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

Cole Wehrle

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Molly House by Jo Kelly and Cole Wehrle

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Molly House by Jo Kelly and Cole Wehrle

This one has been a bit of a struggle. Usually, when I’m planning to review a game I get a decent set of thoughts from the first couple of plays, and the subsequent plays are an exploration of what I might have missed alongside a probing of how sincerely I hold my initial thoughts through further games. While I can’t endorse this as the perfect method for generating reviews, it generally yields the results that I want: an exploration of my thoughts and feelings of a game rather than whether the game is “good” or “fun”. I want to dig into the history, what the game says, and how I feel the whole thing hangs together as an experience. However, every so often a game comes along that is a real challenge to get my head around – not in terms of rules but rather just as an experience. Molly House is the latest challenger, and it has sent me for a bit of a mental loop. That means that today’s review is going to be even messier than usual as I try to create some structure and order to my thoughts on this fascinating, and slightly messy, game.