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

Korea

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The Playte Tier List (Part 2)

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The Playte Tier List (Part 2)

I have something of an obsession with Korean publisher Playte Games. I currently live in Korea, so it is very easy for me to buy their games every month thanks to their low price point, but even beyond that they also feel tailor made for my interests. They do lots of reprints of classic games from simpler times (I am curmudgeonly about the current state of many hobby games, if I’m honest with myself), and in small boxes that I can easily fit on my shelf. I hate big boxes, get out of here with that shit. Gimme games that I can toss in my bag and bring with me. I don’t have a huge basement, I don’t drive to my gaming meet up, please don’t give me games that take a boardroom table to setup and weigh 10 kilograms. So yeah, Playte is like laser focused on what I want out of games, even if I don’t love everything they make.

My enthusiasm for Playte has caused me to deviate from my normal reviewing behavior, which is to focus on historical games and wargames, and write about how I feel about their latest and greatest. I usually don’t review these kind of games, not because I don’t like them, but because I struggle to have much to say. I focus on historical games because I am a historian, so I have a lot to say about games that tap into history and try to represent it accurately. My compromise for my inability to say much about traditional hobby games besides “it’s fun” or “it’s not very much fun” is to do a tier list. I already did part 1, which you can read here, this is the Playte Games Tier List (Part 2).

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Korea’s Place in the Sun by Bruce Cumings

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Korea’s Place in the Sun by Bruce Cumings

I was really impressed with Bruce Cumings’ history of the Korean War, and I was looking for a good general history of Korea, so it didn’t take much of a recommendation to push me towards grabbing a copy of Korea’s Place in the Sun. This is a history of modern Korea, primarily focused on 1850-2000, but it includes a decent overview of Korea’s earlier history in its opening chapter. This is because Cumings wants to emphasize how long Korea has existed as a single nation, because it is essential to understanding the impact of first Japanese colonization and then the division between north and south on the Korean psyche and modern history. Overall, I was really impressed with Korea’s Place in the Sun, it is an engaging if dense history of a fascinating country that does its best to take some very complex topics and make them easier to understand.

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Most Anticipated Games: 2026 Edition

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Most Anticipated Games: 2026 Edition

I did a terrible job at predicting what games would come out in 2025. In my defense, I didn’t see the tariffs and trade war between the US and China coming, which caused massive disruption to the tabletop games industry and delayed lots of games. Of the 11 games on my list last year, only 4 actually came out in 2025. Of those four, I own two of them and have played zero (but I set up one of them on my table!). That’s pretty embarrassing, but the silver lining is that it should make it easy for me to do better next year.

Last year I recapped, in brief, the games from my list that I had played, but since this year I played literally none of them there’s no point in doing so!

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The Playte Games Tier List (Part 1?)

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The Playte Games Tier List (Part 1?)

I mostly write about historical wargames on this website because that’s what I have the most thoughts and opinions about. However, I also love me a classic mid-weight Eurogame. Something German and from the early- or mid-2000s can really get me going. I would love to write more about them, but I don’t have anything interesting to say. In the words of a great philosopher, I just think they’re neat.

When I moved to Korea, I was interested to learn what, if any, games were being made locally. I had previously dug around a little in the Japanese board game scene when I visited there in 2019, but I had very little idea what to expect in Korea. I cannot understate my excitement at discovering Korean publisher Playte. This small operation has published several games for the first time, but it also republishes many classic German-style games with brand new art, usually lovingly made by artist Wanjin Gil. They are also known for their L-Board boxes, where the box itself unfolds into the game board – something that is sometimes brilliant and sometimes feels a bit gimmicky.

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Korea the Forgotten War (OCS Korea) by Rod Miller and Dean Essig

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Korea the Forgotten War (OCS Korea) by Rod Miller and Dean Essig

Where do I start with something this big? I have been playing Korea semi-weekly (with a few gaps) since December last year. I’ve played it for at least twenty hours over the past eight months. In addition to my regular two-player game, I’ve dabbled in playing it solitaire. Playing Korea The Forgotten War has probably been my favorite gaming experience of 2025 so far. However, despite spending so much time with this game I still feel like I’ve only begun to dip my toes into its vast sea. In all that time we only played the game’s opening moments. We didn’t even get as far as the UN crossing the border and invading North Korea, let alone the Chinese intervention and the second phase of the Mobile War. For that reason I don’t feel like I am adequately equipped to provide a full review of Korea. I can only describe the glimpse I’ve had of its majesty. Caveats aside, this game is amazing and I love it. It is absolutely worth the time it requires.

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My First KBO Game

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My First KBO Game

I didn’t really grow up with baseball, or at least watching baseball. I’m still American, so my dad taught me how to throw and how to (kind of) hit a baseball, but I never played outside of our yard, and we never watched games. I can put most of the blame for the latter on the fact that we had no team for most of my childhood – Virginia lacks any major sports teams and Washington, DC (my dad’s hometown and source of our local major sports teams) was in its 33 lacuna of no baseball until I was fifteen, by which point I was a bit too busy to become invested in another sport. I’ve had a passing interest in baseball, and I followed the Nationals 2019 triumph, but only via the newspapers. However, when we were planning our move to Korea, I had heard that attending a baseball game in Korea was a must. While we were surviving our first Korean winter (I say surviving, my wife and daughter loved the freezing cold, me not so much) I was eagerly looking forward to the start of baseball season.