17 July 2025

History, Medieval, Retrospective

Stuart Gorman

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.

Dissimula Edizioni

Stuart Gorman

5 June 2026

American Civil War, Wargame Review, Dissimula Edizioni, Move On Your Works

Give Us Victories by Sergio Schiavi

Stuart Gorman

5 June 2026

American Civil War, Wargame Review, Dissimula Edizioni, Move On Your Works

I’m not sure if it is possible to accurately recreate the Battle of Chancellorsville in a board wargame. All historical wargames must struggle with the fact that we know what happened, and the historical actors did not. This greater knowledge on the part of the players makes certain historical outcomes harder to replicate. Specifically to Chancellorsville, it is very hard to recreate Jackson’s famous (and overrated) flanking march and attack because that relied on Hooker and the Army of the Potomac not knowing that would happen (although they did suspect he was flanking them and Howard ignored orders to turn his flank, but you get the idea).

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.