2025 - a gaming year in review

Well, it seems 2025 was a particularly productive year, something I hadn't quite realised until I started putting a retrospective together. Followers of the blog will know it was only a week ago that I posted a review of my Chain of Command related activities, but looking back at other rules and periods it dawned on me that there was more than enough to warrant a second post. Excuse the indulgence! 

The biggest new painting project for the year was undoubtedly the German tribes for Infamy, Infamy. I didn't buy the figures during the year, which is partly why they became a 2025 project, they were long overdue painting. The vast bulk are from the Victrix plastic range, with shield transfers from Little Big Men Studios.

The few metal figures in the collection are from Wargames Foundry, like this group of wailing women.

As mentioned, the spur to paint the figures was to play games using Infamy, Infamy. My regular opponent Dave has quite a Roman collection and they were just awaiting suitable opponents. I wrote up a detailed report of one of our first games, which you can find in this post. 

The figures also featured in a number of games at the club.

I needed to add a small group of slingers to the German force and adapted those from a set of Gripping Beast Dark Age Warriors that I had lying around. Little did I know, but that decision would then lead me down a completely different rabbit hole. One thing led to another and within very little time I had a Saxon warband. A long story, but one you can follow in more detail in this post. 

This was inspired in part by our Dux Britanniarum campaign Warriors of the Old North. We played the first game at the tail end of 2024 and it continued into the first half of 2025 with another three games. 

All the figures came from Dave's collection, so there has never been a need for me to create an additional warband for this campaign. Well there you go, sometimes this hobby can lead you down all sorts of unexpected paths. 

When it came to basing those Saxons I did it with a number of rule sets in mind. That started me thinking about how I could use some of my existing figures for other periods for different rule sets. 

I have a number of Hundred Years War figures that were created with Lion Rampant in mind. While those rules were fine for a casual game at the club, I was keen to do something on a grander scale. I'd played my first game using Midgard in April. That was a big, multiplayer scenario set during the Trojan War and was very enjoyable. 

When I saw that James Morris had compiled lists for the Hundred Years War I looked to see if I had enough figures to put together a French and English force. I was close, but not quite close enough. What I did have, were a number of Perry plastic sprues that would provide me with enough figures. For a reasonably small investment of time I could add the various crossbow men, archers and men-at-arms to make up the numbers needed. 

The only other additional work was to make up a handful of suitably based figures to represent both French and English heroic leaders.

All that remained was to create suitably sized sabot bases of the standard 120mm Midgard width that would hold up to eight figures per unit.

Our first game used the lists for Agincourt. We decided to see how the rules would play out if we created a scenario that tried to mirror the actual battle. Anyone familiar with Agincourt will know that is likely to create a game with a decidedly English bias. Nonetheless, we thought it might be a good way to test out how well the rules replicated the historical situation. True to that narrative, the French struggled across the muddy ground to confront the English. Those that did make it across came to grief in front of the stakes set up by the archers. French courage was not lacking and their heroic leaders racked up a significant number of reputation points leading charges. While few fell in combat, the same cannot be said for the men they were leading, which ultimately assured English victory. 

That was a satisfying result, in so much as we felt the rules were able to give a plausible historical outcome. That inspired a second game, using the 'defend the hill' scenario in the Midgard rulebook. That delivered a more satisfying game, where the opportunities for victory were more evenly balanced and with the outcome only decided toward the very end. 

As it happens, the sabot bases also work for another set of medieval rules Blood and Horse Droppings by Rob Jones. I've played these before and as Rob is a medieval historian there's no surprise that these do a good job of focussing on the challenges of command in the period. Given I had the figures and bases it made sense to give the rules a run out again at the club.

Much comes down to decisions made by commanders as they enter or continue to fight in melee. As always with the period (and in common with Midgard), leadership and heroic deeds count for much. By the way, the rules are free and available as a pdf download from Rob's website Historian in Harness.

Having played a giant Trojan War game using the Midgard rules, our host also wanted to try doing something similar, but this time using Hail Caesar (or, as the detractors at the club like to call it 'Fail Caesar'). These were my first games using those rules and I have to say, they didn't grab me. Despite the game looking quite spectacular with hundreds of 28mm figures, I found the rules rather vanilla and the games not as engaging as Midgard.

O Group was a rule set that consumed many of my evenings at the club. We managed to play through both the France 1940 and the 1941-43 Eastern Front supplements. For these we used my opponent's large 15mm collection and terrain, most of which was amassed for Flames of War, but has since been repurposed for O Group. 

It's not a complex set of rules, but it does have a lot of nuances. We found it really benefited from repeat play and without keeping too long a gap between games.

We like the system, but we do have one gripe. That's with the scenarios and in particular the victory conditions. Despite setting objectives that can be captured, any game can also be won by inflicting a number of casualties on your opponent. As a result, we've often found the game coming down to our ability to pick off low hanging fruit to rack up those casualties, rather than a focus on capturing key objectives.

More recently we started playing the scenarios from the Normandy supplement, which was an opportunity to use my 12mm collection which I had created with O Group in mind. 

The 12mm collection also saw use at the club playing Crossfire, where I introduced the rules to a gamer I have known since my Advanced Squad Leader days.  

Despite the disparity in the size of their respective rule books, he found much to like about Crossfire's elegant simplicity. Talking of which, I've been using the elegantly simple 2'x2' introductory scenarios designed by friend of the blog Dick Bryant. It's been a very useful tool for taking people through the rules, whether they be new players, or those just inquisitive to discover how the rules play out. For those games I've been using my 20mm terrain and the multi-based figures I still have in 20mm for playing Crossfire (more about those here).

Playing games set during the American War of Independence using the Sharp Practice rules is of particular interest, but 2025 saw very little of that. Sadly, there's only so much game time available each year. However, that period was not entirely neglected. I was able to paint up three groups of ragged Continentals, a lovely set from Eureka Miniatures.

There was only a solitary game using Sharp Practice and that was set during the Peninsular War, not in the rebellious American colonies. However, there were no complaints from me. Once again, our host supplied a magnificent table and an equally magnificent selection of figures.

John Savage, the author of What A Cowboy, very kindly shared a draft version of his modern variant of those rules entitled What a Cartel (these have since been published in the 2025 Lard Magazine). It was an opportunity to dig out my rarely used figures and terrain for Afghanistan and we ran a simple extraction scenario, where a team of private military contractors attempt to save a downed helicopter crew.

Whilst not miniatures, I also played through the whole of an Undaunted: Stalingrad campaign with a good friend. He's an avid historian of the war and an equally enthusiastic player of board games, but any attempt I've made to entice him over to playing miniatures has failed. I've long since given up hope of bringing him over to the dark side, but that doesn't mean we don't continue enjoying gaming together.

So, another full year of gaming. It's funny really, because that's not how I felt about the year when I was first reflecting back. For some reason my mind focussed on the lost opportunities and disruptions. In hindsight these now seem minor and while a year with even more gaming would have been great, it would be churlish to complain. Huzzah for 2025.

Making a Ruined City table

One of the benefits of keeping a blog is that it becomes a record of your gaming life. Now that I'm in the eighth year of blogging I can begin to go back to some of my earliest posts and see how far things have progressed (or not!). This was all brought home to me when I met up with Rob, someone who regularly comments on the posts here. We were talking about terrain and he mentioned how my early game reports were a reminder of how much my tables have come on over the years. He is absolutely right and I was reminded again of that recently when running The Road To Bremen campaign for a second time.

The final game is set in the ruins of Bremen itself and makes for a great setting. I really enjoyed putting the table together for this one and felt it was quite an improvement over my initial attempt more than six years ago.

That initial game was part of the third campaign that I had recorded for the blog and was just two years after I returned to miniature gaming. I'd been very busy making terrain during those two years and while the tables looked fine they lacked many of the small details that really make for a more immersive experience. 

Knowing what I do now, this was one table that I've always wanted to do again. When I put it together the first time I certainly had plenty of buildings, but that wasn't enough to quite capture the right look and feel. Looking at it now there's something a little sterile, even toy-like about its appearance.

Crossfire was the rule set that brought me back to miniature gaming and it’s a rule set that lends itself well to urban fighting. It needs a lot of terrain and for that I had scratch built quite a number of ruined buildings using foamcore. There's a blog post with more detail on how I made those here.

I had given some thought to rubble and how best to represent it. The one element I've stuck with has been modular pieces of rubble that can be positioned around the buildings. 

Admittedly they are slightly abstracted in form, but I’ve found them a simple solution to breaking the boundary between a building and the terrain it sits on. As you can see below they make for a quick but quite effective transformation.

Their versatility allows for variations.

While the bulk of my Second World War gaming these days is using Chain of Command it doesn't follow that those buildings are redundant. Far from it. Now they simply see action in more settings. I recently gave my Crossfire figures a complete refresh and did the same with many of the buildings. They still see use playing Crossfire, in fact we've had something of a revival of interest in the rules at the club and I've been running games like the one pictured below.

You can probably spot a few of the small details I've added to those buildings when compared with the picture from our original Bremen game below.

The foamcore buildings made up the bulk of structures for the ruins of Bremen and I recall at the time being very pleased with the table. That said, I wasn't quite as happy with the mat we used. It didn't really suit an urban setting and now I find it jarring to look at. The buildings don't sit comfortably and look very much like they were plonked down. 

If there's one thing I've learned over the last few years it's how well a good mat or base can tie all the different terrain elements together and create a more seamless piece of terrain. Take the image below. It's from an earlier game in our original Bremen campaign. The mat works well enough in a more rural setting and it makes for a perfectly acceptable table.

Now compare a few of the exact same terrain pieces arranged on the flocked mat in a similar rural setting. I think there is a notable difference.

While my original mat served me well, when I transitioned to a flocked mat the difference was obvious and immediate. Now the terrain pieces looked like they belong in their setting. 

I've been teaching a new player Chain of Command and we've been working our way through The Road to Bremen campaign. The good thing about this campaign is the high re-playability. The number of variables and options means it's extremely unlikely to ever play the same way twice. When it came time to playing on the last map which is set in Bremen itself I was eager to see if I could make a better job of the table at a second attempt.

As mentioned, I've carried out a little more work on the buildings. The main emphasis was on making sure they all work to the same colour palette. At the same time I wanted to add more texture and small piles of rubble. In all honesty you can never really have enough rubble but I've always wanted to strike a balance between form and function. 

If period photographs of Bremen in 1945 are anything to go by I'd need considerably more to capture the real look.

Ultimately the buildings have to be playable and the figures need to be able to work in the terrain, so there is always going to be an element of compromise.

The next thing to address was a suitable mat. I looked at those available commercially but in the end decided to make my own. The main reason was to ensure consistency with the building colour palette. For this mat I repurposed a piece of fleece fabric.

I had originally painted it for use as arid/desert terrain for games set in Afghanistan. I’ve since made a different one using canvas and caulk that I much prefer and so the fleece version had become redundant. 

It was a simple enough job to overpaint it using similar colours to my buildings.

The final missing element was scatter material, specifically more rubble. Looking at the original table from 2018 the one thing that strikes me is how neat it looks. While I have made detachable rubble pieces that help to break up the uniform shape of the building bases it wasn't enough. The simplest solution was to make up my own batch of rubble and scatter it once the building were in place.

I made this using cork floor tiles, the same way I've made the pieces of rubble that are set in place within the building models. In addition I painted up strips of broken balsa wood and threw in a generous amount of cat litter to make a custom rubble mix.

The loose rubble combines well with the modular rubble pieces and allows for endless variation.

Pulling all these elements together I felt I'd done a much better job of creating a table where the terrain appears more seamless. There's no doubt that the right mat combined with the scattered rubble are key components of the transformation. 

The scattered rubble does a very effective job breaking the sharp lines between the building bases and the mat. Could there be more rubble? Well, I think the answer is always going to be yes, there can never be enough. That said, I'm pleased with the way a relatively small amount can create an excellent impression of a rubble strewn landscape.

On another note, when we first played the campaign I didn't have a collection of Fallschirmjager and so we substituted my Waffen SS. This time I've had the added bonus of using my recently painted Fallschirmjager. 

All up it's been very satisfying to see all the various elements come together like this. It's certainly scratched my itch to do this table again and do it better.