2025 Q4 Report: Full of Things

 

 

Sending season's greetings.

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

– Rainer Maria Rilke

 

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

 

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

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

 

Games purchased

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

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

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

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

This, apparently, is what winning looks like.

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

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

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

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

 

Games played

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

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

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

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

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

 

Games unplayed

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Blog matters

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

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

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

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

 

Extra-curricular activities

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

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

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

 

What’s next?

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

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

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

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

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

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

We may not always get what we want, 

and we may not always get what we need; 

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

 

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

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).

 

 

State of Play: Dawn’s Early Light: The War of 1812 (The War Room Ten Game Challenge #4)

 

 

The situation at the end of turn 1 (I forgot to get a shot of the initial set up).

 

At last, the drought has broken, both of us are healthy and rested, and work travel is done for my game buddy. This week, T and I sat down to tackle a proper Card-Driven Game (CDG), David McDonough’s Dawn’s Early Light: The War of 1812 (Compass Games, 2020). This has been a long time in the making; back in early May, T and I sat down for a three-turn run at it the Monday before T headed overseas for a couple of weeks (little did we know two weeks would turn into the better part of three months, but I digress).

I’ve been keen to play Dawn’s Early Light against an actual opponent for some time; that’s the reason I put it on my Ten Wargame Challenge list. I played it a couple of times double-handed when I first got the game to get to know it, but it’s not the same experience with CDGs.

T and I haven’t played a lot of conventional CDGs together (outside of Commands & Colors, of course).  During the lock-down of 2020, I introduced him to the Steam version of Twilight Struggle: the Cold War, 1945-1989 (GMT Games, 2005), which helped to keep us sane, but I can’t think of a single Ops/Event CDG we’ve played face to face before now.

Dawn’s Early Light plays over eight turns with a shorter Prelude turn kicking off the action. The Prelude turn involves completely dealing out the twelve-card Prelude deck, then, starting with the Americans, each player taking turns playing four cards. The eight played Prelude cards are then shuffled into the 1812 deck (this deck makes up the majority of the cards in the game; at turn five, a shorter 1814 deck is shuffled into the remaining Each player plays through their seven-card hand through the course of a turn, drawing another seven cards at turn’s end.

There’s a lot to like in this game; nicely illustrated pre-rounded counters, simple
systems for… well… everything, lots of historical flavour, and Nadir Elfarra’s
rather photogenic gameboard. Two focussed players should be able to get
through the game inside of two hours.

A difference between Dawn’s Early Light and many other CDGs I’ve played it that when you play a card with the opposing side’s event for the Ops points, the event isn’t automatically triggered to the opponent’s benefit. Some cards are discarded after the play of particular events, but most go back into the

There are 86 cards in the game, with twelve of these being dealt out in the Prelude round.  The first four turns are played with the larger part of the deck the, 1812 deck (46 cards) then at turn five, the 1814 deck (28 cards) are shuffled in with the discards and the remaining deck to create a new, augmented deck. I haven’t spent enough time with the game to say for certain whether things get easier or tougher in the second half of the game, as we’ll soon see.

The game is scored at the end of each turn on a pendulum score-track, based on territorial holdings and a couple of other factors. Scoring begins from turn 1, and for the first three turns the needle (well, the cardboard score marker) didn’t quiver too much from the centre.

So, to the game. I mentioned this was our second swing at Dawn’ Early light. I took the British both times (the side’s slightly more complex to play, with naval blockades, the chance of amphibious actions, and a good relationship with the native peoples. In our initial practice game, T was strong out of the gate, building up his privateering operations and having some deft luck with his card draws. We got to turn three before deciding to call it, but T was gaining around seven points on me each turn – I was pretty sure the game would be over in America’s favour in the next turn or two if we’d played it out.

We started the game late again but when we got rolling, we managed a good rhythm to the game, punctuated by incoming and outgoing texts on the other side of the table. One of the strengths of Dawn’s Early Light is it’s an easy game to play, which isn’t to say it’s a simple game by any means. Being a CDG, your options are limited to what your hand will accommodate. There is a suite of options for your spending your Ops points, some excusive to one or the other side, and if you’re lucky, you may have some useful Events to play. So long as your opponent isn’t given to fits of analysis paralysis, the game should tick along at a good clip.

For this game, the Prelude turn was more administrative than combative, with both of us trying to bolster our ground forces and prepare for martial action. No fighting, except for some abstracted tussles over navigation control over the Great Lakes waterways. Dawn’s Early Light reflects the history of the War of 1812 very well, both through the card events and the use of simple mechanical functions to cover what might threaten to become complex mini-games within another game. Waterway control is important; it can decide who gets to cross from one area to another and offer a bonus dice for the controlling player in combat for battles adjacent to the waterway. To take control of a waterway is a matter of simple resource allocation. Spend a point to remove the opponent’s marker, and another to place your own. Lakes Erie and Ontario each have two marker-spaces, so you need a majority of markers to control the lake.

At the beginning pf the first Turn, and every odd-turn thereafter, each player may move one of their tokens along the Public Policy tracks. This is another elegantly simple way to reflect the political situation of this very politically-charged conflict. Shunting a marker along one of the tracks will bring some benefit to your side, but at the expense of not choosing another benefit. Your choice may even telegraph to your opponent your strategic intentions. Some card events may also allow one or another marker to go up a notch, but keeping the granted movements to odd turns only prevents serious escalation on multiple political fronts.

The Public Policy matrix at game's end. Each odd-numbered turn, the players can
move one of their markers one space right, gaining the indicated benefit. Some
card events will allow the further progress on the tracks,
or a negative shift on an opposing marker.

Play in the first proper turn reflected the Prelude round; neither of us wanted to engage with the other until we had an edge in numbers on a front. T secured his territories (those marked in green) with troops and forts, and I reinforced the British (Canadian) provinces (in red). The mapboard, prepared by Nadir Elfara, is one of my favourite game maps. It’s not only a gorgeous representation of the theatre, but so many elements crucial to the play of the game are already on the board, while not making it at all feel cluttered. Area-control games can sometimes feel cramped, but the open areas give enough space to the usually smaller forces, so there’s no need for stacking.

The play of a card for Ops points allows the payer to conduct one action. Ops points run from 1 to 4 points to a card, and the rules are quite generous with what you can do with them. As I mentioned, you can add or remove a Waterway control marker for a point. To Recruit troops, you must spend a point (Militia) or two (Regulars), plus a Recruit marker, at a recruitment point (mostly coastal cities), or to upgrade a Militia to a Regular unit at the cost of a point. The recruitment markers are replenished in the housekeeping phase of each turn, but the forces are limited to what comes in the box, which is never enough for either side to cover all the territory required. Similarly, you can conduct an Operations action using a single point to mobilise any or all of the troop in a single area, moving them into an adjacent area or areas. Want to mobilise troops from two areas? That will cost an extra Ops point.  If any troops have been moved into an area already holding enemy units, a battle ensues; no extra point expenditure, but also no avoiding the fight.

A player can use their points to Build a fort in wilderness areas under their control; in Combat, a fort will essentially take the first hit for the controlling side. The British player can also use the build action to raise more ships at one point per squadron. He may even mix-and -match, using his points to build forts and bring in ships in the same action.

In turn 1, I was lucky to be able to play the Spanish Florida card. As I’d already secured the Southern Coast naval blockade, I was able to place two British Regulars in Florida (securing two VPs, so long as I could hold onto it).  In the early turns, T showed his usual aggressive tendencies, attempting to dislodge me from the Florida peninsula (which I managed to fend off), seizing control of Lake Erie and wresting Lake Ontario from British control, and securing hereto neutral Niagara, then turning his attention to the Indians occupying the Creek and Shawnee regions. I expected a follow-up into Upper Canada, but

The British can also send Indian forces on raids of American-held settlements. Raiding is a separate action, and costs a point per region activated, rather than per unit. The Indians cannot hold a settlement and have to withdraw to the area from which they came at the end of a successful raid, but it is worth a VP to the British for each unit they take out. Through the course of the game, I raided Detroit, Nashville (twice), and New Orleans, with mixed results, but it worked to keep T on his toes and distract him a little from my main game.

The Southern Blockade, freshly closed, and the Naval Theater tracks (not yet adjusted
 for the British). Both sides can engage in naval actions; the British can blockade ports
and conduct amphibious actions on coastal cities (provided the player has troops
available in the British Navy Box - another card event function), while the Americans
can engage in Privateering actions. Blockades and successful privateering
operations each earn VPs for the respective sides.

The stars aligned for the British in Turn 5. I’d managed to gain about a four-point lead and to hold it at the end of turn four, after the Americans had held a slight edge for the first three rounds. A good hand came my way in the fifth and saw an opportunity. In Dawn’s Early Light, the Americans always begin card play each turn. This also played to my advantage. Throughout the game I had managed to maintain a complete blockade of the Eastern coast, from Boston to New Orleans. Early in the turn Loyalist militia marched into Detroit after an Indian raid had left it defenceless in the previous turn, while the two regular units in Florida finally made their move on Savannah on the same Operations play, meeeting little resistance. Detroit was quickly lost again to American forces marching from T feared the worst and began building up his defences in New York and Boston, fearing a push on his hub ports.

After T had played his last card, I closed the trap. With an Ops 3, British units swept down from the Maritimes to occupy Penobscot, others left Kingston to challenge the Hudson, while the occupying force in the hard-won Carolinas marched north to secure the Shenandoah. There were heavy losses on both sides, but the British prevailed in each assault. After the victory points were tallied, I had just enough of a margin to carry me to the 20 points needed for a win. It was by no means guaranteed, and that made victory all the sweeter. I’m not normally one to crow about a win, but this one was kind of special. I refrained from doing a victory lap around the table. T was a good sport about the loss, and probably grateful we didn’t have to play through to the final round, as it was getting late.

Game state at the end of turn 5. The British have explained a few things
to their trans-Atlantic cousins.

From my limited experience with Dawn’s Early Light, I suspect the British need to aggressively prosecute the war right out of the gate if they want a chance of winning. There are things they can do relatively passively in the first few turns, such as controlling the Great Lakes waterways and building up their naval blockades – a wall solid blockade wall will earn a lazy five points if you can maintain it through the end of the turn – but that won’t be enough to make any headway of the Americans secure their towns and farmlands. Without an insistent push into American territories, a slow victory creep will set in for the American side. That’s not to say it’s a cakewalk for the Americans. They have to use every tool in their box to keep the British (and the local tribes) at bay,

T's impression of the game was very positive, even though he wasn’t victorious this time. He is keen for a rematch, and  I can see it becoming a staple of play when I’m not foisting on him some new game on my Ten Game Challenge list. I’d like to tackle Walter Vejdovsky’s Waterloo, 1815: Fallen Eagles II (Hexasim, 2022) next, though, as we’ve seen, plans don’t always play out as we’d like.