"Mentioned In Dispatches" with the Armchair Dragoons

7 November 2025 ~

OK, so we’re getting wacky5 this week as we bring in a pair of game designers/professional musicians on board to talk about the parallels between the wargaming business (and hobby gaming as a whole) and the music business – creating your own music, finding a publisher, going on tour, market segmentation, storytelling, and more

Let’s welcome aboard Wes Crawford of Wharf Rat Games and Dan Bullock, both designers who have self-published a variety of games as well as selling designs to other publishers.  You get back-stories from both designers of pitching games to publishers, developing their games with player feedback, and the inspirations behind some of their upcoming designs.  And of course, we find as many connections to their experiences in the music business as we can along the way.

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Thank you for visiting the Regiment of Strategy Gaming and riding with The Armchair Dragoons.

31 October 2025 ~

For the first time on Mentioned in Dispatches, we’re joined by designer James M. Day, who partnered with Fernando Sola Ramos in designing this year’s multiple-CSR-award-winning Panzer: North Africa.

So Brant & Mike barrage Mr Day with a variety of questions about his history of designing tank-heavy games, the local newspaper covering his win, some history in the computer gaming world, and solo adaptations of his games.  We also spend a little time talking about the background behind Mr Day’s upcoming man-to-man sci-fi game ARC.

Huge thanks to Mr Day for taking the time out of his schedule to join us, and we’ll definitely clear the schedule for him to join us again in the future.

A couple of our links to CSR-related content

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Thank you for visiting the Regiment of Strategy Gaming and riding with The Armchair Dragoons.

24 October 2025 ~

Brant, Mike, and Keith have a discussion about the 2025 Fall Assembly, just in case you weren’t already sick of hearing about the best convention that you haven’t yet attended.

What got played?  What stuck out for us?  What about the new location?  What did we like or not?  What about next year6?  Plenty of wargaming crammed into a pretty tightly-packed weekend with a great crew of gamers.

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Thank you for visiting the Regiment of Strategy Gaming and riding with The Armchair Dragoons.

17 October 2025 ~

The Game Manufacturers Association, which has now been renamed GAMA: The Tabletop Games Association, has been a bit of a flashpoint for wargamers over the past dozen years or more. With some real questions about why wargamers should care about GAMA, it’s often been tough to make the case that they should.  But with all the changes at GAMA since the pandemic7 there’s the potential for real value for publishers beyond just discounts on Origins booths.

So Brant & Ardwulf are joined by Jason Matthews to talk about GAMA as a whole, but specifically what wargamers & wargame companies should be getting out of the organization.  What does GAMA offer everyone and how does that apply to wargamers?  What about Origins and the wargaming program there?  What can a publisher get out of GAMA Expo?  And how many times will someone’s browser crash and knock them out of Streamyard?8

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Thank you for visiting the Regiment of Strategy Gaming and riding with The Armchair Dragoons.

10 October 2025 ~

After 3 years, Brian’s back to join us to talk about his latest releases, both Brief Border Wars 2, and China’s War, which have been in extended development and both just happen to hit your porch at about the same time.

Brant, Mike, and Brian talk about quad games overall, d66 dice mechanics, development & history of the Brief Border Wars oeuvre, other ‘quad’-like sets that Brian’s worked on, when WW2 actually started, and some of Brian’s recent gallivanting through Europe for professional wargaming purposes.

Brian’s always a great guest, so sick back and enjoy!

The mandatory list of links

Mike’s copies of the Fiery Dragon versions of Battle for China

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Thank you for visiting the Regiment of Strategy Gaming and riding with The Armchair Dragoons.

3 October 2025 ~

For our third consecutive Summer, we teamed up with Beyond Solitaire for a big survey about people’s solo/solitaire war & historical gaming.  We were interested in both purpose-designed solitaire games as well as games people played solo regardless of how they were designed.  We had a Google form open for a month towards the end of the Summer for people to vote.  We tallied the results, and here is the top of the list, with links to the entire list and our other data diving linked down below.

So here we have Brant joined by Liz (from Beyond Solitaire) and our usual semi-irregular occasional co-host who-actually-loves-solo-wargaming Mike (My Own Worst Enemy) to talk about what’s on the list this year, what’s new, what’s surprising, and what’s expected.  We also talk some about how different demographic segments of the audience have different preferences.  The top 26 games are below (there was a tie at the 25th spot) and the entire list can be found here.

And audience – talk back to us!  Use the comment fields below and let us know what we coulda/shoulda asked of our respondents and let us know what to put into next year’s survey.

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2025 Solo & Solitaire Wargaming & Historical Gaming Survey Results

Thank you for visiting the Regiment of Strategy Gaming and riding with The Armchair Dragoons.

2024 Solo & Solitaire

2023 Solo & Solitaire

26 September 2025 ~

The 2024 Charles S Roberts Awards were presented over the Summer at Origins9 but we didn’t get a chance to weigh in with our opinions until now.  Look, you already know who won, because you read our site religiously and saw the list we published back in June, right? Right?!

But what you haven’t heard is Jim chime in with his outrageous French accent, or Mike complain about conflating solo and co-op games10, or Brant give a bit of behind-the-scenes insight, or how The Doors factor into all of this11.

Some of the links & lists that we discussed during the show

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Thank you for visiting the Regiment of Strategy Gaming and riding with The Armchair Dragoons.

19 September 2025 ~

Annnnnnnnnnd, we’re back!  Brant is joined by fellow Dragoon Jim/Cyrano, and regular guests Gary/Ardwulf & Liz from Beyond Solitaire, for a discussion inspired by Liz’s comments last year about “what’s in the Wargaming Canon of those games that you expect people to have played if they’re claiming to be a wargamer”

So we brought some smart people together, and let Brant crash the party since he runs the console, and tried to figure out what games we would’ve expected wargamers to have played at some point — not their favorites, or the most influential, or the most popular — if you’re trying to earn that Grognard Merit Badge.

Give the show a listen for the rationale behind the choices, especially since some of them were merely exemplars of wider series/families of games; there’s four different Commands & Colors series games in the table below, but as explained it’s really about picking out the era of interest to you and then giving it a whirl.

We even explain why we left some particular choices off the list, so don’t go ballistic until you hear it all!

There were some other things mentioned during the show, so here’s some / most / almost all of them

And yes, Ardwulf was constructing and testing a plastic speedcoaster for his marble collection in the background.

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Thank you for visiting the Regiment of Strategy Gaming and riding with The Armchair Dragoons.

18 April 2025 ~

Brant, Jim, and Mike just talk about games – mostly wargames, some classic computer games, some good, some bad, and everything in between!

There’s no real agenda here, we’re just babbling about random wargame stuff, from ooooold computer wargames to upcoming battle anniversaries to the SALUTE show over in London.

Some of the links we promised in the episode

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Thank you for visiting the Regiment of Strategy Gaming and riding with The Armchair Dragoons.

11 April 2025 ~

Brant & Jim are joined by first-time Dispatchers Achilles & Robert to talk about Adepticon 2025.  Minis, minis, and more minis, with all sorts of Star Wars, Battletech, and WH40K everywhere, and some occasional real battles too.

What did our guys enjoy?  What surprised them?  What loot did they bring home?  Coolest thing they so?  How many solo games were being played?  And why were there Muppets everywhere?!

We love your feedback, over on the iTunes page for our podcast or on Spotify, or even Amazon or Castro, drop us a rating and let us know what you think.  Thanks!

Thank you for visiting the Regiment of Strategy Gaming and riding with The Armchair Dragoons.