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

Kenneth Tee

, ,

People Power by Kenneth Tee

, ,
People Power by Kenneth Tee

I have a messy relationship with GMT’s Counter Insurgency (COIN) series. I have enjoyed my plays of COIN games, but I also rarely want to immediately jump back in and play a given game again. This is fine for my day-to-day life, where if I play two of these games in a year that’s a lot, but it is a challenge if I’m hoping to write a review of one. COIN games are fiercely asymmetric, so to get a fully rounded experience you should at least sample the various flavors of its factions. However, I often find more enjoyment in seeing how each entry adjusts the system’s core features to create a new experience than I do in revisiting the ones I have played before (with a few exceptions).

That said, I am on the lookout for COIN games that I can revisit more often because I do enjoy the core system. People Power came to my attention because it promised to be a faster playing COIN game. The British Way had reinvigorated my enthusiasm for the series in 2024 in part by delivering a COIN game in about 60 minutes (and in part thanks to designer Stephen Ranganzas’ excellent research). However, that is only a two-player game and I was interested in seeing a similar shorter play time but with the classic multiplayer asymmetric dynamic that helped COIN make a big splash when it first appeared. I was also optimistic that the shorter play time would make it easier for me to play People Power at a normal board game meet up – the pitch for “hey, want to try this weird game about politics and insurgency?” is much easier if it’s a two-hour game versus an eight hour one.