen retail stores from the ground,up.

So, yes, my knowledge of tariffs and my opinion on their effect in the industry should be considered, at the least, “professional.”

This article gives you baseline-level math about how products are made, moved, priced, distributed, and sold, and gives you tangible numbers for examples.  It’s the simplest, cleanest set of explanations of otherwise complex issues that you’re likely to find.

But he does leave you with this very nice point toward the end, too.

Gamers are very smart people. We’ve spent our lives learning rules and then bending the hell out of them.We’ve given our Game Masters migraines. We’ve gleefully written our favorite publishers to point out math errors in their rules. And then we bought the next game to do it all over again.

We, the publishers, also love games. And other gamers. Otherwise, why would we do this? Very few of us grew up planning to become game publishers, but along the way we found a calling (and, yes, for the lucky ones, a way to make a living). Tabletop publishing may be a billions-dollar industry, but most of us are getting by in million-dollar-companies with personal take-home pay somewhere between your local pizza-delivery driver and a high school teacher. And while I can’t speak for all of us, I bet I can speak for many:

We aren’t going anywhere.

Tariffs are just the latest rules revision, dropped on us without any play testing or consideration of balance or fair play. We are all working hard to figure out how to deal with the reality in front of us and bring our customers the next great game we have to offer.

 

This week’s best written coverage from the wargaming world Rocky comes back from vacation and compares his current outstanding game acquisitions against the ongoing tariff shenanigans Brian Train’s thoughts about GMT’s current situation Space Biff reviews Rise & Fall Wargaming Esoterica is playing Red Strike from VUCA Kevin Zucker tells you about becoming a wargame publisher Avalanche Press has an article the Finnish troops in Russia’s army in World War I Boardgames Chronicle looks ahead to what he’s got coming, and no US tariffs need apply

The best videos this week from our wargaming friends My Own Worst Enemy has a Burma 1942-45 Unboxing Moe is hosting Whiskey Charlie – Episode 78: Spring Offensive! tonight Justegarde opens up Littoral Commander: The Baltic (Dietz Foundation) Beyond Solitaire Podcast 193: Eric Lang on Design, Activism, and Mentorship, and also finally catches up on CircleDC 2025 | Recap without ever mentioning finally meeting Brant in person4 Zilla wants to know if you only play wargames Meandering Mike is unboxing Order of the Day – Normandy

Ardwulf’s counter clipping stream talked about GMT & tariffs & such

 

 

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

• ICv2 reports that the CEO of Steve Jackson Games has moved on
• BoardGameWire reports on Final Frontier Games shutting down after CMON payments never came through
• Rascal looks into the psyche of the OSR movement
• Matrix Games released a free update for Advanced Tactics Gold last week
• The product review we didn’t know we needed

 

 

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 ~ 4 May and 1 June
• Next confirmed live event is BuckeyeGameFest, 1-4 May 2025
• Next planned virtual event is the ACDC⁵, 16-18 January, 2026

Other Conventions & Events

• 24-28 Apr HMGS Little Wars (Naperville IL) <– THIS WEEKEND!
• 25-27 Apr Spring Offensive 2025 (Burlington NC) <– THIS WEEKEND!
• 28 Apr-5 May The War Room at Buckeye Game Fest (Columbus OH) <– featuring QUAD FEST!
• 1-5 May Buckeye Game Fest (Columbus OH)
• 2-5 May Gaming Hoopla (Milwaukee WI)
• 8-12 May PAX East (Boston MA)
• 9-12 May PunchedCon (Coventry UK)
• 15-19 May Compass Games Spring Expo 2025 (Meriden CT)
• 16-19 May CanGames (Ottawa ON)
• 16-19 May HexaCon 2025 (Rangiora NZ)

 

We’ve got some corrections to handle for our Origins event schedule before we can definitively post it.  We had submitted some changes that don’t look like they were included.

 

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

• Even the pros are getting in on the whole “publish cool stuff on Wednesday”. . .  here’s one about AI in wargaming
• This one’s kind of tongue in cheek, but still amusing, even if they insist “simulation” and “game” are interchangeable, and kind of shit all over boardgames
• Wargaming Weekly is asking where the games on economic warfare are?
• Jan needs a Borodino expert to help out with some Kriegsspiel commentary
• This week, Mick Ryan talks about the details of the Norks involvement in Ukraine, INDOPACOM, and more
• The next GUWS webinar is Modeling Urban Warfare: how can we model the complexity of urban space? on 6 May followed by Cobalt Rocks: Wargaming Seabed Operations on 20 May
• PaxSims has a long article with practical examples of uses for AI in strategic games

 

 

 

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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