Hello everyone, Happy Monday!
One Year Anniversary of EM Disaster Gaming!
Today, it’s been one year since we launched EM Disaster Gaming in 2024 and our first game, Emergency Operations Center Wildfire Mayhem on Kickstarter…
Since then, we have sold more than 2500+ disaster wargames to Emergency Management, Police, Fire, EMS, HazMat agencies, universities, state and federal emergency management, the National Guard and even the Department of Defense and to agencies and military spanning 25 countries around the world. The reception that we have received has been overwhelmingly positive from first responders, emergency management and the military. Thanks to you, our backers and fans who helped us launch in a crazy time of tariffs and trade wars. Still, we persevered and are going strong!
We are just getting started and have so much more to come. Now that we are entering into our second year we are taking a major leap forward. Today I’m excited to share our biggest updates and news! This is going to be a massive update!!!
Annual Black Friday Sale and Charity Fundraiser
In honor of our 1-year anniversary we are holding our second annual BLACK FRIDAY SALE! This is our biggest sale of the year!!! We are taking 30% off our flagship games Emergency Operations Center Wildfire Mayhem and our new counterterrorism and HazMat response game that we’ve partnered with The Blue Cell and Todd Manns to make: Emergency Operations Center – Complex Coordinated Attack 8 featured in The Blue Cell’s Chelsea County, USA simulation site.
That’s not all!
Additionally, we are offering for the first time as part of our annual Black Friday tradition 30% off Disaster Game Training & Exercise Sessions!!!
You can pay now and lock-in your price for a 30% off a Disaster Wargame training or exercise session. Let us come to you!
· Half-day game session at $2800
· Full-day HSEEP disaster wargaming session at $5600.
We are taking this show on the road and will be traveling across the U.S. in 2026 to events and facilitating disaster wargame training and exercises.
We are already booking out several weeks of disaster wargaming training and exercises across Wyoming, Nebraska, Colorado, and Kansas between now and the Christmas Break. Don’t miss your chance to experience the latest in training and exercises with disaster wargaming in 2026!
These amazing deals will only be available now through CyberMonday! Reserve your exercise session now. These are purposely priced to be even more affordable than paying a consultant to facilitate a traditional tabletop exercise!
Charity Fundraiser
Thank you everyone who has supported us. This is our big annual sale, and it helps us fund all our amazing work for the coming year. We need your help so that we can continue to bring disaster gaming to everyone at affordable prices. So, to make the deal even better, we are going to donate up to $20,000 to charity AND everyone who participates and buys a game or training session will get to vote and decide where we donate the funds to!
Two Milestones:
1. 1000 game sales between now and CyberMonday - $10,000 charity donation
2. 100 Facilitated Game Training or Exercise Sessions = $10,000 charity donation
For reference last year we sold 1874 games during our launch sale, and we donated $5000 to IAEM’s Scholarship fund! Since then, we have donated $12,500+ to scholarship funds, students, and charities with money raised from EM Disaster Gaming.
Your support makes this possible, so we are giving back to causes that benefit this amazing community! Help us meet our goals for our Annual Sale!!!
Disaster Wargaming Training & Exercises 2026 Tour
We are traveling across the U.S. and have already been invited to and booked for several conferences, trainings and exercises facilitating disaster wargames!
You can now pay for and reserve a training and exercise sessions facilitated by me and our Certified Disaster Wargaming Instructors directly on our Shopify store!
We will also be holding open training sessions that you can buy individual seats too!
Attending our disaster wargaming training and exercise sessions will provide an opportunity to earn taskbook credit and put your decision-making skills to the test. There is no other form of training or exercise like this. My system of Emergency Operations Center Disaster Wargames don’t require extensive planning cycles or preparation like other HSEEP exercises. We bring an exercise in a box and you have options to pay for custom maps or player packs!
Wargaming is an elite and storied historic training and exercise tool. I’ve developed disaster wargaming to bring it to first responders and emergency managers for the first time. No other form of training or exercise has a history like this…
“Wargaming is used at every U.S. military academy and is the only form of exercise in the United States that has helped the U.S. win major battles in World War II in both the Pacific with the Battle of Midway, the Atlantic against German U-Boats, and helped the U.S. navigate and advert World War III during the Cuban Missile Crisis. To include having one of its most famous creators Professor Thomas Schelling win a Nobel Prize for "having enhanced our understanding of conflict and cooperation through game theory analysis".
-Dr. Arthur J. Simental, CEM
Disaster Wargaming Academy
Speaking of instructors, I’ve been working on our Elite Disaster Wargaming Instructor Academy program over the last several months. We are just wrapping up the development of our first courses. Our first course we be available 100% online AND will be free to all EM Disaster Gaming supporters and patrons. This will be a crown jewel of an Emergency Management Academy unique and one that I aim to be on par with the Naval postgraduate School, CHDS, and FEMA’s Vanguard Program. My goal is to develop disaster wargame instructors on par with military wargame designers and planners.
We will be offering five levels of Instructor Training from Facilitator, Instructor, Gamemaster, to Game Designer, and Grandmaster. Each with various requirements, duration, and task books to obtain certification. We will also be offering continuing education for first responders and emergency management and working to offer CEUs and other credits. Including Advanced Exercise Design and Storytelling. These will be premium Masterclass style courses bringing the best in education to Emergency & Disaster Management professionals. A lot more to come soon on this! Including academic and institutional partnerships, government sponsors and more!
Shipping Updates
First, I want to start by saying thank you to everyone for all the well wishes. I had to step back for the last month as my brother Patrick had cancer and tragically passed away at 31. Due to this family emergency store orders, shipping, etc. have been delayed. Now I’m catching up and am finding peace in my work. I’ve mailed 17 EOC Hells Highways over the last week and am working to get 80 challenge coins out this week to folks. Thank you for your patience. Disaster Gaming is my happy place. If you haven’t heard from me, please kindly reach out and email me at my new business/work email: arthur@emdisastergaming.com
We set-up a dedicated email system so your emails won’t get lost in my personal email or junk mail. Please reach me here for EM Disaster Gaming business.
EM Disaster Gaming Publishing
Bigger news!!! EM Disaster Gaming is expanding to become a publisher of all thing’s disaster gaming. We are heavily investing our resources to become a one stop shop for disaster games, training, exercises and continuing education! I have officially signed publishing deals sponsoring seven other game creators to bring the best of disaster gaming to the forefront of training and exercises in emergency and disaster management. We will offer an unparalleled variety of disaster games for professionals, educators, and the gaming enthusiast alike. We will have something for everyone at EM Disaster Gaming 😊
In Spring of 2026 we will be supporting the launch of three new product lines. First in the Spring with Crisis Command: A Tabletop RPG for Emergency Management AND a second version for Public Health!
We are honored to have partnered with Victoria Kludge an Emergency Manager and Dungeons & Dragons gaming enthusiast and to bring this DnD 5e game to the EM Disaster Gaming house. Did I mention the artwork is stylized after Civil Defense with a Fallout twist! Everyone who knows me as the EM Historian knows I’m a huge Civil Defense nerd. I’m so excited for this game!
That’s not all!
In late Spring / early Summer we will be launching another title: StormHaven: Maw of Zephyros an epic D&D one shot adventure paralleled for Emergency Management by Mark Borland! A career federal Emergency Manager and DnD Gamemaster.
Stormhaven is structured and mirrors a real-world emergency management cycle (Preparedness → Response → Recovery → Mitigation → back to Preparedness). The monsters and encounters become stand-ins for the “hazards” and cascading consequences that emergency managers face. Crisis Command transforms emergency management training into an immersive tabletop role-playing experience. Built around the Incident Command System (ICS) framework, this game challenges players to lead, adapt, and make critical decisions in high-pressure scenarios that mirror real-world disasters.
I’m excited to work with Mark and bring his expertise with storytelling to Emergency Managers!
My goal is to bring the best of disaster gaming to first responders, emergency management professionals and gaming enthusiats.
Have a game or idea? Reach out to me at arthur@emdisastergaming.com and lets chat.
Disaster Gaming Digital Archive
Next up, we are launching our Disaster Gaming Digital Archive, a digital collection of games spanning multiple domains from law enforcement, counterterrorism, homeland security, cybersecurity, national security & defense, emergency management and more!
We have 35 games that you can print, download and play. You can sign up for a 1-year subscription to the Disaster Gaming Digital Archive in the next couple of weeks 😊
We will be adding more games each year to the archive and rotating in new games and will feature seasonal games and goodies to our disaster gaming treasure hoard regularly.
Website and E-commerce Store Updates
Important infrastructure updates you will all appreciate, we overhauled our website and ecommerce store moving to Shopify which has been amazing. Now new orders that come into Shopify include all the modern e-commerce benefits of auto tracking, auto order and shipment update emails, and even an Ai-bot and virtual assistant that can answer your order questions! In the old system I would have to find your order, copy your email and shipping address and print a label manually. Now it’s all integrated. We are eliminating many of the headaches we faced from when we first launched that our little website was unprepared to handle. Including shipping! Now that we have Shopify we have discounted shipping rates and access to many more shipping couriers AND it’s all in one integrated system. No more paying for shipping separately anymore! That was one of the biggest challenges we faced working with three separate systems and juggling orders between Kickstarter, our website, and Easyship.
Disaster Wargaming Roadmap 2026
In the coming year we plan to do two limited releases for new Emergency Operations Center Disaster Wargames:
1. Welcome to Texas which will have a limited release exclusively in Texas before becoming commercially available nation-wide in late 2026/early 2027. We are working with our gaming partners in Texas Joe Leonard and USCG LLC on this game. To all my TDEM friends and Texas Emergency Managers, when this releases I’ll have games set aside exclusively for you and hope to bring this to the TDEM Emergency Management Conference and Academy. I have family and strong ties to Texas. Texas has been a major supporter of EM Disaster Gaming since its launch. I don’t forget my friends and supporters! Note that this game was originally slated for this year but out of respect for the Texas flooding I postponed the release of this game.
2. Our Major Hurricane Disaster Wargame which will be our biggest game yet spanning 3-4 states will also have a limited release and may debut at the Florida's Training for Emergency Management (FTEM) Symposium 2026😊 I haven’t finalized this appearance yet so stay tuned. More to come!
Outside of that we do have other games in the works as a planned series that you can see on the back of our game manuals. Much more to come. As always stay tuned!
P.S. if you read all this and are excited please share the news!
P.S.S. Some folks never paid for shipping and didn't follow-up to get their copy of the original Emergency Operations Center Wildfire Mayhem. A common issue, they all had AppleID's. Please email me at: arthur@emdisastergaming if you haven't heard from me!
Best,
Dr. Arthur J. Simental, CEM
Founder & CEO
Simental Industries Ltd. & EM Disaster Gaming