Solo Wargaming Research & Counting Down to Fall Assembly ~ #TuesdayNewsday 7/25/23

The Armchair Dragoons’ #TuesdayNewsday is the required update for in-the-know strategy gamers

We are co-sponsoring a research project with Beyond Solitaire

Hello, solo gamers! 

Many of us are omnigamers who enjoy a wide range of solo games, but I think solo historical and wargames don’t get as much love as they deserve. Every year, I love commenting on the People’s Choice Top 200 list, but also spend a lot of time complaining about how my favorite games keep falling further down the list, and further out of the public eye. 

So, Brant from Armchair Dragoons & I have partnered up to try something new—we are putting together a “People’s Choice Top 20” list of solo historical games, and we want you to help us out by telling us your favorites! 

“Historical” is a term we have deliberately chosen to allow a wide array of games to be considered. Your nominees can be traditional wargames, conflict simulations, or games that actively engage with history in some way. (A game with a pasted-on historical theme should not be included here.)

By “solo games,” we truly mean games that you enjoy on your own. No official solo mode is required—wargamers commonly play multiple sides against each other. Just make sure that if you put a game on your ballot, you do it because you actually enjoy playing it by yourself. 

If you want to participate, please fill out the Google Form linked here. We will be leaving it open through 12:00 PM EST on August 31, 2023. Once we have closed the form, we will crunch the data, prepare some fun commentary on the results, and publish the list for everyone to enjoy. 

Thanks for joining us in this new project, and happy gaming!

Liz (Beyond Solitaire)

We’re over 100 responses just since we launched it yesterday

 

The Fall Assembly is coming!

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.  If you’re interested in being a GM, drop a line in our forums, or shoot Brant a message

• 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.

 

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

• Strategy & Tactics #342, with Carolingian Twilight, is now shipping
• A Glorious Chance from Legion Wargames starts shipping this week
• Catalyst Games are bringing back some ‘classic’ BattleTech recognition guides
• Dark City Games released their Battle of the Bulge squad-level game
• The Battlefront minis guys made a big deal about the ‘relaunch’ of their Flames of War ‘Nam game for 1 July, but then buried all the actual product info on their site and didn’t post any of it to the branded sub-site for the product line, which seems… counterproductive?  Anyway, here’s the current list of available products that was squirreled away several links deep
• Gone Hot is a pay-what-you-want hex-&-minis game on Wargame Vault
• Some ‘interesting’ Czarlingrad minis from the always-entertaining Alternative Armies guys
• Avalanche Press has a campaign expansion for Bismarck called Bismarck: Force de Raid focusing on France v Germany in the North Sea

 

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

• Catastrophe Games brought our attention to Fortitude, an off-the-wall solo game where you’re trying to keep the Germans from learning about D-Day
• Alexandros and I Am Spartacus rounding up final pledges for Compass Games through Kickstarter
• The Team Yankee Nordic Forces line is up for pre-order, with products starting to release next week
• MMP issued a last call for pre-orders on SCS Ardennes II
• VUCA Sims’ Red Strike is getting close to hitting their number and will be coming off of pre-order soon, so grab it now while it’s still (relatively) cheap
• Kickstarter campaign is over, but you can still pre-order Gettysburg 1863 from Worthington
• GMT’s new p500s
  • New deluxe edition of Three Days of Gettysburg
  • Thunderbolt in both standard and deluxe edition
  • Red Storm, second printing
  • The 2023 errata/replacement countersheet

 

Stretch your budget a little further with these deals

• SGS Stalingrad is on sale through Steam
• Revolution Games has Warsaw 1920 at half off!
• Gamer’s Armory is still showing On To Richmond II at a pre-order price of $165, so you can roll the dice with that one if you want
• Noble Knight has D-Day at Omaha Beach for $20 off
• S&T’s game-edition magazine sale this week is Modern War #44 with Desert One War, covering the Persian Gulf in the 70s & 80s

 

What were the Dragoons up to this past week?

• Saturday Night Fights ~ The Battle of Lutzen for Double-Blind “Blucher”
• Random Research: Solo War & Historical Gaming 2023
• This week was #UnboxingDay!
  • Paper Wars #103 & Second Fallujah
  • Next War Korea
  • Undaunted: Battle of Britain
  • End of Empire 1744–1782
  • Pendragon Starter Set
  • Insurgent COIN in 2040: An American Insurgency
  • On To Richmond II
  • Undocking UNDER THE SOUTHERN CROSS: South American Naval Battles in the Age of Sail, 1811-1841
  • Assault Red Horizon ’41 Expansion
  • The British Way
• Diving back into our own archives – Battle Lab ~ Wargaming the Soft Factors
• The Giant Civ 6 AAR: Nubia, Part 26
• The Grand “Champions of Krynn” AAR ~ Part 14
• Gameplay this week
  • The Battle of Quatre Bras (III) for “Valour and Fortitude”
• This week in our forums
  • Talking about Dominions 6
  • “What is a 4x Game?”
  • Some new info trickling out on Assault – Sicily ’43
• 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 #UnboxingDay¹ will be 17 August
  • 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 wishes Traveller a “happy birthday”
• Moe has a “learn to play” for Compass Games’ Oceans of Fire
• Pushing Cardboard has an interview with Sean Druelinger
• Gimpy has a multi-part Heroes of the Bitter Harvest playthrough: part 1, part 2, part 3 (so far)
• Ardwulf’s counter clipping stream is labeled “gaming goals” but actually talked about the GMT update, Stalingrad, and plenty of other stuff

 

News & notes from the business end of the gaming world

• WDS released their latest quarterly update
• There’s a couple of companies – including at least one well-known Origins regular – whose websites haven’t been updated in over 18 months and are very close to being dropped from the standard Newsday scramble
• Looks like A Hot Dry Season will be now published by SNAFU
• Grognard Sims has updated their release schedule

 

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

• 22-30 July WBC (Seven Springs, PA) <– RIGHT NOW!
• 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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Don’t forget we’ve got a dedicated area of our forums for the professional wargamers.

• CNA has released several of their micro-games for public download, including Call Sign, and Gaming to the Rescue, and Rolling Rockets (all PDF downloads)
• Lessons that can be learned from the recent wargames covering China/Taiwan
• Merkavas for export?
• 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 shared an article from Kevin Williamson about AI in PME wargaming

 

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

Take a (virtual) boat ride through Norway

 

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. 3rd Thursday of the month