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

Wargame Review

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People Power by Kenneth Tee

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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.

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By Swords and Bayonets by Allen Dickerson

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By Swords and Bayonets by Allen Dickerson

I have an obsession with the designs of one Richard Berg. Often fiddly and weird, I can’t give them all an unqualified recommendation, but I have always found Berg’s work interesting even when I don’t enjoy it. Within Berg’s prolific catalogue of designs, I have struggled with his Great Battles the most. Great Battles of the American Civil War (GBACW) is a system with a storied history, going back to Terrible Swift Sword from SPI in 1976. It was substantially redesigned into an almost new system, but carrying the same name, with Three Days of Gettysburg from GMT Games in1995.

I have never played the original SPI version of GBACW (but I very much want to). My experience with the GMT-era of GBACW has been…fraught. I really disliked Into the Woods, and while I had a better time exploring Dead of Winter, I still would not classify myself as a fan of that game. However, I am almost always willing to give something a second try, especially if it’s a series that originated with Berg. So, when I heard that By Swords and Bayonets was meant to be a much better entry point to GBACW (something that Into the Woods very much was not) I was interested in giving it a try. Even if I didn’t expect to like it, because I think I’m just not a GBACW guy, I wanted to be certain.

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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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Hoplite by Richard Berg (and Mark Herman)

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Hoplite by Richard Berg (and Mark Herman)

I didn’t quite click with Mark Herman’s SPQR, the second volume in the Great Battles of History (GBoH) series that he co-designed with Richard Berg, but I’m nothing if not willing to give a series a second shot. With the recent reprint of Hoplite, volume 15 and the most recent entry in the series, I decided to give it another shot. I was drawn to a few things about Hoplite that I hoped might fix elements that hadn’t quite worked with me in SPQR. Firstly, this is a Richard Berg design and I’m nothing if not a Berg fan. I have had bad experiences with Berg games, but even when I don’t like them, I am generally fascinated by Berg’s takes on history and game design. While I have enjoyed several of Mark Herman’s games in the past, my taste and his are not exactly aligned. The second thing that drew me to Hoplite was that it promised to be a little simpler than earlier entries in the series – stripping out some of the complexity that Berg felt didn’t apply to ancient Greek warfare – and that it was now a chit-pull game. Something I admire about GBoH is how it seems to change significantly between volumes – taking the core but adapting it to each new topic. For that reason, I felt it warranted a second shot. I’m happy to report that I have enjoyed Hoplite quite a bit more than my first dalliance with SPQR, but I’m also still not entirely sure I’m a fan of the series yet.

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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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Hunt for Blackbeard by Volko Ruhnke

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Hunt for Blackbeard by Volko Ruhnke

At time of writing my Volko Ruhnke’s Hunt for Blackbeard is on track to become my most played game since records began (c.2019, when I installed the BG Stats app on my phone). For all that, I’m not sure it is an all time favorite game for me. It’s just so…more-ish. This is enabled in part by the excellent implementation on Rally the Troops, which is also how I’m reviewing a game which has yet to receive it’s physical release. This means there won’t be any section on the physical production, how it feels to play, or what the blocks taste like. Sorry! In its digital form at least, this cat-and-mouse pirate hunting game flies by in a mere moment but has you wondering what if you did it differently next time. It is by far the shortest and simplest game from designer Volko Ruhnke (known for COIN, Levy and Campaign, and big boy CDGs), but it is not without many of his signature elements as a designer. I’m largely ambivalent about hidden movement games, but I’m logging game after game here, so there must be something noteworthy about this one, right?

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Labyrinth: The War on Terror by Volko Ruhnke

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Labyrinth: The War on Terror by Volko Ruhnke

I was twelve when the War on Terror began, not quite fourteen when American invaded Iraq. The political and global climate created in the aftermath of 9/11 defined some of my most formative years – the time in my life when I first became aware of politics and tried to become politically active for the first time. By the time Labyrinth was released in 2010 I was in my twenties and living in Ireland. Labyrinth isn’t unique in being about a still ongoing war whose conclusion was far from determined when it was designed and published, but it is still a rarity within the hobby. That it was on such a major conflict, and one whose casualties extended well beyond a traditional notion of battlefields, certainly drew a lot of attention to it, as did the fact that its designer Volko Ruhnke was an analyst with the CIA at the time. Playing it fifteen years after its initial release, after America’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021 marked what is often considered the end of the War on Terror, is an interesting experience. This is not exactly a historical game, it was not made with enough distance from the events it covers for any real historical hindsight, but it captures a certain perspective on events of the time that we can look back on now and try our best to evaluate. It’s also an incredibly well-designed card-drive wargame (CDG).

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Halls of Hegra by Petter Schanke Olsen and Lanzerath Ridge by David Thompson and Nils Johansson

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Halls of Hegra by Petter Schanke Olsen and Lanzerath Ridge by David Thompson and Nils Johansson

I play a lot of games solo, but I don’t play very many solitaire games. I’m not exactly sure why that is. I’ve had some of my best gaming experiences multi-handing a hex and counter game, but I’ve yet to find a dedicated solitaire game that has gripped me in the same way. As a result, I don’t play that many dedicated solitaire games, but I am also not beyond hope that I have simply not played the right one(s). With that in mind, I couldn’t help but notice the praise that has been heaped on both Petter Schanke Olsen’s Halls of Hegra (published by Tompet Games) and David Thompson’s Valiant Defense series (published by Dan Verssen Games) - in particular Lanzerath Ridge, a collaboration between Thompson and Nils Johansson. Both focus on lesser known actions in World War II where beleaguered defenders withstood ferocious Nazi onslaughts before eventually succumbing. While World War II is far from my favorite topic, I do enjoy killing the odd Nazi and I have something of a penchant for both niche topics and siege games. Since both games have a shared theme, I figured it might be interesting to review them together.

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Luzon: Race for Bataan by Matsuura Yutaka (OCS Review)

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Luzon: Race for Bataan by Matsuura Yutaka (OCS Review)

A system like Dean Essig’s Operational Combat Series (OCS) has a rightfully intimidating reputation. I’ll confess that if you’d asked me a year ago if I was ever going to play OCS, I would have told you absolutely not. It has some legendarily large games, with huge stacks of counters (a personal bugbear of mine), and playtimes that are measured in days not hours. The rulebook clocks in at over forty pages with three columns of text on each page – while it may not be the longest rulebook, I’ve ever read it is certainly in competition for that dubious title. As the name suggests, this is a system for operational warfare, one that focuses primarily on World War II but has strayed into at least one other mid-twentieth century war. You must manage individual supply points to take actions and balance stacks of counters to cover your air power, artillery, combat units, leaders, etc. There’s a lot going on is what I’m saying, and as someone who has only minimal interest in playing games about World War II it just did not strike me as something I’d want to try. I put all this up front at the start to hopefully provide some context for the news I must bring you: I am afraid that I think OCS might be great.

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Washington’s War by Mark Herman

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Washington’s War by Mark Herman

It’s strange that it took me this long to try Washington’s War. Its predecessor, We the People, was my first ever historical wargame – an outlier in my journey, as I wouldn’t enter the hobby properly until decades later. Given my fondness for that game, I should have grabbed Washington’s War during one of my previous attempts to get into wargaming, but it took until the most recent reprint for me to finally get We the People 2.0 to the table. Unfortunately, that interlude was so long that I’ve now forgotten much of the nuance in the 1.0 version, so I cannot make any profound comparison between the two versions. Maybe further down the line I’ll open my battered copy of the original and give it a go, but for this review I will largely limit myself to the version that is currently available. That’s no bad thing, though, as Washington’s War is an excellent game that, while it shows its age in places, delivers a satisfying experience without losing itself in complexity. The genre-defining originator shows that sometimes old games can continue to remain relevant even after their systems have been adopted and updated by countless others.

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WItMoYW ep. 11 - Glory III by Richard Berg

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We’re Back to Berg baby! After a mixed experience crossing the mountains, the boys are trying one of Berg’s takes on Antietam, arguably the most influential battle of the American Civil War. Originally published in 1995, the same year as the first GMT edition of Three Days of Gettysburg which would spawn the modern era of GBACW, and substantially revised in 2002, Glory is a light hex and counter from one of our favorite designers. Will we like it more than GBACW? You can probably already guess!

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Plantagenet by Francisco Gradaille

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Plantagenet by Francisco Gradaille

Any long running game series faces the risk of stagnation. While Levy and Campaign is only on its fourth volume, there are near countless future volumes in the works and it could easily expand to equal it’s predecessor COIN in terms of size, and so naturally we begin to wonder do we really need all these games? Can each new addition sufficiently differentiate itself from what came before? Plantagenet answers this question by being far more than a simple rejigging of the core system, this is practically a ground up rebuild. It takes mechanisms designed for the thirteenth-century Baltic and reshapes them to suit fifteenth-century England, casting off several core systems in the process and adding whole new ones. The final product is, surprisingly, probably the most approachable Levy and Campaign game yet and a stunning marriage of mechanism and theme. While Plantagenet fails to top the post in terms of my own personal preference for Levy and Campaign games, it is a phenomenal design and has reinvigorated my enthusiasm for Levy and Campaign as a whole.

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Gettysburg 1863 by Grant and Mike Wylie

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Gettysburg 1863 by Grant and Mike Wylie

I set up the second day first. I did this because I wanted to tackle something that seemed a little more straightforward to put the changes to the system through their paces. I figured I would want to try the full battle at some point, which meant playing the first day, so for my experiment I chose the second day. Because Pickett’s Charge sucks. This was potentially a mistake – the logic was sound, but I forgot how boring I find playing the second day. Don’t get me wrong, from a historical analysis standpoint I think I prefer the 2nd of July, it has such drama and tension, but when it comes to wargames, I often find it tedious – mostly ill-conceived charges and brutal death. A tedium of attrition to resolve.

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Banish All Their Fears by David Fox and Ben Hull

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Banish All Their Fears by David Fox and Ben Hull

There was very little material available on Banish All Their Fears before its publication, and so it largely flew under my radar. However, when some images came out right before the game was printed and shipped it triggered something in whatever the wargamer equivalent of my lizard brain is and I got weirdly excited about it. I reached out to GMT Games about a review copy, and they kindly provided me with one. Then it sat on my shelf (as these things do) while other games took up my time. In those intervening weeks I started to develop some concerns about the game. For one thing, I finally tried Ben Hull’s Musket and Pike series and struggled to really get invested in it (despite how beautiful the latest version is). Worse still was the buzz around rules and printing issues on BoardGameGeek (BGG). I hadn’t found Musket and Pike’s rules that easy to follow, and if these were worse, I despaired that I would never actually play it. Nevertheless, when I managed to clear some other games off my schedule, I determinedly set about reading the rulebook and setting up the game. Over the past few days, I have been slowly playing through the Blenheim scenario (chosen because it seemed to have fewer errata issues) solitaire, and I have been pleasantly surprised by what I found. I think this could be a real gem of a game, and certainly one I prefer to Musket and Pike, but I do also have some reservations. I think it makes the most sense to start with some of my reservations first, as they inform much of my experience playing Banish All Their Fears.

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SPQR: Deluxe Edition by Mark Herman and Richard Berg

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SPQR: Deluxe Edition by Mark Herman and Richard Berg

I am a massive fan of Richard Berg’s Men of Iron system, but I bounced off Great Battles of the American Civil War (GBACW) pretty hard. This meant that I approached SPQR, the second volume in the Great Battles of History series, with both excitement and trepidation. Men of Iron and GBACW were originated by Berg, while in contrast Great Battles of History started as a Mark Herman design before it became a collaboration in subsequent volumes. I want to recognize that up front, because in this review I will probably be talking a lot about Richard Berg because it is his hex and counter designs that I am more familiar with – I know Herman’s card driven games better than his traditional hex and counter designs.

There is no denying the legacy of GBoH, I can see its legacy in many of the games I have played, including Men of Iron and Ben Hull’s Musket and Pike, and tracing that lineage as I was playing it was really interesting. This is a system with an impressive legacy to go with its significant heft in terms of scope and rules weight, I can see why it has more than a dozen volumes and a significant fanbase. In my case, I had an interesting time playing SPQR and I’m glad I’ve tried it, both for its influence on later designs and for aspects where I think it is still superior to those games, but at the end of the day I don’t think SPQR is a game for me. In this post I hope to explain what clicked with me and why ultimately I decided to pack it back into the box and pass it on to someone else.

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Korea: The Mobile War by Jim Dunnigan

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Korea: The Mobile War by Jim Dunnigan

First on my docket for operational games on the Korean War is the original, Jim Dunnigan’s design from 1971. This doesn’t seem to be a particularly beloved title these days, based on BGG ratings and anecdotal evidence I’ve gathered on social media, but as the first game on the topic (as far as I’m aware) and one that was published within twenty years of the war’s end, I couldn’t help but want to try it. I can’t say that my experience was comprehensive, I played the opening scenario and just dabbled with the system, but I have some initial thoughts just from pushing counters around for a few hours.

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Tanto Monta: A Story of Disappointment

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Tanto Monta: A Story of Disappointment

I think it is safe to say that Tanto Monta: The Rise of Ferdinand and Isabella by designer Carlos Diaz Narvaez was my most anticipated game of the year. I adore Here I Stand, and Tanto Monta took that core system and applied it to the years right before Here I Stand begins, which includes the Italian Wars, a topic I am fascinated by. It also decreased the player count from six to four. Getting six people together who are all willing to spend a day playing through the Protestant Reformation is probably the single greatest barrier to playing Here I Stand, so this was really promising. The back of the box promised the same complexity as Here I Stand and a play time of 3-7 hours, which we should always take with a grain of salt but still it looked good for this being an excellent way to get a dose of more Here I Stand more often. It also came out at the perfect time – my copy arrived just in time for a gathering of myself and my fellow We Intend to Move on Your Works partners in crime. The four of us convened in Pierre’s house for me to teach them all Tanto Monta, expecting a day of epic gaming with great friends. To quote a somewhat infamous review of Virgin Queen: it was a fucking disaster.

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We Intend to Move on Your Works Episode 6: Longstreet Attacks

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Apologies for the delay - we started playing Longstreet Attacks back in July to mark the 160th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg, which is why this game breaks our chronology, but the game took longer than expected and then the editing took even longer than that. Thankfully this episode is a good one, so hopefully that makes up for the delay, and we aim to have the next one with you much sooner!

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Grand Havoc by Jeff Grossman

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Grand Havoc by Jeff Grossman

Blind Swords is quickly climbing the ranks to be among my favorite hex and counter systems. The chaos of the chit draw, the unpredictability of the CRTs, the manageable footprint, and the elegant presentation from Revolution Games have all wormed their way into my heart. Longstreet Attacks showed me the potential of the system, but in a form that didn’t totally agree with me. The Day Was Ours showed me that it could do approach to battle and the chaos of First Bull Run. After playing that I was pretty sure that I would prefer Blind Swords as a single counter sheet experience – low counter density leaving me plenty of room to explore the map. It was with some trepidation that I punched the two counter sheets of Jeff Grossman’s Grand Havoc. Would this cement my love for Blind Swords, or would it be another Longstreet Attacks, an almost hit that doesn’t quite land? I’m delighted to report that it was the former – Grand Havoc delivers a larger scale Blind Swords experience and seems to resolve pretty much all my misgivings about Longstreet Attacks. This is a great game, and I’m excited to talk about why.