"Mentioned In Dispatches" 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?!

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

4 April 2025 ~

Rocky and Mike and Brant do their best to muddle through a discussion around why we do/n’t care about wargame awards, what’s wrong with popularity contests, and how you would design the “right” kinds of wargame awards.

We certainly don’t discuss all of the possible awards out there, and we don’t do a deep dive on each of them, but we try to cover a variety of ways in which these different awards approach their categories, participation, scope, and scale.

So what did we miss?  What awards didn’t we cover that we should have?  How would you organize a set of wargaming awards – categories, voters, scope & scale – if you were going to do so?  Sound off below!

Here’s a bunch of links to some of the wargame awards discussed on the show

And this was from the question we asked at the end of 2024 about your wargame-acquisition decision-making

And we also asked whether or not awards had any bearing on purchase decisions.

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.

28 March 2025 ~

Brant is joined by Dr James Sterrett and one of his students, US Army MAJ Alex Adkins, to discuss the wargaming curriculum at the US Army Command & General Staff College at Ft Leavenworth, KS, and MAJ Adkins Master’s thesis wargame Overmatch.

The discussion includes some info about the program (more info below) and pivots to MAJ Adkins experiences in the program.  There’s a bunch of discussion about Overmatch and its development and purpose.  There’s also a brief discussion of the uses of wargaming in the military decision-making process.

A couple of links to things that were discussed in the show

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.

21 March 2025 ~

Friend-of-the-Dragoons Rex Brynen (of Paxsims, among other places) and fellow Canadian Ben Taylor join Brant for a discussion about serious games that don’t involve all the shooty-bangy things.

What are some of the tools that overlap from wargaming into the non-kinetic world?  What are some success stories in using wargaming techniques in these contexts?  What are some of the third rails to avoid when using wargaming techniques with other audiences?  When do you push back on requests for a wargame?  All these, and more, in the best hour of podcasting you’ll get this week.

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.

14 March 2025 ~

Mike & Bill join Brant to talk about GMT’s long-running Battles of the American Revolution series, as we continue this season’s focus on digging into some different game series in a bunch of our episodes.

At over 25 years old, it’s one of the longest-running, still-active series that started after TAHGC’s crash & burn back in the 1990s.  We talk about the scope of the series across all the games, some nuances of a few specific games, whether (or how) the game could expand beyond the AWI, and games from other publishers that might operate in a similar space.

Some links for this show:

You can chat about this series in the Age of Gunpowder section of our discussion forums

Battles of the American Revolution Series

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.

7 March 2025 ~

Similar to what we did last year at the Expo, rather than try to organize a full-hour episode on a particular topic, we grabbed a couple of different guests to join us for a consolidated Expo episode.  Also, rather than focus exclusively on publishers this year, we cast a slightly wider net.

We start out with a wonderful discussion with Steve Jackson14 to discuss their latest Kickstarter, trends in the gaming industry, blazing new trails, and evergreen hits.  For this conversation, we were joined by Jason Matthews.  We start off that discussion talking about the Kickstarter campaign for the Fighting Fantasy gamebooks that are being reprinted.   Steve also shows off some very neat minis tiles from Lorescape that he’s backing and can be used for a variety of hex-based games.

click images to enlarge

Our second guest was Mike Dunn of Gaming Trend, who is one of the key drivers behind the recent push in the GAMA Media & Events division to improve the quality of content, and capabilities of the members.  We talk about media coverage of overall industry and some of his specific initiatives within the organization.  This might seem a little bit like media navel-gazing, but we thought it good perspective on what forces are shaping potential coverage of the industry.

Finally, with both of the folks that lead Buckeye Game Fest at the Expo, we snagged Kate and Kristin to talk about the background of BGF, as well as some upcoming plans for the next few years as BGF is looking to broaden their appeal to a wider audience. Plus, don’t forget Quad Fest at BGF this year!

Overall, we think this offers a fair cross-section of the kinds of industry folks you encounter at the GAMA Expo, as we try to situate our niche of the wargaming hobby within the broader context of the overall game industry.

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.

28 February 2025 ~

Brant, Jim, Gus, and (eventually) Sam get together to discuss CA’s Total War series of wargames.  Starting with Shogun and continuing through multiple iterations of Rome and Warhammer as well as such off-the-wall games as Attila and Pharoah, plus Jim favorites Napoleon and Empire, among others.

What did we love and/or hate?  What was awesome, ugly, fun, or stupid?  Who is shadowboxing, and why?  What would we fix?  What do we think is superfluous, and what do we think is essential?  And how exasperated will Jim get with it all?

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.

21 February 2025 ~

The OCS games are one of the current standards of the industry for large-scale ‘monster’ games with a reputation for both complexity and consistency.  Series rules are usable across almost all of the 20-odd games, and veteran players have literally hundreds of hours under their belts.

We talk about the scope of the series, how far before/after WW2 you could reasonably extend the series and why, the logistics model, the surprise mechanic, splitting roles across multiple players, and even a digression about bad dice.

A couple of relevant links

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.

14 February 2025 ~

Yes it’s Valentine’s Day; no, it’s not that kind of XXXX fantasy!  Brant, Mike, and Sam chat about their favorite 4X games in the fantasy genre (as opposed to historical or space).

What distinguishes a fantasy 4X game from the other kinds?  What are some hallmarks of the genre?  Which games were our favorites and why?  Which ones had particularly good graphics?  Most of these are digital, but what about on the tabletop?  What parts would we pull from different games to create our ultimate fantasy 4X game?

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.

7 February 2025 ~

Brant & Mike are joined by Ardwulf, and Bill is back again, to talk about the classic quadrigames from SPI, and their later evolutions through TSR and Decision Games, as well as other emulations of the form by Compass Games, GMT, and others.

We talk about the history of the games and the designers who were ‘trained’ on quads, and the underlying ‘schtick’ of fast-playing, quick-learning, low-overhead, small(er)-footprint combo packs.  We also cover some of our favorites, some recent multi-pack games that fit the “quad” ethos, and the fifth-wheel games later published in S&T.  Are series wargames more of a thing now than back then?  And which quads showed up in single packs, as well?

All of this is leading up to this year’s Buckeye Game Fest 15, where we’ll be sponsoring/participating in Quad Fest!  In partnership with Ardwulf’s Lair and My Own Worst Enemy, we’re putting 6 classic SPI quads on the table in The War Room at BGF, from Wednesday through Saturday (with Friday as the main day).  There’s even room for more GMs to add a couple of Quad Fest events – just get in touch with us about scheduling so we don’t overlap each other!

What are your thoughts on the old quad games?  Any particular favorites, or ones you hated?

What about Quad Fest?  Is that enough to get you to come join us / game with us at Buckeye Game Fest?  Is there a game you want to see added, or one you’re willing to come join as a GM?  Sound off below, or tell us in our forums!

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.