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.

Germanic Warriors for Infamy, Infamy

This is my first foray into the ancient period and was inspired by the Infamy, Infamy! rules from Too Fat Lardies. Some of this journey I documented earlier, but I thought I'd wrap up the completed project in a single post. 

I've put together a German warband based on the plastic figure set from Victrix. The set comes with sixty plastic figures and almost gives enough for a complete warband for Infamy, Infamy! 'Almost' being the key word.

There is a good selection of figures. From those barely dressed...

To several equipped with stolen Roman armour and other hardware. These will make for good Foederati.

The Germanic warband is composed principally of groups of warriors, with ten figures per group. The only type of formation these groups can form, if it can indeed be termed a formation, is as a mob. For that reason I've resisted the temptation to use sabot basing for the groups, preferring instead to go for a more unstructured look, but one that still allows me to remove casualties. I've opted for basing with either three, two or one figure to a base.

This worked well for the Mahdists, when I put together my colonial project set in Sudan.

A group of ten is composed of two bases with three figures, one with two figures and two individually based.

The leader figures are based individually, but on bases the same length as the three figure bases. 

I've added rocks to help identify which leader corresponds to which card in Infamy, Infamy!

One reason I've based them like that is so they can sit in between two of the three figure bases and in so doing give each group the same frontage as the sabot bases I will use for the Romans (ah yes, I didn't mention that, did I? I've gone right down the rabbit hole.... ).

That allows the figures and bases to be staggered, to give a much more irregular appearance. One that should contrast nicely with the Romans and their more disciplined formations.

They've already featured in one game. I think this basing has worked well and creates a suitably impressive looking barbarian mob.

The warrior groups have three options for supporting missile units. Only one of these is possible to create from the base set of Victrix figures and that's a group of six armed with javelins.

The other two options are slingers and archers. Initially, I thought an easy solution for the slingers was to make use of a box of Gripping Beast Dark Age Warriors that I had sitting around from a Viking project I'd abandoned (it was intended for playing Saga, but I lost complete interest after playing a few games with those rules and finding them not to my liking).

The Gripping Beast set includes hands with slings, so I thought I could use a few of the spare heads from the Victrix set with the GB bodies and that would help blend these in with my warband. Unfortunately, I found the Victrix heads did not sit well on the Gripping Beast bodies, they seem too large. To make matters worse, I wasn't convinced by the poses of the GB figures, they lacked any real dynamism. They would be passable in an emergency, but otherwise I didn't want to use them.

My solution was to buy an additional sprue of the Victrix figures and add the sling hands to some of those models. I was much, much happier with the result. Obviously, the figures blend in with the other warriors, but perhaps even more importantly, the poses are much more dynamic. Interestingly, I used a few of the GB heads to add variety and these sit much better on the Victrix bodies than the other way around.

I know plastic figures are not popular with all gamers, but this highlighted to me one of their advantages, which is their versatility when it comes to kit bashing or adding variation. Take the two figures below. Both are based on the exact same Victrix body. However, a simple conversion to add a sling hand and a head turned to the side (to alter the angle the body faces the enemy), had enabled me to have two quite different figures based on the same body.

That left a group of six archers. I looked at a sprue of Victrix Dark Age archers and realised these would work well enough for the Germans. The clothing was very similar and I had plenty of spare heads I could add. That was a straightforward enough project, made even simpler by the fact a single Victrix sprue contains exactly six figures.

One other support option, aside from obviously adding more groups of warriors to the warband, is a group of six fanatic warriors. I picked up one more sprue of the Victrix warriors and used this to add the extra javelin figures I needed. I used the additional figures to make up an extra six fanatics. They are no different to the warrior figures, but I just wanted to ensure I had enough on single bases to add the fanatics without taking figures from one of the warrior groups. That way I had sufficient to maximise the number I could deploy in a game.

I added to the support options by making up one of the Victrix figures as a horn blower, to use as a 'musician' to extend the command range of the warband leader.

Wargames Foundry do a lovely set of wailing women, which operate as a Rally Point support.

Finally, I've created markers to use to represent Ambush Points and Deployment Points. The stone cairns will be used to mark Ambush Points. The banner and the priestess will be used to mark regular Deployment Points.

That gives a reasonable force for a game. Naturally, it goes without saying, there is always more than can be added. No doubt it will be, at some stage. Their first outing in a game saw them roundly defeated by the Romans, hopefully they can lift their game in the future!

They fell back in chaos on the wailing women, but even their lamentations and chastisements were not enough to put them back in the fight. 

On the other hand the fanatics proved to be, well.....fanatical. That said, they tend to live fast and die young. It appears German force morale is barely impacted by their loss. After all, what should one expect from fanatics?