Sale Season Is In Full Swing ~ #TuesdayNewsday

Another week, another #TuesdayNewsday!
Catch up on the latest developments in hobbyist tabletop wargaming, digital simulations, and defense sector wargaming practices.
If you’re a new reader that’s only recently found us here on #TuesdayNewsday, drop us a comment and let us know what you liked (or didn’t!); if the spam filter catches you, we’ll get them manually approved as quickly as we can

The Zenobia Award announced the winner for their second competition¹

This post is from Akar Bharadvaj. Akar is the director of the Zenobia Award. He was previously selected as the first-place winner of the award in 2021 for his game Tyranny of Blood, on changes to India’s social structure under British colonialism. He is also a member of the SDHist board.

After more than a year of board game design, mentorship, and judging, the second iteration of the Zenobia Award for historical board games has chosen its winners!

The Zenobia Award is both a competition and a mentoring program in which game designers from underrepresented groups develop and submit historical tabletop game prototypes. Throughout the design process, competitors received mentoring and feedback from industry leaders, to help them move towards successful game publication. This year, the Zenobia judges had a tremendously difficult time narrowing from 37 semifinalists down to nine finalists (as announced in September), and an even more difficult time picking the winner!

As runners-up, the judges and board have selected Melaka: the Forgotten Empire by Effendy Norzaman and Silencio by Luis Salas. Each design will be awarded a cash prize of $500. Melaka tells the story of the Sultanate of Melaka in the Malay peninsula, where nobles loyal to the Sultan attempt to build a great empire. Judges praised the game’s unique take on the 4X genre, action selection, and rondel mechanics, modeling exploration while vying for the Sultan’s favor.

Silencio, in contrast, considers a much more modern dynamic. In the game, members of a Mexican community attempt to find family members missing due to cartel-related violence. Judges applauded the balance between complexity and depth, and how the gameplay engaged with the difficult theme.

For the grand prize of $1,000 and a travel grant of matching value to a game convention of their choice, the judges and board selected The Porters, by Lucas Cockburn, Neco Cockburn, and Alex Goss. This game covers the story of Black porters on Canadian railways working to organize unions. Judges praised the clever design, the unique and compelling theme, and the game’s original balance of organizing a labor movement all while having to work a tiring, full-time job.

Please join the Zenobia board in congratulating the winners, the finalists, and all of the Zenobia contestants! If the first Zenobia contest is any indication, many of these games should be going into publication in the next few years.

Additionally, many thanks go out to all the volunteers, who put in the hours of work to mentor and judge the entrants. The board also wishes to thank this year’s major sponsors: Board Game Guides, Fort Circle Games, GMT Games, Leder Games, San Diego Historical Games Convention, Wehrlegig Games, and Spielworxx.

There’s been a dramatic reshuffling of social media in the tabletop gaming world over the past 2-3 weeks. As a result, Brant (our editorial director) dropped some Dragoons-specific updates in our forums/Discord explaining the plans

We’ve got ‘official’ Dragoons accounts at twxtter, bluesky, threads, mastodon (on the wargamers.social server), IG, and FB. We use another console to post to all of them, as well as WordPress automation to post the articles to most of them.

The vast majority of those are one-way traffic from us. We’re not in a lot of discussions on IG or threads or mastodon about our posts, but occasionally get some replies to them there.

There was some interaction on bluesky, but most of it was on twxtter, largely bc that’s where the other wargamers/designers were congregated.

A combo of an exodus of many of those participants (or a scaling back of their presence) + twxtter changing terms of service to (1) nerf back the block feature, and (2) require that your data be available for them to train their AI, have made it very hard to want to stay on that platform

So we’re definitely scaling back there. Original plan was to just close the acc’t. Might simply set it to re-trans only to post our articles, and nothing else, though. Still trying to decide the exact presence going forward

but most of the interaction on socials will be shifting to bluesky, to the extent that anything goes on at all

We do have out FB page that gets occasional comments, but not much. We share to a bunch of FB wargaming groups, but by “we” I mean “me” pretty much 🙂

There’s just no good way to automate that one, so it’s a lot of manual cut-&-paste to share with them

Now, there’s no need for someone to follow us in every place on the web, but we also want to be able to meet the audience wherever they are, and some folks prefer one platform to another for whatever reason, or are boycotting specific platforms for whatever reasons. We don’t really care either way – we’re just trying to serve the audience wherever they want to find themselves.

Easiest way to decide where to follow us is over on our Linktree, that connects to all those different places, and then some

We did run a series of post blasts out there to all the different platforms re-introducing ourselves to the new followers we’ve picked up – particularly in the Bluesky migration – to give them a sense of who we are, what we cover, and the other things we do. Those went out to all of our social accounts, on all the platforms, because we’re never sure of where the followers are coming/going.

We’re still accepting submissions for events for the 2025 ACDC, to be held 17-19 January

Event submissions for the January 2025 ACDC are now open; events already submitted are being ‘placed’ this weekend and future submissions will be worked around those (first-come/first-served for scheduling)
Registration should go live shortly after Thanksgiving
More info can be found on the announcement page here
Join the discussion in our forums
If you’re interested in volunteering to help with ACDC planning & execution this year, and going forward, please drop a line in the forums, or shoot a PM through there to Brant

We’re moving the sales to the top this week since many of the holiday prices are starting to kick in.
We had a bunch in last week’s news, too (Hollandays, Blue Panther, etc)

Looking for a deal? Getting more bang for your buck?

Osprey Games have started their Winter Sale early, with 30% off just about all of their boardgames, RPGs, and minis wargames
Cube4Me has most of their wargame storage sets on sale and you can take 20% with coupon code BLACKCUBE at checkout
Europa Simulazioni has 10% off most of their back catalog² with coupon code XMAS at checkout
WDS “Game of the week” is Thirty Years War for $29.95; you can read Peter’s first impressions here, and Cyrano’s interview with Rich here
Avalanche Press are having a “pre-tariff” sale where they’ve gone ahead and applied the much-discussed 60% tariff that’ll be slapped on imports from China so you can see what the future pricing will be, but they are still selling games at the current rate until they know for sure what those tariffs will be
Dice Envy has a sale going on their 1-year subscription boxes thru 11/24: only $99 with coupon code BOXLOOT at checkout (which is even cheaper than the already-on-sale-price at the link)
Worthington’s Anniversary Sale is going on right now, and among the insane deals you can grab any of the following boxed games at $25 each
You can get Crown of Pain from GOG right now for less than the price of a holiday-themed latte
Red Dust Rebellion out of stock at your FL(W)GS? Never fear, Miniature Market has you covered, and saving almost $30(!) while doing it
Fanatical has a crazy deal on PDFs, with a d20 book bunch of 30-odd products for about $12
Save a few bucks on Coral Sea Solitaire from Decision when you order it from Noble Knight Games

Hitting the shelves (and webstores) near you now!

Matrix Games just released Armored Brigade II today; more coming from the Dragoons on this one soon
Microprose just released Forgotten but Unbroken on Steam; it’s a squad-level game of WW2 resistance fighters in Europe and discounted 15% for the launch this week
Caporetto 1917 is now available from Europa Simulazioni
SGS has released SGS Battle for: Fort Donelson on Steam and 20% off thru 21 November for the launch
Mike Lambo has a new 2-in-1 combo pack, with both Rifle Squad: US at Omaha Beach and The British Home Guard in one book
Wowza! Steve Jackson Games just released a big OGRE print-&-play, for free!
Warlord Games has a new SPQR: Macedonia – Pezhetairoi set but you have to paint them yourself
Aleph Game Studio has their Aces High WW1 air combat game on a launch sale
Bedroom Battlegrounds is not a euphemism, but more a kids-imagination-fueled battle game using toybox finds, that looks like it’s straight out of the Toy Story movies
High Flying Dice released a couple of new games
- A Hard Day’s Work – The Battle of Droop Mountain
- Heaven’s Will – The Attack on Ulithi Atoll

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

NUTS! Publishing just launched the Kickstarter for their Eurowargames book, which is not about “weuros” but rather about wargames from Europe; a huge thanks to them for doing this on a Tuesday, and not first thing Wednesday morning 🤠
Fort Circle Games has their new game, Shakespeare’s First Folio, on pre-order; this is a limited edition that’s mostly intended to be sold through the Globe Theater or the Folger Shakespeare Library³ and not through other retail channels
Fort Circle also launched their new First Monday in October on Kickstarter where you can compete over varying judicial philosophies across the scope of US history
Modiphius has their new Star Trek Adventures 2nd Ed Starter Set on pre-order; you can read our review of the game here
Populated Hexes Monthly – a hexcrawl zine – just launched their 3rd year campaign on Backerkit
Phalanx has their remake of Hands in the Sea on Gamefound, with some snazzy new artwork
Cryptozoic is relaunching the origins DC Heroes RPG for its 40th anniversary, now on Kickstarter

This week’s best written coverage from the wargaming world

#Wargame arrivals 📦
Joint All Domain Operation (JADO) 01 Nav/Air East China Sea Block 01A / JADO 01 Land East China Sea Block 01B / JADO 02 NavAir North China Sea Block 02A / JADO 02 North China Sea Land Core Set (think Korea) Block 02B. From @WDG_GavinHu needs translation🇨🇳📝 pic.twitter.com/ayZn4FAKHg

— Mountain Navy 🎲🗺⚔️ (@Mountain_Navy) November 18, 2024

The best videos this week from our wargaming friends

Meandering Mike has a Marengo After Action Review
Moe previews the newest issue of War Diary magazine
Grant opens up Mirages from VUCA over at Pushing Cardboard
Zilla wraps up his time at SDHistCon – Wargaming & Boardgames Channel Update
Beyond Solitaire Podcast 177: Anthony Chatfield on Board Game Academics
HissyCat’s first check-in on the 2025 Postcards from the Front
Ardwulf’s counter clipping stream talked about investing in wargames (?!)

Various news & notes from the business end of the gaming world

ICv2 reports on the accounting shenanigans that Embracer are committing as a part of their Asmodee spinoff; it’s another case of “probably legal but still seems a little slimy” which seems to be true any time vulture capitalists get involved
Is playing games to improve your mental abilities really the best thing about playing games?
BoardGameWire reports on Asmodee’s salves vs earnings vs getting railed by their corporate overseers ahead of their spinoff
Alex Knight has an article over at GMT about his upcoming Hammer & Sickle game
Rascal has a nice look back on The Dark Eye, still a cultural force in the RPG world in Germany
OSG has a nice PDF download on their site that’s a Guidebook to Historical TLNB Battles
WDS released a new scenario for Danube Front ’85 and also updated all their Modern Campaigns series to the latest engine
Scott Thorne, over at ICv2, goes through his store inventory to look at what he expects to get hit with tariffs

Looking at the miniature lines we carry, it looks as if Reaper Miniatures is the only one carrying a “Made in USA” tag. WizKids products are all imported from China, as is Catalyst Game Lab’s BattleTech, while Games Workshop and Bolt Action miniatures are all imported from the United Kingdom. Looking at board and card games, the only major publisher I see with games printed in the U.S. is Looney Labs, which uses Delano Games as their printer. If the proposed tariffs are enacted, and printed products do not get an exemption again, we will likely see a lot of price increases in the next year.

It’s been a busy week for the regiment; here’s what you might’ve missed!

Reminder than #UnboxingDay is on hiatus until 2025, when we’ll re-evaluate its potential return

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

Upcoming Dragoons Events

Wargame Days at The Gamer’s Armory in Cary, NC ~ 1 December and 5 January
Next confirmed live event is BuckeyeGameFest, 1-4 May 2025
Next virtual event is the ACDC⁴, 17-19 January, 2025

Other Conventions & Events

things are slowing down now that we’re getting to the holidays, so we’re including some for next year

23 November Battleground (Middlesborough UK) <– THIS WEEKEND!
16-20 January MMP Winter Offensive (Bowie MD)
17-19 January The ACDC (Armchair Dragoons Virtual HQ)
17-19 January ConQuest Ventura (Ventura CA)
17-19 January Marscon (Virginia Beach VA)
17-19 January Siege of Augusta (August GA)
24-26 January Winter War Con (Champaign IL)
31 Jan-2 Feb Captain Con (Warwick RI)
5-9 February Game-on (Bellevue WA)

Focusing on the practitioner world ~ don’t forget about our dedicated area in our forums for the wargame professionals!

How Participating In Educational Wargames Changes Student Preferences On Learning, from MCU Press
How games let leaders practice making risky decisions
HIMARS strike in action
An interesting question about “why is my wargame full of Russian propaganda?”
This week, Mick Ryan talks about realistic Ukrainian military strategy / aims
The next GUWS webinar is tonight – Blood & Treasure: Modeling the Role of Contractors in the US-Afghan War
And after that it’s Understanding Educational Wargaming in the Military Sector on 17 December and then Wargaming for the Social & Cognitive Sciences on 21 January
PaxSims has a report about a UK resilience matrix game
The Pentagon failed their 7th consecutive audit, prompting this bit of humor

Thinking about designing a game where you play the Pentagon and you win by passing an audit.

— Paul F. Sinn (@pfs.bsky.social) November 17, 2024 at 11:15 AM

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

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Ernst Stavros StarchBerry (@drstarchberry)

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.