Armchair Dragoons Fall Assembly 2023 ~ #TuesdayNewsday 7/11/23

Each week, #TuesdayNewsday parses through the strategy gaming world to dig out the headlines

Registration is not yet live, but the initial information for our Armchair Dragoons Fall Assembly 2023 is up and running.  We need to get a few coordination points ironed out, and then we’ll be able to open up the event registration for everyone.

• Badges are $40 for the weekend, which include some munchies, custom Armchair Dragoons swag, and whatever other prizes or giveaways we’re able to gather before the event.
• Attendance is capped on this one because of the limited floorspace we’ve got inside the store and we want to make sure every player gets plenty of time on the tables.
• Gamer’s Armory is planning to open early on Sunday just for us, so we can get an additional game session or two in, before the general public gets in the doors.
• As noted on the convention site, we do not have a hotel attached to the facility.  You can find local hotels here.  We’re looking into a potential block deal with some local hotels, but with the State Fair in town it’s tough.
• As a reminder, Regimental Patron-level Patreon supporters get a free badge for all Armchair Dragoons-hosted events.

 

An interesting discussion that’s exploded on Twitter over the weekend about the types of content that the audience prefers, that spiraled into a couple of side-threads on unboxings, and their value.  Now, Zilla’s focused on video content, which is not our core content, but the discussions around unboxings are still relevant.

Do you like them?  Hate them?  Ignore them?

We try to contain them in both scope and frequency, but we also make it a point to at a minimum get an unboxing of everything we get our hooks into, because it’s the easiest thing to crank out.  And we also make it a point to dig out some classic games, too, for that walk down memory lane.  But we are trying to increase the writing we’re doing after those unboxings so that we can give you more details about those games.

 

New games released in the past week that you’ll find interesting

• Vive L’Empereur is White Dog’s new game about the Battle of Waterloo
• High Flying Dice’s sixth game in the Battles for Canada series – A Brilliant Fight – covers the Battle of Queenstown Heights in 1812
• Paper Wars #103, with Second Fallujah, is now shipping
• Because you can never have too many games on the topic, TS Wargames just released their Eylau 1807
• Blue Panther has the new Dawn of Battle: Designer’s Edition that gives you the option to purchase the entire new edition, or just the new stuff to upgrade your original version
• The Historical Game Company dropped a pair of new games
  • Huh, the little-know, totally obscure Battle of Stalingrad gets the THGC treatment!
  • The Battle of Son Tay is not about the POW camp raid in Vietnam, but rather a French battle in the 1800s
• Revolution Games are now shipping their two newest games (both just went on pre-order in early June)
  • Grand Havoc: Perryville, 1862 – both boxed or ziploc
  • Eagles in the Sky – WW1 aerial combat
• Warlord Games has a new “Operation Critical Hit” campaign that’s bundling a variety of starter packs across their WW2 series games, with some free exclusive minis, and multiple languages¹; among the sets are
  • Battle of Midway
  • Band of Brothers
  • Battle for the Pacific
  • Island Assault
• Holy cow! An actual new release from Aceis Edizioni!  Kings of Rome is now shipping
• War Diary #23 is up for PDF orders, with print orders presumably imminent
• Alternative Armies has a bunch of new “pucci bearer” minis for your fantasy grunt labo(u)r camp followers
• Miniature Market has DVG’s new Stuka Leader at $30 off
• Per last week’s charging/shipping update, GMT is running cards for the following p500s today and should start shipping next week
  • CDG Solo System Pack #2
  • Liberty or Death, 3rd Printing
  • North Africa ’41 and NA ’41 Mounted Maps
  • Plantagenet

 

Crowdfunding or pre-orders ~ if you can pre-order it now, here it is

• Bonaparte’s Eastern Empire is a newly-launched campaign on Gamefound from Form Square Games
• Maurice Suckling’s Crisis 1914 from Worthington is on Kickstarter right now
• Too soon?  Maybe.  CSL has Prigozhin’s March of Justice on pre-order already, where they crowdfunding cycle is lasting longer than the “rebellion”
• Osprey has launched pre-orders for a new skirmish minis game² for apocalyptic/horror monster hunting called The Doomed and it’s 10% off right now
• Modiphius Games has the new Fallout book Winter of Atom on pre-order
• Heroes of the Pacific: Guadalcanal brings the Heroes of Normandie rules to the other side of the world and the pledge manager is open now

 

Stretch your budget a little further with these deals

• The Steam Summer Sale runs thru 7/13 at midnight US PDT
• Avalanche Press has a bunch of package deals³ that are 20% off with coupon code TRISHA at checkout
• Warlord Games has a Napoleonic French Imperial Guard set for $20 off and the Scramble! collection for Blood Red Skies at over $30 off
• Even Amazon’s Prime Day is getting involved!  Wargaming Campaigns is about 45% off right now
• Warhamer 40,000 Dawn of War Master Collection is on sale at GOG for under $10
• Decision Games’ deal-of-the-month is 5 folio games for $99; basically, it’s a B4G1
• Dark City Games has a “Buy 3 Get 1 Free” deal where you order 3 and then email them for the 4th
• Kraken Dice has their own “Buy 3 Get 1 Free” deal, but all you have to do is put stuff in your shopping cart and get the 4th cheapest one free
• Multiplayer Mercs is on sale at Steam for under $1; protect a refinery in this basic FPS
• S&T’s game-edition magazine sale this week is World at War #70 with War Plan Orange

 

What were the Dragoons up to this past week?

• Saturday Night Fights ~ The Battle of Waterloo (III) for “Valour and Fortitude”
• This week’s Origins Coverage
  • On-Site Origins 2023 ~ Gameplay!
  • Origins 2023 ~ Spotlight!
  • Origins 2023 ~ THE RAFFLE!
  • Origins 2023 ~ Convention Photos
• Diving back into our own archives ~ Field of Glory vs C&C: Ancients – A Comparison of Digital Wargames
• The Giant Civ 6 AAR: Nubia, Part 24
• The Grand “Champions of Krynn” AAR ~ Part 12
• Gameplay this week
  • “Battlefleet Gothic” Stumblethrough
  • Littoral Commander for TTS is now in the Steam Workshop, for our LC league going on right now
• This week in our forums
  • Now that the battle is done, you can read the dueling AARs / reports from UCG and Barthheart, who faced off in a Flashpoint Campaigns shootout
  • More details on the new Punic Wars II from HPS
  • Plenty of talk about The Great Houses of Calderia
  • hahahahahahahaha
• 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 ~ 6 August and 10 September (skipping ahead bc of Labor Day)
  • Next #UnboxingDay⁴ will be 20 July
  • Next virtual event is The 2024 ACDC, 12-14 January 2024
  • Next live event is The Armchair Dragoons Fall Assembly 2023, 20-22 October 2023, The Gamer’s Armory, Cary NC

 

Our fellow content creators from the wargaming world

• Rocky digs into 2040 from Compass Games
• Moe takes a look at War Diary #23
• Real & Simulated Wars digs into Six Days in Fallujah
• Justegarde digs into On To Richmond II
• Ardwulf’s counter clipping stream talked about games on Operation Market Garden

 

News & notes from the business end of the gaming world

• Per MMP, the updated maps for On To Richmond II are going out to customers
• Ah yes, the annual bitching about the CSR’s continues – this time without even waiting for the results first
• Fort Circle Games gives you a behind-the-scenes look at the Halls of Montezuma Kickstarter that just closed

 

Don’t forget to check our consolidated event & convention calendar for more!
You can also submit your own events for our calendar here.

• 19-23 July Historicon (Lancaster, PA)
• 22-30 July WBC (Seven Springs, PA)
• 3-6 August GenCon (Indianapolis, IN)
• 17-20 August HistoriKC Fest (Kansas City, MO)
• 18-20 August SDHistEast (Portsmouth, RI)
• 25 August-2 September ConSimWorld Expo 2023 (Phoenix, AZ)
• 20-22 October The Inaugural Armchair Dragoons Fall Assembly 2023 (Cary, NC)

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As announced on our podcast on 3/31

The Armchair Dragoons Fall Assembly 2023
20-22 October 2023
The Gamer’s Armory, Cary NC

The convention page is up, but registration is not yet live as we lock down a few additional details.

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.

As a reminder, Regimental Patron-level Patreon supporters get a free badge for all Armchair Dragoons-hosted events.

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

• From one of our readers: Pros talk about logistics, using the Siege of Gondor as the exemplar
• Another one from a reader: Using games for strategic intelligence
• Update those NATO orbats: Sweden is now in the fold
• Ukraine’s counterbattery fight is making a difference
• The next GUWS webinar is Why You Should Be Megagaming on 15 August, followed by Intelligent Cardboard: Implementing AI in a Board Game on 29 August, which dovetails nicely with our podcast episode last season talking about tabletop AI
• PaxSims inventories the latest issue of the Simulation & Gaming academic journal
• The Influence Wargaming Handbook from the UK DSTL is now available
• GUWS talks about that new Influence Wargaming Handbook

 

 

Something neat from outside the wargaming world we thought was worth sharing

A semi-ranking of the “best movies that take place in the 80s” but seems to skip more than a few great ones that were made in the 80s….  like the entire John Hughes high school canon, and a good portion of the Generation X movies discussed 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.

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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.
You can also find the regiment on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, and occasionally at a convention near you.

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In the weekly wargaming news,
We focus on info you can use,
From tabletop to digits,
And the occasional fidgets,
Missing it would give you the blues!

1. the product labeling on the website is not clear and reads as though the German “island assault” box is a bunch of amphibious German operations rather than a USMC vs Japan set, printed with German language rules and info
2. in the UK it still counts as a “wargame”
3. pretty much anything that says “package” in their store listings
4. 3rd Thursday of the month