by The Armchair Dragoons brings you #TuesdayNewsday to check out this week’s strategy gaming headlines
Registration is now open for Connections Online 2023, to be held from 17-23 April, with Core events running 18-20 April
The Connections Online executive committee is pleased to announce the theme of this year’s Connections Online conference: “The Enemy Gets a Vote — Playing Red.” We’ll look at playing Red in wargaming, as well as what various professional communities mean by the term “red teaming.” (Hint: The definitions overlap, more or less, but terms frequently has discipline-specific connotations that may not be entirely obvious.)
The Core of the conference will run from 18-20 April 2023, with events scheduled from 1000-1600 EDT. Extended events (including both games and workshops) will run from the weekend before to the weekend after.
Among the 13 planned core events we will have: What Is Red-Teaming, Red-Teaming Acts of God, Advice for New Practitioners, Gaming & Red-Teaming the Pandemic, and the guys from The NSDM
Extended events will include the Wargame Bootcamp to learn to use Discord, VASSAL, and TTS; a Littoral Commander demo; a discussion of the state-of-the-art of the hobby wargaming space; and a multi-player Discord-driven Kriegsspiel with the International Kriegsspiel Society, and more
As a reminder, Regimental Patron-level Patreon supporters get a free badge for all Armchair Dragoons-hosted events.
Mentioned in Dispatches is on Spotify now, too1
What’s shipped this past week that you’ll find interesting
- High Flying Dice has 2 – cont ’em, TWO – new games this week: A Wretched and Costly Fight and A Sharp and Fierce Fight, both in their Battles for Canada series
- Not to be outdone, The Historical Game Company also dropped 2 news games on you this week: The Battle of Waterberg (1895 in German East Africa) and Siege of Delhi (1857)
- We’re going to have to try Steve Jackson’s new One Roll Quest just for the novelty of it all
- Matrix Games released Shadow Empire: Oceania to expand that game, along with a core update
- Rapid Fire released some new Normandy scenarios on PDF
- While we’re all waiting for the crowdfunded version of A Momentous Issue of War to come back from the printer, Wicked Wargames has released in on Wargame Vault, if you’re in the mood for an arts-&-crafts project
- Command Post Games released some mermaid sirens in support of their Pirates! naval game
- This week’s winner of the “screw those guys; release the new game on Wednesday” sweepstakes are War Diary Magazine, who decided to email everyone the day after the new dropped – 1914 Deluxe: Hell Unleashed from designer Mike Nagel
Crowdfunding or pre-orders ~ if you can order it now, here it is
- The new Flames of War Berlin German line now includes a “tank training company” starter pack on pre-order
- Warlord Games has a new series of Judge Dredd minis coming, and most of them are in the Block & Roll collection that’s up for pre-order
- VUCA Sims is still taking pre-orders on Red Strike
- City Crushers is pretty much what it sounds like, on Kickstarter now
Save a few bucks with these deals
- Last Hundred Yards is almost $20 off at Miniature Market
- Big Easter sale on digital games over at Fanatical
- Destroyer: The U-Boat Hunter is on early access on Steam
- Both Sommar Skrala, Russia, Sweden, and the War of the Hats 1741-1743 and War of the Hats – A Lesser Wrath from Red Sash Games are on sale at Noble Knight for all of… (checks notes) 5¢ off?! Really, 5 whole cents? Five. Gawd. Dammed. Pennies. I mean, why bother marking something down 5 f’n’ cents for a game that’s over $110?! Look, people already hate Nickelback; you don’t need to invoke them as a useless level of ‘savings’
- Noble Knight does have a Bakshi cover War of the Ring SPI-edition game for $175, too, but not on sale for even a nickel off
- Complete Space Empires pack on sale at GOG
- S&T’s game-edition magazine sale this week is Modern War #45 with The Dragon and the Hermit Kingdom
What’s happened with the Dragoons this past week
We rearranged the furniture in the living room and/or reorganized some of the boards & threads in our forums. Take a look when you get a chance and find a conversation to join in!
- FL(W)GS Spotlight ~ The Gamer’s Armory
- Saturday Night Fights ~ “A Patrol to Ap Bac” (part II) for “Charlie Company”
- Connections Online Registration Now Open
- The Giant Civ 6 AAR: Nubia, Part Ten
- Mentioned in Dispatches Season 10 Ep 8 ~ BGF & Other Conventions
- Gameplay this week
- This week in our forums
- Grabbing some whiskey
- Recommendations for books on Roman Britain?
- Talk about the D&D movie
- Upcoming Dragoons Events (and don’t forget to check the event calendar for everything else)
- Wargame Days at The Gamer’s Armory in Cary, NC ~ May 7th and June 4th
- Next #UnboxingDay2 will be 20 April, right in the middle of Connections Online
- Next Virtual Convention is The ACDC on 13-15 January
- Next Real-World Convention is going to be Buckeye Game Fest, in Columbus OH, 28-30 April (with the War Room opening up on 24 April for extended wargaming)
Don’t forget to check our consolidated event & convention calendar for more!
You can also submit your own events for our calendar here.
- 17-24 April Connections Online
- 24-30 April Buckeye Game Fest (incl The War Room) (Columbus, OH)
- 18-22 May Compass Expo Spring ’23 (Meriden, CT)
- 27-29 May KublaCon (San Francisco, CA)
- 21-25 June ORIGINS (Columbus, OH) and our discussion thread
- 23-25 June WarGamesCon (Austin, TX)
- 19-23 July Historicon (Lancaster, PA)
As announced on our podcast on 3/31
The Inaugural Armchair Dragoons Fall Assembly 2023
20-22 October 2023
The Gamer’s Armory, Cary NC
Details will be announced after we get back from Buckeye Game Fest, and registration will open this Summer before we head off to Origins, and will be capped around 40 or so attendees.
In partnership with The Gamer’s Armory, we’ve got our first in-person convention coming up in October, where we’ll be taking over about half of the store. We’ll be playing games in probably the biggest vendor booth you’ll see at a convention, and making plenty of new friends.
Stay tuned for details!
As a reminder, Regimental Patron-level Patreon supporters get a free badge for all Armchair Dragoons-hosted events.
Other great content creators from the wargaming world
- Rocky went to Circle DC and had both day one and day two thoughts
- Pushing Cardboard’s latest episode (#18) is Everything Old Is New Again
- Moe goes through War Diary #22
- My Own Worst Enemy cranks through Hill of Death from Tiny Battle
- Wargame Central looks at the new version of Kingmaker
- Mad Padre has a bunch of 6mm Napoleonics on the painting bench
- Ardwulf’s counter clipping stream talked about entry points for popular series
News & notes from the business end of the gaming world
- RIP Klaus Teuber, creator of Catan and arguably the most influential Eurogame designer ever
- Hey, Brent Nosworthy has a Patreon! (h/t to Besilarius in our forums)
- This week, Avalanche Press talks about chaos in Ukraine in ’193.
- Wargame Design Studio released a whole bunch of Panzer Campaigns updates for Western Front, Southern Front, Eastern Front and Eastern Front II, and Pacific, plus updates for both Modern and First World War
- Free League released 2 new open game licenses
- Big relaunch of the Polyversal website
Don’t forget we’ve got a dedicated area of our forums for the professional wargamers.
- Roger Mason has a new article about Experiential Learning and wargames
- Nick Drage talks about designing wargames for business use (podcast)
- As brought to our (indirect) attention by Brian Train, this article talks about some of the lessons coming out of Ukraine
- The next GUWS webinar is tonight! Milena Rodban talks about Flux Capacity: Interactive Sims for Decision-making in Complex Environments; on May 9, Michael Bond talks about Scenario Design, or How I ruined my perfect wargame with a sloppy scenario
- Most of the sim/game publications that PaxSims gives you in this newsdump deal with conflicts with China
Something neat from outside the wargaming world we wanted to share with you
This one’s unfortunately behind a paywall, but might be the most bonkers story of a national team you’ll ever read
Meanwhile, there’s some good chuckles in here
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.
We appreciate you visiting the Armchair Dragoons and hope that you enjoy our weekly news dumps!
Please leave us your feedback in our discussion forum, or in the comment area below.
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