Review of 2025

 A Happy New Year to All! Best wishes to everyone for 2026, I hope that it brings you all you wish for, and all you need.

As I write this, I am reminded of how little things have moved on for me in the last couple of years: the difficult and wearing period of my life has continued, in much the same way and with much the same deleterious effect on my gaming.  Once again, the second half of the year in particular has been mostly a damp squib in regards to gaming, which has again reflected a very frustrating time more generally. Some of the drivers were a little different, but the effect was broadly the same. Still, these things don't last forever, so I live in hope. 

 What did I do in 2025? I finished my element of the playtesting of John D Salt's WW2 rules set - not the 'missing link' WRG project named 'The Farquhar Version', but his own, through the vehicle of replaying the first of Just Jack's Kampfgruppe von Klink's WW2 mega-campaign, featuring the campaign in Poland. Both rules and campaign scenarios worked admirably, really looking forward to John publishing them. I wanted to move onto the next von Klink campaign, but didn't get that done.

When the 'Farquhar Version' was published, I used it to play another Too Fat Lardies pint-sized campaign that I hadn't tackled before: the Capturing Ceasar's Camp campaign. 

 In my ongoing refight of the scenarios in the Twilight of Divine Right scenario books o the Thirty Years' War, I got Lutzen done, which was great, but didn't make any further progress.

 

I experimented with some more simple OHW-esque scenarios, adapted from old scenarios in Miniature Wargames, this time linked into a mini-campaign.  It did work quite well on its own merits, and the scenarios were fine, but it didn't quite click for me as a campaign. I think I needed something a bit more - possibly I need some more structure than narrative and unit advancement (or deterioriation) gives per se.

 I did a little homage to the Polemarch's War of the Stuart Succession campaign and played through the first three battles in that campaign, slightly reset into the middle of the C17 and made into the 'Third Bishops' War'. I was really enjoying it actually, but then most of my gaming fell into the void.

I was the very grateful recipient of some new painted 6mm Ancient armies this year, and they made some appearances on the table towards the back end of the year. It is really good to have some armies appropriate for the Successor states and Pontus, it very much expands the number of possible actions for my Ancients.

Lastly, I got a few boardgames played: Mansions of Madness, Achtung Spitfire! and Squad Leader all had an outing or two.

I did spend a lot of time this year with RPGs - some playing, but more scenario design and adaptation. In particular, I spent time in converting some of the really big Call of Cthulu campaigns - Masks of Nyarlathotep, Horror on the Orient Express & Beyond the Mountains of Madness into WFRP 1e campaigns. I also did the same with the old D&D adventure 'Caverns of Thracia'. I think I have mentioned before that when I feel lower than a certain point, I do tend to prefer messing about with RPGs. There is a level of immersion involved which is somehow more distracting than wargaming - which, under normal circumstances, I much prefer. Perhaps it is to do with it simultaneously being imaginary, fantastic and controllable, when other things feel uncontrollable and all too real. In any case, these CoC campaigns have ported across really well to WFRP - not surprising, since WFRP does incorporate a lot of 'Mythos' stuff in its own background, one way or another - and up to a point, the scenarios fit tonally without too much amendment. I became more interested in RPG design more generally, particularly in optimizing the attribute, skill and alignment elements of characters - trying to minimize complexity and bloat but getting systems to output more useful comparisons and differentiations. I haven't been able to actually play as much with my bairns this year  - they have been busy with important exams - but I do enjoy it when I can, and the prep for it.

"not-gaming" can be roughly split into two parts: work and space. Work really has been busy and demanding and particularly draining this year. I would like to say that next year looks different, but it really doesn't, alas. Space has been more of an unexpected problem - we have had to have a couple of move-arounds within the house for various reasons this year, and each move has ended up making finding a gaming space more difficult. For me, a viable gaming space is somewhere that can either be set-up and left more-or-less permanently or a place where I am not going to be disturbed too much, AND is comfortable enough so it is not actually awkward or even unpleasant to spend time there. And every where that has been left has failed on one or more of these constraints. The garage is viable as a space, but is just too cold in winter. Everywhere else doesn't have the space or is in too busy an area. Now, in the post-Christmas tidy up, I may have identified a place which seems like it might work and is big enough to just squeeze in a 3'x2' table - I aim to test this out in the next couple of days. Failing that, I may look to move some of my gaming more online, onto Vassal. For the Fighting Wings air combat games, I might do this anyway - they are quite awkward to play manually, requiring a fair bit of space AND space for numerous play sheets. It might actually work better on a screen.  

 Painting could have been a lot better this year, but it wasn't awful. A bunch of disparate 6mm WW2 stuff got done (German volksgrenadiers, US paratroopers, more French infantry, more US and UK vehicles and artillery), plus some more 6mm WSS. I did plenty more stuff for the little one - more Ancients (Greeks, Romans, Gauls), more medievals (100YW English).

Other purchases and presents included two very nice castles from Total Battle Miniatures (the Motte-and-Bailey castle and the later Medieval castle buildings and walls), some more 6mm Landsknechts and some additional 6mm Napoleonic Prussians. It is a great shame that Grumbler don't seem to be trading any more, I would love to get more of their great Prussian line infantry musketeers. I picked up some 3D printed 1/4800 WW1 Naval - WW1 Naval has piqued my interest somewhat and I wanted to get a few ships to start off. I also got given a copy of the Nimitz WW2 naval rules. Sam Mustafa generally writes a really good set of rules, so I am looking forward to trying this out. I might try this out with boardgame counters to begin with.

So, how did I do against my goals for 2025?

Play:

1.  Do the Caesar's Camp campaign. DONE

2.  Finish the Thirty Years' War refights. NOT DONE, BUT MADE AT LEAST A LITTLE PROGRESS

3.  Design and publish more Neil Thomas-esque scenarios. DONE

4. Play a few more of the 'classic' wargame scenarios. NEARLY (I.E. STARTED ONE, BUT DIDN'T FINISH)

5. Play more higher-level WW2 wargames.  NOT DONE

6. Play more Mansions of Madness. DONE

7. Play more Heroquest. NOT DONE

8. Play more Space Hulk. NOT DONE 

9. The stretch goal is another PBEM campaign. NOT DONE

 

Hobby:

1. Finish off the lead-pile by 30 September 2025. No ifs or buts. Don't buy anything additional that increases the risk of not achieving this goal. NOT DONE

2. No new armies, only filling out gaps in existing armies and navies. MORE-OR-LESS DONE, OR AT LEAST ALL THE NEW ARMIES WERE PAINTED ONES, EXCEPT FOR DUCHY OF WARSAW NAPOLEONIC, WHICH IS PERHAPS A 'CONTINGENT' RATHER THAN AN ARMY.

3. Concentrate on more terrain improvements - making the most commonly used pieces of terrain more attractive, whilst retaining portability and flexibility. I DID A LITTLE BIT OF THIS.

4. Make a comprehensive shopping list for after the lead-pile is tackled, to make any future purchases in a more deliberate and rational way. I HAVE DONE SOME WORK ON THIS, PERHAPS SOMETHING FOR A FUTURE BLOG POST.

5. Make some changes to allow slightly better game photography. NOT DONE, A VICTIM OF THE HOUSE MOVE-AROUNDS

6. Continue the project of increasing accessibility and portability, to reduce the level of effort and fuss needed to get a game on the table. AS ABOVE, MORE A CONSTANT PROCESS OF MITIGATION THAN AN ABSOLUTE FAIL.

 

Looking back, the goals were relatively conservative for me, which at least limited the extent of failure! 

 

A few main goals for 2026:

 

1 - Try to get some stable, regular gaming in with a physical set-up I am happy with.

2 - Make some real progress on the lead mountain.

3 - Move the KG Heller campaign onwards, into 1940.

4 - Play at least one more boardgame-based campaign. 

5 - Rebase my new Ancient armies so they are consistent with my existing stuff. 

6 - Make some more progress on the Twilight of Divine Right scenario refights. 

7 - Experiment with Vassal versions of more games to get more games played, even if they are on-screen rather than on-table.

 

These goals are constrained by my likely being heavily space-constrained in winter, and time- and energy-constrained pretty much all the time.But I think these should be manageable.

 

One thing I must mention is the impact of generative AI. Response to this in the hobby has been varied, it is fair to say. There is some enthusiasm, mixed with a rather greater amount of scepticism and hostility. I use AI in a work-context for some things but not for anything directly hobby-ish. Where I have found it useful is helping my coding, which has allowed me to create more apps for various activities - again, this has been more to do with RPGs, like making more sophisticated NPC generators and so on. I realize that creating assistance apps for gaming is a pretty niche sport, but if you are interested, then it can work very well: translating written human language ideas into code is one of the abilities of generative AI which does work.

 In any case, for those who have read this and any of the other posts this year, in particular those who have offered encouragement, comment and advice - my heartfelt thanks, those connections are very valuable to me, as a solo player in particular.