by Embark on a weekly journey into the realm of tabletop brilliance and miniature mayhem with our #TuesdayNewsday wargaming dispatch.
There’s a lot of “calendar Tetris” going on here at Armchair Dragoons.
- We’re sorting out our podcast episodes for this season, our 12th. It looks like we’ll hit our 150th episode on the last one of the season.
- Our Origins event submissions are due this week, and we’ve got about 100 wargaming events, plus 3-1/2 days of programming at the Origins War College, and that’s just what we’re handling. There’s going to be other wargaming events there from people outside the Wargame HQ, and 2 other rooms running full days at the Origins War College, too.
- We are piecing together the finalized schedule for Connections Online, coming up in April. There’s definitely going to be an extended Peter Perla Appreciation session, and we have several other neat seminars lined up as well.
- The planning date we’re aiming for with the Fall Assembly is 11-13 October 2024, but we have to confirm that with the location before we can finalize it.
This week’s releases that you’ll want to know about
- S&T #345 is now shipping, and includes Tanks of August, about the Russian seizure of South Ossetia and Abkhazia
- Soldier Emperor: Indian Empires (Playbook edition) available from Avalanche Press
- Sea Wolves Solitaire is a new one from TS Wargames
- Wargames Illustrated #434 is now available
- Slitherine released Stargate: Timekeepers and you can read our first impressions here
- Osprey released Tomorrow City
- Columbia’s line of massive neoprene mats now includes Napoleon
- Steve Jackson Games released their Skull & Dragon dice game
- Alternative Armies released Furioso – their rules for ECW wargaming
- The new Operation Lustre scenarios for Rapid Fire are now available
- This past week, GMT started shipping their latest arrivals (we reported these back at the beginning of January, but GMT’s most recent update indicated a 24 January shipping date)
Getcher orders in now and then either (a) wait for it impatiently, or (b) forget your ordered it and be surprised later!
- Phalanx just launched Triumph today – how far can you lead Rome?
- Following their Kickstarter campaign, Worthington has Rommel’s War up for direct pre-order from them
- White Dog Games are taking pre-orders for Gift of the Nile with a mid-February ship date
- King’s Orders – Innovative Letters-based Strategy Game – “medieval Kriegsspiel” from the guys that did Radio Commander – now on Kickstarter
- EVE: War for New Eden is a tabletop adaptation of the MMO and let’s see if it gets here before the Stellaris boardgame
- Dune: Fall of the Imperium from Modiphius is now on pre-order
- B-17 Flying Fortress : The Mighty 8th Redux is on early access on Steam
- ABC Warriors all-in bundle from Warlord is on pre-order for the low, low, discount price of only $306
- Catastrophe Games has a few new things on pre-order
Saving money? Spending just as much but getting more for it?
- Compass Games’ catalog sale ends this week, so get your last minute orders in ASAP!
- “Fathers of Wargaming” bundle of PDFs at Wargame Vault that’s 75% off right now – HG Wells, Robert Louis Stevenson, and more
- B2G1 mystery dice sets from Easy Roller Dice Company with coupon code BOGO24 at checkout
- You can knock nearly $60 off of Axis Empires Ultimate Edition by ordering it from Noble Knight
- Star Wars: Rebellion is over $15 off here
- 17% off full price games at Fanatical right now with coupon code FANATICAL17 at checkout
This week’s best written coverage from the wargaming world
- Rocky digs into the mechanics underneath the Cowboy Bebop RPG
- Brian shows us a full-table-sized version of Nights of Fire at a group in London
- Space Biff continues his play of The British Way, tackling Kenya in this one
- Avalanche Press has an article their alternate history of Byzantium
- The Flames of War site has a nice history of the Battle of Cassino, as we hit the 80th anniversary of that fight in Italy
The best videos this week from our wargaming friends
- Moe looks into Silent War 2.0
- Justegarde was very happy to show off his copy of Winter’s Victory
- How do you ‘review’ Unboxed with doing an unboxing first?!
- ZillaBlitz goes into the “shelf of shame” challenge
- Ardwulf’s counter clipping stream talked about circumcising wargame counters, and eventually got around to learning & teaching wargames
Various news & notes from the business end of the gaming world
- The Troll Lords signed an extensive agreement with the Gygax estate to get a bunch of Gary’s older work back in print
- Compass Games’ most recent town hall
- Here’s a PDF download of the most recent set of special rules for the Team Yankee series
- BGW has a long article about the fiasco that is Mythic Games
World At War 85 Blood and Fury Update https://t.co/GpP9cwU8Wv
— Lock 'n Load Publishing (@LnLPub) January 27, 2024
It’s been a busy week for the regiment; here’s what you might’ve missed!
- Saturday Night Fights! ~ The Battle of Isandlwana (II) for “The Men Who Would Be Kings”
- Stargate: Timekeepers – A Quick Look
- Your 2023 in Wargaming, Part 4 – Crosstabs #2
- The 2024 ACDC Keynote
- Mentioned in Dispatches season 12 starts recording this week!
- This week in our forums
- Gameplay this week
- 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 ~ 4 February and 3 March
- Next #UnboxingDay1 will be 15 February
- Next virtual event is Connections Online, 15-20 April 2024
- Next confirmed live event is Buckeye Game Fest, 29 April – 5 May, 2024
Don’t forget to check our consolidated event & convention calendar for more!
You can also submit your own events for our calendar here.
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- 3 February 2024 SDHistCon 2024: ‘Winter Quarters’ (Online) – THIS WEEKEND!
- 10 February 2024 The Battle At The Crossroads (Cambridge OH)
- 17 February 2024 Connections North (Montreal QC)
- 4-7 April 2024 Circle DC (Washington DC)
- 2-5 May 2024 BuckeyeGameFest (Columbus OH)
- 16-20 May Compass Expo(Meriden CT)
- 19-23 June 2024 Origins (Columbus OH)
- 25-27 June 2024 Connections (Carlisle PA)
Looking forward to SDHISTCON Winter Quarters? Here’s a preview!
Focusing on the practitioner world ~ don’t forget about our dedicated area in our forums for the wargame professionals!
- Revisiting the RAND wargames in light of what’s unfolded in Ukraine
- The War Room podcast from the Army War College talks about the “China” course there and a bit about their in-class wargaming (wargaming talk really kicks in around the 15min mark)
- The next GUWS webinar is Saga: A Sub-threshold Conflict Wargaming System (Feb 6), followed by Integrating Scientific Experiments with Wargaming Mechanics (Feb 20)
- Some generic OPFOR for professional training games within the Combat Mission series
Something neat from outside the wargaming world we thought was worth sharing hilariously cringey
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 Armchair Dragoons and mounting up with the Regiment of Strategy Gaming.
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(We have an Instagram page and it’s really just a placeholder & redirect to our articles.)
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Feel free to talk back to us either in our discussion forum, or in the comments below.
On Tuesdays, the wargamers convene,
For news on each strategic scene,
With updates in tow,
They’re ready to go,
In battles on both tables and screens!
I don’t know anything about the Arabian and Korean pre-order games from Catastrophe, but I can vouch for the Insurgent: Algeria game as a very interesting first design!