2025 Year in Review

 I retired as of the 1st of January 2025, so I have been fortunate enough to have some extra time on my hands this year, as planned.  My wargaming goal going into the year was not to turn down any offer of a game unless absolutely necessary.  The HAWKs have had a regular retirees group for some years now, and I was happy to be part of it, starting with the first meeting in January. I’ve also gotten games days with my sons, and made it to a few conventions this year.  As a result, as of the 15th of December, I’ve logged 67 game sessions this year, with only a slender chance of getting any more in before the 1st of January.  That is a new record, and has been the best part of the hobby year.

A Fantastic Battles Game with My “Myzantine” Forces

As gleaned from my log, which I keep on paper in a notebook, being somewhat old school, here is a complete list of those games, arranged by frequency:

Miniatures Games of 2025

9 x Combat Patrol (7 20mm WWII, 2 25mm WWI)

6 x DBA (20mm)

5 x Fantastic Battles (4 6mm*, 1 25mm*)

4 x Dragon Rampant (3 20mm*, 1 25mm*)

4 x Look Sarge, No Charts (10mm WWI)

4 x 15mm Napoleonics home rules (3 different sets)

3 x To the Strongest (10mm ancients)

3 x Fistful of Lead (F&IW, 2 40mm*, 1 25mm)

2 x Fantasy home rules (1 25mm, 1 wooden “crafties”)

2 x Charge! (40mm NQSYW*)

2 x Square Bashing (25mm WWI)

2 x Chain of Command (20mm WWII)

2 x Medieval home rules (54mm*)

2 x Neil Thomas 19th Century Europe (20mm)

2 x Chosen Men (25mm Napoleonics)

1 x Rebels and Patriots (40mm NQSYW*)

1 x Turnip 28

1 x WWI home rules (10mm)

1 x British colonial home rules (25mm)

1 x Vauban’s Wars (15mm SYW siege)

1 x Don’t Give Up the Ship (Napoleonic Naval)

1 x Fistful of Lead Bigger Battles (25mm British colonials)

1 x This is Not a Test (25mm post-apocalyptic)

1 x Star Schlock (25mm SF)

1 x Thalassa (1/300 ancient naval)

1 x Battletech Alpha Strike (1/300 SF)

1 x De Bellis Fantasiae (20mm fantasy)

1 x Lion Rampant (54mm medieval*)

1 x Blood and Swash (25mm early American)

1 x Tanks for the Apocalypse (20mm post-apocalyptic)

——-

67 games

30 (+) different sets of rules

*17 games involving my own figures; 50 not involving my figures

Someone asked me recently on a hobby Discord what I typically play.  This year, there really was no “typically” about it.  Due to my acceptance of whatever was on offer, the most frequently played game was Combat Patrol, one of the many games designed by club member Buck Surdu. I played it both in the standard WWII version and modified for WWI. I personally only have one 20th century project in my collection at this time, a 6mm Spanish Civil War set which, according to my records, has not been used in a game since April 2005, over 20 years ago.  Due to club interests, I suppose I do end up playing a lot of WWI and WWII, but I enjoy the opportunity to play something without having to build up a collection myself.

Only 17 games involved any of my own figures this year using figures from 6 projects.  By my count, I have 16 projects that have “playable” levels of figures. I would have to say that my figure collection was a bit underused this year.

With 30+ sets of rules played this year (the uncertainty being how to count the home rules Napoleonics) it has been difficult to gain proficiency with any new sets of rules, and I have a stack of rules that haven’t been tried yet, particularly Hobgoblin and Midgard for some fantasy mass battles.

Some 40mm Prince August Infantry for the Not Quite Seven Years War

It has been a bad year for painting overall. I have scarcely picked up a brush since I finished a few Prince August semi-flats for the NQSYW in September. Other than that, I finished about 10 stands of various 6mm troops for Fantastic Battles and a handful of 25mm fantasy figures (also Prince August home cast).

I have been wanting to get back into blogging more regularly, and I can’t really say that this year was a success.  It took until September to actually buckle down and write something, and I did not match that pace for the rest of the year.  However, I did do some blogging, and I had three times as many posts as last year, so perhaps we’ll call that a draw.

I have usually done some solo gaming in the course of a year, and I have a solo campaign in progress, although it has been stalled since I played out the Battle of Newkeep in January of 2022. I know why the solo campaign is pending: I am stalled on building some buildings I want for the next scenario. However, I have not done a single solo game this year. I could have tried either of the new fantasy rules mentioned above solo, or done any number of other one-shots.  I would suppose that the availability of opponents this year has reduced my craving for more games, at least a bit.

Overall, though, it’s been a really good year for the hobby, even if some areas could be improved.

I haven’t actually written down my goals for 2026 yet, and I hope to blog a bit when I do. There are several ideas on my mind. March 2026 is the 50th anniversary of my involvement with Dungeons & Dragons, and I would really like to dust off the original rules for some retro-gaming. August will be

the 30th anniversary of the first NQSYW game, which is an occasion I will certainly wish to mark. I also want to play some games with some vintage rules. I haven’t had Knights and Magick (Heritage Models, 1980, review minus pictures here) on the table in a few years. We have always played K&M as 

“miniatures agnostic”, but a couple of years ago I thought that it might be fun to see if I couldn’t assemble a couple of forces using contemporary Heritage figures (currently available from Classic Miniatures), either vintage or new castings, and I have acquired more miniatures for this recently. I acquired a set of

Warhammer (1st edition) rules during the pandemic which I still haven’t tried, despite the recent release of a video series on the topic. I’ve been accumulating Citadel Dark Ages figures to provide a couple of appropriate armies, just for fun.  Never having been a Games Workshop fan, the Dark Ages figures and the early Citadel ranges such as Fantasy Adventurers and Fiend Factory, which were licensed to Ral Partha for production in the US, are the only Citadel minis in my collection, so I decided I’d try to build on that a bit.  And…if I’m going to dig into Warhammer, it might be fun to break out Warhammer Ancient Battles for a Dark Ages game or two. More to follow on those ideas…

Meanwhile, I wish all of you a merry Christmas and a happy New Year!

Cold Wars 2014 After Action Report

Cold Wars has come and gone again. At least I was able to make it this year; last year's convention was pre-empted by an unavoidable business trip.

Things were still uncertain at the time that games needed to be scheduled, though, so I was conservative in what I signed myself up to do. I booked two sessions of the same scenario, a Dark Ages Saxon/Viking skirmish. This was an extended version of the one I ran as a solo game last summer. I elected to do one session at 2:00 on Friday, thinking that would give me a shot at doing my shopping first, and probably time to do a turn through the flea market as well, even if I had to drive up on Friday morning. I set the second session for 2:00 on Satuday.

Due to procrastination, and influenced by the work/school schedules of my sons, I didn't end up booking a room. I commuted up by myself on Friday, and then drove up with both sons on Saturday. Sunday is pretty quiet at HMGS conventions, so it wasn't worth going up for one game in the morning.

Anyway, I had my three scenery boxes and three figure boxes (two humans, one farm animals) stacked and ready to go, so I was able to be on my way at a reasonable time in the morning. After dealing with an issue about my badge and membership status, I set my game up.





I'm not quite finished in that shot, still needed to put out the two main farm buildings. After completing the setup, I hit the dealer's room for some serious shopping. I was a little disappointed to find that only one of the three or four possible dealers in 1/72 plastic attended, as my main objective was to fill out all the Greeks and Persians I want for my next project. I gave it my best shot, though, and came home with all but a few boxes, as well as several boxes of assorted 1/72 fantasy figures for the current small project. I placed an order after the convention to finish things off, and was a little distressed to find that HaT Persians are apparently not currently in production.

My first game of Athelric's farm went well. I had five players rather than the eight I had room for. Possibly this was due to the timing; 2:00 turned out to be the opening time for the flea market, always a large crowd draw. After much ferocious fighting, the Viking players eventually carried off the livestock, though at the cost of two of the three Viking leaders. Given that I had to drive home, I didn't really want to play an evening game. My Saturday game was the next game on the same table, so I packed the troops and left the scenery set up and headed home to meet the kids.

I remarked to them on the light crowd, wondering if I was started to exhibit the grumpy old man syndrome of thinking that things had always been better in the past. I will take this opportunity to say that I don't think that I am. Saturday was as crowded as one might wish, and we had a hard time finding a parking space at 9:30. I was glad that my scenery was already in place. I dropped off a box of flea market goodies which one of the other HAWKs agreed to set out on his table, and took my soldiers back down to the HAWKs room to set up.

Norman also had a 2:00 Saturday game, one of his award-winning Bronze Age chariot scuffles, as described in his blog. When we had things squared away, we took a look at the flea market. My best find was not miniatures related, but a nice crisp copy of 1st edition Gamma World. I have been having some fun with 1970s RPGs lately, and my copy had gone astray some time ago. Of the 1970s games I used to have, Gamma World has the dubious distinction of being the only one not legally available in a .pdf edition, so I was glad to scratch that itch at a reasonable price.

I didn't take very many pictures this convention, so I've only got one shot of my Saturday game worth posting:





Here the Saxons, aided by a few continental mercenaries hired by the local lord (generally to the right) defend their shaggy cattle against the Vikings. This game went better for the Saxons, who managed to kill the Viking leader and evacuate most of the livestock. I filled this game, and turned one walk-up player away, so the player/game ratio seemed a lot tighter on Saturday. I also found that I had somehow been listed in the program as a "kid friendly" game. I was using Knights and Magick, an old rules set that my group started playing when I was a teenager, so they aren't especially kid-unfriendly, but "kid" here means middle-schooler, or surpervised late elementary schooler, not pre-numerate five-year-old. After some discussion, I was also compelled to suggest that the game would not work for the aforementioned five-year-old and his father. I will need to look into this in the future and see what the algorithm for making this determination might be. I used to be on the other side of that conversation, so I would prefer that correct information is out there. But the kids do grow up eventually...





Overall, it was a good convention, and we all came home energized for our projects...

The Fight at Athelric's Farm

Snorri's crew knew that it wasn't going to be an easy day. Somewhere in eastern Northumbria, they had lost track of the rest of the raiding force, and hadn't found anything worth lifting.
Things started looking up as they found and followed a track, which shortly led to a stream they could probably follow back to the shore. Moreover, ahead they could see the smoke rising from a small cluster of farm buildings...and cooking smoke, not the sort that would suggest that other Vikings had gotten here ahead of them.




Unfortunately, their arrival was heralded by the shouts of a local, who leaped up from a hiding place and dashed across the ford. A local herdsman quickly flung a rock, dropping one of Snorri's two bowmen in the waters of the stream. The other hastily shot the running local, before noting that it was just a boy.




The Saxons rapidly started to round up their flocks, and the men grabbed their weapons with the intention of making a stand, at least for long enough for the women and animals to flee.


As the Vikings crossed the ford, the farmers hastily formed up in the lane, between the hedges, where it would be difficult for the Vikings to get around them. Ragnar Eagle-Eye slew a sling-armed herdsman with an arrowshot. Ahead and off to his left, Snorri could hear a Saxon horn in the near distance. This was going to be tougher than he had hoped; apparently help for the farmers was nearby. The Viking raid must have the whole countryside abuzz.




As the Vikings came around a corner in the lane, they could see a group of frightened farmers trying to make a stand. Ragnar slew one with a hasty shot, and the rest of them fled. Meanwhile, Snorri waved one of his followers toward a slinger hiding behind the hedge to the right, but the man hesitated.



The farmers, except for one who didn't stop at all, did not run far. Thinking of their farms, and hearing the horn of the approching thane and his men, they turned to face the oncoming Vikings again. Pointing at the slinger, Snorri yelled, "Ragnar, slay this troublesome farmer!" Another shaft reached out, and the luckless farmer dropped where he stood.



A couple of Snorri's men crashed into the line of farmers at the gates in the lane. Two farmers fell and the third fled, but a lucky spearthrust slew a Viking. Ragnar, crossing a field to the right of the rest of the crewmen, saw a herdsman attempting to gather his cows to flee, and shot him before he could get them all moving.




Meanwhile, Godric the thane and his fyrdsman arrived on the scene. Hoping to take the Vikings by surprise, Godric led half of his men toward a low spot in the hedge, hoping to get into the land behind the raiders. He waved the rest of his men toward the gate by the farm's well. However, lacking their leader's drive, those men hesitated to attack the Vikings. Meanwhile, Godric himself was met by a Viking with a two-handed axe as he reached the hedge. While both fighters were hindered by the hedge, the Viking's longer axe gave him the advantage, and Godric fell beneath a mighty stroke.




Up at the gate, Snorri spurred his horse at the hesitant fyrdsmen, brandishing his spear. They promptly fled. Ragnar, finding himself alone in a field of cattle, started rounding them up, along with a woman and child he found at the house.




Snorri sneered at the Saxons, who ceased fleeing, but hesitated to face him. He was joined by two of his companions, as Axe Harald leaped after the followers of the slain thane, who took one look at the dripping axe and the Viking's grim visage and fled back down the lane toward the ford.




Snorri and his men found themselves in a sharp fight at the well. After an inconclusive series of exchanges of blows, Snorri and a follower suddenly cut down two of the six Saxons. The fighting was intense, and when it suddenly ended, all six of the Saxons were down, as was one of Snorri's crewmen, and Snorri himself had been the victim of a lucky Saxon spearthrust.




One farm family and their animals had fled, but Ragnar had rounded up the other. Only one fyrdsman remained, and he did not fancy his chances against four hale Vikings. As the action ended, Ragnar, Axe Harald, and the other two Vikings lifted their leader's limp body onto his horse, uncertain whether he would live or die, and rounded up the cattle and the two new thralls to resume their race to the ships, pausing only to torch the farm buildings in reprisal for the loss of their leader...



Overall, this was an exciting little game. I used Knights and Magick, without the "magick", using some of the optional rules for very small encounters. I had eight Vikings on foot (two with bows) and a mounted leader against about a dozen Saxon farmers and another dozen fyrdsman. In K&M terms, the Viking leader was the only A class warrior, with the thane and the rest of the Vikings as B class, the fyrdsman as C, and the farmers as D. I didn't add up the points but just eyeballed the balance. It ran ten turns and took me about two hours to play, including taking enough notes to do this battle report.

Scuffle at the Elven Tower -- A Knights and Magick Battle Report

After the completion of the household move and the recent business trip to Korea, both of my sons were home last weekend for a combination of a slightly belated birthday celebration and Easter. We took the opportunity to set up a small fantasy skirmish game using Knights and Magick. K&M was recently rereleased in pdf; the original was published by Heritage in 1980. I have a full review posted elsewhere on the blog.





The table included a river and ford, the tower, a small settlement of human serfs (who prudently fled and were not represented on the table), a small patch of woods and a couple of hills. The decadence of the elves was suggested by the fallen pillar at the tower approach...





We started by pulling out all of the individually mounted orcs in my collection, adding a warlord and a couple of ogres, and calculating a point value using K&Ms Book 3. This orcish force consisted of 27 figures in total. They were deemed to be investing the tower. An elvish force of equal point value was created, starting with a group of 6 assorted mounted figures, followed by a bow-armed hero and 6 archers as a tower garrison, and then filling in with a mix of sword elves in chain with shields (6) and unarmored spear elves (10). The elf cavalry and hero were rated at morale level A, and the balance of the elves were morale level B. A few better orcs and the ogres were morale B, with the balance of the orcs being morale C. The elvish force was tasked with clearing the table of orcs. We elected to use the small game rules, which meant that morale was checked only for individuals. This probably had the effect of reducing the penalty associated with the C class orcs, who could not be induced to flee en masse.

Norman took the orcs and William took the elves. Norman deployed a detachment of sword orcs near Lone Tree Hill, a detachment of spear orcs, an ogre, and the two wolf riders in a covered position between the woods and the human building, and the balance of his force across the ford in the hedged field.




Here the orcs await the approach of any elves...



The game opened with the appearance of the elvish horse on the edge of the table on the road at the far right in the overview picture. This placed them almost on top of the orcs guarding Lone Tree Hill. Seeing their hated enemies appear, they bellowed an orcish war cry and plunged into the mass of the riders. Caught off guard, not all of the elves were able to countercharge, and a desperate melee ensued. When the dust settled, all seven orcs were dead, but they had taken three of the elite elvish riders with them.



Meanwhile, across the ford, the elvish foot patrol, led by the spears, approached along the other road. They, too, seemed surprised to find the orcs almost on top of them. The elves' skill with the spear turned out to be insufficient to deal with the armor of the orcs, and the spear elves were rapidly cut down.




This fracas highlighted a bit of bad planning on my part, as it clumped up in one corner of the board. The bows of the tower garrison could almost reach the ford at long range, so it was too dangerous to move within line of sight of the tower. Norman's ogre found this out the hard way, by attempting to intervene in the fight against the cavalry, which necessitated leaving the shelter of the woods.




Meanwhile, back at the bloody road, the elvish swords made a valiant effort to force their way through to the ford. Although their armor and shields were a great help, and they gave better than they got, they too were cut down or forced to flee.



The surviving riders, upon looking over the field and realizing that they were heavily outnumbered by the remaining orcs, spurred up the road to the tower to join the garrison. Thus, the standoff continued, as both sides sent for further reinforcements to try to alter the situation on a later day. The orcs had not been driven off, and were held to be victorious, at least for the moment.

The whole game took about 12 turns and was played in a little under two hours. Norman was pleased to not have his troops swept from the field in a contagious rout. William was shaken to find that his troops were more fragile than he was accustomed to after years of playing Medieval Mayhem, and I was glad of an opportunity to remind myself of these rules. As expected, the game flowed fairly quickly. I did all the chart lookups since I neglected to copy the charts in advance. K&M is, as I wrote in my review, a little fussy to my streamlined current tastes, but not by any means unmanageable. I look forward to running another game, perhaps a little larger, soon.

However, the next thing on the schedule will be a return to the Not Quite Seven Years War, with a game on the 6th to allow several participants to field some new recruits.

Knights and Magick

I am envious (sometimes) of those people who can keep their mind and efforts on a single project for an extended period of time. Long experience suggests, though, that I will never be one of them...

I keep a finger in the role playing game world, in the forlorn hope that I might someday have some energy to spare for a game. I ran across the following on rpg.net earlier this week:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1513061270/reaper-miniatures-bones-an-evolution-of-gaming-min

This Kickstarter project is reaching the level where it is looking fairly tempting. ..as long as I don't think about minor things like where the painting time is going to come from. I like the idea of plastics, especially for transportability, but not the need to build them from multiple tiny parts like most of the new hard plastic ranges. I also look at this and see all of the elements needed for a skirmish game project. Some of my favorite projects have been those with some outside constraint on them. The Medieval Mayhem project, for example, was originally built to a tight budget for a competition. So building something out of this one batch of figures might provide an interesting limitation. I sent my son off to the FLGS to pick up a Reaper sample figure in this plastic. I'll be attempting to paint it up this weekend, afer which I'll know for sure whether I'm in on this...

While brainstorming about this fantasy digression, I started thinking about the rules I might use. My Song of Blades and Heroes playtest in April was reasonable (despite Norman's distaste for the activation mechanic). However, my usual "go-to" rules for fantasy are Knights and Magic:



Knights and Magick was copyrighted by Heritage in 1980. I think that I picked my copy up at Origins in 1982, shortly after moving away from home for my first job. My original D&D/wargaming group had been playing it for some time, after spending 1976 to 1980 casting around for a set of rules that suited us and our figure collections. Chainmail, for example, required "too many figures", and the original D&D miniatures rules, Swords and Spells, didn't use dice for combat (which *still* seems odd). We also used to fight most of our games on a rather cramped little 3x4 foot table.


In a modern version of this, we had a nostalgia/reunion game in 2008, with a sixty or seventy figure skirmish on a similarly sized table at my parents house. Shown here are two other members of my original gaming group.




I think the overall result was fairly effective, and we had a good time with it, which was the point.

K&M is an interesting product. It was written by Arnold Hendrick, and developed and playtested by a team that included most of the cast of characters from the late, lamented Major General's Page. It is fairly straightforward, with an "I go, you go" turn sequence with one twist: all missile fire is done during the opponent's movement phase. (I borrowed this when I did my own Medieval Mayhem skirmish rules.) This has two happy effects : units can't run from cover to cover with impunity (or needing some sort of opportunity fire rule), and players stay engaged throughout both sides of the turn. Morale is checked to charge, to stand, and at casualty check point levels. Combat rolls are made against a target number read from a chart cross-indexing attacker weapon type with defender armor class, and modified by a figure quality rating and a short list of situational modifiers. The chart is a bit finicky by 21st century standards, but usable. I have copied selected portions of it when using the rules for things like historical Dark Ages skirmishing, to simplify the lookup procedures.

The rules are scalable. In the basic rules, it is anticipated that figures are deployed in units, perhaps of a dozen or so. Advanced/optional rules add a more detailed man-to-man level, with a active defense/parry ability added to figures, and the unit/leader rules deemphasized. It is noted that these rules should only be used in small games, as they'll add to the length of turns and slow down combat by reducing casualties. The rules are intended to be usable for historical and fantasy games, so there are optional rules for chariots, elephants, sieges, castles, and so on, as well as magic. That covers the first volume.

The second volume includes a guide to painting miniatures. The section on heraldry is particularly good; I've used it as a handout for a Historicon painting class. There are also sample army lists for typical fantasy armies such as elves and orcs, and for a range of historical armies from ancient Egyptians to medieval samurai.

Volume three covers scenarios. It includes a DIY point system which allows you to put numbers to whatever you might need. Then and now, I consider that to be a useful factor in rules. If I'm theoretically tied to the company for figures and point values, I'm not really interested. There are also some sample scenarios. Some of these are pleasantly bonsai'd. The smallest is laid out for a 2' by 3' table, and has force levels suggesting about 60 figures total. The rules will actually support games with even fewer figures, so I'm surprised that they didn't include an even tinier scenario. Nevertheless, the suggestion was there that you could get started playing in a small space with a small collection of figures and scenery and build from there. There is also, at the high end, a campaign system.

Volume four covers monsters for fantasy games. While keyed to the original Heritage figure lines, most of the monster types are generic enough that every manufacturer out there today covers them, and the generic point system from volume three should cover the rest.

Volume five is half-sized and covers spells. I'm not entirely convinced that the magic system is balanced in a point system free-for-all, but it is workable with a referee.

It is a very comprehensive package.