More and more often, I find myself thinking that game design, development, and the final release are truly a joy. If only it weren’t for logistics—a tedious task with far too many factors beyond our control. With every new project, we work on improvements and hope to get better step by step.

As you read these lines, the last remaining packages of “Battles of Napoleon Vol. 2 – Quatre Bras 1815 / Wartenburg 1813” are being delivered; the special dice have arrived in the U.S., and I hope you’re satisfied with the contents of the box. As I’ve mentioned before, one of the reasons the game took so long to finally go to print was that Wartenburg 1813 turned out to be a big surprise, and this battle deserved proper development—which, unfortunately, took some time. Mark Trowbridge did a fantastic job.

If you haven’t received your shipment yet, please feel free to contact us— we’ll send you the tracking ID.

Now that the games have been shipped, we’re excited to be able to offer directly from our shop:

“Battles of Napoleon Vol. 2 – Quatre Bras 1815 / Wartenburg 1813” and the mounted maps

“Brandywine 1777” from our friends at Les 3 Zouaves

“Model’s Counterattack” by Sergio Schiavi

And we’re finally able to offer the Italian version of “Battle Commander Vol I: Napoleon’s Italian Campaigns” in our web shop. The Italian version of "Battle Commander – Expansion 1" is also available (including Spanish).

Soeren Sorgefri is the editor-in-chief of our “Sound of History” book series, and in the coming days you’ll also be able to read exciting news from him regarding this thrilling project.

For “Assault Red Horizon 41” we’re waiting for approval of the final sample; once that’s done, we’ll be able to print while the Pledge Manager is still live.

Development and playtesting of “Battles of Napoleon Vol. 3 – Aspern-Essling 1809” are underway, and we can now begin work on the graphic design. 

The print files for the English version of “No Retreat: The Russian Front 41-45” are also nearly complete and currently being proofread. 

As for the very exciting game “Operation Valkyrie – Race For Power Against Time,” we’re waiting for the final test results so we can begin working on bringing this solo game by Gottardo Zacani to life.

Carl Paradis and his team are testing “Battle Commander Vol. 2”. This game concept received outstanding feedback in Vol. 1, and we’re very much looking forward to new battles in this format featuring mounted maps and exclusively wooden game pieces on the board.

Matt Brown is working on our new series “Battles of the American Civil War”. One might well ask: Do we really need another series featuring battles from the American Civil War? Yes, we do! The series is based on the core concept of “Battles of Napoleon”

And you’ll experience the ACW on the table like never before.

The same applies to the “Iron Cross” series developed by Jim Lauffenburger—an innovative, accessible system set at the operational level during World War II. 

We will be at SPIEL 26 in Essen come and join us in Hall 3 booth Q200. In addition to the games just mentioned we’ll also be presenting the original design of “Neither King Nor God”. We warmly invite the community to participate in the creation of new courtiers. After the conventions in the U.S., where dozens of games were played, we received an outstanding 14 (!!) ideas for additional types of courtiers. 

Also at SPIEL 26 we’ll be hosting Jason Matthews and our friends from GMT. Jason is excited to present the “20th anniversary edition of Twilight Struggle” and will be holding signing sessions at our booth in Hall 3, Q200.

And for our German-speaking players, we’ve arranged for demos of the German version of “Europa Universalis – Der Preis der Macht” and the expansion “Wider das Schicksal” to be delivered to Germany in time via air freight. We will share out booth again with our friends from Aegir Games who will present the English version of this game which is one of the biggest games projects I have ever experienced.

Thank you for supporting Sound of Drums!