2025 Q4 Report: Full of Things

 

 

Sending season's greetings.

“And now we welcome the new year. Full of things that have never been.”

– Rainer Maria Rilke

 

For a more complete picture of how the year panned out, I'll refer you to my previous reports for Q1, Q2, and Q3.

 

About this time last year, I wrote a By the Numbers post called What I did in 2024. I made a kind of checklist of general subjects that I could quantify, like the number of games I’d bought or played over the course of the year, and the kinds of things I’d posted to A Fast Game, and I also discussed some more qualitative stuff. Over the course of 2025, I’ve fallen into using this model for a more structured quarterly report, so no more “What I Did” pieces from hereon in, just the quarterlies. I will probably talk a little more broadly about some aspects of the year, but I’m not going to duplicate great swaths of previous reports. Here you’ll get the whole numbers for the year as well as the last quarter, but if you want to see how my collection grew over 2025, I’d point you to the links to the previous three quarterly reports for the year at the top of this post. You’re welcome.

2025 was a strange year in a couple of respects. I’m not going to get into a discussion about tariffs or shipping price-hikes, but there was all of that. 2025 was a year I spent much more time thinking about wargames than playing them. Part of this was circumstantial, part of it was accidental, but another part feels like it was avoidable, after the fact.

 

Games purchased

In last year’s What I did post I wrote that I gained 34 games in the course of the year. In my Collection-to-Games Played Ratio I said I’d purchased – or more accurately, received – forty-one games (actually forty-two, but I’ll come back to that). There are a couple of reasons for this discrepancy, but they all boil down to me being an idiot. The list I was working off for the Games to games played piece was an extract from my Owned list on Boardgamegeek.com; yes, I list my collection on BGG, and it’s public facing, if you’re at all curious. It also includes the family games we play, so the count blows out to over 300 titles. I’m usually fairly diligent about adding newly acquired titles to my BGG record, and I’ve come to rely on it as a single source of truth. Except the system isn’t foolproof and sometimes things slip through the cracks. While I was preparing the current list, I realised there were about three titles I’d neglected to add, including A Most Fearful Sacrifice: The Three Days of Gettysburg (Flying Pig Games, 2022), which I was certain had been on the list, but was not.

Fourth quarter haul. The Combat Commander Minor Nations folio with the extra
material included in the new combined Europe/Mediterranean box is missing
from the photo.

In the fourth quarter, the collection grew by six games (plus one extra, which I’ll get to) and an expansion (Combat Commander: Minor Nations. Three of those were Legion Wargames games I’d been keen to acquire for a while (I’m working through an unboxing sequence, starting with The Battle of Blenheim, 1704 (Legion Wargames, 2018), which you can read here), second hand copies of Charioteer (GMT Games, 2023) and Beware the Ides of March (Hollandspiele, 2024).

I’ve always maintained that I will not solicit review copies of games from publishers, but I attended the last Compass Games Town Hall for the year – Bill Thomas and this team do a live fortnightly show on YouTube, and give away a copy of their latest release via a lottery system. Except for the end of year show, Bill was feeling especially generous, and gave away about a dozen games and copies of Paper Wars that had been released in 2025, and I was lucky enough to have my name drawn for a copy of Mike Vitale’s Desert Blitzkrieg: Rommel's North African Campaign (Compass Games, 2025), which arrived today, in time for the 2025 count. Rest assured, an unboxing post and AAR will be coming in the new year.

This, apparently, is what winning looks like.

This was one of two wargames I won in tottery draws this year. Grant from Pushing Cardboard had a giveaway on his website, and I was drawn for a copy of Italy '43 (GMT Games, 2025). I already have a copy on its way (hopefully due in a fortnight or so), so I'm tossing up what to do with this copy. I may run some sort of competition on A Fast Game, but I'm not sure how that would work yet. Stay tuned.

Over the course of the year, I’ve received thirty-seven games* (and two supplementary materials, GMT’s 2024 Replacement Counter-sheet, and Combat Commander: Battle Pack #8 – Minor Nations (GMT Games, 2025). This is up three titles from last year (after me saying 2025 was the year I would wind back my game purchasing), and I’m expecting a GMT delivery (three games) and another game each from Sound of Drums and Les3 Zouaves early-ish in the new year.

We live in an apartment, and not a particularly large one. I’ve estimated previously that I can probably accommodate around 300 wargames before I need to start weeding the collection. Here, at the end of 2025, I’m sitting at 248; not “peak wargame” – well, not quite – but my buying habits will have to to adjust accordingly.

Addressing that in a small way, 2025 was they year I went hard on computer games, or more accurately, computer ports of existing board wargames. I bought Rebel Fury, Waterloo and Gettysburg (for a bundle discount), Saratoga (a port of the Battles of the American Revolution game from GMT), all from Hexes of War, and SpaceCorp (Logix Interatvive,2025), Britannia and Napoleon’s Eagles from Avalon Digital, and Bill Kalapoglou’s Arete (Molotov Cockatiel Games, 2025), all available via Steam.

 

Games played

I’ve posted a separate account of games played here. It turns out I had played more games through the course of the year than I had expected, but less than I would have liked. These weren’t all wargames, but engaging in any game is a chance to learn something new.  There were more role-playing sessions with the Wednesday group than last year, but RPGs are what brought that group together in the first place, so I can’t really begrudge that. I’ve been a part of the Wednesday group for seventeen years next March. In that time, we’ve played a number of wargames (mostly miniatures, but others ranging from The Grizzled (Sweet Games, 2015) to Here I Stand (GMT Games, 2015)), but it’s not a wargaming group, and I can’t count on getting my fix here. This year we played sixteen games (we played Border Reivers: Anglo-Scottish Border Raids, 1513-1603 (GMT Games, 2023) and Successors (Phalanx, 20, each over two weeks). Our host is an inveterate lead-pusher as well, and will often have a game already set up from another weekly game night, so I got to try three different, new-to-me miniatures rulesets; Lion Rampant, Second Ed. (Osprey Games, 2022) for Saxons and Late Romans, Pikeman’s Lament (Osprey Games, 2017) for the English Civil War, and Valour & Fortitude (Perry Miniatures, 2022) for some Peninsula action.

Long-time readers may remember I started this blog as part of a project rather misguidedly inspired by the War Room’s annual Ten Game Challenge. So, I thought it would be fitting to actually take part in the official proceedings.

I signed up for the War Room’s Ten Wargame Challenge for 2025; not only have I fallen short of playing ten of the nominated twelve games (two back-ups were allowed), but the War Room as a collaborative YouTube entity has ceased be. I’m not so narcissistic as to think I singularly brought on the institution’s end, but I possess enough inherent paranoia to wonder, “Did I jinx it?” When the War Room fell over, there was a lot of discussion on Facebook and elsewhere about whether people should still try to finish their challenge lists (a dozen or more had already ploughed through there ten, and at least one FB friend had actually played all twelve games on his list. I wanted to finish my list; it was furnished with games I’d wanted to table for a year or more in some cases. But internal and external pressures prevented me from getting past the five I managed to get played (I played a Rebel Fury (GMT Games, 2024) scenario Spotsylvania on Steam, but never got around to writing it up).

For fifteen years now, I’ve been spending a Monday evening – sometimes Tuesday (and since his schedule has cleared, occasionally Thursday) – playing wargames nearly exclusively, face to face with my brother-in-law, who I refer to here as T. In the past we played Commands & Colors: Napoleonics (GMT Games, 2010) exclusively; after about the first nine years we branched out into other C&C flavours, and in recent years, I’ve got him to play other games as well, sometimes. In the earlier years we’d consistently play between forty and forty-five weeks out of the year (and usually get a Wings of War (Nexus, 2004) or a Trafalgar (Warhammer Historical, 2009) game in on Boxing Day. This year we only managed twenty-six games all up. The other twenty-six were lost to a combination of sickness, travel, and family commitments (T is now a doting grandfather). I don’t resent the lost opportunities, but it was another reason for my game count falling off this year.

Another reason was, I simply didn’t take all the opportunities I had to play a game when they presented themselves. Which segues us into the next section.

 

Games unplayed

This is a new subheading that will probably only appear in Q4 reports. Or maybe not; let’s see how it goes. Since the beginning of A Fast Game, I’ve always begun the year with grandiose plans of what I hope to accomplish, then it gets to the end of the year and what do I have to show for it? Admission is the first step to healing, so here is where I’ll fess up to all those things I declared I wanted to do but didn’t get done. Kind of a psychoanalytic version of a shelf of shame selfie.

The American Civil War remains under-fought in my household. I had planned to get By Swords and Bayonets (GMT Games, 2025) and A Most Fearful Sacrifice to the table as part of my Ten Wargame Challenge, and Flanks of Gettysburg (Compass Games, 2024) in 2025. This didn’t happen. I even told designer Herman Luttmann that I was finally going to play AMFS this year, and I didn’t follow through. This was why I had both AMFS and By Swords and Bayonets on my Ten Game Challenge list.

Our last Monday night game was Yorktown from the Commands and Colors Tricorne:
the American Revolution (Compass Games, 2017) The French and More! Expansion
(Compass Games, 2018). I'm embarrassed to say this was the first scenario
we've played from the expansion.

Crucially, 2025 was meant to be the year I learned the Great Battles of the American Civil War (GBACW) system, something I said I was going to do in 2024 as well. This didn’t happen, either. With BS&B, I now own four GBACW titles – the three most recent box games (BS&B, Into the Woods: The Battle of Shiloh, April 6-7, 1862 (GMT Games, 2022), and Death Valley: Battles for the Shenandoah (GMT Games, 2019), plus Wilson's Creek: The West's First Fight, August 10, 1861 (SPI, 1980) from Strategy & Tactics, issue 80), but all remain unpunched, glowering and taunting from their shelf.

This year, after resisting the siren call for some time, I finally gave in and bought my first Great Battles of History (GBoH) game; the one that started it all, The Great Battles of Alexander: Macedonian Art of War (GMT Games, 2015). A second-hand copy of the most recent printing (including the Tyrant expansion) came up for sale, mostly unpunched, and bearing a faint mothball odour. This was apparently enough to put one off, and when it was still available after about four months, I thought it was meant to be. This now sits on the shelf next to the GBACW games and is picking up their glowering habits. I’ve said for the last two years that this would be the year I’d crack GBACW.

Many of the games I didn’t get to on my Ten Wargame Challenge list because I was holding out to play them against an opponent instead of two-handing them, including We Are Coming, Nineveh (Nuts! Publishing, 2023 – this game actually come solitaire rules, so doubly no excuse), Waterloo, 1815: Fallen Eagles II (Hexasim, 2022), and Imperial Bayonets: We Were Not Cowards –Sedan 1870 (Conflict Simulations Ltd, 2020), when I really should have bitten the bullet and played them solo. This is what I did with Drop Zone: Southern France (Worthington Publishing, 225) when T cancelled our game that week at the last minute. In fact, I haven’t played that many solo games this year at all. In 2025 I played six separate times spread over four games.

This year I struggled to get motivated to play. Quite a bit, in truth. Some times when I had the oppotunity to play even something short, just setting up a game often felt insurmountable. This was a symptom of something else going on, unrelated to gaming, but that nonetheless affected this and other parts of my life adversely (I’m sure this was a contributing factor to my posting output slowing over 2025 as well). I wouldn’t say I’m much better than I have been, but I think I’ve turned a corner in this regard, and I’m looking forward to a more play-full coming year.

 

Blog matters

I have written quite a bit though 2025, though not quite as much as the previous couple of years. At time of writing, I have posted around 358,500 words to A Fast Game since its start at the end of January, 2023; If it were a novel, it would be longer than The Brothers Karamazov, nearly as long as David Copperfield, but a lot less compelling than either. This is in the space of a little less than three years. Not counting this report, I have posted sixty-one posts since February 1st. I haven’t written or posted as much this year as I have in either of the two previous years, but you have to keep in mind that the technical year-end for the blog is the end of January, so I may catch up a little here (check in again around January 31 for the third anniversary post).

In mid-October A Fast Game hit 50,000 views, and half of those came from readers over the most recent ten or so months. As I write that number is a little shy of 62,000. I’ve had various posts mentioned on The Armchair Dragoons and grognard.com, and the good folks at GMT continue to add my unboxing and review efforts to their product pages, alongside the work of more celebrated critics.

When I started writing A Fast Game, I was still finding my feet with the blog, after a long absence from writing anything consequential. Frankly, some of the stuff I wrote in the first six months is a little embarrassing, but You have to start somewhere, and I think I have become a better writer in the intervening couple of years. I made a conscious effort to post useful material. When the Charles S. Roberts Award nominees were announced, A Fast Game was the first (and so far as I am aware, the only) place on the web to post a complete list of nominees along with links to their respective BGG pages. This year I also published my first feature article, a survey of the value of wargame awards for publishers, which took time and effort and the good graces of many publishers who responded to my cold-call questionnaire. This was fun to put together and I would definitely do a research project like this again if I find an interesting enough subject. Suggestions for future feature subjects are welcome.

I feel like the writing and the arguments behind it have matured somewhat from that first year. I’m a little surer of what I mean to say, and more willing to not write about something unless I feel I have something to contribute to the conversation. I still tend to apply an irreverent tone to most subjects, but that’s just me, and it comes from a place of love and respect. That won’t be changing.

 

Extra-curricular activities

I did some scenario development and layout work for Ray Weiss’s Afrika Army Korps (Conflict Simulations Ltd, 2025), which was released earlier this year. Since then, I’ve backed off from pretty much everything wargame-related except playing, posting to A Fast Game, and engaging with the Pushing Cardboard Discord channel. Grant Linneberg has built a friendly, respectful, and welcoming community of serious gamers, and I feel lucky to have been accepted into it.

I tried out for proofing work with Decision Games (for their bi-monthly magazines, Strategy & Tactics and World at War), and with GMT Games, but didn’t get a guernsey in either case. I’m not all that upset about this; it would be nice to contribute to the hobby with more than half-baked opinions and the occasional rant, but doing this kind of work would seriously eat into my ranting time. So, for now, I’ll be sticking to A Fast Game as my sole avenue of contribution.

I posted a printable copy of the Scenario set for AAK on the game’s BBG page (it’s in letter – I submitted an A4 colour version as well, along with Printer-Friendly versions of both standard sizes, but only the colour Letter-sized version was accepted). I’ve yet to find a retailer in Adelaide that stocks Letter-sized paper, which is disappointing, considering A4 sheets don’t easily fit into American game boxes. If anyone can tell me where to get some (besides on Amazon with their extortionate prices), please let me know in the comments. I’m still thinking about some additional scenarios for AAK – it’s such a great sandbox game, it really deserves some more love. I’ll (try to) post each new scenario to BGG as they become available, and I’ll let the faithful know on this blog.

 

What’s next?

Last year said I wasn’t going to commit to anything gaming-wise, except maintaining work on A Fast Game, then I fell off the wagon and signed up for the War Room’s Ten Wargame Challenge. I’ve already talked here about how that worked out. I think I’ve finally learnt my lesson and so I’m not going to make any hard and fast declarations about wargaming intentions. Well, at least for this year -no challenges, not numerical goals. I’m going to make more of an effort to learn a handful of game-systems, and GBACW will be on this list. Given my limited storage capacity, system games are gaining in appeal. I’m hoping I like GBoH as well, as that’s a particularly rich vein to extract. If I settle on a short selection, I may write something about it in the new year, but it will be at best an intention, not a commitment.

Impending Allied assault on Sidi Barrani; Operation Compass scenario,
Afrika Army Korps (CSL, 2925).

Turning to extra-curricular activities, if I can get myself in the right frame of mind again, I'd like to write up two or three more short (four-eight turn) scenarios for Afrika Army Korps, including Operation Battleaxe (which was incomplete at time of publication) and a hypothetical of the planned, but never executed Operation Silk. I've been kicking around an idea for a solo print & play game covering a siege from the Thirty Years' War, but I wouldn't expect to see that in 2026. I wrote a solo journaling game about a secretive cabal a while ago on an interstate flight. It needs a rewrite, but I promised my wife I would finish it off and and send it out into the world this year. All of this is wish-list stuff, except for the journaling game (a promise is a promise), but I tend to get restless without a couple of things on the go.

As for the blog, I will keep doing what I’ve been doing with A Fast Game. This has become more important to me than I would have ever expected. It has garnered praise from people whose opinions I respect, and it helped a handful of people find new games and new experiences they otherwise may not have stumbled across. I would be open to trying new types of post, if anyone has any suggestions (I have done this before), but in the short term, I will be sticking to what I know works. Unboxings will often include art history lessons, and After-Action Reports will still highlight the mistakes that were made (we screw it up so you don’t have to). And I’ll try to knock out more than five game reviews over the next twelve months. No promises, though.

I began writing the quarterly reports for the same reason I began writing the blog in the first place; to hold myself to account regarding whatever goal or quest I’d set for myself. If I’m not setting targets, there seems to be less need for a status update every three months. But… I’ve come to look forward to writing these reports. They are way for me to keep in mind what I’m spending my hard-earned on, and where I’m putting my time. So, I think I’ll be sticking to these as well.

 So, that's the year that was, and a glimpse into what's to come. All that's left is to thank you, gentle reader, for persisting this far. I hope you've enjoyed the blog this year, and I hope you'll come back again in 2026. Happy New Year, and I'll leave you with a toast that a late friend was fond of giving:

We may not always get what we want, 

and we may not always get what we need; 

just so long as we don't get what we deserve.

 

*Make that thirty-eight games - I really wasn't expecting Desert Blitzkrieg to arrive before the New Year.

Stripped Down for Parts: Fire on the Mountain (Legion Wargames catch-up order, Part 2)

 

I recently blew a windfall of PayPal credit on some games I’ve wanted to try for varying lengths of time. One is still on its way from another publisher, but the other three I was able to order directly from Legion Wargames. I’m looking at these in order of release; the first one I looked at was The Battle of Blenheim, 1704 (Legion Wargames, 2018). You can check out that unboxing here. The second game in the order is John Poniske’s Fire on the Mountain: The Battle of South Mountain September 14, 1862 (Legion Wargames, 2022). I’ve had a lot of fun with Mr Poniske’s Ball’s Bluff (Legion Wargames, 2015), and I’ve heard that this, Fire on the Mountain, and Belmont: Grant's Baptism of Command, November 7th, 1861 (Compass Games, 2017) are variations on a theme, essentially the same system, but with something extra to fit the individual battle situations.

The Battle of South Mountain is an interesting battle to game, and is or has been available in several American Civil War game systems. It is also significant in one respect of ACW lore. As mentioned in an anniversary post by the Wisconsin Veterans’ Museum;

This battle also is the most-commonly accepted origin for the famous name “Iron Brigade.” Late in the day an infantry brigade consisting of the 2d, 6th, and 7th Wisconsin and 19th Indiana attacked in the Union center along the National Road. “What troops are those fighting along the Pike?” asked General McClellan as he looked on. “They must be made of iron.”

Fire on the Mountain’s box cover features and extract from a painting by H. Charles McBarron Jr (1902-1992), a noted illustrator for US military publications and a founding member of the Company of Military Historians, as well as a consultant to the Smithsonian. This painting, known alternatively as “The American Soldier, 1862”, “The Citizens Corps of Wisconsin at South Mountain, Maryland,” and “6th Wisconsin at Turner’s Gap, South Mountain,” was originally prepared as part of a series of fifty illustrations released in five sets of ten by the US Government Printing Office, called The American Soldier: 1775 to the Present (released around 1974).

Lookout Mountain. This photo was taken quite soon after the Union attack 
on the Confederate forces. One of the rigid ladders used in the assault
is just visible (here's a better view (Courtesy of WIkipedia)).

McBarron worked very quickly, was an early adopter of photographic media, often working off existing photographs of his own polaroids to more accurately portray the landscape’s details in his subjects. In this case, McBarron worked from a photograph taken after the battle, but misattributed. Paul McKee, a friend of a friend on Facebook, has conclusively established the photograph from which Barron worked was actually of Lookout Mountain in Tennessee (site of the Battle Above the Clouds), rather than South Mountain, Maryland.* Nonetheless, the painting is beautifully executed and quite compelling. And popular; it graces at least one other wargame box cover – Grant Wylie’s South Mountain 1862 (Worthington Publishing, 2025), from Worthington’s Brigade Battle series.

Box back. I forgot to mention in the post, Fire on the Mountain is recommended
for grognards fourteen years and older.

As I’ve probably mentioned before, Legion box-backs are, in my opinion, a benchmark for how game information should be presented, The box-back of Fire on the Mountain offers a two-paragraph historical precis of the battle for context, and a much shorter statement of he parameters of the game at hand. This would be my only point of criticism in the presentation of the game; The black print on the muddy brown background made me work a little harder at reading than I’d otherwise like. It’s a small thing, but a slightly lighter shade for the background (or white print, as used in the game details inset near the bottom) would be appreciated.

The box-back also features a representation of the map (which looks great, even in miniature, but we’ll get to that), a sample of the game’s unit counters and markers at their actual size, and the relevant game details. These tell us the game’s scale – 300 yards to a hex, brigade-sized units, and one-hour to a turn – a truncated component list, and the game credits, which we’ll return to soon. The Fire on the Mountain has a complexity rating of Medium-Low and, while designed as a two-player game, is rated Medium-High for solitaire suitability.

The Rules of Play.

The rulebook for Fire on the Mountain is printed on a matte-finish paper-stock of roughly 100gsm, lending the booklet a satisfying heft for its size. The booklet runs to sixteen pages, but the first two pages are occupied with an introductory note *as seen in the above photograph) and thorough Table of Contents, and the back cover features the Confederate and Union Orders of Battle, so the rules take up a mere thirteen pages. There is an addendum to this count, which we will come back to in due course.

Sample pages.

I keep harping on this, but I can’t say often enough how much I appreciate the rules layout in Legion games; Fire on the Mountain is no exception. The rules here are set in a nice, easily readable sans-serif font and presented in two columns with coloured bars marking the beginning of each new section (these follow the numbering convention familiar to anyone who grew up on SPI games. Examples are set in text boxes, and the whole thing has colour illustrations when necessary (pictures appear sparingly, but not frugally).

Rules Revision sheet and Errata note. Seriously, if the errata fit on just a half-sheet
of paper, somebody deserves a commendation..

Fire on the Mountain, as it is presented, is not a wholly historical representation of the battle; the Confederate Order of Battle includes R.H. Anderson’s Division, which did not participate in the historical battle. The designer has included a rules revision to accommodate this shortening of the Confederate forces to equate any loss of balance caused by playing the historical Order of Battle (making Confederate defences a little more resilient in the face of Union assaults), and a second to use Anderson’s Division, but with an uncertain arrival time across four game turns.

Two small items in the rulebook remained uncorrected at the time of printing, and these are addressed by a half-page Errata note, also included in the game, one involving Movement Costs and the other a reference mis-naming a brigade’s commander. In the latter case the counters and Orders of Battle contain the correct information. No harm, no foul.

The map-sheet. Even with some encouragement, the folds didn't want
to give up completely.

The game map was prepared by Edmund Hudson. If that name sounds familiar, I’ve noted Mr Hudson’s excellent work previously on the map for All Are Brothers, Solferino, 1859 (Legion Wargames, 2025). He is also responsible for the game-maps for several of Revolution Games’ Blind Swords series games, including the recent Gettysburg: the First Day (Revolution Games, 2025). This map is simply stunning.

A map extract highlighting Frosttown and its environs. The terrain details
are clear, but subtle and unobtrusive.

The game focusses on the action in the vicinity of Fox’s Gap and Turner’ Gap, and is topographically challenging, both in play and in its representation. Changes in elevation are noted by a shift from darker hues of green though near-grey to yellows and browns (the Altitude key runs in 100’ increments from 400’ to a dizzying 1,600’). Features on the map – farmsteads, roads, trails, woods, and escarpments – are clearly defined without being jarring, and the hexes are large enough to comfortably accommodate the elongated (1.2”) unit counters.

The map-sheet incorporates a terrain legend and Turn Track along the Right-hand short edge (the Confederate left). Also built into this column are Casualty boxes for the two sides.

The game's two counter-sheets.  

The game comes with two counter-sheets, each printed on a medium weight white-core cardstock and each consisting of a mix of square 0.6” and the aforementioned 1.2” by 0.6” counters. The double-width counters are brigade-sized units representing the two sides’ complements of infantry, cavalry, and artillery units. The square counters represent the two side’s divisional and corps Commanders and also provide an assortment of administrative counters.

The unit counters are a study in usability and at-a-glance identification. Each unit has a silhouette of an unmounted or mounted soldier or a cannon to identify it as an Infantry, Cavalry or Artillery unit respectively. Each infantry counter also exhibits a white silhouette of the brigade’s home state. At the right-side end of the units is a big, easily read number (two numbers for Artillery units) indicating the unit’s current battle strength in Strength Points (SP). This number represents the number of dice that unit will roll in combat (attack or defence), with an overall ceiling on ten dice per roll. Many units are represented by two or more counters, which are flipped or replaced as the unit suffers losses in combat and loses SP. Finally, each brigade is identified by their brigade commander’s name, which appears on the bottom edge of the counter, superimposed over a colour-bar that identifies their divisional affiliation (this is something reflected in the layout of the Confederate and Union Order of Battle cards, which we’ll see coming up). The regiments that make up the brigade are also listed on each counter, which has no game value, but adds to the historical depth of the game and is a nice, respectful touch.

The orientation of the unit counters is crucial in the game; the top long edge of the counter represents the front facing side of the unit, and the unit is paces in the hex side to side, to that edge is acing two hexes. These represent the front. The two hexes below the counter are the units rear, and the remaining hexes meeting the side edges of the unit are its flank. This configuration will, of course, impact on movement and combat. Up to three brigades may stack together in a hex (as well as up to two leaders), but only two of these may be infantry brigades. That's all I'm going to say about brigade units at this point. I'm no expert yet - wait for the AAR.

The Players' Aid Card. Only one is provided, but by the end of the second game,
you'll probably remember most of the regular tables.

Fire on the Mountain comes with a single Player Aid Card, a Set-Up and Reinforcements schedule, and two Order of Battle cards, one each for the Confederate and Union players. All of these are single-sided and printed on a sturdy weight of card-stock.

The PAC offers a quick reference Sequence of Play and charts for the Burnside Roll (reflecting Burnside’s order to all Union formations on his arrival at the battle to disengage with the enemy until he had taken stock of the situation), and charts for Rallying and Regrouping units, checking Morale, and a set of guidelines for Commander behaviours (various Commanders may be subject to different conditional rules in certain circumstances).

The Union Order of Battle;

...and the Confederate Order of Battle. Note how provision has been made
for the multiple-step units.

The Orders of Battle cards allow for the setting out of each side’s units in a coherent and organised fashion. Each Brigade has a corresponding template of each of its step-counters on the Order of Battle (one, to or three counters), and these are grouped by division. This is unusual in this kind of set-up, but it removes the need to stack and swap out units' step-counters on the fly.  Personally, I think this is a great approach; it should speed up solo play especially.

The game should exhibit a low counter-density. This is partly due to staggered arrival of the reinforcements for both sides over the course of eight turns, but also because, even if every unit from both sides were to be deployed at exactly the same time, this would still only come to twenty-nine units for the Confederate player and thirty-five for the Union.

The Set up and Reinforcement Schedule (as I like to call it).

The Set Up and Reinforcements schedule is just that, a card that lists the set-up locations for the initial forces, and breaks down the reinforcements list turn by turn to make it easier to track. Each unit that starts on the map is represented by its divisional commander and a reference to its position or on the board’s numbered hex-grid. The reinforcements are presented as a list of Confederate or Union divisions, with a map entry hex for those units.

Some games build the reinforcement schedule into the Order of Battle, but given both the size of the unit counters and the relatively low density on the board – there are only about sixty units among the two sides combined – I think this is a more sensible approach.

As always, the good folks at Legion Wargames have provided zip-loc bags in sufficient quantities to house the game’s loose components. I’m old enough to remember when coins still came in paper rolls and the best way to store game counters was in empty matchboxes or, if you were lucky enough to have a supplier, typewriter ribbon cases, so I always appreciate it when these are provided, even when they don’t get used. Fire on the Mountain also comes with ten dice, five each in red and black. Ten in all, which (as mentioned earlier) is the total highest number of dice to be used in a single roll, so that makes sense. I’m not sure if there is any significance to the two colours of dice as I haven’t finished going through the rules yet, but for what it’s worth, they do look like nice dice.

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So, that covers the components of Fire on the Mountain. Everything looks functional and really quite nice. The counters should really stand out on the map, and the housekeeping should be a breeze with the Orders of Battle cards and the reinforcement schedule. I should point out that the Set Up and Reinforcement Schedule isn’t actually called that, but that’s how I thought about it and now I can’t stop calling it that. The word “schedule” never appears on the card or – so far as I’m aware – in the rules. Don’t get uptight when your copy just has “19.0) GAME SET UP” at the top.

This has been the second part of my exploration of my three-game Legion catch-up order. I don’t think I’m going to get to part three, A Glorious Chance (Legion Wargames, 2023) for a couple of weeks, given family commitments over the holidays, but I may surprise myself. In the meantime, thanks for reading this far, and hope the season is good to you and yours.

 

* This is not meant to be an indictment against the misuse or wrongful allocation of the picture; Barron no doubt did his best with the resources he had to hand. The US Army Center of Military History still represents the painting on their website as being Turner’s Pass. These things when left this long tend to take on a life of their own, and while everyone else appreciates the fine work or the stirring narrative, only pedants and curmudgeons mutter their disapproval.

 

By the Numbers: Games played in 2025 (keeping score)

 

Record sheet from a fifteen-inning game between the Universities of Michigan
and Santa Clara, back in the day.

I wasn’t looking forward to preparing this post; while I’ve mostly kept up with writing about wargames here at A Fast Game, I’ve been feeling a bit like a failure in the actual playing of the games, writing what feels like a lot of unboxings (nineteen this calendar year, as of posting). I’ve often made plans to tackle a new game or revisit a favourite, only to have sickness, family responsibilities, an opponent’s sudden unavailability, or some other circumstance to nix those plans.

When I started pulling together the numbers, I was a little surprised. In truth, I’ve had a better gaming year than I had first thought. A couple of years ago, I started keeping a week-to-a-page diary, mostly to write down what games I had played (I also have a poor memory for ephemeral details). Working through this year’s journal, I realised I’d managed more games overall than I’d previously thought. It’s down from last year, but the overall count wasn’t as dismal as expected.

So, without further ado, let’s talk numbers.

 

Wednesday group

I have two regular gaming commitments in the normal run of things, and both have been a thing for more than a decade and a half. These are my regular Monday night game (though as often as not, it gets pushed out to Tuesday, occasionally Thursday) with my brother-in-law, We’ve been doing this most weeks since 2010. The other is an established Wednesday night group that I joined in 2008 as an RPG group, but that in the last six or seven years has been mixing up the game itinerary to include minis and board games. I’m deeply appreciative of both of these opportunities, and I know I’ve got it better than a lot of wargamers.

Taking the fight to the rebels. American Revolutionary War,
fought using the Valour & Fortitude rules.

Due to sicknesses and some other commitments, the Wednesday group only convened thirty-eight times this year. Twenty-one of those evenings were spent on Role Playing Games; there was a resurgence in RPGs with the Wednesday group compared to last year, but RPGs are what brought that group together in the first place. We played five RPGs, all new to the group, and all varying levels of fun and interesting. But we’re not here to talk about RPGs.

I’m proud to say I’ve been a part of the Wednesday group for seventeen years next March. In that time, we’ve played a lot of wargames (mostly minis), but it’s not a wargaming group, and I can’t count on getting my fix here. In 2025 we played sixteen non-RPG games all up (over seventeen weeks - we played Border Reivers: Anglo-Scottish Border Raids, 1513-1603 (GMT Games, 2023) and a six-player game of the Berg/Simonitch classic, Successors (Phalanx, 2021) each over two weeks), spread over nine games. Of these, five were minis games, two what I’d class as functional wargames – Border Reivers and Undaunted 2200: Callisto (Osprey Games, 2024), and two were co-operative franchise games with rather silly names but were nonetheless quite fun if I’m honest. We also played El Grande (Hans im Glück, 2015), of which David Thompson said he considered “the perfect game,” and wondered why anyone would bother making other games after playing it. Thankfully Mr Thompson has ignored his on position on this.

Undaunted 2200: Calisto. Familiar mechanics, new challenges.

I also got a couple of games in with Wednesday night host, B; two games each of Commands & Colors: Medieval – Expansion #1 Crusades Mid-Eastern Battles I (GMT Games, 2024), and The Hunt (Salt & Pepper Games, 2023). There was talk of other games, but each time plans slipped, or difficulties emerged. We managed to get a couple of games of The Hunt into an hour or so before our regular Wednesday night start-time, so that might be something we can replicate in the future; I’ve got a stable-mate of The Hunt, Operation Barclay (Salt and Pepper Games, 2024) that would fit the bill.

 

Monday night games

Illness and international travel took a toll on Monday night gaming with my brother-in-law, T through 2025 as well. When we started catching up for a quick game on Monday evenings in 2010, we averaged around meeting forty weeks out of fifty-two. In recent years that batting-average has become harder to achieve.

The battle of Lake Antioch (a thrashing for the Seljuq Turks). We played
a lot of C&C: Medieval - Crusades this year.

In 2025, we managed just twenty-six. Twenty-five of those sessions were wargames (sixteen of those, some flavour of Commands & Colors), but a few weeks ago, after a string of defeats and draws, T pulled out Century: Spice Road (Plan B Games, 2017), in which he maintains an unbroken string of wins since our second ever game.

 

Alone again, naturally

When I get a new game to the table, it’s almost always a solo endeavour (Breizh 1341 (Shakos, 2022) was an unusual exception to this). Sometimes I’ll dive straight into a game if, after going though the rules, I feel confident about it; I did this with Pacific Tide (Compass Games, 2019), and more recently, Drop Zone: Southern France (Worthington Publishing. 2025). But more often than not I’ll give the rules a onceover, have some non-directed play to familiarise myself with the workings of the game before I try to set up a scenario.

When a new game (or an unpunched second-hand one) arrives I’ll usually make a photo log of the components – not every game I purchase has got an unboxing here, but I like to be prepared – and ideally punch and clips the counters (at this point I have about a dozen unpunched games, but nearly all of these are bigger games, like Death Valley: Battles for the Shenandoah (GMT Games, 2019) that involve six or more counter-sheets, and that I haven’t sorted out storage solutions for yet). The smaller ones I’ll usually punch and bag immediately, and these are the ones I will tend to break out to just push some counters around and get a feel for the game  I don’t usually keep a record of these noodling sessions because it’s not really playing the game in the proper sense, and I tend to lose track of the games I start off this way. It does still warrant engagement with the game, however superficial, so I should be keeping track of these instances. I know this year I’ve gone that with All Are Brothers, Solforino, 1859 (Legion Wargames, 2025), Stalingrad Roads (Nuts! Publishing, 2024), Panzer Battles: 11th Panzer on the Chir River (Multi-Man Publishing, 2016), and some others, but I’d estimate I’ve done this with fourteen or fifteen games this year. For the sake of the stats, I’ll keep it to the eight or nine I can remember starting out like this. 

Gaming avenues	Wargames	Other	Total
Monday night (T)	25	1	26
Wednesday night (group)	12	26*	38
Other contested games (opponent)	-	7	7
Computer games	15	-	15
Solitaire	7	-	7
Try outs	8†	-	8
Totals	67	34	101

      * This count is in weeks played rather than games played.

        † This is an estimate based on the games I can recall. The actual number was maybe               another half-dozen or so instances higher.

 

The Spread

Now for a little analysis. This will cover just the full games I played, not the less serious noodling engagements. I have included what I think of as non-wargames, in this list, though technically the only two with no direct conflict, either between players or players vs. game, are Century: Spice Road and Odin’s Ravens (Osprey, 2016).

I played a total of thirty different games played in 2025 (plus five new RPGs). Only three new, physical games hit the table for a full play this year (five new games in all – I played through the entire eight scenarios of Bill Kalapoglou’s Arete (Molotov Cockatiel Games, 2025), which I’m hoping to write something about not far into next year, and another 2025 release, Rebel Fury (GMT Games/Hexes of War, 2025), which technically isn’t a new-to-me game, but was on a new platform. Two of the new games played were on my Ten Wargame Challenge list, but only one of those, Drop Zone: Southern France, was a new game. The other was Agincourt from the Men of Iron Tri-Pack (GMT Games, 2020). T was so impressed with the game he’s getting a copy in the second printing (which is scheduled for release in January ‘26).

It should come as no surprise that I got a lot of Commands & Colors games in through the course of the year. For our Monday game, if we’re playing at T’s house, nine times out of ten C&C-something will be set up and ready to go.

Dawn's Early Light - one of the non-C&C games we managed to get to get in
on a Monday evening. Or maybe a Tuesday.

So, the results are better than I anticipated. If I count all the times I’ve engaged with a game even superficially (which is still “playing” maybe just not with all of the rules yet), I’ve managed about two games a week. I have to be happy with that. I would have liked to get some more new games to the table, but there's little use in repining.

I’ll look a little more closely at some aspects of my gaming year in the last Quarterly Report for the year (I’ll add a link here when it’s posted on the blog). In this post, I just wanted to look at the numbers. You’ll have to wait for the rest of the story.

 

Simply the best?

I’m not a Top Ten person – I don’t see the value in pitting favourites against each other, though I can understand the appeal if you're a content creator looking to generate comments on your posts (I appreciate all the comments I get, but I'm not going to cajole readers into making them; I'm grateful enough for you all showing up). I’ve been lucky this year to have played a bunch of games that I’ve enjoyed at some or another level, not as many or as varied as I would like, but this is something to work on. Having said that, a couple of game experiences stood out. Here's something from the highlights reel.

Most played game

Hands down, Commands and Colors: Medieval – Crusades exp. Over a dozen plays over the course of the year, but we still haven’t worked all the way through the included scenarios. I’ve posted a lot of AARs for C&C-Crusades this year, as well, not every game, but the most interesting ones.

 

Best new (to me) two-player game

Drop Zone: Southern France. Dan Fournie has a talent for making fast-playing but nonetheless challenging and quite addictive games. I cite 1944: Battle of the Bulge (Worthington Publishing, 2020) as just one example, but Drop Zone was a labour of love for the designer; his father was among those who jumped into Southern France in the opening stages of Operation Dragoon. This game plays out quickly and smoothly, but success must be earned by either side.

American (green) and British paratroopers land, ready for a fight.
Drop Zone: Southern France.

I’ve only played this solo, and I’d like to take it out a couple of times with different opponents before I write up a review. In the meantime, I look forward to whatever Mr Fournie chooses to turn his design hand to next.

Honorary mention: Breizh 1431. Another taut, frustratingly good game that is done in an hour and takes up a quarter of the table space of Drop Zone.

 

Best new (to me) multi-player game

I really enjoyed Border Reivers, but the standout for me was Successors. For the wheeling and dealing at the table, it reminded me of Republic of Rome, but the game was much less abstract, with sieges to lay and alliances to break. A tense game right up to the last turn, but still a lot of fun. I think something that added to it was less than usual whining at the table – with six players, there is always somebody who feels they’re being unfairly put upon. There was still some of that with Successors, but with less longevity. Everybody could see that everybody was getting a kick in the ribs at one time or another; luck and fate were equal-opportunity obstructions.

The rather austere cover of the fourth edition of Successors, released by Phalanx. 
The image, and the square box put one in mind of an obscure Nordic Metal band. 

Honorary mention: El Grande. I don’t think I’ll ever be as big a fan as David Thompson, but this was a surprisingly deep game with multiple avenues to victory that didn’t outstay its welcome.