by It’s time for your weekly strategy briefing: welcome to #TuesdayNewsday! This week, we’ve got the latest from your favorite tabletop wargames, as well as cutting-edge advancements in digital and professional wargaming. Whether you’re a player or a strategist, we’ve got something for you.
CSR Ballots are out. With Brant on the committee, we can’t make any ‘official’ site recommendations, but we some of our writers might sound off with their thoughts.
This week in tariff news
- A board game editor’s column about the impacts of the tariffs
- Fort Circle Games weighs in, and gives you specifics, which will still be ignored by those with no skin in the game
- Game stores are seeing the impacts of tariffs as some products are starting even double in price
- More info on Stonemaier’s lawsuit
- Clio’s Board Games talks about the issue, too
- A disingenuous plea for numbers, which know-nothing non-publishers without any industry context will continue to insist they somehow show the opposite of what they actually show
- The OP is talking about sending 15 containers of games back to China rather than pay over $900k in tariffs
- Here’s a pretty good tariff primer from GAMA and the TTGDA (PDF file)
Hitting the shelves (and webstores) near you now!
- Decision Games’ Campaigns in Europe Complete Pack is showing “in stock” at their web store
- Wargames Illustrated issue #449 is now available
- War Diary Magazine’s Nightfighter Command started shipping yesterday
- They’re not dead! Clash of Arms released Mollwitz & Chotusitz: Battles of the First Silesian War from their Battles of the Age of Reason this week
- World at War issue #102, with Invasion Australia 1942 is now available
- Wes Crawford’s Engine Thieves is out the door at Compass Games
- Looks like Tabletop Tycoon’s 2nd edition of Black Orchestra is now shipping and you can save $10 with coupon code BO4301 at checkout
- WDS released a new Sword & Siege demo that’s free on their site
- A couple of new Quar’s War products from Wargames Atlantic
- Per their site, LNLP’s Point Blank: Winter Victory Expansion for Point Blank V is for Victory is now available for purchase and looks ready to ship, but they’re having some trouble with the site
- Stellaris: Biogensis DLC is now available
- Victory at Sea Atlantic – World War II Naval Warfare is still on its launch sale on Steam for a few more days
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
- We talked with founder Danny Block, and are hoping to bring you a look inside the factory soon, too, but in the meantime you can go back the ZeoGenesis campaign to stock up your own giant-battling-robot-style minis
- Compass has Combat Vol 3 on pre-order thru Kickstarter so it’ll ship soon
- Modiphius has launched the Heroes of Might & Magic TTRPG on Kickstarter, and there’s a free quick-start, too
- The Dietz Foundation has Sweeping Satellites from Fight Club International on pre-order
- Relic Wars from Flying Pig – designed by Denver Walker – is now on Kickstarter
- Stargrave: Death Vector is on pre-order with Osprey Games
- Warfront is on Kickstarter and it’s a fantasy battle game using cards as units, but it’s possible the ugliest damned art we’ve seen in a well-developed project in forever
- Somehow we missed this Crusades CDG game on Kickstarter so there’s only a few days left
- Casus Belli launched on Gamefound and it looks cool but the company has a history of running behind on delivery dates
- Some wheeled vehicles coming from Warlord Games
- Pre-orders are up for Chain of Command 2 bundles from Too Fat Lardies
Looking for a deal? Getting more bang for your buck?
- WDS “Game of the week” is Panzer Campaigns: France ‘40 for $29.95
- Kraken Dice are having a pre-tariff sale and there’s 25% off all dice with coupon code TARIFFS at checkout
- This week’s sales from On Military Matters include Bolt Action and a couple of books from Helion & Company
- Dice Envy’s new set this week is “Air Apparent” and it’s 10% off with coupon code CHIEF at checkout
- Steve Jackson Games’ “Space Day” sale runs until the 8th and there’s a bunch of stuff of sale from 15-25% off
- Tabletop Tycoon has Hapsburg Eclipse at 20% off with coupon code WW1430 at checkout
- Flames of War folks have the North Africa line of models, plus rulebooks, back in stock and on sale
- Miniature Market has The Seven Days Battles 1862 on sale for over $20 off
- A couple of editions of Streets of Stalingrad (3rd Edition) over at Noble Knight right now
- RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha hardcover base book is 35% off at Amazon for a few more days
It was a light week for us thanks to Buckeye Game Fest and Origins prep, so look for a ramp-up again here in the next week or so!
- Saturday Night Fights ~ MORE “Et Sans Resultat!” with the Designer
- Grand Adventure in Realms of the Three Rings for The One Ring RPG
- AARs
- Gameplay this week
The Best Thing We Saw On Another Site This Week Was (as mentioned above)
Tariffs and Pricing, Oh My! from Kevin over at Fort Circle
In 2022, I desperately sought out a printer or manufacturer to publish in the United States for the first run of Votes for Women. It was simply impossible to find a printer or manufacturer that could come even close to the quality that we receive from our Chinese manufacturer. I know there has been some disagreement about this online, so today I ordered a copy of Angola by Multi-Man Publishing and Jaws of Victory by New England Simulations (both printed in the United States) and will go through each game component by component in comparison to Votes for Women and First Monday in October. Look for that post in about a week.
This week’s best written coverage from the wargaming world |
The best videos this week from our wargaming friends
|
Ardwulf’s counter clipping stream talked about beer & pretzel wargaming
Various news & notes from the business end of the gaming world
- Decision have reloaded their “Renaissance of Infantry” survey as there were some errors on the previous one, so please resubmit your responses
- ICv2 reports that Jeremy Crawford, lead D&D designer, is leaving WotC
- BoardGameWire reports that GAMA Expo will head to Baltimore once the current Louisville contract is done
- Rascal has an article about another international publisher canceling a US convention appearance because of travel-to-the-US concerns
- Avalanche Press has a new web store, and there are direct links to the games from their current site, which is a good thing, considering there’s some, uh . . . ‘interesting’ content on the front page of the new web store
- Polygon has been sold, and most of the staff laid off
Today’s work: Hidden Strike: Cold War – rules writing, refining/correcting databases.
— Maurice Suckling (@writegameread.bsky.social) 2025-05-02T19:11:38.829Z
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 ~ 1 June and 6 July
- Next confirmed live event is Origins Game Fair, 18-22 June 2025
- Next planned virtual event is the ACDC2, 16-18 January, 2026
Other Conventions & Events
- 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)
- 23-27 May Kublacon (Santa Clara CA)
- 23-26 May Strategicon: Gamex (Los Angeles CA)
- 30 May-3 Jun ConCarolinas (Charlotte NC)
- 18-22 Jun ORIGINS (Columbus OH)
- 20-22 Jun LibertyCon (Chattanooga TN)
- 20-22 Jun Southern Fried Gaming Expo (Atlanta GA)
Buckeye Game Fest. Quads were played, mistakes were made, good times here in Columbus
— Catastrophe Games (@catastrophegames.bsky.social) 2025-05-02T19:42:26.961Z
Thanks to BGF, we didn’t get our new series started last week like we’d hoped. Should fire up tomorrow, though 🤠
Focusing on the practitioner world ~ don’t forget about our dedicated area in our forums for the wargame professionals!
- Adapt or Die: Redefining Wargaming for the Age of Algorithmic Warfare
- Urban Conflict PhD newsletter for May ’25, including info on some urban wargames (PDF download)
- One of the guys from Matrix Pro Sims wrote his “Top 5 Myths About Wargaming” over on LinkedIn
- The Atlantic Council hosted a wargame about Iran & their proxy forces
- You can see some of the Georgetown wargame design class projects from this semester here
- McGill University has a wrap-up of their in-class designs, too
- The next GUWS webinar is tonight! Modeling Urban Warfare: how can we model the complexity of urban space? will be followed by Cobalt Rocks: Wargaming Seabed Operations on 20 May
- The USNI has an author recommending that we Use Artificial Intelligence to Conduct Wargames
- An interesting broadcast exploration of CNA’s wargaming capabilities
15:40 or so where they start discussing “peace-gaming” and inter-agency cooperation
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.
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.
