December 6, 2024

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

 

5News 1 top

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.

 

5News 2 Below 1

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.

 

5News 2 Below 2

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

 

5News separatorLine

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)

5News 5 falling

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

 

5News 3 Incoming

Hitting the shelves (and webstores) near you now!

 

5News 4 launch

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

 

5News separatorLine

5News 8 Blogs

This week’s best written coverage from the wargaming world

 

5News 9 screen

The best videos this week from our wargaming friends

 

5News 10 industry

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

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.

 

5News separatorLine

5News 6 regiment

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

 

5News 7 muster

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

 

5News separatorLine

5News 11 Pros

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

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

 

5News separatorLine

5News 12 different

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

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.

Footnotes

  1. it’s not quite annual
  2. it does not appear the discount applies to Caporetto 1917
  3. also the site of Circle DC in 2025
  4. Armchair Dragoons Digital Convention

Armchair Dragoons PAO

Official Public Affairs account for The Armchair Dragoons, for official site news, and other contributors.

View all posts by Armchair Dragoons PAO →

Tell us what you think!

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.