Overthinking it: It’s okay to own unpunched games

 

 

This post began as an afterword to an unboxing post looking at a recent acquisition, Blue vs Gray Deluxe Edition (GMT Games, 2003). I was considering the fact that this game, which I bought second-hand, had probably been bought with every intention of play. Yet it looked untouched when took possession of it. Below is what I originally wrote in the Blue vs. Gray unboxing:

A game this old that remains on a shelf, unpunched and pristine, tells its own story. I’m under no illusions that there’s a good chance this copy of Blue vs Gray came from a deceased estate.  The online store I bought it from specialises in these kinds of bulk purchases.

When I was younger, I couldn’t imagine buying a game and not immediately on arrival home, opening it up, examining the map and the pieces, maybe even giving the rules a cursory glance before punching out the units and starting to push some counters around. These days we might call it “active learning,” or learning by doing. Now I think about it, I don’t have a single shelf of shame – my games are spread over several locations and some surfaces – but I must have around two dozen games yet to be punched. It’s a slippery slope.

I could feel myself being drawn down the rabbit hole by a coupe of competing tensions, including the futility of attempting anything in the face of annihilation; not the sort of thing that belongs in an unboxing post (with the possible exception of the one that made Pandora famous). In the end I decided to carve of this line of thinking and give the notion it's own post to run around in.

Where this all started.

I’m not a collector; I get some satisfied joy from owning the games I own, but I bought every one of them with the explicit intention of playing them at some future date. When it comes to games, I’m an examiner. I don’t think the shrink wrap has stayed on a game in my possession for more than twenty-four hours before I broke it open to paw the components and take at least a cursory look at the rules. but more and more often, a game arrives, and I’ll make that initial examination the contents and rulebook, but then it gets relegated to a space on a shelf, in the wardrobe, or the end of my desk, filed next to some nebulous idea of getting to playing it sometime soon...

If I’m honest with myself, this behaviour isn’t new. I began writing A Fast Game in part to hold myself to account in an effort to play more games I already owned. Back then, I don’t think I owned a single game that was unpunched or unstickered, or otherwise not ready to grab off the shelf and set up to play. I’m not sure when that started to change exactly, but I think it must have been about two years ago. Unboxings were more of an occasional feature of the blog when I began, but they are a popular feature, and I get positive feedback on them, so they’ve become more common. These days I tend to hold off punching a game until I’ve at least photographed the components. This has created a backlog, and now I have at least twenty-three games I can think of that I haven’t got to properly cracking yet, with another four in-coming in the next month or so* (while writing this post, I received notice of the imminent arrival of a copy – my copy – of Cuius Regio (GMT Games, 2026)). I’m going to try to lift my game with the unboxings, although I will likely skip the bigger games that are already receiving a lot of attention.

This is all peripheral, though, to what’s been on my mind. Unpunched games are a kind of a marker of something greater. As I mentioned, the place that I bought the copy of Blue vs Gray that I now own handles a lot of deceased estates. While they post a lot of obviously second-hand games, more and more boxed games appearing in their catalogue are not just unpunched, but still in their shrink-wrap. I don’t have a problem with the source of these games – I think most of the previous owners would be pleased if they knew their collection was getting a second life. But it’s a lot. It’s an awful lot of games that were bought (presumably) but never even gazed upon. 

Recent arrivals. More grist for the anxiety mill.

Due to current circumstances, mortality and its implications are lately never far from my thoughts. I’ve been thinking a lot about my own collection, and how many games I still haven’t played (I haven’t crunched the numbers lately, but I think I’m sitting a little above 30% played). This has kept me awake at night. I wondered whether I should just sell any game that remained unpunched for more than a couple of months. I thought about just cancelling thee couple of dozen preorders I have standing, and a few other options as well. But as I jumped through these hoops, I came to realise that I wasn’t addressing the issue, just the evidence. I was busy with the noise, trying to ignore the signal.

I will someday die. I hope that eventuality doesn't occur for a while, and that in the meantime I will get to play some of those games I haven’t got to the table yet. And that I’ll get to spend time with people who I respect and whose company I enjoy, and to drink some good wines, and that I’ll get to read all those books I’ve been hording in anticipation of retirement. In nearly all cases, the end-point is inevitable, but not defined. Every unplayed game, every unread book, every pencilled-in catch-up with friends is an expression of hope in the face of an indeterminate but unavoidable termination-point.

I'm sure I’ve related this story on the blog elsewhere, but it’s a good story so it’s worth repeating. The late writer and semiotician Umberto Eco possessed a library of over 30,000 volumes. Sometimes visitors to his library would ask him, “Umberto, have you read all of these books?” Often he would grace the questioner with an astonished look, and reply, “What would be the point of a library full of books I’ve already read?”

So, hereon in, this is going to be my attitude to my game library; what would be the point of only owning a shelf full of games you’ve already played? Well, okay, it’s not quite the same – of course there are dozens of games that I‘ll happily replay, ust as there are books I will no doubt read again, but I’m also content to own games that I’ll get to eventually, given time. Or not. It’s taken me a while to get here, but this is where I am now. I wouldn't say I'm completely anxiety-free, but I believe I am more sanguine regarding my collection.**

An unplayed game is an opportunity for a new experience, maybe even a shared experience, and one shouldn’t be ashamed of their Shelf of Shame. I don’t think I really like the term Shelf of Opportunity, but whatever works. Everyone’s journey is different. I hope that stack of untended games doesn’t stay unpunched for too long, but I’m not going to lose any more sleep over them. If there’s a game I don’t get to play, I hope somebody will take up the mantle. I’m not trying to be morbid. I just think it would be a shame if others should also get to have some fun.

* Along with Cuius Regio, I'm expecting Coast Watchers: Allied Field Intelligence in the South Pacific, 1942-1943 (GMT Games, 2026), Brandywine: A Time for Heroes (Les 3 Zouaves, 2026) and 1809: Talavera (Tactical Workshop, 2026), all within the next month or so. 

** There is, of course the very real tension between the growing collection and the limits of available storage space, but we'll have t tackle that in a future post.

 

2026 Q2 Report: A little willingness to venture

 

Color guard of the Japanese American 442nd Regimental Combat Team standing
at attention while their citations for bravery are read, near Bruyères, France,
November 12, 1944. (Source: Britannica.com)

Have courage and a little willingness to venture and be defeated.

— Robert Frost

2026 has hit its half-way point, and it’s time for another quarterly report. These missives are really just for my own benefit; they help me to help take a tally of where I am and what I’ve been doing, both gaming- and blog-wise. I’ll make assumptions about what I’ve played or received in the mail, but then when I go over the records, my memory’s out of whack. I mention this to say that I won’t resent anyone not reading this. It might be a little dry and somewhat self-indulgent, but if that’s your thing, read on.

 

Incoming

This is what I was talking about in the intro – Looking back over the last three months, I was sure it had been a relatively quiet quarter for incoming games; I counted five new to me titles, as well as the Update Kit for Mr President (GMT Games, 2023) to bring it in line with the Second Edition (GMT Games, 2026). Then Queen of Spies (Salt & Pepper Games, 2026), which I’d backed during its Gamefound campaign, arrived a couple of days before the end of the month (I thought it wouldn’t be here for a few weeks).

Queen of Spies. Unboxing forthcoming.

In truth, I received nine games, plus the Mr President update. Regular readers would have noted the saga of the January GMT order, but in short, I was able to run out to the Australia/New Zealand distributor (handily located here in Adelaide) and get the part of the order that had arrived. For me this was Ardennes ’44, Fourth Edition (GMT Games, 2026), Purgatorio: Men of Iron Volume VI (GMT Games, 2026), and the Mr President update. In that batch was a copy of the Men of Iron Tri-Pack (GMT Games, 2020) reprint for my brother-in-law, T. This, too, had its issues (an Errata Replacement Kit will be forthcoming).

Purgatorio. You can get a look at what's inside here.

In a moment of feverish excitement, I impulsively ordered Guerre Eclair (Nuts! Publishing, 2026), directly from the publisher within a day or so of its release. The price was very good, although the shipping cost wound back most of that advantage, but in fairness, the package arrived in just a little over a week and really nicely packed. Guerre Éclair is the third in Nuts!’ Combat Rations series. True to the blog-title, I like a fast-playing game, and this promises to live up to that.

Speaking of fast games, the other titles received are all second-hand purchases (though four of the five were unpunched on receipt). These were the GMT Deluxe Edition of one of Pushing Cardboard host Grant Linneberg’s favourite games, Blue vs Gray (GMT Games, 2023), and four zip-loc games Blitzkrieg Unleashed: The Battle of Sedan – May 13-14, 1940 (Hi Flying Dice Games, 2002), Blitzkrieg Met: the Battle ofStonne, May 15-16, 1940 (High Flying Dice Games, 2011), Green Berets: War in the Central Highlands 1964-1965 (One Small Step, 2001), and  Warsaw 1920: Lenin's Failed Conquest of Europe (Revolution Games, 2020). And before you ask, with the best will in the world, I have not as yet managed to get any of these to the table. Their time will come.

Commands and Colors: Napoleonics (Prussian Army expansion), Placenoit scenario.

 

Games played

Last quarter, T and I didn’t catch up for a game at all (I’ve written about why that was here, so I’m not going to dwell on that here). Since Easter, we’ve been playing Commands and Colors: Napoleonics (GMT Games, 2010) nearly exclusively twice a week – twenty-five games in all – and all scenarios from the Continental Army expansions (this makes up somewhat for not getting any games in through Q1). We punctuated the run with a couple of palette-cleanser games of Battle Line (GMT Games, 2000) Century: Spice Road (Plan B Games, 2017). I’ve posted a string of AARs on A Fast Game, which must be tedious for readers who aren’t a fan of Napoleonics. Sorry about that – I’m trying to get back to a more diverse spread of subjects.

The Italian Wars, Scourge of Princes style.

What I haven’t been writing about is a new miniatures rules-set we’ve been playing with the Wednesday group, Scourge of Princes (Sam Mustafa Publishing, 2026), which shamefully does not yet have an entry on Boardgamegeek.com. Scourge is subtitled, “The Birth of Modern Warfare: Machiavelli to Cromwell,” which is a broad scope to tackle with a single rules-set, but having played scenarios set during the First Italian War and the English Civil War, the overall rules capture the general nature of battle across the period, while situational rules-tweaks applied to the periods covered (such as freer movement options for cavalry in the later centuries) lend a sense of verisimilitude to the eras while keeping a fairly low rules overhead.

Royalist troops (English Civil War)...

and Cromwell's New Model Army (Scourge of Princes).

There’s one more game we played with the Wednesday group just recently which was a revelation. I own the earliest editions of the three European Conflict of Heroes games, Awakening the Bear: Russia. 1941-1942 (Academy Games, 2008), Storms of Steel! – Kursk 1943 (Academy Games, 2009), and Price of Honour – Poland 1939 (Academy Games, 2010), which I scored as a job-lot. I enjoyed the game, but I haven't played it in an age, and was considering selling it, but just last week, I played a buddy's Awakening the Bear – Operation Barbarossa 1941, Third Edition (Academy Games, 2019). It was a revelation. It's a familiar game, but is just a bit tighter and more thrilling. The beauty of Conflict of Heroes is one can play the older editions with the Third Edition rules (downloadable from the Academy Games website); the only drawback is they require a customised ten-sided die for each side. Bless the Internet - two people had posted .STL files to make your own custom d10 for the game. Now I just have to find someone who can print me a couple. 

Blog matters

I’ve been slipping a little this quarter, posting only twenty-one pieces, about seven a month. Putting it that way, it’s not quite as bad as it first sounded – that’s nearly two a week (honestly, it felt like less). These included four unboxings (I have a couple in various states of completion, but that need better photos of some of the components – even I have some pride in this regard. I also bored everybody with a string of C&C Napoleonics AARs, eight, posts covering nine scenarios. I burnt out a little before getting on to the subsequent boxes, but I might write up some of those. I also posted two Blog Notes (short posts about things that don’t fit into the regular, established categories). I’ll come back to these below, because they are each interesting in their own way and worth some extra consideration.

The rest of the posts were interviews. This was a new thing last quarter. A Fast Game’s first interview, with Yasushi Nakaguro, which I posted in February, in February. In Q2, another four have appeared, almost accidentally; Mr Nakaguro sent me a copy of Bansai 28, which featured the Award Value Proposition for Wargame Publishers article I posted to the blog last year, and the featured game in that issue was Brian Trains Balkan Gamble (BTR Games, 2015; Bonsai Games, 2026). I read Mr Train’s blog regularly and we’ve exchanged comments in the past, so I asked if he would mind forwarding me the English-language rules for Balkan Gambit. When he did, I though Nothing ventured, nothing gained, and asked if he’d be willing to participate in an interview, to which he said yes, but he had some work across the country, so after that.

Bansai 28

Around the same time, Grant Linneberg had been renovating his basement to become his new game room and studio. Mr Linneberg is responsible for the excellent Pushing Cardboard podcast and YouTube channel. I’ve written about wargame collection development in the past, and I thought this was a great opportunity to talk to somebody in the process of unpacking and reorganising his game library. Mr Linneberg agreed, and so his became the second interview for A Fast Game, published at the end of last Quarter. [EDIT: Mr Linneberg's interview was published in late March, and was mentioned as such in the report for Q1 - I had inadvertently flagged it as a Q2 contribution; more evidence of my flagging short-term memory.] The third was Mr Train’s, which appeared in April. Both were really a delight to work with, and I’m very happy with the results. 

I’ve been a fan of Nadir Elfarra’s art for wargames since I first got Dawn’s Early Light (Compass Games, 2020). Mr Elfarra and I have some mutual friends on Facebook, so I messaged him asking if he’d do an interview. I’m keen to highlight the artists that make our favourite games special, and so there will probably be more art-design interviews in the future. I’ll circle back to the third below, but there’s a bit more of a story behind it.

In the last quarter I hit a milestone that I mentioned in a Blog Note, but I kind of buried the lead there, so I’ll reiterate. A Fast Game hit 100,000 views about a week and a half ago (at time of writing). I must be doing something right because it only took me about eight months to add another 50,000 page views from my last milestone.

Being on Blogger, I’m not tapped into the WordPress fraternity that most of the other blogs I follow have access to. I have no members or subscribers, per se, just regulars and tourists. Thank you to everyone who stops by, and I hope when you do you’re all finding something of interest when you do. And thank you to all the who have contributed to that growth; I gave them all a shout-out here, so I won’t repeat myself of embarrass them further, but I am very grateful to all of them.

Now for some statistics, because this wouldn’t be a quarterly report without some random numerical values. I finished the quarter with a total of 101,464 page-views of 276 posts. Considering the interviews, I can no longer say “I’ve written X words,” so instead I’ll say that I have posted to the blog total of 439,058 words. A Fast Game, in its totality, is now somewhat longer than Don Quixote, though I have a way to go before reaching the length of The Count of Monte Cristo.

 

Two scoops

Reader, this quarter saw A Fast Game has take a few small steps toward covering some real news with two stories that hadn’t been covered elsewhere. In their May newsletter, GMT inadvertently listed The Napoleonic Wars, 3rd Edition (GMT Games, ~2027) as tentatively joining the company’s production queue in the fourth quarter of this year. There had been rumours of a reprint or new edition circling around the usual online haunts for six months or more, but nothing official had been announced (the title appeared again in the June newsletter).

I did apologise to the good folks at GMT, after the fact (better to beg
forgiveness than ask permission).

I’m sure other people noticed this, but so far as I’m aware, I’m the only one who wrote about it. I posted a Blog Note about the inadvertent announcement here. Feeling cocky, I posted a link to the note to the Official GMT page on Facebook. This has become the most-read piece I’ve posted to A Fast Game, clocking a little over 700 direct views in the first 48 hours. At time of writing, it’s registered over 1,000 views, plus the 200 or so it would have received from folks wandering in through the front door while it was the latest post.

In the subtitle I mentioned two scoops. The second actually came out of the first. As an afterthought, I asked readers to mention in the comments what other games they would like to see GMT reprint. The second comment mentioned the one game that comes up every time somebody mentions reprints. Downtown: Air War Over Hanoi, 1965-1972 (GMT Games, 2004) is a perennial wish-list candidate with a particularly strong reputation. It won three separate categories in the Charles S. Roberts Awards for 2004. A string of games have leveraged Downtown’s systems to explore new theatres, from Bloody April, 1917: Air War Over Arras, France (GMT Games, 2012) to Red Storm: The Air War Over Central Germany, 1987 (GMT Games, 2019). But in more than twenty years, no reprint. I decided to find out once and for all if it might come to pass.

I follow Downtown designer Lee Brimmicombe-Wood on FB, so I cold-called him on Messenger and asked the question. I admit I was a little surprised when he replied, and his answer prompted another question, which he graciously answered. Rather than pepper Mr Brimmicombe-Wood with further random questions and risk is just blocking me, I asked if he’d be willing to do an email interview. He agreed.

I recommend you go read that if you haven’t. It’s an interesting read (and a salutary lesson in the importance of thoroughly researching the topic). And it definitively answers the question of a Downtown reprint.

 

Extracurricular activities

I’m staying away from playtesting for the foreseeable. I have been thinking about the Cesare Borgia game I’ve been tinkering with, but nothing solid (it’s still pretty much vapourware – don’t look for it anytime soon). I haven't given much thought to the further scenarios for Afrika Army Korps (Conflict Simulations Ltd, 2025); they are on the backburner for now.

 

Next steps

As I said, T and I have been playing “All Napoleonics – all the time.” Commands & Colors: Napoleonics is T’s go-to game, and twice a week, nearly every week since Easter. Apart from the aforementioned reason, I’m using the opportunity to reacquaint myself with the Continental Armies expansions. We’ve played around half a dozen or more scenarios each from the Austrian Army (GMT Games, 2013), and Prussian Army (GMT Games, 2014) expansions, and are currently working through the Russian Army box (GMT Games, 2013). The three national army expansions are now set for reprint as a combined set in a BIG box. There’s not a lot of critical consideration of the Continental army expansions in the wild (beyond casual musings over playthroughs, so the plan is to present something like a review of each box on the blog. I’m part-way through the Austrian Army write-up; I had hoped to get that one at least up before the end of Q2, but I should be able to post all three will be up before the end of Q3.

With a lot else going on, I've been slack at tabling new games this quarter. I'm planning to turn that around in Q3. I'm not going to commit to firm numbers, but I'll write something about each one as it happens. 

I won’t have any further interviews planned at the moment. I do have a line on one that’s been taking longer than I expected, but I won’t mention who it is in case it doesn’t come off as I don’t want it to reflect at all badly on them. I never meant for interviews to become a regular feature, and I’m a little surprised I managed four in the space of three months. But if the opportunity arises, I’ll be happy to follow it up.

I’ve been a little distracted from posting in the last couple of weeks because I’m spending a chunk of free time gathering data for A Fast Game’s next research project. I don’t want to say too much this far out, but I’m hoping to get a proper article posted in the second half of August, though there may be some slippage in that time-line depending on how quickly I can gather the information I need. Like my last research piece, I’ll include the full methodological details and such. And like my last article, this one is drive purely by my own quirky interests, but I think this one will have broader appeal to the regular readership. Unlike the last one, I’m planning to release as much of the raw data as I can in a set of follow-up posts. For more, you’ll just have to wait until it's online.

-----

Thank you, long-suffering reader, for persevering this far, and generally for showing up and checking out A Fast Game. Honestly, I’d probably still post if I didn’t have a regular readership, but it’s nice to think somebody will see it and maybe even have a chuckle. If you have read this far, either pat yourself on the back or pour yourself a double.

2026 Q1 Report: Supplies and Demands

 

 

9th Division Army Service Corps, Tobruk, September 1941
(Courtesy of the Australia War Memorial).

Three months into the new year, I find myself feeling like a bit of a fraud. A Fast Game began a blog about playing wargames, but there hasn’t been a lot of games played lately. Life, family illness, and associated stresses intrude on plans, or weariness overtakes the planner. Either way, I’m left with feelings of guilt over missed opportunities. This leaves me in a funk, a little black terrier growling and pulling at my trouser leg.

Writing is the best salve for this funk, but I’ve been wilfully ignoring this avenue out of Achillean stubbornness (I’ll come back to this later in the post). I think I’m digging my way out of that funk now. The terrier is in the corner, chastened but alert.

Overall, I’m a little disappointed with my written output these last three months – the quantity thereof, of the quality I’m quite chuffed – and dissatisfied with my own participation in the hobby. Through the course of preparing this report, my view of the last three months of A Fast Game has softened a little; I do feel like I’ve achieved some joy in some areas, in spite of not meeting my own expectations in others. On balance, it hasn’t been a bad quarter.

 

Incoming

In previous quarterly reports, this section has been called Games Purchased, but most of the arriving games in a given quarter have been ordered and paid for in advance, sometimes a year or more earlier. So, I’m changing it to “Incoming” partly in keeping with a martial theme, partly because some quarters it can feel somewhat like a barrage.

Overall, I’ve received twelve wargames and two expansions/supplements in the last three months. Q1 2026 was the Quarter of Big Boxes. No less than three games arrived in 12” by 12” shells (see the photo attached). A GMT P500 order arrived with two Mark Simonitch games (and a mounted board for Italy ’43 (GMT Games, 2025)) and Unconditional Surrender! Western Campaigns (GMT Games, 2025). I also received Battle Commander, Volume 1 (Sound of Drums, 2026) and its first expansion, and Gallipoli: Ordered to Die (The Dietz Foundation, 2025), both crowdfunded through the usual channels. 

Q1 haul. Not pictured; Bansai 28, Paper Wars #84 (Autumn 2016). 1846: The Race for the
 Midwest is an honourable mention. I've never played an 18XX game, and the price was
very good, so I grabbed this and 1777: Year of the Hangman (Clash of Arms, 2002)
as a job lot.

I’ve mentioned elsewhere that Brian Train’s latest COIN game, China’s War (GMT Games, 2025) was subbed-out for another title I won in a raffle draw. I was particularly heartened to receive a contributor’s copy of BonSai Games’ Bansai 28. I’ve bleated about this enough – you can read about it here – but, but by happy coincidence, it included a a revised edition of the game Balkan Gamble, also designed by Mr Train. He was kind enough to forward me the English language rules and scenario details (the game covers four planned but unexecuted invasions of Greece/Yugoslavia between 1943 and 1950). This is near the top of my to be played.  And as if the gods themselves smiled down on the exchange, a copy of Mr Train’s Finnish Civil War (Compass Games, 2016) in issue 84 of Paper Wars arrived (with Battle Commander, but that’s a story for another time) on the same day as Bansai 28. China’s War arrived the following week.

The others were opportunistic purchases, on my part – get ’em before they’re gone. I've already posted an unboxing of War & Peace, Seventh Edition (Avalon Digital, 2025); the others will be forthcoming.

 

Games played

This will be short. And embarrassing. In the last three months I think I’ve played maybe nine games or less to completion, depending on how you define complete. When I’m playing a game two-handed, I’ll sometimes stop when a probable conclusion is clear, when it would be impossible for one side to make it out of the hole they’ve dug, and those last three or so rounds would just be a slow attrition, delaying the inevitable.

I’ve also played out the first couple of rounds of a handful of games, only to pack them up again before I’ve reached the meat of the game. These last three months have been a season of disruptions. This happened twice with The Battle of Blenheim, 1704 (Legion Wargames, 2018), and twice again in the last several weeks, with Battle Commander, Vol 1.

French Regulars and Guard advance on brittle Spanish militia (Valour and Fortitude).

T and I haven’t met for a game since a couple of weeks before Christmas. We thought we may be able to squeeze one in tonight (the last day of March), but circumstances would not permit. The reason for our extended break is also the cause of much of the stress across the extended family these past months, and a big contributor to my not clocking more games recently.

Something I have played quite a bit these last three months is minis games. I participated in a couple of miniatures games using the Valour and Fortitude rules (Perry Miniatures, 2022), which is fast becoming the go-to rules for a sweep of periods. This quarter we’ve played an American Revolutionary War action and an early Peninsular War game.

Not quite a free-for-all (Jugula).

We also had two consecutive weeks of Gladiator games, Spartacus: a Game of Blood and Treachery (Gale Force Nine, 2012), which was mechanically elegant and a brilliant engine builder but didn’t blow my socks off, and Jugula (Studio Tomahawk, 2014), which did. Spartacus is more about building your ludus and stabbing your competition in the back, and the side-spectacle of the gladiatorial combat almost a distraction. Jugula is all arena combat, with a brilliant card-based system where the deck both offers advantages and determines your fate at each exchange of blows. If swords and sandals are your thing, hunt down a copy of the Jugula rules and decks (you’ll need one deck for each team, but there are lots of options for your team).

We who are about to die... (Jugula).

 

Blog matters; or, How I learned to stop worrying and love the box

This Quarter I’ve posted just nineteen entries to A Fast Game (including this one). In my last Quarterly Report, I mentioned I was hoping to improve the posting count from 2025, but that Quarter I put up twenty-two posts all up. There are a lot of little contributing factors at play here, but I want to look at one here in particular.

Like I said at the start, I started A Fast Game to talk about playing games. In spite of barely getting any table-time in the last three months, I still think of myself as a wargame player rather than a wargame collector. So, it wasn’t much of a shock when I realised unboxing posts made up a third of the entries posted in the last three months (compared to just two AARs), and three of those went up consecutively. This isn’t really a problem– I treat unboxings like a community service and try to make them informative and entertaining – but lately I’ve been hyper-conscious of A Fast Game starting to look like a big advertisement. Or the online equivalent of a used car lot.

I have about four unboxing posts in various states of completion and could probably have upped the quota for Q1 so something like last year’s levels, but I realise now I’ve been self-editing my posting. I’ve got four games that arrived between January and now that I’d like to write up, as well as another eight or ten from last year. If I had pushed through and finished some of these, I probably would have felt better overall about the blog, and would probably have written more overall, not just the unboxings. I hope I’ve turned a corner with actually playing games, but I’ll also try not to let my embarrassment form not posting AARs get in the way of posting unboxings.

Another thing regulars may have noticed is I’ve added a new, if infrequent, feature to A Fast Game. Q1 saw two short-form interviews, with designer/publisher Yasushi Nakaguro and social media impresario Grant Linneberg. This is something I’be been thinking about for a while. I want to present short interviews with a relatively concentrated focus on a given subject. I’m still finding my feet a little with it, but the reception so far has been encouraging. I’m currently lining up another interview and have a few other subjects in mind. It will stay an infrequent addition to the stable, but expect to see more of these.

Early action in the Battle of Montebello (Battle Commander).

The other big news is that just yesterday (at time of writing), A Fast Game passed the 75,000 visits mark. To put that in context, starting out I just about reached 500 views in the first six months of posting (and I think about 10% of those were me making sure all the links worked live), and about fifteen months all up to get to 10,000 views.

The view count is a pretty high-level metric and doesn’t mean much; in a previous job I was responsible for reporting on a handful of metrics, and the Marketing division was in love with the overall site visit metric because it just kept going up, in spite of the fact that the actual number of visits per month was circling the drain.

I don’t know how many of those visits result in the reader glancing over what’s on offer and digging further or just bouncing off and checking out YouTube videos instead. A Fast Game isn’t monetised, and I don’t want to pay for Google Analytics, so I can only extrapolate from the meagre data provided in basic Blogger.

The simple analytics you get with Blogger show you the Top Referrers and Top Referring URLs – who is sending readers your way, and how they are getting there. These usually pick up less than ten percent of the overall visits for a given duration (I have it set up for the last week’s activities). So, while I get readers from recommendations on other websites, the majority seem to come through the front door; that is, the come to the general blog address and see whatever I’ve posted most recently, then sometimes they’ll go rummaging through the back-catalogue.

Traffic report.

As I’ve said previously, I’m really appreciative of the mentions I get on other blogs and elsewhere (you know who you are), but the bread and butter of the blog is people who presumably have A Fast Game bookmarked and drop in every other week or so to see what’s going on. In this case, the referrals are gravy, and I return the favour when I can. Referrals must be how most people find A Fast Game in the first place. A Google search for <”a fast game is a good game” blog> brought up half-a-dozen links each to old Armchair Dragoons’ Tuesday Newsday posts and GMT Games’ product pages, but no direct link to the blog (I’m sure this would change if I turned on Adsense).

I mostly write A Fast Game for myself. I go down statistical rabbit holes and chase down obscure facets of art history because that’s what interests me. But the knowledge that people are coming back to read what’s on offer, and occasionally even comment on it, brings its own reward. Thanks for coming along.

 

An international audience.

Extracurricular activities

Nothing to report on this front. If I haven’t had the time or opportunity to play wargames, I certainly haven’t had the capacity to play-test anything. That may change in the future, but I can’t promise anything.

 

Next steps

Last year I wrote the first part of what I envisioned would be a three-part exploration of Block Wargames, why and how they do what they do. It started as a two-parter, but after rethinking it, I edited down the second part and posted it under the title Not Created Equal: a Block Wargame Primer, Part 1 – Commands & Colors; an odd place to start, but there you go. I’ve been meaning to get back to it for a while, but I’ve finally started to sketch out a couple more chapters (to make it a four-part series in all, maybe five if I can maintain the momentum), and I hope to get at least another one up on the blog before the end of June. I may even rework the first chapter to bring it more in line with the others (no promises there, I hate reworking old material).

I’d like to do another research article as well; I have an idea of what I’d like to look at, but I’m struggling with the methodology. If I can crack that nut, you may see another long-form piece later this year.

In the meantime, expect to see more unboxings, hopefully some AARs, maybe another interview or two. I especially can’t make promises when other people are involved – I’m at the whim of their schedules and commitments. The interviews are fun to do, and after I fire off the first batch of questions, I can get on with something else until I get a reply.

So as always, expect more of the same. Thank you for reading this far, and for coming back to A Fast Game if you’re a regular. If you can keep showing up, I should be able to keep it interesting. And I’ll try to be less morose this quarter.

 

 

Line of Fire: A fast interview with Pushing Cardboard’s Grant Linneberg

 

I am unpacking my library. Yes, I am. The books are not yet on the shelves, not yet touched by the mild boredom of order. I cannot march up and down their ranks to pass them in review before a friendly audience. You need not fear any of that. Instead, I must ask you to join me in the disorder of crates that have been wrenched open, the air saturated with wood dust, the floor covered with torn paper, to join me among piles of volumes that are seeing daylight again after two years of darkness, so that you may be ready to share with me a bit of the mood-certainly not an elegiac mood but, rather, one of anticipation-which these books arouse in a genuine collector. For such a man is speaking to you, and on closer scrutiny he proves to be speaking only about himself.

- Walter Benjamin, "Unpacking my Library: a talk about collecting" 

 

Grant Linneberg is the voice behind the Pushing Cardboard podcast. He also maintains the Pushing Cardboard website, YouTube channel, and Discord server, a peaceable kingdom of lively game discussion between wargamers. In his spare time, Mr Linneberg writes about games and all the news from wargame publishers on the Pushing Cardboard blog and longer-form articles, and even manages to squeeze in some games.

I’m always curious about how other people build and manage their game collections. Mr Linneberg has recently undergone a complete refit of his gaming space and has just been unpacking his game library. Between filling shelves and recording podcasts, Mr Linneberg took time out to answer some questions about his collection.

---------

A partially unpacked collection.

A Fast Game: I’m sure you’ve mentioned this before on the Pushing Cardboard podcast, but what were your earliest wargaming experiences? What drew you to the hobby?

Grant Linneberg: When I was thirteen, my family took a summer motorhome trip from our home in Alberta through the US to visit family in Iowa and Missouri. Great trip, and I remember it was the first time I went to visit the Little Bighorn battle site (Montana was along the way).

It was 1976, the American Bicentennial, and so everyone in the US was trying to capitalize, including Milton Bradley, who re-published their American Heritage games from the 1960s. While I spent most of my spare cash on model tanks, I came across one of these games, Dogfight (Milton Bradley, 1963), and bought it. I had always been an avid boardgame player, but I'd never seen anything like this. Not much of a wargame by our standards today, but to me it was fantastic. Plastic biplanes! Air combat!

The following summer, we moved to Calgary, a sizeable city, and I stumbled upon my first real wargame in a department store, Avalon Hill's Tobruk (Avalon Hill, 1975). I bought it and loved it and went back for more as soon as I could afford it. Next up, Richthofen's War (Avalon Hill, 1972)! So much better than Dogfight. From that point, I was hooked and continued buying AH games for years. I'd get the odd SPI game, but at the time I didn't appreciate the innovations, I didn't think much of the paper maps in the flat packs, and I was skeptical of Strategy & Tactics being able to ensure quality on a magazine schedule. Of course, I only had a couple friends that were interested in these games with me, so I played a lot of them solo, much as I still do when I'm learning a new game. I had much better luck getting friends to play AH's sports games.

New shelves. Even the desk looks exhausted.

 

AFG: Roughly how big is your game collection (number of titles or linear feet)?

GL: I keep track of them in a spreadsheet as well as on BGG, so I can say that I have 695. That includes a few that are destined for the trade/sell/giveaway pile. It also includes a few family games, but not many as my wife is not a gamer (though we play Scrabble probably three times a week).

 

AFG: Do you keep a record of what games you own, like a spreadsheet or a listing on BoardgameGeek.com?

GL: Yes, as mentioned above, both. I put new games into BGG as they arrive, and every so often I export the BGG listing and update my spreadsheet with it. I've found the spreadsheet really useful for both my podcast and livestream. It lets me know what's new since the previous episode. As well, on the spreadsheet I've added a few columns for things I'd like to filter with. ERA, CONFLICT, MAP SCALE, TIME SCALE, UNIT SCALE, etc. I don't have that all input yet, it's one of those things I chip away at when I have time.

 

An artist's impression of Grant's collection in storage.

AFG: You’ve recently had the double-whammy of renovations and, let’s say, an unscheduled indoor water expression incident, and for a good while much of your collection has been tucked away in storage. Now you’re unpacking your library, which is both a herculean task and a real opportunity. Who are you setting up your collection this time around? Alphabetically? In historical order? By publisher? Mode (tactical, operational, etc)? Colour blocking?

GL: Ha! Colour-blocking would be great. Project Runway would be so proud of me. I would love to sort it strictly by date. (Date of the conflict portrayed, not date of publication.) However, space is limited, and I will eventually run out. My wife is supportive of my hobby, but she asked for a limit on how many games I have. Not for financial reasons, but because she's concerned about how many games she'll have to deal with when I die! Perhaps I can pre-arrange someone to deal with them for her, and then space will become unlimited, but until then, the new shelves I've had installed are a hard limit, so part of my arranging and sorting is all about best use of space. The big help is sorting by publisher – for most publishers, the height and width of 99% of their games is standard. So, I can set the shelf to exactly that height for those games. If I sorted by conflict, all the shelf heights would have to be high enough to accommodate the tallest games.

With publishers where I have a lot of games, such as GMT, I sorted them by conflict just to make them easier to find. I could have done them alphabetically, I suppose, but it's interesting to look and see how many games from a certain publisher I have on a specific topic.

The other thing that I did to save space was to stand the boxes on their edges rather than their bottoms. The names of the games in 98% of cases are on the top and bottom of the game, so this way I can put the shelves closer together. The shelves are over 18" deep, so I have no fear of them not fitting. Of course, this is talking about standard wargame style boxes, roughly inspired by the old Avalon Hill bookcase games. I have a few shelves along the bottom for the big monster boxes. A Most Fearful Sacrifice (Flying Pig Games, 2022), the Grand Tactical series, the Old School Tactical series, stuff that comes in those giant boxes. I lay some of them flat, some on their edges - that's a work in progress.

Magazine games are another challenge. I bought some cardboard boxes from ULine that are OK, but they aren't as sturdy as I'd like. A company called Aegis makes trays for magazine games and I have a handful of them. They work great, but they're about $5 USD per tray, so pricey. And they don't fit European size magazines, of which I have quite a few. On the plus side, I wrote to my friends at Cube4Me and described the problem and how the Aegis trays weren't exactly what I was looking for, and they got interested. They asked for the measurements of the trays I'd tried, and asked about what a good tray would look like. This was about a year ago. And just a couple weeks ago, they announced they are testing a prototype. Maybe they will be my saviour.

The "after" pic. In the words of Marcel Duchamp, "Finally unfinished."

AFG: Do you have a collection philosophy or a set of guiding principles when adding games to your existing collection? And if so, how strictly do you adhere to it.

GL: The only real principle is that I have to feel confident that I want to actually play the game. I'm not really a collector, I don't have multiple copies of games other than my backup copy of Up Front (Avalon Hill, 1983) (my all-time favourite game) and a couple that were part of box lots I bought and I'll sell or trade the extra copy. I adhere to the "I need to want to play the game" idea fairly strictly, but I can see where I have blind spots. For example, Great Campaigns of the American Civil War (GCACW). I haven't really played more than a few turns of it yet, but I've bought five of the games. A couple of them I bought second-hand but in shrink for an amazing price, so that's understandable. But I buy new ones as they come out. That's because they are from MMP [Multi-Man Publishing], and MMP takes forever to reprint things, and in the meantime, the aftermarket prices skyrocket. So, my rationalization is that if I end up liking GCACW, I'll have bought the games at pre-order prices or less. And if I don't like GCACW, I'll sell them for a profit and buy something I like better. On the other hand, I've bought four or five Library of Napoleonic Battles games, and I have less confidence that I'll enjoy them, so that's breaking my rule perhaps.

When I was younger, Advanced Squad Leader (Avalon Hill, 1985) was my main game. In the 80s and 90s, it was possible to own everything for it, you could be a real completist. I went away from it from about 2000 until 2015. When I jumped back in, the number of third-party publishers had exploded. It just wasn't possible to be a completist anymore, at least not on my salary. And that was very freeing for me. I still play a ton of ASL, but I don't buy everything that comes out. I don't even buy every official product. If there's a new historical module where I'm not interested in the setting, I pass it by. And that feeling of not have to be a completist in ASL has carried over into other series.

One other thing to note though, is I'm not the sort of gamer that looks for the perfect game on a topic and then gets rid of the rest. No perfect Gettysburg game or Bulge game for me. I like multiple games on the same battle or campaign because I like seeing what different designers do. And I have developed really wide tastes in terms of eras. Hence, 695 games and counting.

 

AFG: You've mentioned before that your collection storage is limited and you can see a point where you will have to introduce a one in - one out policy (I find myself in the same boat; I may be a little closer to "peak game", but I still have a steady influx of new titles). What would be your criteria for parting with a game beyond just not enjoying it?

GL: I'd try to use the same rationale as for buying a new game - will I still play this or not? I know that there are some sentimental choices where I probably won't play them again, but I can't see parting with them. I can foresee a time when there may be hard choices to be made. As I think about it, I realize my criteria will shift over time. I'm loathe to admit it, but perhaps the time where I'm interested in monster games is passing (or has passed!). I imagine if the choice came down to two games and one took 50 hours to play the whole thing, I might let that one go. I am avoiding this question. I won't really know until I'm faced with the actual decision.

Grant Linneberg (centre) assisting two unidentified gamers at a convention
(picture courtesy of The Player's Aid).

AFG: Is there a particular publisher, designer or topic that makes a new game an inevitable purchase for you?

GL: think there are a few, but most come with caveats.

First, I'm not into fantasy as a setting. Those days have long since sailed for me. Cheers to those who enjoy them, but I'm done with that stuff. I'm almost the same with sci-fi, but I let the occasional one through. I used to have a strict "no solo games" policy, but that is slipping. I'm trying one every once in a while. It's not really that I hate any of these things, I just like them less than two-player history games, and I thought I needed to draw a line somewhere. I'm sure it means missing out on some absolute bangers. Oh, I'm less interested in really recent history wargames. Stuff on the Ukraine War or recent Mid-East conflicts, it takes a lot for me to be interested.

Publishers: I have a soft spot for the little guys. I will try a game, even one on a topic I'm not otherwise much drawn to, when it's from a small operation that's trying to get established. So, DisSimula Edizioni from Italy, Form Square from England, Sound of Drums from Germany, Neva and Bellica 3^rd Generation from Spain. I'm sure I'm forgetting a few. It would have to be a solo game about dragons for me to say no. I will buy every Blind Swords game that Revolution puts out. I love Revolution Games and own almost every non-solo game in their catalogue (thankfully a couple were sent to me to review). I pretty much buy all Hollandspiele non-solo history games as well.

Designers: I will buy every non-solo David Thompson game (and even bought a solo one last year) that is history or military themed. Same with John Butterfield, but he's so crafty, he makes his solo games playable as two-player games. I can't recall the last time Mark Herman put out a game that I didn't buy. Kim Kanger has been an auto-buy as he's so inventive, I always want to see what he'll do. When Amabel Holland does a wargame, I'm first in line. Jerry White and Volko Ruhnke, again, if it's not solitaire, I'm in. Both of these guys are always finding new ways to do things. I could make a much longer list here, but so as to avoid leaving someone I really love out, I'll leave a lot out.

Topic: The provincial part of me is always lurking and I can't say no to anything with Canadians in it. Lucky for my wallet, that doesn't amount to much. But it's also why I want to encourage it. I'm sure Australians have the same feeling. Other topics come and go. In the past few years I've gone on binges of France ‘40, The French and Indian War, WWII Italian Campaign, and the War of 1812. So, I think it shifts along with what I'm reading. But a constant is I'm always interested in new game mechanics, or old mechanics used in a new way. Part of what has fascinated me about boardgames going back to even before I saw my first wargame was the desire to figure out how they worked.

 

AFG: Finally, if you had to pack up your collection again for an extended period, what half-dozen-or-so games would you leave out for the duration? Which ones would you be loath to part with for any length of time?

GL: This is a tough one. I sort of had to do that a bit when I put the collection in storage during our renovations, but the games I kept out were some new ones, and older ones that would fit on a small table as I knew I'd be pressed for space. So this will be a whole new list.

Up Front - I can go three years without playing it and then fall in love with it anew the next time I play. I'm never disappointed.

ASL - Well, how much of it can I keep in this scenario? I have enough ASL stuff and scenarios to keep playing something new until I die.

The U.S. Civil War (GMT Gsames, 2015) - I know most people would pick one of Simonitch's ZOC-bond games, but I think this is his masterpiece.

Turning Point: Stalingrad (Avalon Hill, 1989) - I love area-impulse games and there are a few others that I could just as easily pick.

Empire of the Sun (GMT Games, 2005) - I've only played it once, just scratched the surface, but it's clearly something I'll love.

Blue vs Gray (QED Games, 1999) - ACW strategic level in a card game where the cards also make the map. Can't get enough of it.

And I'd have to pick one of my WWI tactical air combat games. But that's like choosing between your children, I can't decide which one.

There are others that I really love, but I think if I played them 100 times, I wouldn't love them as much. The above games, I could just play over and over.

 

Edit: After initially posting this, I added the before and after library photos and the rather apt Benjamin quote at the beginning. His essay, Unpacking my Library, was cavorting in the back of my mind while I was preparing the questions for Mr Linneberg. For those interested, a full text of the essay can be found here.