The End of the Year Show

Well, the end of the year has crept up on me, all unexpected. Actually, it has been rather hidden by the madness that we call ‘Christmas’ here at chez Polemarch. Not just the usual pagan ‘eat and drink and be merry’ stuff that the rest of the world indulges in, for the Estimable Mrs P. gets an awful lot of work to do in what used to be called ‘Advent’ but is now, apparently, Christmas.

Anyway, grumbling and humbuggery aside, it is probably time to review the year’s wargaming, of which I am pleased to say, there has been a reasonable amount. I can report the encouraging total of 38 wargames played. Two of these were ancients, and the rest were across a number of campaigns: Toungoo, A Very Mogul Civil war, the War of Stuart Succession and, latterly, 1600 – Something.

There were only a couple of games in Burma, as that campaign was winding up at the end of last year. The Very Mogul Civil War yielded eight games and finished with a round of murder and possible assassination rather than a decisive field action. The introduction of subversion rules made diplomatic activities a lot more, um, interesting.

The War of Stuart Succession was a very interesting and rather amusing campaign, set in a fictional world with several possible claimants to Elizabeth Tudor’s crown. In the end, a rather unexpected winner emerged, which seems to have vindicated, at least in my mind, the way the campaign rules worked. The innovation here was the God On Our Side (GOOS) roll, which players made when entering new areas to see if they were welcomed as conquering heroes or had the local armed forces called out against them. The Scots were a bit unlucky in this; Arbella Stuart was rather lucky. Still, despite grabbing control of the Channel early in the campaign, I doubt many people foresaw Isabella of Austria being the ultimate winner. Twelve wargames resulted from this campaign, a rather pleasing number. It also included a naval encounter, as mentioned, which required some rules to be created, fast.

The next campaign was one I had had in mind for ages. As I remarked at the outset, nearly 30 years ago, I ran a play-by-email game called 1618 – Something, which covered the whole of the Eurasian landmass. This ground to a halt in complexity and a lack of orders from some players, but I had spent quite a lot of time amassing the toys for various armies from across that part of the globe. So I created the map (in a different style, this time) of Europe west of the Urals (or thereabouts), and set off, using the WSuS campaign rules, slightly modified to accommodate some budgeting. Not that most early modern rulers knew, or particularly cared, what their budget was, but it does add some restrictions as to what they can do.

To date, the campaign, which started in Spring 1600, has reached 1604. There have been 13 games in the sequence so far, with another one in the pending file, which, doubtless, will happen fairly soon. The campaign so far has proved to be fascinating, with a good number of twists and turns and, most importantly for me as a solo wargamer, lots of decision points. The variety of armies is also a bonus, from Tartars and Persians to full-blown pike and shot armies. There is a lot going on.

As I have hinted, there is also an expansion planned for this campaign, spreading east to India, China and Japan, with, hopefully, a side issue of Indonesia. I have yet to work out the full details, or, indeed, finish the map. I have discovered that the European map needs a bit of adjustment, and my knowledge of the political geography of Mongolia in the early Seventeenth Century is woefully lacking. The Estimable Mrs P is concerned that it might bog down, but I am hopeful that the current system can handle it, even if I might have to abandon scrawled bits of paper for a spreadsheet for some of the administration.

In other developments, the ancients collection has all gone to its new homes. I say ‘all’, but that is not quite true. I have discovered a number of civilians in my ‘camps’ box, which I will have to consider the future of. After all, I cannot really have my ECW camps full of Greek generals in bronze armour, can I? I’ll have to sort them out. Similarly, the 15 mm Peter Laing collection has found its way (eventually) to Australia, where I hope they are settling in.

The rebasing project has, remarkably, been completed. This has led to a modest order to Irregular (in their new guide as 2 and 6 mm) to use up some of the odd bases, and round out one or two of the armies whose infantry quotas were a bit low. They will have to be painted, and their compatriots will have to be repainted, I guess, but it is really a fairly modest total, about 30 strips in all. I can only apologise to the manufacturer for buying one strip of this and one of that….

The project has now moved into phase two, which is reducing the footprint of the current collection. The Aztecs have a new home in a 2-tier box, while some of the others are now in much flatter containers. The taller plastic boxes are the destination of the terrain collection, but I’ve still not worked out what to do with the 20 mm scale buildings.

In other news, I did a podcast, which was about my book. The podcast is still available here. It is about an hour long, and various friends and acquaintances have listened to it, some while decorating. One or two expressed a desire to print out some WW2 ship counters from the internet and give wargaming a try. I’m not sure they ever did.

I started the year resolved to try to have more wargames, and I think I succeeded in that. Not only that, but all but two were campaign games, which seems to suggest that these held (and continue to hold) my interest. I managed 38 games in 2025, as opposed to 24 in 2024. The trend is in the right direction, and, a relatively small quantity of painting aside, hopefully I can get even more boots on the ground (or bases on the felt) in 2026.