by Happy #TuesdayNewsday! Whether you’re pushing counters, slinging dice, coding AIs, or crafting strategies in national security, here are the latest updates to keep you in the loop
Land and Freedom announced as 2024 Summit Award recipient
The San Diego Historical Games Convention (SDHist) is proud to announce the winner of the third annual Summit Award. The Summit Award aims to recognize a historical board game published in the preceding year that most broadened the hobby through the ease of teaching, ease of play, uniqueness of topic, novelty of approach, and/or effectiveness as a historical game. The 2024 Summit Award winner (for games published in 2023) is Land and Freedom: The Spanish Revolution and Civil War.
Land and Freedom is designed by Alex Knight and published by Blue Panther LLC. It features cover, counter, map, and card art from José Ramón Faura, with additional player/non-player aid and card art from Ryan Heilman and Knight, development from Heilman, and rulebook work from Heilman, Knight, and Dave Shaw.
More details about the Summit Award can be found at the SDHISTCON site. You can also read BoardGameWire’s report here.
Hearty congrats to Alex Knight!
Extremely humbled by this tremendous honor. The Summit Award represents much of what I’m striving to do with game design. So many people came up to me this past weekend at PAXU with congratulations – I was honestly overwhelmed. Thank you to everyone involved in @sdhistcon.bsky.social!!
— Alex Knight (@alexknight.bsky.social) December 9, 2024 at 7:15 PM
Your Year in Wargaming, 2024 Edition
We’re asking how 2024 went for you.
You can hit the survey on our site here, or you can go directly to the form at this link. We’re interested in what you played, who you played with, where you played, why you chose the games you did. We’ve got a few questions that were suggested to us by respondents from last year, and we’re always interested in how you found out about the survey.
Much like the solo survey, we do ask you to paste a couple of URLs from BGG, but only 1 of those questions is required and you can choose to leave the other one blank (we are working on a possible solution to this). For now, though, we use this method to keep the data consistent and cut down on variations in spelling, or exact wording, of the titles. The survey closes on 31 December, and like last year, we’ll go through the results in January and share what we found.
It’s been almost a month since we lost Mark Ruggiero, and this coming weekend, put some pics on social media of your games and let’s all #playLikeMark
Registration is open for the 2025 ACDC, to be held online 17-19 January 2025. Early bird badges are all gone, but even the regular ones are less than a latte at Starbucks.
As with our previous editions of the ArmChair Dragoons Digital Convention1, we’ll be wargaming all weekend long with a variety of games, seminars, panels, talks shows, pickup games, and more.
We’ve recently updated the event list with another half-dozen or so games & seminars, and still have a few more we’re expecting. Stay tuned for some more detailed previews on what’s coming up at The ACDC, but yeah, you’ll want to grab that badge now.
ORIGINAL OPORD ~ REGISTRATION ~ LIVESTREAM ARCHIVE ~ AAR
Hitting the shelves (and webstores) near you now!
- MicroProse released Urban Strife to Steam Early Access and have been running a bunch of livestreams with the dev team where you can watch them try to survive a semi-apocalyptic hellscape that might be (but isn’t specifically named) something called “Cleveland”
- Avalanche Press released Panzer Grenadier: Uprising as a new campaign study on the Slovak Army, and of course it needs pieces from 3 other games to play all the scenarios
- Actual new stuff from Minden Games! (sort of) . . . They’ve got a new Panzerschreck Wargame Collection Vol 12 with 5 titles in the set
- The first DLC for Slitherine’s Terminator: Dark Fate – Defiance is now available; it’s called We Are Legion and it’s part of the Slitherine publisher sale on Steam right now
- NAC Wargames released The Republic’s Struggle, “inspired” by Twilight Struggle and covering the 1930s in Spain
- Slitherine also released Astra Militarum as the latest DLC for Warhammer 40,000: Battlesector, and it’s also part of the Slitherine publisher sale on Steam right now
- Free League is now selling the Outgunned RPG, which is a game of “cinematic action”3 that was developed by an Italian studio (2LM) and sold under Free League’s new “Workshop” label/program
- No Greater Glory: The America Civil War is a re-release of a 35-year-old game that, well, looks like it –– but it’s probably a good nostalgia trip for players, especially at only $6 and on sale for a week during launch
- Lots of Airfix models available from Warlord Games now
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
- Last week’s winners of the “go live with something right after the news posts” was Black Oak Workshop, whose Monstrous Stockings campaign fired up Tuesday night on Kickstarter; they’re still cool and you should go take a look
- Not only have the not sent us this year’s holiday catalog, but now Compass Games are waiting until 10 minutes before we publish to go live with a new Kickstarter/last-minute pre-order campaign, for Roma Victrix
- Roll 4 Ruins is a print-and-play roll-and-write needs-more-hyphens dungeon-and-crawler that’s already-made-funding and is-pretty-cheap
- SkyGrid: The Tactical Air War Card Game might have an interesting concept underneath it, but the funding goal seems too high, there’s almost no promotion for it, there’s AI-generated artwork all over it, and yeah, one of the rewards is an NFT 🙄; it’s every tech-dude-bro stereotype trying to layer on top of a card game in an industry where most of those things are not particularly welcomed
Looking for a deal? Getting more bang for your buck?
- WDS “Game of the week” is Panzer Campaigns: Japan ‘46 for $29.95 where you can try your own take on Operation Coronet
- In celebration of their 10th birthday, Draco Ideas has a 10€ discount on purchases over 40€ with coupon code DRACO10 at checkout
- Save 25% on Soldier Emperor or Midway Deluxe or Defiant Russia from Avalanche Press with coupon code REMEMBER at checkout
- The current Deal of the Month at Decision Games covers their ‘big box’ games and gets you 20% off 1 game, 25% off 2, and 30% off 3 or more
- Save 24% on stocking stuffers from Easy Roller Dice Co with coupon code LAST24 at checkout
- Christmas Surprise Stockings from Dice Envy are $40, but include at least $60 of stuff, plus the stocking!
- Alternative Armies will throw a 3-pack of “wee beasties” in every order between now and 9 January 2025
- Commands & Colors: Medieval – Expansion #1 Crusades Mid-Eastern Battles 1 is on sale at Miniature Market
This week’s best written coverage from the wargaming world
- Rocky has an excellent dig through ARCS
- Brian Train talks about (Maurice Suckling talking about) how to build a time machine
- Space Biff reviews War Story: Occupied France
- Stuart reviews OCS Luzon
- Avalanche Press has an article about BATTLE ELEPHANTS!
- Wargaming Esoterica dives into an older copy of Panzergruppe Guderian
The best videos this week from our wargaming friends
- My Own Worst Enemy continues the game of Mr Madison’s War: The Incredible War of 1812
- Moe has part 1 and part 2 of a learn-to-play Compass Games’ recently-released Grant: The Western Campaign of 1862
- Justegarde opened up Caporetto 1917 (Europa Simulazioni)
- Beyond Solitaire Podcast 180: Paul Wright and Liz Davidson on Foxes & Lions
- HissyCat’s SDHistCon 2024 Game Haul
- Meandering Mike’s Mail Call – Unstacking Hollandspiele Sale Goodies 2024
- Ardwulf’s counter clipping stream took a look back at Azure Wish Enterprises, and plenty of other random chatter
Various news & notes from the business end of the gaming world
- Over on ICv2, store owner Scott Thorne looks at the upside of industry giants WotC and Games Workshop
- There’s a tabletop gaming mentorship program that’s now under the UnPub.org umbrella
- ICv2 also has a report about a strike at the Vallejo paint factory in Barcelona which makes a lot of popular hobby paints
- BoardGameWire has a report on Portal Games cutting ties with GTS Distribution
- GMT has a nice article about TacOps: Ortona as a solitaire game
- This article from The Guardian is wider than just wargaming, but does name-drop Twilight Struggle and Votes for Women
- OSG has a Guidebook to Historical TLNB Battles PDF on their site for free
A good few games from GMT’s P500 list have Made the Cut over the last few weeks! Thanks to all of you who have supported these games with your orders thus far. See the latest games that have made the cut in the thread below:
— GMT Games (@gmtgames.bsky.social) December 10, 2024 at 2:23 PM
It’s been a busy week for the regiment; here’s what you might’ve missed!
- We launched out 2024 Year-End Wargaming Survey
- Saturday Night Fights ~ The Battle of Ligny (3) for “Valour and Fortitude” 3.0
- Mentioned In Dispatches Season 13 Ep 13 ~ Thankful Wargamers
- Red Mistress in Red Dust Rebellion
- It Takes a Village of Children to Build a World in Dreams and Machines
- ICBM Escalation
- Gameplay this week
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 ~ 5 January and 2 February
- Next confirmed live event is BuckeyeGameFest, 1-4 May 2025
- Next planned 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 here are some for next year
- 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)
- 23-26 January MMP Winter Offensive (Bowie MD)
- 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!
- Missile defense live system test in Guam
- Wrap-up of the TRADOC G2 Mad Scientist wargaming conference at Georgetown last month
- Has WW3 already started?
- IWP’s students played through the ISIS Crisis matrix game
- This week, Mick Ryan closes the year with a look back on the numbers on the Ukraine War
- The next GUWS webinar is Understanding Educational Wargaming in the Military Sector on 17 December and then Wargaming for the Social & Cognitive Sciences on 21 January
This is it.
Wargaming for experimentation ≠ WG for education ≠ WG analysis
It’s almost like the desired outcomes effect things like abstraction, simplification, adjudication, player sets, level of analysis, or ALL design decisions
— Paul M Kearney (@strategerist.bsky.social) December 7, 2024 at 10:09 AM
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.
Your “And Now For Something Completely Different” videos have become tiresome. Now is the time on Sprockets when we offer a more delicious alternative: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PP6XPlVvUSM
Auf wiedersehen.