History, Medieval, Retrospective
Stuart Gorman
The Battle of Castillon – A Reflection

Today is the anniversary of the battle of Castillion. A year ago today I submitted the final draft of my manuscript for Castillon: The Final Battle of the Hundred Years War to my editor. Now, once again on the anniversary of the battle, my book is out and I thought it would be interesting to write something about the experience of writing it. 

If I’m honest, though, I feel kind of disconnected from the book now. I finished it over a year ago, and while I’ve re-read it in that time as part of proofreading and making the final tweaks to the text, as a project it has felt finished for a long time. In the intervening time I moved to South Korea and started a new job, and I haven’t had much time to think about what that day in 1453 might mean to me still. 

The Battle of Castillon – A Reflection

Fellowship of Simulations

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Verdun 1916: Steel Inferno by Walter Vejdovsky

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Verdun 1916: Steel Inferno by Walter Vejdovsky

Like many people I imagine, I first heard about Verdun 1916: Steel Inferno from a livestream on the Homo Ludens YouTube channel, where several prominent designers of card driven games (CDGs) highlighted it as one of their favorite games in the genre. However, many years, and a second appearance of the game on Homo Ludens, would pass before I played Verdun for myself. I long held off on buying it, for lack of anyone to play CDGs with (I, for one, don’t love soloing CDGs), but I was given a copy in a Secret Santa for Christmas 2024 and set myself a goal of playing it. I initially struggled and it sat neglected on my shelf, but I was finally saved by the addition of Verdun to the excellent website Rally the Troops.

I no longer had an excuse, so I set about learning and playing as many games of Verdun as I could over the winter break in 2025 (and in early 2026). Even with around half a dozen games under my belt now, I still feel like a novice. While not a complex game, there is clearly a lot of depth to Verdun, and I can feel my own lackluster skills every game I play.

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2025 in Review – Top 7 Games

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2025 in Review – Top 7 Games

Normally I start these posts with a rundown on my year in gaming and life, but not much happened in 2025 so there’s not much to report, especially compared to 2024 when I moved to a new continent and started a new project. I am still living in South Korea and enjoying it, so no news there. I started a new job in the spring, which ended up eating up quite a lot of my free time, especially in the autumn, so I didn’t learn nearly as many new wargames this year as I would have liked.

We Intend to Move on Your Works didn’t go into a total hiatus, but we also didn’t get very many episodes out this year, which I’m a little disappointed by. My project to play more Korean War games progressed by playing a longer campaign of OCS Korea, but I did not manage to try out Joe Balkoski’s classic Korean War game. Overall, it was a much better year for Eurogames, especially those published by Playte Games in Korea, than it was for wargames.