Blog Note: a recent arrival

  

I’ve been a little quiet on A Fast Game of late due to a combination of circumstances; my wife’s aunt and uncle are over from England at the moment, visiting, and I’ve been working on a longer piece that’s soaking up most of my remaining free time. But I wanted to go on record with a thank you to BonSai Games’ Yasushi Nakaguro for a copy of the latest issue of that publisher’s latest house magazine, Bansai 30. Each copy of Bansai comes with a complete game (complete as in rulebook, map (or maps), charts and tables, and very nice counters – no dice, of course), and issue 30 is no exception, with Andrea Brusati’s Operazione C3 (Aleph Game Studio, 2024), first featured in Italian wargame magazine, Parabellum (first published by Acies Edizioni and Europa Simulazioni, and since 2022 by Aleph Game Studio). Now I just need to find an English-language copy of the rules and charts.

Along with the game and a host of articles and reviews (all in Japanese, of course), the interview with Brian Train (translated by Mr Nakaguro) as featured in A Fast Game back in April of this year. I’m honoured and quite chuffed that somebody thinks anything that makes it to A Fast Game is worth introducing to a wider audience, and this marks the second time something from the blog has made it into Bansai (you can read about the other time here).

I’d also like to offer an apology for the drop in posting frequency of late. I am making efforts to turn this around, though this will probably be restricted to unboxings and the odd blog note for another few weeks at least. Please bear with me, and check in often.

 

 

Blog note: A long absence and another milestone

 

 

 

It’s been a week – strike that; it’s been ten days since I last posted. I try to get something up at least weekly (I aim for six or seven posts a month – anything extra is gravy), and I hate letting A Fast Game fall into disrepair through inattention, but sometimes life will get in the way. This isn’t the longest I’ve gone without posting – I think the record is fifteen days without a post. It’s still not a good look. I feel like I have a responsibility to my handful of regular readers to have something fresh when they drop by, but at the same time, I don’t want to post something half-baked so as to not waste the reader’s time and burn through any good will I’ve built up.

The gap isn’t because I don’t have anything to say. I have two AARs in varying states I’m working on, one unboxing (and a couple of others waiting in the wings), and a multi-part examination of a beloved game. I’m also doing the background for my annual-ish statistical review of the collection, and a Quarterly Report due at the end of the month – now just a week away (yikes!). But I am also in the midst of some basic home maintenance stuff that’s been eating into my writing time, so there’s that. More posts will be forthcoming and sooner rather than later.

We've been playing a lot of Continental Commands & Colors: Napoleonics lately at
T's place, and Claude has been my Aide de Camp for most of the battles (he's pretty
good at not knocking over blocks, but soaks up a lot of attention).

So, this note is part-apology (see above) and a thank-you to the readers of A Fast Game. I guess I could be accused of burying the lead, but in the early hours of the morning (Adelaide-time), the page-view count for A Fast Game tipped over into six digits. At time of writing, the view-count for the blog sits at 100,264(?!). It was about this time in October that A Fast Game hit 50,000 views. It took two years and nine months to reach that figure, and just eight months to double that figure. I’m shocked. Pleasantly shocked, but it still doesn’t feel quite real. I work hard at every post that appears here, and I’m confident I’ve gotten better at conveying what I’m trying to say than I did at the beginning – and in less words, though it may not seem like it with some posts – but to me it doesn’t seem the blog warrants this kind of audience.

Here is where I need to point out that I couldn’t have reached such lofty heights without the help and support of a bunch of people pointing new readers to A Fast Game; Rachel and the good folks at GMT Games, Brant, who’s responsible for the weekly Tuesday Newsday post for the Armchair Dragoons, Yasushi Nakaguro at Bonsai Games, Grant at Pushing Cardboard, Jerry at Cardboard Commander, Brian Train for the shoutouts whenever I write about a Brian Train game, and everyone else who have given their time and effort for interviews or surveys. 

And, of course, everyone that checks in and reads the blog. Y’all make it worth the effort. Thank you.

 

 

Blog note: GMT let something slip

So, there has been talk around the traps of Mark Mclaughlin's other classic Napoleonic game, The Napoleonic Wars (GMT Games, 2002), getting a reprint. Well, technically a third printing. I think I heard that is was under consideration form Mr McLaughlin himself on a forum somewhere.

Well, it looks like this has been confirmed. Sort of. Maybe unintentionally.

At the bottom of GMT's newsletters there is a section listing the status of various games in the production queue. This lists the games charging imminently, or that are likely to be charged in the next month or two, then goes on to list other titles at various development or editing stages. I like to have and idea of what's likely to be coming soon so I can budget of those times three or four games drop at once. 

The further out from the current date, the fuzzier the details become regarding different titles, and it's not unusual for a game to be relegated to the next quarter in the Art and Development schedule, or for another to jump ahead suddenly in the queue. All the titles have hyperlinks to their product pages, and ones that are new to the listing or have moved from one rank to another are usually highlighted in bold. 

What caught my eye was this:

Extract from GMT's May 21 Update newsletter.

I don't think most people would be as obsessive as I am about lists. I don't know if anyone else spotted this, or if A Fast Game got the scoop. 

I for one couldn't be happier. The Napoleonic Wars came and sold out not once but twice in the decade and a half I was out of the hobby, so this is on the list of White Whale games for me. Meanwhile, I'll be here, waiting patiently. <sound of fingers tapping>

Let me know in the comments what other out-of-print titles you'd like to see GMT bring back to print.

Blog note: Commands & Colors: Napoleonics – Eggmühl, 21-22 April, 1809 complete

 

Napoléon acclamé par les troupes bavaroises et wurtembergeoises
à Abensberg, le 20 avril 1809, by Jean-Baptiste Debret, a French
painter and student of David, who lived in Paris contemporaneously
to the event (Courtesy Wikimedia Commons).

The Eggmuhl Cycle* is the longest series of scenarios dedicated to a single battle in the Austrian Army expansion set (GMT Games, 2013)† for Commands & Colors: Napoleonics (GMT Games, 2010). It was only after we’d played the Eggmuhl, French Right scenario that I realised the battle was explored across five scenarios, and suggested we tackle all five (non-consecutively). This is why the scenarios appear out of sequence. 

Below is a table of links to the five scenario AARs in their proper order; that is, the order in which they appear in the C&C: Napoleonics - Austrian Army scenario book (pp. 18-22).

We’ve been enjoying playing through the Eggmühl scenarios so much, we’ve decided to look at other multi-scenario battles in other national army sets as well. Next off the rank will be a shorter Austrian scenario set, the Battle of Wagram. Wagram is a shorter sequence, so I’m going to take a different tack with that one, writing up the more manageable three scenarios in a single, extended post.

 

Eggmühl, Day 1, 21 April, 1809

Eggmühl, Day 2, Attack on Eggmühl, 22 April, 1809

Eggmühl, Day 2 (French Left), 22 April, 1809

Eggmühl, Day 2 (French Right), 22 April, 1809

Eggmühl, Day 2 (Alteglofsheim), 22 April, 1809

 

* The scenario sequence isn’t referred to this way, so far as I know, except here at A Fast Game. It’s just a shorthand tool for referencing the five-scenario sequence.

† I would be remiss of me not to mention that, while The Austrian Army is now out of print, An omnibus edition including this and two other national expansions, The Russian Army and The Prussian Army, is now available for preorder at the GMT P500 webpage.

Blog note: Big in Japan, redux

 

Yasushi Nakaguro was kind enough to forward me a copy of Bansai 28, the latest edition of BonSai Games house quarterly magazine, which arrived today. Mr Nakaguro's translation of my research article, The Value Proposition of Wargaming Awards - the Publishers' Perspective that appeared first here in A Fast Game, appears in this issue, along with news and game reviews, all in Japanese, of course. Each issue of Bansai also comes with a complete game; full-size map, counters, and a rules booklet (also in Japanese).

The game accompanying Bansai 28 is called Balkan Gamble, designed by Brian Train. It's a reworking of the original Strategy and Tactics release from 2015, The game is a counterfactual, exploring four separate operations in the Balkan Peninsula proposed by Churchill between 1943 and 1945: Operation Boardman (1943), a distraction from the real Operation Husky (Allied invasion of Sicily); Operation Zeppelin (1944), a notional plan to invade Greece and Yugoslavia (actually a cog in the broader Operation Bodyguard - the Allied deception operation shrouding Overlord); and Operation Gelignite (1945), an intended plan to insert Allied troops to to block the retreat of Army Group F (and to guard, against a Russian advance into the region) but was abandoned due to the shortage of available troops and matériel. A fourth scenario is also included in this edition; Operation SILVA (1950), a hypothetical (but all too believable) invasion plan to bring Yugoslavia into the Soviet fold.

This version has a new engine under the hood, making it a sister game to Summer Lightning (Lock 'n Load Publishing, 2011) and Winter Thunder (Tiny Battle Publishing, 2015; BonSai Games, 2025). I haven't played either — I had a second-hand copy of Summer Lightning bought out from under me when I wasn't quite quick enough — so I'm keen to try this one out. I contacted Mr Train via his blog, and he forwarded me the English-language rules and charts. So, the revised Balkan Gamble will join the (rapidly growing) queue.

In the meantime, I should have an unboxing post of my "most anticipated game for 2025" (when speaking of crowdfunded games, a single quarter drift is doing pretty well), Carl Paradis's Battle Commander, Volume 1 (Sound of Drums, 2025). That should be the next thing posted, with a couple of other unboxings to come. I feel like A Fast Game is becoming more like a showroom lately, but gaming has been scarce this year, and games worth writing about scarcer. That should change soon. In the meantime, thanks for checking in.

 

 

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.

 

 

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.

 

Blog note: 2026 Prospectus

 

 

Planning for a brighter 2026.

"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)

 

Happy new year, gentle reader. I hope January finds you in good health and spirits, and that you find more than you lose.

My wife has been on leave the last fortnight, so I’ve taken a break from wargaming and (mostly) from posting to A Fast Game. We’ve spent tine walking, cross-quizzing (I feel like this is a peculiarly Australian pastime, crosswords where the clues are quiz questions instead of simple of cryptic cues), jig-sawing and generally abiding. I now feel refreshed, recharged, and ready to face the coming year.

As I stated in the Fourth Quarter report for 2025, I’m begin off setting goals for myself or for the blog this year. Think of it as a reset. My one ambition for the year to get more games played overall than last year. This has been thwarted at the gate; I’m writing this on Monday, and T is overseas (I knew they had a trip coming up but thought it was later in the month), but I have fifty-one weeks in which to catch up.

I have played one more game at the end of 2025, though not a wargame. A few months ago, we had dinner with friends, and D quizzed me about games he could play with his going on nine-year-old. I told hm I’d think about it. The next day I ordered a copy of Odin’s Ravens (Osprey Games, 2016) which I finally dropped around to them on New Year’s Eve afternoon, and we played a quick learning round. D picked it up straight away, but on reflection, their “I’m eight-and-a-half!“ year-old might need a little more time (and a primer in Norse mythology).

 

Short term and long term

Over the next month or so, I’ll probably mostly be posting unboxings. Today I received Waterloo Solitaire: Board Game Edition (Worthington Publishing, 2023) and notice of the imminent arrival of a GMT Games care package (three games from their November release). I still have one outstanding game from Legon Wargames to look at – A Glorious Chance (Legion Wargames, 2023), and Desert Blitzkrieg: Rommel’s North African Campaign (Compass Games, 2025), which I won in a lottery draw watching the last Compass Town Hall for 2025. Compass owner Bill Thomas usually gives away a copy of the company’s latest release at the end of the show, but this time, full of the Christmas spirit, Bill and the crew gave out a copy of practically every box title and issue of Paper Wars released in the year that hadn’t already sold out. I was lucky enough to score Mike Vitale’s new game (which I was going buy, but I put that money to another Compass game instead).

I tend not to post unboxings of second-hand games; I see less of a point in that, but I’ll continue to write up older games when I happen to find intact copies (like I did with Monty’s Gamble: Market Garden (Multi-Man Publishing, 2019) and 1914: Glory's End / When Eagles Fight (GMT Games, 2014) (you can find these in the index column).

When I play an interesting game, I’ll write it up. I wrote fifteen After Action Reports of games played across 2025. I think the number will probably be closer to twenty-five over 2026. Considering six or seven of those were write-ups of Commands and Colors: Medieval (GMT Games, 2019), I’ll try to offer a bit more variety, as much for my own sake as for subject diversity.

I have in mind some game reviews I’d like to write and post, but I don’t want to commit to a firm number because that never ends well. I only posted five reviews in the last year; I’ll aim to beat that number. I’ll try to look at newer games for review as well, or at least those still in print. I have some candidates in mind already.

I enjoyed researching and writing up an inquiry into the value proposition of wargame awards from the publishers’ perspective in 2025. If I can find another subject to get deep into the weeds with this year, I’ll take that challenge. Nothing is leaping out at me though at this point. If you’d like to suggest something, let me know.

I’m also hoping to continue the Not Created Equal series I started in June, then proceeded to ignore for the rest of the year. I’ve started sketching out two more instalments, and I hope to get one out at least before the middle of the year.

So, that’s a brief look at what to expect here in 2026. If you’re an old hand, thanks for sticking with us. If you’re new to A Fast Game, don’t try to read everything; most of the first six months of the blog was me finding my feet. It gets progressively better after that. And, thanks for coming along for the ride.

 

Here’s to more wargames played, and to having fun. In the end, that’s the point.

Blog note: Something of a milestone

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

Blog note: Conspicuous in my absence

 

I wanted to post a quick note to apologise for, and explain the lack of, well, posts recently. IN what seems to be becoming an annual event, we've been visited by COVID again. It hasn't been too serious a bout, but it did knock the wind out of me for a time. Before that I had a couple of things partially written, and I'm working on those to get back up to speed. 

There's also been a couple of of extra-curricular things I've been involved in, one I've alluded to before, and another that came quite out of the blue. I still can't really talk about either, but there is some progress on the older one and I hope to have some news to share soon.

I haven't been playing much because of sickness - I find it hard to concentrate when my sinuses feel like John Hurt lying on the Nostromo's mess table - But I've been chipping away at some delayed posts in the last few days. I should have a thoughtful review of Napoléon 1807 (Shakos, 2020) up inside of a week. Unless you're writing Britpop album brag-it-or-bag-it pieces in the early 1990s, reviews should take a long time to write. This one has taken me longer than most, because of other things getting in the way, and because every time I think I'm nearly there, I realise there's another aspect of the game that deserves some time. I'll lose a lot of this when I cut it down to a reasonable post length, but it's important to do it in the first place to show due respect for the game, and it really is that good a game.

I also have some things to say about the Charles S. Roberts Awards for 2024 (more specific to this year's nominations than my thoughts last year), but I wanted to leave that closer to the voting round closing. If you haven't voted and you feel inclined to, you have until the end of May (Here's the link to the online voting form - no waiting!). At the time I'm posting this, the CSRA website still hasn't been updated with the current nominations, so here's one I prepared earlier, complete with BGG links.

I have a couple of other things on the simmer as well, a couple of unboxings and some AARs. I'm feeling better today than I was two days ago, and at this rate I should be fully operational by the weekend. If you're a regular, I beg a little more patience. If you're new to A Fast Game, thanks for coming; have a look at the tags down the right hand side of the screen and see if something takes your interest. 

In the meantime, here are some photos of the last game I participated in, an American Revolutionary War miniatures game (in glorious 28mm) using the second edition Valor and Fortitude rules, available free from the Perry Miniatures website.