Next year's words: three years of A Fast Game

 

 

Saint Jerome in his Study, by Albrecht Dürer. While undeniably a beautiful work by a pre-
eminent artist, I think we can comfortably assume Dürer had never seen an actual lion.

 

"For last year's words belong to last year's language. And 

next year's words await another voice."

— T.S Eliot, Little Gidding (Four Quartets)

 

Three years ago today, I launched A Fast Game is a Good Game. Three years later (today) I can say with some pride that A Fast Game is still up, and still (fairly regularly) presenting new – and I hope interesting and informative – material. I went into it with a couple of specific goals, one of which was to see out a full year. A Fast Game began as an adjunct to another wargame project, but over time it’s morphed into its own thing, and three years on, people are still visiting and reading the blog; in late October A Fast Game reached a milestone of 50,000 views, a figure I hadn't expected to reach until I was some way into 2026. Now, at the end of it's third year, the blog just topped 65,000 views. In the last year A Fast Game has received more than double the number of visits the blog had gotten in its first two years combined. Many of those visits are the result of the continued support of good folks like Rachel at GMT Games, Jerry from the Cardboard Commander blog and podcast, and Brant from the Armchair Dragoons. Thank you, all.

If you want a potted history of how we got to here, you could do worse than read last year’s anniversary post. That should bring you up to speed without getting too deep into the tall grass – I’m getting better at keeping my indulgences brief. You could say the blog began with a misunderstanding, and I’ve been buggering things up since. But along the way I’ve learned a lot, played quite a few more games than I otherwise might have, met some interesting, like-minded folks, and had a lot of fun.

Evidence of a quiet evening in, clipping Desert Blitzkrieg (Compass Games, 2025).

A Fast Game runs to two cycles. Regular readers will know I keep a calendar-year record, and present various wargame- and blog-related goings-on in a quarterly report (the next will be due at the end of March, if you’re interested; if you’re even more interested, you can click on the “Quarterly Report” subject heading in the column to the right and be confronted with all of them, starting with the most recent). But my first post for A Fast Game, went up on January 31, 2023, so this (today, I mean) is the actual anniversary of the blog, and it’s become a thing to me to mark the date with an entry separate and apart from the usual stuff.

Year three has been a mix of good and less good. We had a death in the family late 2024 that cast more of a shadow over the last twelve months than any of us were expecting. That and a third bout of COVID (not as bad as the first two, but awful enough), along with other less serious ailments kind of set the tone for the year, which had an impact on output for A Fast Game.

I haven’t written as much this year as I did in the one previous, but more than in the first year of A Fast Game. At the beginning I thought two posts a week, about a hundred a year, would be workable. I nearly made this count in 2023-24, but the number has steadily dropped over successive years, with 2025 being punctuated by long gaps, sometimes a fortnight or more. Still, I’d rather post worthwhile content than make targets, but I am going to try to maintain a more regular output. Here are the relevant numbers.

 

* The first post to A Fast Game was supposed to go live on February 1, 2023,
however, due to the vagaries of International Time Zones, Blogger disagreed,
and so the official launch date is the 31st.

If A Fast Game was a novel, it would be a bit longer than David Copperfield, but would fall somewhat short of Don Quixote. Over the last three years, I’ve written ninety-four After Action Reports, fifty-seven unboxings and twenty-seven reviews. I’d like to up the number of reviews, try for twelve to fifteen a year. I also don’t write up every game I play. I do try to capture the interesting ones, and those that highlight something the game does well. I also have three or four more unboxings to write up even now (as well as some new games due this quarter). Stay tuned.

As for the coming year, I’ve already written at length about my abbreviated plans here (with a minor amendment here), so I won’t rehash all of that, except to say that I hope to get more games in generally this year than last. I’d like to spend some time working on something bigger, like last year’s research project or 2024’s two-part rumination on how to build a wargame library, but at this stage I have absolutely nothing in mind. I’m open to suggestions if anyone has any thoughts.

I intend to wind back spending money on new games in the coming year (though that’s what I said in 2025). As a result, you may see some more time and attention spent on older ones. Or to evoke Eliot once more:

“We shall not cease from exploration / And the end of all our exploring /

Will be to arrive where we started / And know the place for the first time.”

 

 

State of Play: Commands and Colors Tricorne: The American Revolution - Yorktown

 

 

 

Initial assault on Redoubt No. 9; an inauspicious start.

We had our last game of 2025, and I told T to surprise me. And surprise me he did. For our diversion, he’d set up the Yorktown scenario from the French and More! Expansion (Compass Games, 2018) for Commands & Colors Tricorne: The American Revolution (Compass Games, 2017). The full game of the scenario is Yorktown (Assault On Redoubt #9 & #10)  14 October 1781, the last scenario in the set. It sounds like hard work, and it was.

Seeing French troops set up on the board, I realised this was the first scenario we would have ever played from the French and More expansion. This is an embarrassment as I’ve stated several times here in the blog that C&C Tricorne is probably my favourite flavour of the Command and Colors family, and not just for the eras it covers. It brings a few tweaks that add a little swinginess to the proceedings that I enjoy. The lack of plays from the expansion is something I plan to remedy in 2026.

Opening positions: some manoeuvre required.

T had set himself up to be the British/Hessian defenders manning the stout redoubts, and I took the Continental Army and their French allies. The antagonists have a stronger force going into the game – fifteen infantry units, supported by three artillery formations, against the British eight leg units and one not inconsequential heavy cannon unit – but the two redoubts are tough nuts to crack. Under the Tricorne rules, units behind fieldworks can ignore the first retreat flag in a ranged attack and the first symbol hit of a melee attack.

I was fortunate to start the game with a decently strong hand, offering
some options for proceeding.

But first I had to get my fellas up close enough to make any kind of worthwhile attack at all. This took three turns. The Continental player goes first, and the early turns involved edging Colonial and French units into position to advance on the enemy’s works. Meanwhile British potshots had some success in thinning out my troops. Cannon proved wholly ineffective against T’s lobsters. Whoever engineered the redoubts deserved a commendation.

At turn four I was finally in a position to make a concerted effort against Redoubt No. 10 (Continental Left). Three Brave French Line attacked on a Bayonet Charge order, throwing themselves against the desperate British defence... to an inconsequential result. No casualties on either side. This initial strike set the tone for the whole game.

The initial French assault on Redoubt No. 10, with
the road to Yorktown visible on the right.

Over the course of the next eight or nine rounds, we both took some hits, but neither of us had lost a unit (or gained a banner). Fearing the possibility of the No. 10 Redoubt being overrun, he had begun to T had begun to bring his heavy cannon down to lay fire on the French attackers. It was already a good way toward the redoubt when I saw my chance. I’d moved two Light troops up to the tree-line between the redoubts, attempting to bring them behind No. 9 for a clearer shot – Light units are better at range than regulars, and can move more quickly if they forgo combat, but other issues kept cropping up needing attention.

Mid-game: much blood spilt, with nought to show for it.

At turn fourteen, I had my lightbulb moment. By this time, we’d both taken some hits and scored off one another. I’d managed to get a much-diminished Regular unit behind the No. 9 battlements, and to replace it with another the following turn, when T’s counterattack finished off the first. The tide had begun to turn, but no end to the game was in sight (it was starting to get late by now, and it was a school-night). I’m not proud of my actions, but something had to be done, or we would have to call it a draw short of any clear victory.

I interspersed my following actions between maintaining the gains I’d made (the Continental player gets (or keeps) a Temporary Victory Banner for each fortified hex they occupy) and double-timing my two light units up the road to Yorktown and its two vacated Fieldworks hexes. I held two, and we had by now two legitimate Victory Banners each (T was about to get is third).

I didn’t announce my intentions to take Yorktown, and T was too distracted with the redoubt action to notice until the final move. By the time my Light troops entered the vacated fieldworks at the edge of the occupied city, I had managed five Victory Banners, and this action gave me the last two to win the game.

End state. Yorktown Occupied, but at a cost.

It felt like less of a victory than it might have, but the game had been a twenty-two round slog, and I come back to my earlier comment; the Yorktown defences are a terribly hard nut to crack for the Continental player. I think I may have still won if I’d gone ahead with my original intention of flanking Redoubt No. 9 and likely capturing its attendant officer, but this may have taken another five or eight turns. T tends to feel that a win is a win, but to me this felt a little gamey to take too much pride in the success.

 

 

Stripped Down for Parts: Desert Blitzkrieg: Rommel’s North African Campaign

 

 

 

I have mentioned several times over my time with A Fast Game that I don’t and won’t ever ask publishers for review copies of games, and that I wouldn’t accept offers of copies in exchange for content or reviews. This is still the case. I don’t judge other content creators who do this; they all have their reasons, and I enjoy their hard work. I just want to keep my independence and not feel like I have to write about games that didn’t do it for me.

Now, I’ve also mentioned here and elsewhere that I won a copy of Desert Blitzkrieg: Rommel’s North African Campaign (Compass Games, 2025) that was part of viewer draw for around a dozen different prizes all up in an extended pre-Christmas Compass Town Hall. This came as a complete, but timely surprise. I’d actually found seller on eBay with a couple of copies and was going to buy my own in a week or so, but now I didn’t need to! To maintain karmic balance, I put the cash I was going to spend on that toward a copy of Christopher Moeller’s really gorgeous-looking Burning Banners: Rage of the Witch Queen (Compass Games, 2024); I finally game into its sheer awesomeness and bought a copy, but I haven’t decided whether I should write about it on A Fast Game or not. If you have an opinion about this, let me know in the comments.

So, this was a situation I hadn’t anticipated. In the end, I decided to go ahead and write about Desert Blitzkrieg, even though I didn’t technically buy it myself because, a) I was going to buy it before this copy landed in my lap; and b) it’s too interesting looking a game not to spend some time over it and share what I learn. So, here’s my first look at Mike Vitale’s Desert Blitzkrieg.

The box top captures the essence of the game in a simple montage of images split between British Cruiser tanks from very early in the conflict, with an inset Rommel looking typically heroic, and the iconic photograph of the one of the Long-Range Desert Group (LRDG) teams prepared to set out on another mission below. The Desert War, at least in the early years managed to keep a veneer of gentlemanliness that had well and truly worn off by the time of Operation Torch. This game covers the early part of the North African campaign, roughly up to Rommel’s historical defeat at Second El Alamein.

Designer Michael Vitale has been involved in wargame design and production for longer than I’d realised. BGG lists Desert Blitzkrieg as Mr Vitale’s third game design credit (the earliest being the extraordinary Timelag (Gameshop, 1980)). I was pretty sure this didn’t tell the whole story, so I contacted Brittani-Pearl Eaton-Koch from Compass Games (and Desert Blitzkrieg’s editor), asking about Mr Vitale’s other work for the publisher. Ms Eaton-Koch replied, “He's the co-designer of Iberian Tide with Gregory Smith, and the designer of Desert Tide & Hannibal's Tide.* [….] I think the big thing BGG fails to cover in his designer credits, though, is the fact that he was one of the original partners in Nova Game Designs (original publishers for Ace of Aces, Axis & Allies, the Battletech book games).”

Box back. For the first time I can remember, I'm questioning a little the standard
"recommended for age 14 and up." There's just a lot more going on here than a
straight-forward hex-and-counter game. 

The box back offers a view of the whole map, along with some sample unit and HQ counters. The written blurb doesn’t spend any time on the history covered, jumping instead into a thumbnail description of the game and its design philosophy.

The graphic key familiar from other Compass games informs the reader that the complexity of the game is rated Medium (with which, with my limited reading of the rules so far, I would concur), each turn represents a month, units are primarily Regiments, and the game is designed for two players, though solitaire suitability is rated Medium-High. A shorter scenario will play out in two-three hours, but a full game will likely require ten hours or more to see to its conclusion.

The rulebook follows the Compass custom of the cover match the box-art.

The Desert Blitzkrieg Rules of Play runs to thirty-six roughly 100gsm, light gloss-finish, full colour pages. The booklet is usefully illustrated – lots of example pictures and diagrams, thin on the filler historical photographs or illustrations found in some rulebooks. The whole book is presented in a readable double-column format. At this stage I haven’t spent enough time with the game to comment on the clarity of the rules (at time of writing, I haven’t even punched and clipped the counters yet), so that will have to wait for an AAR, but I have every confidence in the editor.

Sample page of the rules. The illustrations are nearly all useful rather than decorative.

I can say the rules are presented following the Sequence of Play. I’ve noticed recently that this pattern has helped me to grok unfamiliar games more quickly than when they’re laid out to some other system of logic. I like to get to know a game by laying out the map and pushing some counters around, and the manner in which the rules are presented suits this learning-style much better (or maybe I’m just growing more impatient with age).

The rules run to sixteen pages, with another page of optional rules. The rules envision play of the full twenty-one turn game, but two shorter scenarios – O’Connor’s Offensive (a four-and-a-half turn “training” scenario), and the five-turn Short Game Scenario are included. Both of these can be played in an evening. Also included are five pages of Designer’s and Player’s Notes, and seven pages of Examples of Play (and a full-page Table of Contents in lieu of an index).

The mounted map-board. As usual, apologies for the sub-par lighting.

The mounted map represents the theatre of operations in the North African campaign, from Aghelia in the west to El Alamein in the east. Movement in the game is point-to-point, which makes sense for a Western Desert game at this scale; the desert is vast but offers only so many serviceable paths for regiment- or brigade-sized formations. The board- and counter-art are the work of Bruce Yearian, a veteran wargame artist whose name should be familiar to anyone who pays attention to such things. Mr Yearian has a talent for combining usability and ascetic value in his maps, with a view to playability.

Built into the map-board are separate Victory Point tracks for the Allied and Axis players, various holding boxes for the two sides for Eliminated units, Reinforcements, and for the Allied player, Withdrawn units, as well as marked positions for the shared Event Card deck and discarded cards. Perhaps the thing I love most about this board set-up, though, is the Turn Track, which is amended with places for all of the Axis and Allied reinforcement units, all right there and ready for action. I’m always appreciative when reinforcement schedules are included in a game – the extra time sorting through counters to populate them is well worth the inconvenience for uninterrupted play – but to have it there on the board is a boon. The whole play area is an exercise in good planning and layout.

The Battle Board, printed on a good weight of card-stock, with pre-rounded corners.

Manoeuvre and supply tracing are the domain of the main board, but when one side attacks the other, the action transfers to the Battle Board. This is an 8 1/2” by 11” board, about the same weight as the counter card-stock, divvied up width-ways into two halves, one each for the Allied and Axis forces. Each half is in turn split into two rows, representing each sides’ Front and Second Line. The box-description mentions that battles can play out like a mini-games in themselves.

In the event of a Combat action., the Battle Marker counter is placed at the point of action on the map-board, while beach side arranges their units in two battle lines on the Battle Board, starting with the player with less units in play (discounting other assets, like Air Support). Here the clash will play out for at least one full round before a side may withdraw. In subsequent rounds, the players may move units from the Second Line to the Front Line but not off the Front Line. Combat continues until one side withdraws from battle.

I’m keen to see how the battle board works in context of the game. Battle boards aren’t a new concept – I’m most familiar with them in terms of block wargames – but should add extra depth to individual combat situations, zooming in on the brutality of the action like a slow-motion sequence in a Sam Peckinpah movie.

Two counter sheets, nearly zero waste (just one unused marker).

The game includes two 5/8” counter sheets, 352 counters in all, of which probably a little more than 40% are unit counters; these are all clearly readable and quite attractive. The counters are printed on a nice weight brown-core card-stock and punch out pretty cleanly. Of the units, the Germans are presented in a light grey, Italians in a creamy yellow, British in khaki, and the Commonwealth units get an olive drab background, with the standard mix of NATO symbols for leg units and silhouettes for the AFVs. The national colours are understated, but clearly recognisable. 

The rest are an assortment of administrative and DRM markers. Most of the markers are generic tokens for mnemonic service, such as Combat Attack/Defence, Interdiction, “Entrenched”, Supply Units, and Out of Supply, while a few are function specific, like the defensive bonus level for the Tobruk fort. The counters are all clear and readable. 

The card-deck, still sealed, sporting an iconic AAK promotional photograph.

Desert Blitzkrieg is a card-assisted game. As such it features a small (twenty-six cards in all) shared deck. These offer some advantage to the drawer, and most of the cards must be used in the turn they are drawn.

Sample Event Cards.

While the Sequence of Play lists the card draw as the first step in a turn, the draw is optional. Moreover, each player can only draw from the deck six times across the game’s twenty-one turns (draws is recorded on two six-sided dice – red for the Allied player, grey for the Axis – provided in the game for this purpose). With less than half of the cards being drawn from the deck in a single game,

The general PAC, covering the Sequence of Play on one side (pictured) and
Combat procedure and notes on the verso.

Desert Blitzkrieg comes with two general, double-sided Player Aid Cards, and two administrative cards, one specifically for the Allied player, and one shared. The general PACs cover a detailed Sequence of Play one side, and a comprehensive guide to the Combat sequence on the reverse. These are thorough and well laid-out and should cover 85% of questions that arise at the table.

The Commonwealth/British Withdrawal/Return/Upgrade Schedule. More than a mouthful.

The Commonwealth/British Withdrawal/Return/Upgrade Schedule does what it says on the label; it offers a schedule of (mostly) unit removals, with some returning units and three unit-upgrades (mostly reflecting new equipment arriving for the Allied forces). The complication of the steady down-drawing of Allied forces will resent a challenge for the player, but the Axis player will have their own challenges to face as the game advances.

Omnibus PAC. This is the one that will likely see the most use.

The other shared card is an omnibus PAC covering British and German Armor Upgrades, parameters for Replacement units (these are drawn from the Eliminated box; units not choses for refit are removed from the game), HQ Return after capture (not a given), Capture and Supply Rolls, some specific instructions for the Axis First Turn, and Victory Point Scoring guidelines for both sides.

The clarification slip.

Included in the box is a half-sheet on "Official Clarifications." Compass Games gets a lot of grief from some quarters about errata (I've been guilty of this myself, but just the once), but everything listed here is either a legitimate clarification (something stated in the rules, but maybe not repeated often enough to sink in) or a really minor typo, like the misnumbering of two illustrations on page 12. There is nothing here that will otherwise break your game. Still, it's worth a read.

Box and dice (and baggies, not mentioned in the text).

Finally, the game comes with a set of dice; two d6s (as mentioned earlier, these are to keep tabs on how many Action Card draws each player has made), and three d10, though the rules note that the values on these rolls run 0-9 rather than 1-10. As stated, I haven’t gotten through the whole rulebook yet, but I haven’t got to – or maybe just skipped over – what the third white d10 is for; the other two, in colours matching the d6s, are for rolling combat results, bonus supply tokens and such. I’m sure the purpose will be revealed as I get deeper into the rules, and I’ll bring along some answers in an AAR.

-----

I feel very lucky to have randomly won Desert Blitzkrieg in the Town Hall lottery and want to “pay it forward” by getting it to the table sooner rather than later so I can talk to the game with a little more experience than I can here. It’s going in the queue; I can’t see an opportunity to play out an entire twenty-one turn game for a couple of months at least, but I think the two shorter scenarios seem doable. The plan is to get confident in how combat works, then try out O’Connell’s Offensive. If it all goes to plan, I should be able to post an AAR in a fortnight or so (there are a couple of things ahead in the queue).

In other news, A Fast Game is coming up to its third anniversary at the end of January. I’m going to try to get one more post up before the anniversary post, but we’ll see how we go. In the meantime, thanks for reading this far, and stay tuned for more on Desert Blitzkrieg.

 

* Sorry, but none of these titles have BGG entries established yet. I am however looking forward to all of them. I'll try to remember to come back and add the links as they become available.

Blog Note: Big in Japan

 

Last year I researched and wrote up my first research feature for A Fast Game called The Value Proposition of Wargaming Awards - the Publishers' Perspective (I also wrote a TL/DR summary for the time-poor and attention-deficient). I contacted dozens of publishers in North America, Europe, and Asia, asking them about their experiences receiving nominations for or winning wargame awards. Nearly half of the companies I contacted replied – something I’m still humbled by – and one of the publishers that replied was veteran designer Yasushi Nakaguro (arguably best known in the West for his game, Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere: War in Asia and thePacific (BonSai Games, 2017), which appeared in Issue 9 of MMP’s Special Ops magazine) who runs BonSai Games in Japan. Mr Nakaguro was in the unique situation of having three games of his design nominated, released by two different avenues, BonSai and French publisher, Nuts! Publishing (I’ve written about one of these titles, 300: Earth and Water (BonSai Games, 2018; Nuts! Publishing, 2020) here).

BonSai is a small operation with a comparatively large output; along with a fairly busy release schedule of wargames both locally designed games and English-language titles translated to Japanese, BonSai also produces a quarterly wargaming magazine, Banzai, which includes a game in every issue (like the rest of the magazine, the rules are presented in kanji, although translations are sometimes posted to a given game’s BGG page).

I’m delighted to report that the Value Proposition of Wargaming Awards article is going to feature – translated into Japanese, of course – in the next issue of Banzai, no. 28 which, according to BonSai’s most recent newsletter post, will be available at their online store from February 20. If you’d like a copy (and why wouldn’t you?), best get in quickly as the previous three issues at least have completely sold out pretty soon after release.

 

 

State of Play: Waterloo Solitaire Boardgame

  

 

 

I had a free hour-and-a-half on Tuesday, so I took Waterloo Solitaire Boardgame Edition (Worthington Publishing. 2023 – an unboxing can be found here) out for a turn. I haven’t played the Waterloo Solitaire Book Game (Worthington Publishing, 2021) on which this was base, but I understand it’s a pretty faithful interpretation of the original.

The Veteran Allied Actions card, mounted on its easel. I thought during the Kickstarter
campaign that it was a bit of a gimmick, but now I'm absolutely sold on the easel.

Let’s be clear from the start; this is not a faithful recreation of the nuances of the pivotal battle that conclusively drew a line Napoleon’s martial ambitions. Waterloo Solitaire is definitely positioned close to the “Game” end of the Simulation/Game continuum, and it makes no apologies for that. The original book games were conceived in the time of lockdowns and enforced isolation and brought a brief reprieve from ennui to thousands of people.

This was my first time out, so there were plastic bags to tear open and pieces to locate. I’d already split the single card-deck into its constituent sets of Allied and French cards. I’d settled on playing as the French because looking at the victory conditions, it seemed Napoleon would have a slightly tougher time of it. This wasn’t my first rodeo with a Worthington solitaire game, so I knew not to expect to win on the first time out (or the second, or the eighteenth, maybe). Even being the first time out, set-up still took less than ten minutes (probably closer to five; I didn’t check my watch).

The initial set-up and my opening hand; a good spread of options to start with.

The game has two adjustment points for difficulty, hand size (and what I think of as opponent-difficulty (each side has three levels of resolve; Challenging, Veteran and Tough). I intended to play the middle-path, but inadvertently make things a little tougher on myself, something I’ll come back to later.

Each turn, the player selects an Order Card to play from his hand, placing it face-up in a conspicuous place. He then rolls for the Bot action; on a 2-5, the Bot chooses an action eerily prescient of the player’s chosen order, seemingly calculated to mitigate or nullify the effect of the order before it can be played at least a third of the time. I know how this sounds; I don’t have the mathematical chops to model how this is possible. I don’t think Worthington solitaire games are somehow cursed. But a slither of doubt lingers. We'll have to see how a second game plays out.

Case in point. Three times in the course of the game I played a Fire Artillery order.
In response, the Bot "rollled" Reverse Slope Tactics for two of those orders,
nullifying those potential hits. It's like the game and the die are in cahoots. 

An inauspicious beginning

In my first turn, I decided to lead with the First Corps. Before the First and Second Corps can attack their corresponding Allied infantry Wings, they first have to deal with the garrisons at La Haye Saint and Hougoumont respectively, much like the British facing the Mill in Freeman’s Farm 1777 (Worthington Publishing, 2019). In that first turn I lost two blocks from the First Corps, one from a roll of five on the Allied Actions matrix – Allied Artillery Fire – and one from the stout defence put up by the 2nd Light Infantry Battalion of the King’s German Legion. This opening set the tone for what was to come. It would take assaults over four turns to clear the eastern chateau, and another two against Hougoumont, at a terrible cost in troops.

Combat is brutal in Waterloo Solitaire, and the odds are weighted against the player, or at least that’s how it seems when you’re the player. As a rule, the French score hits on low rolls, the Allies on high rolls. Add to this the nearly ubiquitous +2 modifier on many of the Allied orders, and in many cases the best the French player can hope for is a one-for-one hit exchange. This sounds like a complaint; it’s not meant to be – it’s just an observation. The game should be challenging (the lowest rated Bot matrix is called “Challenging”); if the game was easily won, you’d lose interest very quickly.

End of turn five. Already, things aren't looking good for the French.

The first Prussians arrived in turn four. The next turn, I sent the Reserves to check their progress, only to lose two blocks to the Allied cavalry (on a roll of the Cavalry Charge order, the Allied cavalry pre-emptively attacks whichever French formation has been ordered for that turn), then a third in an exchange.

Around the middle of the game – turn eight or nine, I sent the Old Guard out against La Haye Sainte, then again two turns later. The first time they were beaten back with heavy losses. The second – two turns later – they sacrificed themselves to clear the chateau in an exchange of hits. In between, Blucher had begun to arrive in force. If there are seven or more Prussian blocks on the board at the end of a turn, that’s an automatic win for the Allies. In the course of the game, I rolled a favourable one once. Every other one on a die roll came up on the Allied roll, and they seemed to come in pairs, inviting more and more Prussians to the party.

 

The end of the battle

Going into turn sixteen, having cleared Hougoumont and La Haye Saint, I was ready to make my final assault on the Allied lines. My Reserve and Imperial Guard had both lost all cohesion and withdrawn from the field of battle, both having sustained terrible losses at the hands of la belle Alliance. My First Corps was down to two blocks and my Second Corps had been reduced to a single block, but my two cavalry wings were both more or less intact; in the face of adversity, I thought a Je vous salue, Marie may just see the French carry the day. With three turns left victory was a tantalising mirage for a dying man.

I played a Cavalry Charge order. Intending to try to sweep up the Allied Right Wing and clear the way in the next turn to vanquish the Left Wing. Rolling for the Allies resulted in a result of one, followed by another one rolled on the Tactical Events table – Blucher Leads the Way. Two more Prussian units arrived in the woods, triggering an attack on the First Corps (the Prussians convincingly outnumbering the French). A To-Hit roll of five (with +2 modifier, of course) put an end to Napoleon’s Imperial dreams once and or all.

Final state. The Allies lose the game in a turn when two formations - Left Wing,
Right Wing or Reserves - are destroyed, but the French lose if either Corps is
vanquished, which is what happened, thanks to Blucher's (un)timely arrival. 

Mistakes were made

The hand-size difficulty adjustment is meant to limit player options in a given turn. The difficulty levels here are as follows; seven-card hand for Rookie, six for Experienced, and five for the Grognard. I didn’t check this when I set up for play, and misremembered the Experienced level being five cards, so I ended up playing a tougher game than intended, though I don’t think the extra card would have made much difference in light of my die-rolling and the lack of use of my Combined Arms option. This was another mistake. I declined from using the Combined Arms in the early turns, then I kind of slipped into a routine of card plays and ignored the option (this is the kind of mistake you make early and just once). Honestly, I don’t think they would have helped me keep both Corps in good order with the 5s and 6s the Wellington Bot kept scoring against my formations.

One game isn't enough to begin exploring strategies or testing tactical advantages, and it's easier to see mistakes after you've made them. The more time spent with Waterloo Solitaire, the better the odds of not losing so catastrophically. But that's what keeps bringing me back to games like this, the prospect or hope of not losing the same way twice. 

*****

So, the game was indeed an inauspicious introduction to Waterloo Solitaire. I expected to lose, but I’d hoped to lose in the last round, not two rounds early. The game is tough, even at a fairly moderate setting. Next time out I will stick to the Grognard (five-card) hand-size, but try the Challenging Allied order matrix rather than the Veteran. I’ll also make judicious use of the Combined Arms option, to cancel out the near ubiquitous +2 modifiers applied to so many of the French To-Hit rolls.

I only had enough time for a single game this time out; with every other Worthington solo game I’ve played, I’ve immediately reset it for a second inevitable loss straight after my first. I’ll be getting Waterloo Solitaire back to the table sooner rather than later, though There are other games also vying for my attention at the moment. But it’s a comparatively short experience, definitely playable inside of an hour, so I‘m sure I’ll be able to squeeze it in somewhere.

 

 

 

Blog Note: Rising to the (6 AAR) Challenge

 

 

Long time readers may remember that A Fast Game began less as a general wargaming blog than as a way to keep account of my progress on a wargaming program I had set myself. I’d intended to play six different wargames six times each; thirty-six games in all, which seemed like a surmountable challenge. Alas, it wasn’t. well, it wasn’t for me anyway. I managed not quite half the number of games, completing six plays at just two of the titles I’d chosen.

The following year – 2024 – I was still keen to try a regulated programme of play, but I scaled it back to a three-by-five – five games, three times each. The three-play target grew out of my belief that nobody should review a game on a single outing. I still think you need to play a game at least three or four times to begin to get to know it well enough to have a considered opinion about it. Unfortunately, due to a cacophony of influences, the three-by-five model, too, proved to be unworkable.

Around this time last year, after declaring that I was going to beg off setting myself any tasks or targets for the year beyond a review a month (spoiler alert: I managed five), The gentlemen of The War Room announced their Ten Wargame Challenge; play and document plays of ten different games of your choice (declared in a list at the beginning, along with two substitute titles, so a selection of twelve in all) before the end of December to go into the draw for prizes. I wrote about my hypocrisy in a previous post, went ahead and signed up for the Challenge. Not only did I only manage to write up four of the games on my list – I’d played a fifth but hadn’t documented it – by the time The War Room ceased to be.

The sad evidence of my first wargame challenge. I have since played Brief Border Wars
and Great War Commander several times. Alas, 1960: Making of a President
is yet to make it to the table.

So, at the end of last year I was quite vocal about not setting any kind of goal beyond playing more games in 2026 than I had in 2025 (achievable, I think – ’25 wasn’t a stellar year for getting games to the table). I was resolute in this; nothing was going to shake my resolve.

Then, about a week ago. Cardboard Commander posted to Facebook about something he was proposing for 2026. Jerry James – the man behind Cardboard Commander – is in the running for the Busiest Man in Wargaming. He has a YouTube channel with a handful videos going up each week, including a weekly live show, Zones of Control. He also writes a blog (there’s a link in my blog roll just to the right of the subject index). And on top of all that, he’s a funny, thoughtful, and gracious guy who is doing his bit to help build the wargaming community.

Last week Jerry floated the idea of people signing up for a Six Game AAR Challenge, inviting people to register to complete six After-Action Reports of games that they’ve played, either on the Cardboard Commander Facebook group or directly with him (via the blog). I wrestled with whether to participate or not for a while, but I eventually came around and have now registered with CC for the tour. I wrote about sixteen AARs in 2025, so I think I’ve got this. But the truth is, I like to feel like I’m a part of something bigger, however tangentially.

So, I don’t possess the level of commitment to finish stated goals or – apparently – to stick to not setting myself explicit challenges (or participating in presented challenges) after stating just that. This is obviously something I need to work through. I’ll get right on that. After this year.

If you'd like to join in the fun, contact Jerry through the links provided above. You have until the end of February to register, and have to submit your sixth AAR by the end of November. The parameters for accepted AARs are as follows:

 - Complete a game;

 - Minimum three accompanying photos of play; start, middle, and end;

 - An After-Action Report of a minimum 200-words to accompany the photos;

 - Send the whole thing (or a link if it's published elsewhere) to Cardboard Commander, or post it to the FB group;

- Repeat previous steps five more times.

Before you say it, anyone can write 200 words. Two hundred words is a thank-you note, or a sternly-worded Letter to the Editor. To put it in context, this "Quick Take " I wrote about The Hunt (Salt & Pepper Games, 2023) – five short paragraphs – came to just over 600 words. 

Just try it – the more the merrier. You might have fun.