Blog note: Something of a milestone

 

Earlier today, A Fast Game reached a significant milestone. Sometime after midday local time, the blog reached 50,000 views. It’s currently a week shy of its two-year, nine-month anniversary (I began the project on January 31, 2023, posting my first entry that day after spending the previous fortnight before that writing or sketching out the first half-dozen posts).

Over the last two and three-quarter years, I’ve written a variety of subjects related to specific wargames or wargaming in general. In that time, I’ve posted 220 pieces and I usually have at least three in various states of incompletion at any given moment. I used to post reviews and some unboxings to one or another relevant group on Facebook, but I haven’t bothered with that in some time (though I still link AARs of games from my Ten Wargame Challenge to idjester’s Facebook group). I usually don’t go out of my way to promote A Fast Game; the folks at GMT Games are gracious enough to link reviews and unboxing posts to the product pages, but most publishers are only interested in YouTube content, which is fair enough because, as Carboard Commander mentioned in a recent livestream, nobody reads blogs anymore.

One of the things I'm working on at the moment is an unboxing of this two-game pack,
so of course I'm going to spend a couple of paragraphs on the significance
of the cover illustration.

Except apparently, they do. Or maybe I have a core fan-base of twenty-or-so loyal folks who have each visited the blog 2,500 times. Honestly, I don’t know. A Fast Game isn’t monetised, so I don’t have access to the super-duper analytics tools that I would otherwise be able to use, just raw numbers and a national breakdown that’s pointless when maybe 80% of readers are using VPN software (apparently, we’re big in Mexico).

I don’t have sponsorship arrangements with any store or publisher. I don’t seek out or accept free review copies. I’ve paid for every game that has appeared on the blog (often bought second-hand, but I’m always up-front about that). I only write about the games I have either really enjoyed or that do something worth mentioning, and probably really well. And I try to write about games the way I want to write about them, highlighting the things that interest me. I was never certain there would be an audience for the kind of things I post, but apparently there is. To the tune of 50,000 views in less than three years.

So, to my readers – both the regulars, the less-frequent visitors, and the newcomers – I want to say a most sincere thank you. When I started A Fast Game and I was only hitting a hundred views every other month or so, I decided I was going to keep writing so long as I was enjoying the process. Being a bit of a data-wonk, numbers like this give me an endorphin hit, but it’s still true, and I'm still enjoying it.

In the time I’ve been writing A Fast Game, the one thing that gave me the biggest thrill was when I was researching the feature on publishers’ attitudes to wargame awards; a designer/publisher who had a couple of games about the French and Indian War under his belt wrote me to complain that I’d cost him money – he’d been reading through the blog, and my review of 1759: Siege of Quebec (Worthington Games, 2022) made him go and order a copy. 

For me, that alone is enough of an endorsement to keep talking up games I think are worth the trouble. Writers have to write, but it’s always nice to think we're writing for an audience.

 

 

Stripped Down for Parts: Monty’s Gamble: Market Garden

 

 

 

I have a couple of Mike Rinella’s area impulse games (Last Battle: Ia Shima, 1945 (Take Aim Designs/Revolution Games, 2015) and Return to the Rock: Corregidor, 1945 (Take Aim Designs/Revolution Games, 2020); unboxing posts here and here respectively), both of which are fun to play, but quite brief; not unsatisfyingly so, but I’ve been curious as to how a larger game would play out. So, when a second-hand, unpunched copy of Monty’s Gamble: Market Garden (Multi-Man Publishing. 2019) came up one of the usual channels, I jumped on it.

Since then, it’s languished on my TBP stack for a few months while I’ve been distracted with other things. Since then, I’ve received and played WWII Commander: Vol. 2 - Market Garden (Compass Games, 2025 – here’s an unboxing and short AAR), and I thought it’s about time I showed Monty’s Gamble some joy.

The thing you don’t notice straight away is this is actually the Second Edition of Monty’s Gamble. The First Edition was also published by MMP, back in 2003. The thing is, there’s nothing on the box-cover to indicate the Second Edition IS a second edition.

The cover illustration, a montage of images from the period, all in line with the Market Garden theme, differentiates the second edition from the first, which features a peculiar portrait of a British paratrooper that looks like a lifeless mannequin. The box cover of the first edition was described by one BGG user as Paras in the uncanny valley.* The second edition cover is a vast improvement.

Box back.

The top of the box-back offers a teaser of the map (the region around Arnhem) and the counters, all at roughly true size. The blurb leads with the game being “a reprint of MMP’s highly acclaimed game of Operation Market Garden […],” and a short historical backgrounder for the uninitiated. We eventually learn (In the third paragraph) that this is an updated version of the original printed game, and now includes Fortress Holland, 1940, which was originally featured (counters and a rulebook) in Operations Special Issue #2. That’s right, with Second ed. Monty’s Gamble, you’re actually getting two games.

The game’s Complexity is rated Medium in MMP’s truncated three-tier rating scheme, and the Solitaire suitability is marked as High. This feels right from what I’ve seen so far. No indication on how long a game should take to play out; I guess I’m just going to have to find that out for myself. Also, no indication of age suitability, but I suppose the usual catch-all of “14+” would probably apply here as well.

Rulebook. 

Coming from Mr Rinella’s zip-loc bag games with their short but thorough rules, parred down to the very specific subject at hand, the 44-page book that comes with the second edition was a little daunting at first blush, but you shouldn’t be deterred by this. The rules for Monty’s Gamble only take up twenty-five well-spaced and illustrated pages.. Another six are devoted to some very well illustrated examples of play, while the last nine pages offer alternative rules for a second game, Fortress Holland, 1940.

Rulebook sample page: Example of Play and the Fortress Holland
bonus game rules. The rulebook is colour throughout.

The remaining pages are given over to the cover and a detailed Contents page. The rules are set out well, in dual columns, set in a nice readable Garamond-style font. A cursory read-through hasn’t raised any flags for difficulty understanding the concepts at play, but the proof will, of course, be in the play. Attention is given over to supply issues for both the Allies and Germans, which is how the situation should be approached. I’ve liked Mr Rinella’s rules in the past; they tend toward clarity and concision in the couple of other games of his I have played, and I don’t anticipate any departure from the standard here.

The map.

The map is a single, sightly oversized sheet (38 ½” by 24 ¼”, even though the back-of-the-box inventory states a standard 34” by 22”) covering the theatre of battle from Hoeze in the south the Heeve in the north. As previously mentioned the game is an area movement/control model, with a scale of roughly 1½ miles to a map inch, and is the work of noted wargame artist and designer, Nicolas Eskubi. The map art looks almost like a satellite representation of the terrain, overlaid with road and rail paths, bridges, and towns, along with white chalk-line markings separating the landscape into controllable areas for the regulation of movement and measuring of success. Each area of the map is bound by the white markings or by watercourses where the white boundaries meet rivers or canals.

Map detail: Nijmegen and environs.

Historically, the action of Operations Market and Garden took place in a long salient corridor along a highway dubbed the Club Route by the planners, with American, British, and Polish paratroopers dropping in to secure a series of key bridges, and the British XXX Armoured Corps rushing to secure a line of supply and relieve the beleaguered paras. The map reflects this, with the playable area running diagonally across the map-sheet, flanked at diagonally opposite corners by crucial charts and record tracks.

Map detail: the Allied Tracking corner.

I like a game that manages to fit the tracking needs for play actually on the board; this saves a lot of time otherwise spent rifling through PACs or (the horror) the rulebook, thereby breaking the cadence of play. Here the Axis player tracks the Game Turn and Impulse quotas, as well as their own Air Interdiction and Construction capabilities, while the Allied player tracks Supply and Victory Points, and their Bombardment and Drop Supply capabilities and availability of Assault Boats for river crossing. Each side can also access some crucial tables (Bridge Seizure/Bridge Demolition, Bombardment resolution and Attrition Points), and a mnemonic key for Isolation rolls, another key characteristic of the action around the operation.

My only gripe with the map is the folding; it’s folded into four sections length-wise (three folds) and three width-wise (two folds). I understand the necessity for this – with the extra couple of inches width and length a standard eight-section fold wouldn’t allow the map to fit into the box. The extra fold peaks will necessitate the use of a plexi-glass sheet, which I do have, but at 36” by 24” (poster size), it isn’t going to completely cover the map, which will annoy me more than it reasonably should. I’ll try to not take it out on the game when I come to review it.

Counter sheets 1&3.

Counter sheets 2&4.

Monty’s Gamble comes with four counter sheets of 5/8” counters on white-core cardstock; two full sheets, one half sheet and one quarter-ish sheet. The counters aren’t chunky, but they’re thick enough to not be awkward to play with on the map. The counters needed for the Market Garden are to be found on the two full-sized sprues, and nearly all the counters for the Fortress Holland game are provided on the two cut-down counter-sheets. Nearly half of the counters across the two games are administrative or mnemonic markers for recording area control and unit status, along with the expected Turn and VP markers and such.

The unit counters are clearly readable, in keeping with MPP’s good work in this regard. They are comprise of the somewhat standard mix of NATO symbols for leg units with armour represented by a silhouette of most prevalent vehicle type in the unit. These are predominantly battalion- and regiment-sized units, though some brigades and even divisions are represented. Personally, I don’t mind all NATO symbols, but I don’t begrudge others their tanks if it helps create a more immersive play experience. 

German Set-up and Reinforcement sheets.

Each side gets two light cardstock sheets. The German player has a Set-Up card and a Reinforcement card. By dint of having fewer units on the board at the outset, the German Set-up card also features a Sequence of Play, as well as a list of optional unit directives for the Airborne Landing Phase, and priorities for retreat of units (these apply to both sides).

Allied Set-up and Reinforcement sheets.

The Allied player receives an Allied Set-Up and D-Day Sequence of Play card and an Allied Reinforcements card. The D-Day Sequence of Play is a simple three-phase process with another couple of lines outlining some limitations to the Allied actions in this part of the turn. A little of the play is scripted in the initial turn; paratrooper units can choose to attempt to seize their target bridge, but they are then Spent for the turn, which will have ramifications in any ensuing combat, while the Allied player must conduct an Assault action with at least one armoured Guards unit from among their initial XXX Corps land units in the opening turn.

Box and dice, with a friendly packing note from the folks at MMP.

The box is roughly standard size and 1½" deep. The construction card is on the lighter side, but perfectly adequate for the contents, which don’t add up to too much weight. The game come with four six-sided dice – two red and two white. The rules advise the white dice are for German use, and the red for the Allies. Combat rolls are simultaneous, and the rules recommend both players make their rolls into the same receptacle, and stipulate that if a die lands outside the tray, only that die is re-rolled (something that some folks apparently take issue – or liberties – with). The dice will be familiar to anyone who has purchased or played MMP games in the past. They are a little smaller than I prefer, but are perfectly suitable for the task.

 

 

* Replying to the comment on BGG, Mr Rinella was quick to mention he did not sign off on the original cover design.

 

 

State of Play: Sarmada - 29 June 1119 - "Field of Blood" (Commands & Colors: Medieval – Crusades Exp.)

 

 

Scenario set-up.

Another Monday Tuesday Night game at T’s; another Commands & Colors: Medieval (GMT Games 2019) Crusades (GMT Games, 2024) scenario. This time we visited the field of Sarmada, site of the Battle of Ager Sanguinis ([the] Field of Blood). T took his traditional role the Crusaders, in this case Roger of Salerno, in an incursion that took place in the brief lull between the formal First and Second Crusades, while I played the Artuqid Turk defenders, under the leadership of Il-Ghazi.

The scenario covers a portion of the situation of battle. For background; after a couple of years of uneasy peace in the region following the death of Ridwan of Aleppo in 1113, Roger captured Azaz in 1118, which left Aleppo vulnerable to attack. Il-Ghazi, under whose rule Aleppo had fallen at Ridwan’s demise, recognised the danger facing the city, and had crossed the Euphrates River with his army, making camp less than a day’s ride south of Aleppo. There he was to wait for another contingent of the supporters under Toghtekin of Damascus, but he received intelligence of Roger being on the move.

Not a bad opening hand.

The night before the battle, Il-Ghazi encircled the Crusader camp, which only realised their predicament at first light. The only avenue that offered a chance of survival for Roger and his men was to attempt to break through the envelopment. This scenario reflects that attempt to escape through the Artuqid lines.

The Artuqid move first in the Sarmada scenario. I opened with an Order Medium Troops, which saw five of my Medium Cavalry descend on T’s Turcopole mounted archers on his Left flank (my Right), and the Medium Cavalry vanguard on his Centre/Right. The Retreat and Panic rule is in play for the Crusaders in this scenario, and this, rather than straight combat, led to my first Banner of the game, with both Turcopole Cavalry fleeing and breaking, one completely lost and the other reduced to half strength. Pressing their advantage, the brave Medium Cavalry took on a Knight Cavalry unit under the leadership of Robert of St Lo. Though reduced, Robert’s men stood firm against the onslaught. On my left, my second banner was temporarily denied me as a Crusader Medium Cavalry unit weathered my cruel attacks, trading nearly man for man. In response, the Crusaders adjusted their ranks but didn’t engage.

Taking the fight to the enemy: five Medium Cavalry descend
on the Crusader front line.

My second order was to five Light units, none of which needed to move to be able to strike with their bows; this winnowed down some of T’s forces by a block or two, particularly his Right. T Responded with a Leader Right Section card that drove into my thinner Left and earned his first banner for the game.

Robert of St Lo valiantly held his ground.

While the Dice god seems to have forgiven T for his past infraction, the god of the Cards still takes umbrage, dealing my opponent unhelpful hands. Nearly all of T’s efforts too place in the centre, which by the third turn I’d begun to hollow out. 

The Card god continued to smile down on me, offering a useful card for every turn in the action. But those who the gods would cast down, they first build up; I tried to save myself the indignity of a second banner loss in the third round, when Geoffrey the Monk’s Knight Cavalry hit one of my reduced Medium Cavalry units on his Right, but my rolls amounted to naught and the squadron was swept away in a deluge of crossed-swords and helmet results.

End state. Not much left on the board for the Crusaders.

With the scores at 6-2 in favour of the historical victors, we entered the seventh round. In my last turn I needed just one more banner to seal the seven-point game. The Leaders card allows a side to commit all their Leaders and any attached troops, which may manoeuvre as normal but will attack in close combat with an additional die. All of my leaders had at least partial units attached, and so I went at it. As is our habit of long standing, we played out the whole round – I took all intended actions while T responded where and as he could. I took a banner in the first round of combat for the turn, winning the game. As the bouts continued, we exchanged two more banners each, bringing the final score to a convincing 9-4.

Crusader casualties: seven full units, Robert of St Lo and Guy de Frenelle.

T has broken his non-scoring streak, which made for a more satisfying win. Historically we’re pretty evenly matched across all the flavours of Commands & Colors, though we’ve both experienced losing streaks. The longest was recorded by me, with fourteen consecutive losses. There’s no telling when that particular brand of lightning nay strike again, but it wasn’t this week.

 

Artuqid cards played.

 

State of Play (quick take): The Hunt

 

  

The Hunt: little board, big ocean.

Last Wednesday we lost our Chief of Security to an unseen menace in our third session of Mothership 1E (Tuesday Knight Games). But I’m not here to talk about that.

Last week, our host, B, asked me if I could get over earlier to squeeze in a short game before dinner. After some juggling, I managed to get over about an hour and ten before anyone else was due.

The game on offer was The Hunt (Salt & Pepper Games, 20230, designed by Matthias Cramer and Engin Kunter (now, I believe, Engin Cramer). This was my first play of a Salt & Pepper game. I bought Maurice Suckling’s Operation Barclay (Salt & Pepper Games, 2024) earlier this ear, but alas, haven’t got it to the table yet.

The Graf Spee status display at the bottom edge of the board,
with the Oiler Altmark on station inn hex 24.

Salt & Pepper specialise in small footprint games that offer immersive, out-sized play experiences. The Hunt is a cat-and-mouse game of hidden movement and subterfuge, abstractly playing out the interdiction operations of the over-gunned German cruiser (or “pocket” battleship) Admiral Graf Spee, operating in the South Atlantic during the early part of the Second World War against British commercial shipping. One player plays the Germans, operating the (hidden) Graf Spee and an oiler for resupply, while the British player begins with one task force on the hunt for the German cruiser, and two convoys heading either to or from the United Kingdom. These are the targets for the Graf Spee.

The Cruiser is never actually on the board; it’s not represented by a playing piece. Instead, its location is hidden from the British player, its movements recorded by the German player who each turn writes down the speed (number of hexes moved) and registers the new location (the board’s hexes are numbered). Operations from turn to turn are conducted by playing cards for their points value (or for their event, which will sometimes dictate a number of points the player is allowed to expend after committing the event function). Each player has their own deck of Event cards, and these are also used in combat rounds.

Card sample. These are from the British deck, (pictured top right), and can be used for
their Action Points value, the Event described on the bottom half of the card, or as an
assist to a search (the bottom band with the pictured binoculars and hint markers).

The German player must try to avoid the Task Force (or potentially Task Forces as the game progresses), and attempt to sink the commercial shipping, which it can do by conducting a successful search.

In the space of an hour we managed nearly two games – to be fair, the first game was just three rounds long, resulting in a successful search for the cruiser by the British Task Force. Combat ensued between the Graf Spee and the Task Force, resulting in a win for the Kriegsmarine. We were about six rounds into the second game with maybe another two before things came to a head, but the others were arriving so we decided to pull up stumps.

Task Force G escorts a convoy headed to Britain, sure that
the German cruiser must surely be close.

The Hunt is an engaging game, brilliant in its simplicity and depth of play. I feel like I’m just scratching the surface of what is going on here. I’ll be able to talk more analytically and less gushy about is after a couple more plays, so stay tuned.

 

 

State of Play: Tel Danith - 14 September 1115 (Commands & Colors: Medieval – Crusades Exp.)

 

Camping, Crusader-style.

Sometimes I feel bad for my long-time Monday game night partner and longer-time brother-in-law, T. In all flavours of Commands & Colors we’re pretty evenly matched. But every so often the gods of dice and cards take umbrage at some perceived offence, and in their petty manner they contrive to deny him any gaming satisfaction.

To wit, this week we played at T’s place, so, of course, a scenario from the Crusades Expansion* (GMT Games, 2024) for Commands & Colors: Medieval (GMT Games 2019), as set up and ready to go when I arrived. This time, it was Tel Danith; I went to sit on the Seljuk side, but T insisted I was to take charge of the Crusader forces. After our previous exchange and the humbling 6-0 defeat he recently suffered as the Seljuks at Harran, T would have been eager to return to the Crusader camp, but he insisted, and I didn’t argue.

Initial set-up.

On the face of it, the Seljuks may have an advantage in numbers – twenty units on the board, compared with the Crusaders’ fourteen. For mobility the Seljuks have fourteen mounted units to the Crusaders’ eight, although five of those are Knight Cavalry. On top of that, all the Seljuk Medium Cavalry are armed with bows. Personal artillery seems to have a greater diminishing effect in C&C Medieval than in any other flavour of Command & Colors.

I’ve learned the hard way not to underestimate a smaller Crusader force (again playing the Seljuks), receiving a particularly clarifying lesson on the shores of Lake Antioch. There, a combination of the disfavour of the card and dice gods on my part, along with some clever execution of orders and outstanding rolls on T’s side, saw an 8-1 victory for the Crusaders.

First blood (and poor sticker application).

The situation in this scenario is as follows; supporting Crusader forces gathered to Baldwin I of Jerusalem’s aid when news was received of an invasion lead by Bursuq under the auspices of the Sultan. When Bursuq heard of the gathering force, he demurred, crossing the border once again. When some of the Crusader forces had dispersed, Bursuq, himself having lost some of his forces due to internal disputes, chose to attack Jerusalem with his own diminished but still viable army. Baldwin’s superior intelligence warned him of the danger, and he rode out to meet the treat, descending on Bursuq’s army while they were setting camp. The Seljuks counterattacked, but at the end of the day, the bloodied Crusaders prevailed.

The first five Orders for the Crusaders,

My Crusaders opened with movement on the Right flank, making for the camp tiles on that side. A special rule states that if a Crusader unit occupies a Camp hex at the beginning of their turn, the player can remove it; when all four are removed, the Crusader player earns a permanent victory banner. It took five rounds to accomplish, but the decampment of the Seljuk aggressors earned my fourth banner.

In all, the bout covered eight rounds. Auxilia, Medium Infantry, and Light Bow Cavalry fell like wheat before the scythe. Everywhere was blood and fear.

End state.

Whatever led to T’s loss, it could not be blamed on a lack of fighting spirit. With what cards he had (and with the occasional murmur of, “Who dealt this rubbish?”), he brought the fight to the Crusaders. This may have been his downfall. In the same situation, I would have (where I could) use my light troops as artillery, trying to pick off the enemy as I could with arrows and javelins rather than committing them to near certain death. In consecutive ruounds, two banners were secured for the Crusaders by defending units putting multiple retreat results on Seljuq Light Cavalry, forcing them off the board

If I have a score advantage, I can often get a little callous with my troops, taking greater risks to press an advantage. I’m willing to risk the loss of a unit or even a leader if it will bring me closer to victory. In this case, an Order Two Units Left allowed me to activate the Turcopole Light Bow Cavalry on my Left who, capitalising on their accomplishments on the previous turn, gained the last three banners I needed to secure a win of 8-0.

Seljuq banners and casualties.

T must have greatly offended the gods of chance. While his Seljuq army (at least the ones he could bring into the contest with his limited card options) fought bravely, and sent many Crusader souls to their eternal rest, he once again could not gain a single banner.

 

* I tend to use the Crusades Expansion as short-hand for what, in truth, should be referred to as “Commands & Colors: Medieval – Expansion #1 Crusades Mid-Eastern Battles I”. This distinction is crucial, as the I at the end of Mid-Eastern Battles suggests at least a second set in development, and, of course, the Holy Land wasn’t the only place that saw Crusader battles. I for one would be overjoyed to see an expansion covering major battles from the Northern Crusades, a crucial but often overlooked portion of European history.

2025 Q3 Report: the loneliness of the long-distance blogger

 

The art of the long view (Artillery forward observer, Guadalcanal, 1942). 

 

You can also check out my previous activities for 2025 in the Quarterly Reports for Q1 and Q2, if you really have nothing better to do with your time.

 

And suddenly here we are at the end of September (at time of writing) so. three-quarters of the way through the year, it’s time to look back, evaluate and remonstrate in a Quarterly Report. This is the third for the calendar year; long-term readers will be familiar with the format, and I’m confident new visitors will be able to work it out as they go, so I’ll skip the long preamble and get to it.

 

Games played

I have two “regular” game nights in a given week, Mondays with my brother-in-law who I refer to as T, and Wednesday, which has been a thing now for eighteen years. I put inverted commas around regular because, in the words of Yogi Berra, “In theory, there’s no difference between Theory and Practice, but in practice, there is.”

Congestion on the Club Route; WWII Commander - Market Garden.

Last year, the Wednesday group got quite a few wargames – some boardgames, some miniatures - in among the occasional Role-Playing Game. In the last couple of years we’ve been doing a tour of the classics, getting Here I Stand (GMT Games, 2006), Republic of Rome (Avalon Hill, 1990), Successors (Fourth Ed. - Phalanx, 2021) and Empires of the Ancient World (Warfrog, 2000). This year, the roles have reversed (no pun intended), and RPGs are the order of the day, punctuated with (usually) a couple of weeks of historical minis. On this front, we got some table time with some English Civil War action using the Pikeman’s Lament (Osprey Games, 2017). I really quite like these rules; they are simple enough to pick up at the table, and don’t get too fussy regarding manoeuvre. A given unit roll a handful of dice in attack until its reduced to half strength, then the dice are halved. Two games played as the Royalists, the first convincingly won, the second comprehensively lost, but a lot of fun both times.

As mentioned, all the other weeks were taken up with role-playing. In early July we finished up a game of Cartel (Magpie Games, 2020). We went on to Daggerheart (Darrington Press, 2025) for about seven sessions, and the last couple of weeks we’ve been playing Mothership 1E (Tuesday Knight Games, 2024). Variety is the spice of life, so I’m told.

C&C Medieval: the Crusades - Battle of Harran set-up, with Claude. He is clumsy
 of tail and dismissive of games generally, but very affectionate,
and likes nothing more than sitting on PACs.

As for Monday (sometimes Tuesday) Night games, we managed six games out of twelve weeks, a little better than I had anticipated. Most of the off-weeks were from T being overseas, either recreationally or with work. We’ve played a lot of scenarios from the Crusades Expansion (GMT Games, 2024) for Commands & Colors: Medieval (GMT Games, 2019) this year, three just this quarter. I also managed to get three other games (two which only arrived this quarter). Here’s the short list, with accompanying write-ups:

- Dawn’s Early Light: the War of 1812 (Compass Games, 2020) (Ten Game Challenge AAR)

- C&C: M (C) – Ascalon AAR, Harran ARR, Tel Danith (EDIT: AAR can be found here)

- WWII Commander, Vol. 2: Market Garden (Compass Games, 2025) (unboxing; AAR)

- Breizh 1341 (Shakos, 2022) (unboxing; AAR)

I feel like I’ve stalled at four games ticked off my Ten Wargame Challenge list. The War Room, the YouTube program that has run variations on a Ten Game Challenge for the last four or five years. At the beginning of this year, people were invited to submit a list of ten games they intended to play, along with two substitute titles they could swap out for games in the main list. I posted my list here, and on idjester’s Tac-Up Facebook group; Jester kept log of everyone’s submissions and ticked off the games when we would post proof of play – photos or an AAR – to the group.

Mike's experiment in Democracy

Recently the show was disbanded, and I haven’t heard anything conclusive about the future of the Challenge. Meandering Mike (who hosts one of my favourite YouTube channels - go subscribe if you haven't already - I'll wait) posted a survey for his viewers regarding whether he should proceed with his list. I voted in the “finish the complete list” camp, so I’d be a hypocrite if I didn’t at least make an effort to finish mine. I have four down, with another six to go. I may get it done, but if I don’t complete ten games total, I should be able to squeeze in another three or four at least. I’m resigned to playing most or all of whatever I get done on my own, with the possible exceptions of Panzer Battles: 11th Panzer on the Chir River (Multi-Man Publishing, 2016), Waterloo, 1815: Fallen Eagles II (Hexasim, 2022), and possibly A Most Fearful Sacrifice: the Three Days of Gettysburg (Flying Pig Games, 2022).

 

Collection development

I have been trying to wind back the number of games I’ve been buying, but the actual numbers suggest otherwise. This quarter saw the collection grow nearly as much as the last two combined. Some of this was from games I’d already paid for; a number of crowd-funded games arrive, as well as some preorders. I have been deciding against buying some games, or postponing purchases, but I’ve also been picking up some titles on the second-hand market. The fact is, I’ve received nearly as many games in the first three quarters of 2025 as I did in the whole of 2024.

Around the first week of July I received my January P500 orders from GMT. This was their first experiment with Australia-friendly shipping, and it took a little longer than anyone expected. I wasn’t panicking, but I was relieved when a box arrived containing Fields of Fire, Deluxe Edition (GMT Games, 2025), Fighting Formations: US 29th Infantry Division (GMT Games, 2025 – you can check out my unboxing post here), In the Shadows (GMT Games, 2025 – unboxing post here), and the 2025 Replacement Counter-sheet.

Also arriving this quarter was the monumental Rock of Chickamauga (Flying Pig Games, 2025), the second volume n the Black Swan series. I had said I should have an unboxing post of the first volume, A Most Fearful Sacrifice, but that’s been let slide, like a couple of other games. Now Chickamauga has arrived, it’s an opportunity to do a compare and contrast, either as a single post or back to back posts.

Third Quarter haul. Missing are 1811 Albuera, and the
Replacement Counter Sheet from GMT.

I’m a relatively new convert to Gamefound. Around the beginning of the year, I backed three separate projects on the platform, and this quarter two of them found their way to my door. The first was a Shakos game, Rex Britannorum (Shakos, 2025 – get a peek here), to which I’d added a copy of their reprinted Breizh 1341 (see above). Next was 1811: Albuera, Second Edition (Tactical Workshop, 2025 – unboxing here). I’m hoping to see my other outstanding Gamefound preorder this coming quarter - Carl Paradis’s Battle Commander, Volume 1 (Sound of Drums ~2025), the first in a series of (as I understand it) six volumes covering he major theatres of the Napoleonic Wars. Volume 1 will cover Napoleon’s Italian campaigns. More on this, of course, when it arrives.

One of the reasons for the no-game Mondays mentioned above was T being overseas a lot. This included a trip to San Francisco for a medical conference.  Which meant an order from Noble Knight Games. I’d settled on just two games (like I said, I’m trying to rein in my acquisitions a little); I picked Napoleon’s Wheel (Operational Studies Group, 2020), and Radetzky’s March: The Road to Novara (Dissimula Editzioni, 2023), the second edition Sergio Schiavi’s first release through his company, Dissimula Editzioni. Nineteenth century conflicts are becoming more of a focus for me, both in reading and games, at least when I get a chance to play something that isn’t Commands and Colors: Medieval.

At the last minute I added WWII Commander, Volume 2: Market Garden (links above, in the Games played section). We’ve had a lot of fun with its sister game, WWII Commander, Volume 1: Battle of the Bulge (Compass Games, 2020), so it was an easy choice.

I also made a couple of opportunistic purchases of second-hand games that showed up on my radar. After long resistance to going down the GBoH rabbit-hole (too hard, too fussy, too expensive), I gave in and bought a very reasonably-priced, partially (less than a half a counter-sheet) punched copy of The Great Battles of Alexander: the Macedonian Art of War (GMT, 2015), which I may yet have resisted if it hadn’t been the 2023 printing which incorporated the Tyrant expansion (GMT Games, 2003), which brought up the number of scenarios to an impressive thirty-one. I haven’t factored this into my play schedule for the year, but having crossed this particular Rubicon, I may try to get it to the table in the coming year, which really isn’t all that far away.

My other second-hand purchases were also GMT games; an unpunched copy of the 1914: Glory’s End / When Eagles Fight Dual Pack (GMT Games, 2014), and a pre-loved Grand Illusion: Mirage of Glory, 1914 (GMT Games, 2004), both by Ted Raicer, the man who literally wrote the book on the subject - Crowns in the Gutter (Strategy & Tactics Press, 2010). I don’t have a lot of WWI games, and I didn’t have any that cover the Eastern Front, so another collection gap is now filled.

The Defiant One. Eustace, brother to Claude, is his sibling's opposite in nature.
He's a biter and is not satisfied until he draws blood, and he doesn't like me
very much, but to his credit he is generally respectful of set-up games.

I've played Breizh 1341 twice now, and tinkered with Rex Britannorum and Into the Shadows. I'm hoping to spend some time between now and Christmas getting to know the Fighting Formations system better, and I'm currently reading the series rules for the Library of Napoleonic Battles series; this is another one I'd like to noodle around with by myself before I try to introduce anyone else to it. 

 

Blog activity

A Fast Game saw a mere fifteen posts this quarter, an average of five a month. That's more than some quarters past, but I think I can do better.My posting cycle has been patchy at best, with long breaks in transmission, followed by feverish attempts to catch up. In July I only put up three posts. This was supposed to be four, but I mis-timed the posting of my last Quarterly Report by a couple of hours and slipped into the June count. I made a little better effort with six posts in August, and another six in September. Of these, six were unboxing posts (under the auspices of Stripped Down for Parts; unboxings are something I’ve talked about here and elsewhere before, but I want to come back to in a bit), five After Action Reports (these are mostly what appear under the heading, State of Play), and my first Feature piece and a follow-up Executive Summary of the report’s findings, one Public Service Announcement, and a belated, bedevilled review.

L'Estocq prevails at Elbing. Napoléon 1807.

To wit, I finally posted a review of Napoléon 1807 (Shakos, 2020 – you can find that here). Despite my best intentions, I’ve slipped on reviews this year. Part of my shortfall is due to the games I’ve been playing of late. When I do get a game in it is more often than not something I’ve already reviewed (I present Exhibit A – C&C Medieval). As I’ve stated numerous times, I’m not comfortable playing a game’s shortest scenario just once, then proclaiming a deep enough understanding of it to advise others on its qualities, which is essentially what a review does. My stated low limit is three games played before I start preparing a review, then I’ll try to get another play or two in before completing it. I played Napoleon 1807 eight or nine times over about six months (time away from a game to think about it and its possibilities is also crucial, in my opinion). Revisiting a game will offer more insight into what is happening, how the whole set of systems and sub-systems work to create a narrative of conflict, with all its vagaries, missteps, and accidents happy and unhappy. Nobody can rightly claim to understand a game after a single play. At best they may be able to discuss the superficial or surface interactions of the game’s systems. I’m rarely playing a new game as it was intended to be played before the second game; embarrassingly, sometimes it takes a third run to get that far. I’ve read or seen too many reviews or (more honestly) first impressions where the reviewer seems to be talking about a different game to the one in front of them, I get there’s pressure to put out new content, but every game, even the less than great ones, deserve some time spent and consideration given. A Fast Game is probably not the place to come if you want reviews of the latest games, but hopefully the reviews I post will be worth the reader’s time. Here the rant endeth.

I’ve recently realised something about myself and the way I engage with wargames. When I’m playing a game, if I’m enjoying it, I rarely experience any difficulty immersing myself in the unfolding narrative, feeling every small win or setback, every bit of the thrill of victory or the agony of defeat, even if I play it down in front of an opponent. Yet when I come to think back on the game I’ve just played, usually a couple of days later if I’m writing an AAR, I find myself capable only of engaging with the remembered game analytically, in terms of mechanics and the quirks of fortune. I’m not sure there’s anything I can do about that, but some readers seem to like the play-reports I’ve been posting, so I will probably stick to what we have going on for now, but I’m a little in awe of those that can spin a story out of the raw facts of the mechanical results of a game in their retelling.

The numbers say I'm doing something right. Over the last three months, A Fast Game has had a little shy of 9,600 visits, a little over three thousand a month (though in reality, July was a stellar month for visits, my second highest after June 2025, then I slumped to barely seventeen hundred in August). Most visitors just come in through the front page and read whatever is most recently posted, but seven posts - a mix of reviews, AARs and a couple of unboxings - are hitting near or over four hundred direct visits, and two of those - both reviews - are well over the five-hundred-visit mark. And no, that doesn't, mean it's time to start advertising (this is more out of laziness then any kind of high-mindedness, I'm sure).

 

Extra-curricular activities

Regular visitors to this blog will probably be aware that I’m a fan of the Charles S. Roberts Awards. Actually, I’m a fan of wargame awards in general – they highlight and celebrate good design and production, and prompt discussion among gamers. They have the potential to raise awareness of wargames outside the confines of our sometimes clique-y groups and fora, and they can shine a light on obscured gems that deserve more attention.

In recent years there’s been a school of thought within our broad church questioning the need or validity of wargame awards. I spend way too much time thinking about stuff like this, and I began to wonder how wargame publishers felt about the awards they vie for or get overlooked by. So, I sent a short questionnaire out to a bunch of companies and a subset of those wrote back. You can read about the whole ordeal and the results here (and if 5,000+ words is too much to face, you can get an executive summary here but it’s worth scanning through for the quotes). I am still astounded by the number of companies that wrote back to me (I’m not that big a deal). Pulling the data together, interrogating it and parsing some findings out of it took longer than I expected and impacted on my blog post output, but overall is was a lot of fun and I got to correspond with some interesting people, and I'm pretty happy with how it came out.

I haven’t been doing any more playtesting since With the Hammer (Conflict Simulations Ltd, 2025), and I’m okay with that. I’m a much better proofer/editor; I don’t possess the “let’s break this thing” gene necessary for useful playtesting. I would like to do some further scenario development for Afrika Army Korps (Conflict Simulations Ltd, 2025). I’m proud of what I helped put together for the game release and I wanted to do more but ran out of time. Again, this relies on time and energy, both of which are finite resources, but I’ll post them on BGG as they’re done, and, of course, mention them here.

 

What’s next

At this stage I don’t have any big plans for A Fast Game between now and the end of the year. I’d like to finish my declared Ten Wargame Challenge, even though the exercise feels a little pointless now, after the implosion of The War Room (I was never really in it for the prizes; A Fast Game originally started out of a misunderstanding about the Ten Wargame Challenge, which I’ve talked about before, but this was the first time I participated in the real thing). I may try to come up with something for next year, or try again if somebody decides to declare a wargame challenge like the War Room folks had done. 

I have a couple of ideas for pieces I’d like to write. I’m sketching out another two or maybe three posts of different aspects of block wargames (the Not Created Equal posts); you would have seen another one by now had I not got tunnel vision with the Value Proposition survey piece. I’m also thinking about a series of really narrow-focus interview pieces with people with more expertise than me. Like the Survey report, these will probably just follow my own obsessions, but they may be of interest to others. Time will tell. I also want to write more reviews, but this means I need to play new games - or revisit old favourites - more than once or twice.

I’m also going to try to get myself some more table time. When I have the opportunity to play a game, even a short one, I’ve been doing something else instead, and that hasn’t always been something that needs to be done right then. T and I have missed a lot of weeks for our Monday night games, and rather pull out a solitaire game instead, I’ve been either writing, reading, or (less productively) catching up on YouTube videos. Hell, even my wife has been telling me to play a short game for myself when I have a free night. I suspect, for all my good intentions, I still won’t get as many games out as I’ perhaps should, but I’m going to try to be more mindful of the option.

Thanks for reading this far. If you think I'm doing something right or wrong, please leave a comment. And if there's something you'd like to see on A Fast Game, or something you think would be worth the time to research, get in touch (comment or email).