2025 has been a funny old year for me. Whilst I've continued gaming at the club, various circumstances, both personal and external have contrived to reduce the amount of gaming I do at home. And it's the gaming at home that drives both the various projects and game reports that fill this blog. Which is a long-winded way of saying that there's been less material on this blog over the past year.
But the year hasn't been without activity.
Towards the end of last year, a group of us decided to add some Wild West gunfights to our repertoire, and we picked up figures to paint. In a surprising burst of activity I actually produced twenty gunfighters, and in the first half of the year managed to use them in a few games.
This burst of painting activity then helped power up the next project. I'd played some Turnip 28 last year, and even bought some figures for it, but had stalled after a little bit of painting and modelling. However in the first part of the year I managed to produce my first army for it, and have started a second. Needless to say that that one has stalled. And the reason for this activity? It was so that I could play in a Turnip 28 tournament in Sydney in April. I pretty much came last and my army was wiped out in every game. But it was fun.
I got involved in two bursts of playtesting this year. The first was for Nic Wright's new fantasy skirmish game, Fantastic Scuffles (which was actually published a couple of weeks ago). The second was for a variant of Galleys & Galleons, that had been picked up as a game in its own right for publication in the near future. It's called Torpedoes & Tides and covers small ship actions in WWII. I didn't allow my total lack of knowledge of this period to hinder me when it came to giving it a go, and in another burst of activity I developed simple scratchbuild designs for the vessels I needed. I think the rules are pretty much completed now, and are awaiting an editorial hand and eventual publication.
In the middle of the year my gaming was dominated by the new Dominion series of games, which present a set of rules that are stripped down to the bare minimum to offer 10-15 minute games with, it has to be said, a surprising amount of depth. Whilst the individual games are light, they are an excellent set of rules for resolving campaigns, and I developed campaign systems for the English Civil War, the French Intervention in Mexico and the War of Spanish Succession for use with the rules. It also spurred another burst of painting allowing me to finish an ersatz early 18th century Ottoman army to go with my Russians and Swedes.
New games (to me) this year have included Frostgrave and Sword Weirdos. Since I also played a bit of Song of Blades and Heroes, fantasy skirmishes have been well represented.
My regular favourite games have not been neglected. I've continued to play Galleys & Galleons (adding the world of Earthsea to my repertoire there) as well as HOTT and even some Gaslands, although for various reasons I actually missed the two most recent club games of that.
I have also continued to play boardgames as well, even if a lot of that doesn't get recorded. Mrs Kobold and I try to fit in at least one game of something each week if possible and we continue to take small games such as Love Letter with us when we go out in case we have downtime that needs filling. Our favourite small game of the year has been Bananagrams.
Anyway, that was the past year for me. I hope you have had at least a moderately pleasant year of gaming at that 2026 sees the same or more!
As ever, here are the top posts in terms of views for each month. You'll see that they mostly concern games and projects I've mentioned above. There should be a few fun memories in there for regular readers.
January
.jpg)
Go West, Young Man - Although it all went south later in the year I started this year's painting off well, with this batch of gunfighters.
February
Pirates Of Earthsea - In February I revisited Ursula Le Guin's Earthsea trilogy, and then went on to read the other books in the series for the first time. It inspired me to play some games of Galleys & Galleons set in her world, which was also a chance to try out the magic rules.
March
April
The Long March - I played a couple of games of Turnip 28 in 2024, but this year I was able to use my own army for the first time. This was the debut game for the Gentleman's Gentlemen.
May
Monsters - More Galleys & Galleons. June requested a game with sea monsters and that's what we did.
June
A Simple ECW Campaign - The Dominion series dominated the middle of this year, and inspired me to create a couple of rudimentary campaign systems. I did a much prettier map for the campaign system later on, and have run the whole thing through several times, each one giving some exciting games.
July
Random Armies For The War Of Spanish Succession - As well as campaign systems the Dominion series also inspired some random army generators. I love putting together this kind of thing.
August
The Adventures Of Harvey Knight - 1 - Moving on from the Dominion rules, I did some playtesting for a forthcoming set of WW2 coastal rules based on Galleys & Galleons. This is a new period for me, and I tried the campaign system. Harvey Knight and his flotilla have had some hair-raising adventures, but have cost the Germans dear in terms of lost ships.
September
More Small Boats - Playtesting continued into the next month. This was a club game with Daniel, but I really must run a couple more adventures for Harvey Knight as well.
October
More Hebridean Piracy - Ships were popular and specifically my little Viking ships, which got used in this rerun of a scenario set off the coast of Scotland in the 16th century.
November
Minoans vs Egyptians - I much prefer DBA to Art de la Guerre, but that didn't stop me playing a game of the latter one Thursday evening.
December
The HOTT Literature Championships - Draw & Game 1 - Inspired by an idea for a short series of HOTT games at the club I started a mini knockout tournament using armies derived from various series of books. At the time of writing I have reached the semi-finals stage, with four armies now battling for a place in the final. This post covered the initial setup, as well as the first game.
No comments:
Post a Comment