Upcoming Wargames + Giveaway | June 2026 | New Releases | Board Games

0:00 Hi everybody, I'm Zo Litz and welcome to the June edition of Upcoming War Games. This is the video where we take a look at newly released or upcoming tabletop war games from around the world. This edition of Upcoming War Games is sponsored by Noble Knight Games, which is a board game retailer that ships across the planet and specializes in new and used war games. So, if you're looking for something hard to find or just don't want to spend full price for something, Noble Knight Games can be a great option. It's also worth mentioning in these days of increasing shipping costs that they have a $149 or more free shipping option. So, that can amount to some pretty significant savings if you bundle a couple of games together. Also, at the end of this video, I'll be giving away a $50 store gift certificate to Noble Knight Games. Instructions on how to enter that drawing are at the end of the video. Links to Noble Knight Games are down in the video description down below. And thanks to everybody who's used those links to buy stuff as it does help out the channel. Let's jump right in now and get started. Our first game in the newly released category is Wilderness 1864 from Worthington Publishing. Now, this is volume 7 in their American Civil War series. And I this one just arrived as well. I've got a copy here. It came a couple of days ago. I'm going be setting this one up on the table this week and trying a two-player scenario. Uh playing two-handed here. One of the things I really like about it is the rule set.

1:16 Let's pop the rule set up here. Eight pages. I mean, this is scrolling through. It took me I read through them the other night. It took me less than a half an hour to digest the rules. I feel like it's going to be a very playable, easy to get to the table s uh series and game. And we can take a look at the map here as well. Wilderness, as can be expected, has a lot of wilderness on the map here. Now, the the map size is 34 in x 44 in. There are about a half a dozen scenarios in the game. Very clean counter design. I'm really excited to give this one a shot. I think this could be a again that that type of Civil War series that you can learn and play fast. A lot of American Civil War series are outstanding, but they are a larger time commitment for something that could get to the table very quickly. Very much looking forward to trying this one and getting into this series a little bit more. So, Wilderness 1864 from Worthington Publishing. Next up, also in our newly released category, is Gare Eclair. I mentioned this one in the channel update video as a copy arrived a little while ago. very much a two-player game set in May 1940, the German invasion of France with one player playing the Allied side, one player playing the German side. Wouldn't recommend this for solo. It's got a lot solo. It's got a lot of uh hidden card play, some hidden elements to gameplay, but it plays very fast. It' be really nice for introducing friends to a board game/war game. It's that hybrid space between war games and board games that uh really captures the essence I think of the invasion in 1940 and is a single sitting. You can learn it and play it

2:47 in, you know, under an hour. So fun game. Uh I played this one about two years ago at SD Histcon and got a chance to play a prototype of it then. Really enjoyed it. So I'm looking forward to digging into this one more. GLA from Nuts Publishing. Next up, Dawning the Sacred Heart from Form Square Games. French Revolution. anyone. Also, newly released game this designed by Andrew Ror. This game takes us to the Vond in France 1793. Specifically, this game covers the action from March through December of that year. This is game campaign number five in the limits of glory system by Form Square Games. And this game also, while staying within the rules compendium of those previous four editions, it adds elections to the mix. Really a lot of fun gameplay in these series here. And it's great to see the series continuing. I like the art style.

3:35 I also like the events calendar in these games are very unique. They spawn events in a sequential logical fashion, but each time you play, you're not quite sure how they're also all it's going to happen. So, it gives it a great sense of both credibility and yet uniqueness and variability each time you play. So, this one just arrived uh as well a few days ago. I'm looking forward to getting this one to the table, too. But uh dawning the sacred heart from form square games. Sticking with French Revolutions and sticking with newly released, we have Revolutions France 1820 to 1880 by Fellowship of Simulations. Talk about a difference in scale. Dawning the Sacred Heart. All the action happens within one year 1793. This game covers six decades of French history. very much a political simulation three to five player game where players are going to represent ultras Republicans or socialists and try to enact your political agenda. Although you can use violent insurrection and elections to to accomplish your goals.

4:36 I'm not sure too much about the gameplay yet on this one. I haven't had a chance to explore it, but it is card-based. We've got a lot of tableau to track different statuses of the players as they're going through this one. Looks like this could be a very I mean political simulation games with three to five players set in the French Revolution. This could be really fun to play. Really like the art on this one. Seems steeped in history. So if you're interested in the French Revolution and looking for a game that covers a wide span of history, this one revolutions 8 France 1820 to 1880 might be something you want to check out. Continuing along with our newly released category, we have Old School Tactical Volume 5 from Flying Pig Games. This is perhaps one of my most anticipated new releases in recent memory and it has just started shipping. This is the fifth volume in their old school tactical series, which is a World War II tactical combat series defined probably by trying to strike that balance between complexibility and playability. Um, I got a chance to take a look at the prototype for this game a while ago and have created some videos on it for the channel. really really like the balance between complexity, tactical accuracy, fun, and just playability with this one. So, u this is a great addition to the series. Also want to point out down here, there is an expansion that has also started shipping. This is the first to fight Poland 1939, which takes the series uh to Poland in 1939 for more tactical combat. So, if you are a fan of World War II tactical combat, you might want

6:07 to check out the old school tactical series. And before we jump away from Old School Tactical, I want to stick with them for a moment and jump up to our crowdfunding category because Oldchool Tactical volume 2 and volume 3 have just finished their crowdfunding campaign for reprints of these issues and they are available for late pledges and pre-orders here. Uh the Old School Tactical series comes in and out of print. When it goes out of print, they get fairly expensive. So if you are a fan of the series and don't have some of these volumes, it might be something that you'd want to check out. as well as the main volumes for volume two and volume 3. They have the expansions. Now, just briefly, volume three is the Old School Tactical Pacific takes the Pacific War 1942 to 1945 as well as the expansion Hellbent. And then Oldchool tactical volume 2 is Westfront 1944 to 1945 and the Ghost Frontier is Belgium 1944. So, uh, more Old School Tactical goodness. If you don't have some of these and are a fan of the system, you might want to check them out. And even if you uh haven't gotten it yet, you might still want to check out Old School Tactical System. For our last game in the newly released category, I want to jump back to Worthington Publishing for three of their games in their travel series. These are games that come in bite-sized boxes that you can take with you very easily on the road. Now, uh Pacific War 1942, which is the one I'm showing, you can see on the right here, is a reprint of the existing the previous Pacific War 1942 game. It just went out of stock. Taro 1943 is a travel-sized version of the larger boxed version of this soliter game about the

7:37 invasion of Taroa. So, this too is somewhat of a reprint, but the one I want to focus on for this segment is Midway Solitaire shown in the middle here because this is a brand new game packaged in the Solitaire format. So, if we scroll down a little bit here, we can see that this is very different gameplay than other games in the Solitaire series. We've got a map of the ocean around Midway Island. Then down below we're going to have task forces. Now in this game you can only play as the US forces trying to prevent the Japanese from achieving several of their goals. We have mats here for the various task forces and they have different hit points. Also card-based play. So there's going to be some events that trigger during the game. So a very different type of gameplay come from the other games in this series. Looks very interesting and it is currently shipping now from Worthington Publishing.

8:26 Normally in these videos, I focus on tabletop war games, but sometimes I feel like there's such an overlap between some PC games and the tabletop community that it makes sense to mention something of the PC nature in upcoming war games. And indeed, this is one of these cases. War Game Design Studio, which makes Hex Encounter War games. They have over a hundred of them on a wide range of historical topics. Has recent has always had their own proprietary uh sales service system and installation engine. Recently they have begun porting some of their games over to the Steam platform. There are currently three available now with one more coming. Now if we take a look at what they've got, we've got American Revolutionary Wars upcoming on July 3rd. Available now. Sword and Siege Age of Longbow Volume 1. If we take a look at some of these, Sword and Siege Crusades book one, which has again over 70 scenarios. These games are packed with all sorts of gameplay. And Sword and Siege Crusades book two, which has an equal number, if not more scenarios in it. Then Sword of Siege Age of Longbow is available now on Steam. And then upcoming again for July 3rd is The American Revolutionary War. So, if you have hesitated to explore the War Game Design Studios games and engines because they're on a third-party different type of independent sales and installation system, now they're all the ease of installation and access that Steam brings. So, they're automatically updated and all those things that Steam brings to the game. So, you might want to check those out. And to call your attention to a couple of things here,

9:58 there is a Sword and Siege demo and American Revolutionary War demo. So, if you don't want to spend money for one of the games, you just want to check out some gameplay, you can do that on Steam as well. Sliding over now to Compass Games. I thought we were drifting into the Last Call category of games, but judging by this web page here now, it is I think the game is available now and it's back up. It's up to full price. So, this would be in the newly released category. I'm talking about For the Motherland, the Russian Front, 1941 to 1944. Now, this game is designed by Masahiro Yamazaki. And apparently before it was a twom map game of the entire Russian campaign, but they've condensed it into one map, refined some of the counters, enlarged them, tweaked the rules. Basically, it seems like it's an upgraded version of that earlier game by his design. Now, if we take a look at some of the images here, nice cover, but really like the map here. This looks like a fresh uh interesting well-designed map. There is a there are a lot of scenarios that can be played in two to five hours in this game. And then their campaign game of which is 1941 to 1944 grandscape. We've got armies and core or the unit scale here would be more as of an eighth hour adventure. If we look at the back of the box real quick, it does mention that solitire cap playability is high. Uh I think only because there are no hidden units. I think it gives it a seven out of 10. But some nice looking counters here. Very clean and sharp. Uh the Russian front of course is a crowded field in terms of games, but this one looks intriguing. It looks very playable. I'm very curious to

11:28 see how this one plays for the Motherland. The Russian Front, 1941 to 1944. Looks like it slid over now to the newly releasleased category from Compass Games. Sticking with Compass Games 2, moving into this last call category, which is basically the last chance to get a game pre-release before the price goes up to full price. You can see here it's $69 what it will be in the future, $54. Let's focus on the game now, though. Rebel Tide, the American Civil War. So, strategic level game of the American Civil War designed by Gregory Smith, who is the designer of the Hunters. He's designed uh American tank ace, British tank ace games that we've looked at on the channel. Now, this is a a two-player game, point-to-point game, relatively low complexity, playable in I think 3 to four hours as a an entire Civil War experience. So, medium low medium to low complexity, four out of 10 is what they rated on their complexity scale. Uh rather straightforward units here. You know, we've got the the political track, combat results track here, so it doesn't look like it's going to be overly complex in terms of mechanics. It is designed as a two-player experience, but there is a note here that the soliter play is rated 8 out of 10, and there is a solitaer bot that will allow you to play it solo. So, solo players might be something you want to check out. Look, players looking for an accessible Civil War strategic level game might be something you want to check out. Rebel Tide: American Civil War from Compass Games. Sticking with our last call category, let's go to Vuka Sims and the Far Seas. So, this is the last chance to get the pre-order discount on this game. What is the Far Seas? Well, the Far Seas happens at the

12:58 outset of World War I. It's a global map, as we can see here from this image. And as the German player, you take charge for the most part, you're taking charge of your eight large cruisers and trying to wreak havoc on the Antant forces without getting these cruisers sunk. as the Antant forces, as the largely the British Navy, you're trying to hunt down these cruisers and prevent them from causing damage to your forces. Now, this game is a reimagining, if we look at this, of the uh the Far Seas, a 1987 strategy and tactics game. So, complete reworking of that game, but the principal core gameplay is based on this idea. Now, couple of cool things about it. As we look at this image here, beautiful components as always with VUA Sims, cat-and- mouse types of games. And you might be thinking, well, this must be a two-player game only. But it is not. There is also a complete soliter mode in the game that allows you to play not bullside soliter. You play the allied side solitaer trying to hunt down the German cruisers who are controlled by an AI bot. Beautiful components.

14:00 Again, as we can see here, the Far Seas from Vuka Sims. They always do amazing work and uh this one looks like no exception to the case. Let's stick with World War I and talk a little bit about a forlorn hope which is the first game by Warfrat games. Now talked about this game about 6 to 8 months ago in an upcoming war games. Since then they've had their successful crowdfunding campaign and it's in the pre-order stage. You can still late pledge the game here if you're interested in it. But what is a forloren hope? Well, first up soliter game World War I trench warfare designed by Herman Lootman who has almost 40 games now in design. pretty much everything. He's the designer of A Most Fearful Sacrifice, which is one of my favorite games. I really like the stuff that he does. So, good design pedigree here. As we look through some of the images, we can see that the gameplay in essence is you're taking groups of men leading them across no man's land, trying to reach the other side of the trenches and have a successful offensive. Meanwhile, all these events and bombs are dropping on you and bad stuff is happening to your men as you're trying to get your forces across no man's land for victory. I got a chance to play this one about 6 to 8 months ago. 6 to8 months ago, I got a chance to play a prototype of it. Really enjoyed this one. So, if you want to check it out, it's still available on Late Pledge, a forlorn hope from Warfrat Games and designed by Herman Lootman.

15:20 All right, let's stick with Herman Lootman for a moment and stick with our pre-order category to go to Dawn of the Zeds by Blue Panther Games. Now, this is available now on pre-order, but they're doing it somewhat as a crowdfunding. As you can see on the right side over near my head here, there are some pre-order goals that have been unlocked depending on how many pre-orders there are. Right now, they are up over 400 as I'm making this video. But, let's back up for a second and say, what is Dawn of the Zeds? This is a State of Siege game where you play as a solo player essentially. Now, there are multiplayer rules. I'm going to pop up the the little blown up version here, and you're trying to defend yourself against these zombie-like killers that are closing in on your your town and where you live. And so, uh, basically, you're you're fighting off these zombies. Now, a couple things. This is a deluxe edition based on an earlier game from way back in 2016, which was the third edition.

16:12 So, I think this game has gone through a number of iterations. This is supposedly the final or the ultimate version of this game. Can see some of the cards here for gameplay. These are some of the characters I think that you can play as you are defending your town. Here's another look at the map. Some more closer look at some of the characters that are available. And then some of the artwork here. So, a lot of production value put into this one. And I've also noticed in reading through the description on the game here that there's a number of gameplay changes as well. So, some of the combat's been changed. There's new heroes, new town guard civilians, different victory points. So, they've really, this isn't really a reiteration of the previous version of the game. This is literally an upgraded and enhanced version. So, this looks extremely juicy. If you like soliter games, if you like tactical combat, I think this one's going to be a lot of fun to play. Dawn of the Zeds available from Blue Panther Games on pre-order now. Let's jump right now over to our crowdfunding campaign. This is an upcoming campaign, Sovereign Shogun from Fallank. It'll be starting towards the latter part of June. Now, there's not much information on the Gamefound page yet because the campaign hasn't launched, but we do have an advanced prototype version of the game. So, I'll put some pictures up here so we can take a look at things as we go through them.

17:24 So, the year is 1598. Toyotomy Hideoshi dies. His son is 5 years old. So, instead, the rulership of the land is split up over five daimo. These daimo fight it out over the next years until we have one ultimate ruler, the shogun of Japan. And that's what this game is all about. Now, the game count player count is listed as two to five players. It if you have less than five, areas of the map will be blocked out. So, it seems like this is going to be a game that's going to shine at the larger player counts. Play time is listed as at 90 minutes. I haven't really played with it yet, so I don't really know yet how accurate that feels. It feels to me like it with five players it might take a little bit longer, but um certainly not a full day game, at least as the way it's portrayed here. Miniatures in the game. Uh beautiful map, beautiful components, card play. This looks like for fans of Japanese history and if you like multiplayer games that are going to give you a grand strategic experience, this like this one looks like it could be a lot of fun. Now, I will be making some content for the game coming up on the channel in the next couple of weeks.

18:22 So, look for more videos about this game in the coming days. Staying in our crowdfunding campaign, we have a preview of an upcoming campaign for Assault Red Horizon 41, the revised edition from Sound of Drums Games. Uh, now what is this? Well, earlier we talked about Old School Tactical as being a World War II combat tactical system that's designed to really strike that balance between complexity and playability. I put the Assault series right in that same category. This is an outstanding series. Recently, Sound of Drum has published the Assault Sicily game and the expansion that have this series and this system taking place with the Allied forces down in Sicily. Well, Assault Red Horizon is the revised edition of the earliest edition of this Assault series that was self-published. And so, this new version will take all of the components of the original game and upgrade them. Now, there's not a ton of information here, but if we click through the little images that are here, we can see new rules, artwork, upgraded game components. I believe there's also an expanded game module in this one as well. So, this will allow you to combine those two assault modules to their new leveled up and the quality of the components in these newer versions are I mean it's a complete remake of the game.

19:35 It's just really evolving the game to its to its best format. So, if you like the assault system, this might be something you want to follow and keep tabs on. We'll be talking about this one more as it goes through its crowdfunding campaign. Sticking with crowdfunding, let's go to Kickstarter for Crown Encourage. Now, this is the second game from Tumpet Games. Many of you may recall or have be fans of Halls of Hegra, which was their first game produced a couple of years ago where you were defending a fortress/c/castle from German attackers at the beginning of World War II as Germany invaded Norway. This game, Crown and Courage, takes place within that same thematic environment. This time, the Germans have invaded Norway, and you are trying to escape with the king and bring out as much gold as you can from the country. So, you're fleeing this onslaught of German forces trying to escape, bring stuff out, create delays, and basically survive this attack as the Germans are coming into the country. Let's take a quick look now at some of the images from the Kickstarter page to make some comments. Oh, yes, of course. Solitaer game player in about playable in about an hour to an hour and a half. So, a similar type of gameplay experience as was Halls of Hegra. If we scroll down here, we can see the game board, Modest Footprint. There's some bagpole elements down here. And then if we look here at some of the gameplay components, you're going to be playing tiles, I think, that represent actions. Here we can see the king trying to escape the on-rushing German forces. Halls of Haggar was fishly hard to win, but a fantastic gameplay experience and was very well regarded. This looks like the same type of experience, but another theme,

21:05 another gameplay element, and more good work from Tom Games. Crown Encourage in Kickstarter as we are creating this video right now. Let's go now to GMT games for a couple of games that are in the distant future perhaps. The P500s. These are two new games that came up in the recent announcement from GMT Games about what games they're putting on P500. First up is Wargy the Deluxe Edition. Now, to be fair, this is not a newer game. This is another one of these games where GMT takes an older game that was out a decade or more or so ago, package it packages together and updates it as well as bringing in some of the expansions and re-releases it in a new condensed and upgraded format. this game. Why am I interested in this game? Well, I was reading a book about Greek history, per Greek and Persian history a while ago, and there wasn't I realized there wasn't really a lot of games that focused specifically on naval combat in the ancient era, the era of triams and all the different reams here. Wargy is one of two games that I could find. The other is an old Avalon Hill game called Triam. So, I bought an old used copy of this from Noble Knight Games and I've been explo experimenting with it a little bit and it's really fun. And then of course as soon as that happened, I saw this new version got published and and announced. So I was a little bit too slow. I should have waited a little bit longer. But I'm extremely excited about exploring this topic more from a historical perspective and a gameplay perspective. This game as well, I should say, designed by Richard Berg and Mark Herman. So we have two esteemed design designers in this one. It looks like it's going to be a ton of fun and I'm really excited to see it get this new reprinted and upgraded and updated and

22:36 compacted format. And for our last upcoming war game, Combat Commander Adversary from GMT Games. This also just went on P500. Now, what is this? Well, first of all, we have to talk about Combat Commander. Most everybody's probably familiar with that, but it's at its heart. It's a World War II tactical combat game that really focuses on gameplay, and it is card-based. Uh, fantastic series, creates incredible narratives. There's a competitive ladder. There are tons of people who just love this game. I've started exploring this game this year, and I absolutely am enamored by it. really a great game. Combat Commander Adversary solves one of the weaknesses in the game and that given the card-based nature of the play of Combat Commander, it's not a game that is very amenable at all to solitire play. Combat Commander Adversary is the solo version of Combat Commander. Now, you do need uh at least what the Combat Commander Anniversary Edition or Europe perhaps you need some of the previous modules to be able to play this. And you might be looking say, "Wow, $79 for a soliter module. That's a lot." But it comes with six nationspecific fate decks that will allow you to control every nation according to its unique play style. So this is a lot of cards. That's over 400 cards in this game here. And and then as well as a bunch of other rules, player aids, and all the things you need to be able to take your combat commander scenarios and play them solitire.

24:00 This is a dream come true. This looks really fun to be able to play Combat Commander Solitaire and have a a smart and and savvy opponent to go against. Oh, this is going to be really really fun. It'd be a great way to learn the game as well. So, very much looking forward to this one. Again, this was the second fastest I've put up a P500 order when I saw something from GMT Games. Combat Commander Adversary from GMT Games on P500 now. And so, there you have it. We have frittered away yet another half hour exploring upcoming war games. Hopefully you found something that you might be interested in, might bring some joy to your gaming table. We're not done quite yet, though, because we have to give away $50 in uh store credit to Noble Knight Games, our sponsor for this video. For this one, I'm going to do a little bit of a treasure hunt. So, I'm going to put a survey, a little form to fill out down. A link will be down in the video description. Uh you want to go click on that link. It's going to open up a a survey form that's going to ask you about three to five questions based on some of the content on this video. So, go hunt for the answers to those questions and then submit that form and that will automatically enter you into the drawing for the $50 store gift certificate. We'll pick the winner to that drawing in the next channel update video, which is usually out in about 2 to 3 weeks from now. And the form will ask to collect email addresses because that's the best way to contact winners, but I do get rid of those email addresses and don't use them for any other purposes except for this contest.

25:19 Thanks for watching everybody. Have a great day.