By the Numbers: Thinking about Wargaming Goals for 2024

 

January is the time people choose to make decisions about changes in their lives. I’m certain most people make these declarations – or unspoken determinations – with sincerity of spirit, but the fact remains, any kind of change is hard, and behavioural change is an order of magnitude more difficult again. Most New Year’s resolutions are abandoned – forgotten or ignored – withing the first eight or ten weeks of the year,

I’m no stranger to unfulfilled self-promises and commitments to being or doing better. But, at the beginning of 2023, I wanted to change one behaviour that I noticed in myself. I’d shifted from being a wargamer to being a wargame collector. I’ve talked about this before; collecting games is a valid hobby in and of itself, there is a special joy in owning some artifacts, and I would never try to fat-collection-shame anybody, but I’ve always identified as a player of games (more recently, nearly exclusively board wargames), but my actions were not reflecting my self-identity. So, I set about doing something about it.

Here I Stand (GMT , 2006)

As a veteran of failed change attempts, I knew I had to plan something manageable, and settled on playing six games I owned hadn’t got around to playing, and playing those games six times each before the end of the year, to get to know them better than if I’d just played each one the once, with all the rules  mistakes and tactical errors that are inevitable in first runs at a new game.

As I’ve also mentioned here, I didn’t complete the task I set myself. But I tried to. And in the trying, some interesting things happened. I played a lot more than six new games – I just didn’t play them al with other people, one of the stipulations I set myself in my 6x6 challenge – and a lot of those were games I’d had in my collection for some time, but now had the desire and confidence to try out on my own.

A Fast Game (this blog) was an unforeseen side-effect of my desire to play more of the games I already owned. I wanted a way to keep myself accountable for the project. I could pose AARs on Facebook – there is a very supportive group based in my adopted home-town – but I’ve always been a writer, and I thought keeping a written record of the games I played and my responses to them would make me think more deeply about the games in question and about why I played what I played or chose this game over that (or just chose both).

WWII Commander: Battle of the Bulge (Compass Games, 2020)

I’ve been making some notes in my planner (which might hint at how old I am) on what I might set as my gaming goals for 2024.Nothing is carved in stone as yet, but here are some of my thoughts:

➤ Complete my 2023 6x6 Challenge I feel like I owe it to myself to see it through, so it’s not just one more incomplete effort. I’ve talked about this before; I don’t see it as an overall failure because the process of committing to it and writing about it has made me both more conscious about the games I play, and more eager to play new and different games off-list. Before 2023, I could have counted the number of solitaire games I’d played on one hand. Looking over my records for 2023, I recorded 52 separate solo games played (some of those were two-handed solo learning games, but I’m still counting those). For the year, I had 122 gaming incidents listed, so all up, around 150 individual games (a full third of those alone, but that’s okay too). Planning to play games has lead to more games being played, unplanned. Which is kind of cool, and kind of why I started planning to play games in the first place.

Siege of Syracuse (Worthington Publishing, 2022)

At time of writing, I have made some headway on this, having last week played my sixth game of Napoléon 1806 (Shakos, 2017) and my first run at Great War Commander (Hexasim, 2018) on the same day. There are a couple of things vying for my attention at the moment, but I’m hoping to finish the three outstanding games on my list by the end of March, and I should have a review for Napoléon 1806 in the next week or two.

➤ Commit to something like a 6x6 for 2024 This is a tough one. At the end of January last year, I thought that a slate of 36 games – six games, six plays each, against another actual face-to-face human would be tight but doable (I even set myself a stretch goal of another six games of 1960: the Making of a President (GMT Games, 20##). I think it’s a valuable exercise, and I wouldn’t be heartbroken if I didn’t complete it again, but I’d like a better chance of getting it done. If I do commit to a scheduled program like that, it might include solitaire games, for a little more flexibility, and maybe even online games (using VASSAL or Rally the Troops!).

➤ Learn to play the Great Battles of the American Civil War (GBACW) rules-set I have no excuses for this one; I managed to land my White Whale game, Death Valley: Battles for the Shenandoah (GMT Games, 2019), after a year-and-a -half of near-misses and second-hand but lovingly clipped and tray-sorted,  and I have Into the Woods: the Battle of Shiloh, April 6-7, 1862 (GMT Games, 2022) tucked away and as yet unpunched, waiting to be played. GBACW has a reputation for being a difficult system to grok, but I’m prepared to put the time and effort into it.

Regardless of what other goals I settle on, I intend to pursue another year of A Fast Game. The only item I had on my list relating to the blog was to try to raise the number of game reviews posted from 12 in 2023 to 20+ (I remember when I wrote out my notes that I thought about declaring 25 reviews – roughly two a month – but I lost my nerve and lowballed it a little to keep it manageable). Reviews are where everything I’ve learnt about a game, thought about it and through it, and taken from it gets wrung out into a fifteen hundred-of-so words, and it rarely conveys everything I mean it to. I like to think I’m getting better at it, though.

Aces of Valor (Legion Wargames, 2022)

The reviews are often the hardest part of the blog to write, but also the most probably the most satisfying as well. I’ve never accepted a copy of a game for review (I’ve never been offered one either), so I’m in the lucky position of being able to spend that energy on games that I think deserve a spotlight for whatever reason. That won’t change. But I’ll still be posting game reports and unboxings (State of Play and Stripped Down for Parts posts in A Fast Game parlance), and the odd, meandering prose-poem about some esoteric facet of our shared hobby (Overthinking It).

The end of January will mark the first anniversary of A Fast Game, and my first year of blogging about games. Writing A Fast Game has been very rewarding personally – a separate joy from the actual playing of the games I write about – and some folks seem to enjoy reading it. So, whatever I end up settling on for the year, people will still be able to read me babbling on about it for another twelve months at least.

Great War Commander (Hexasim, 2018)