History, Medieval, Retrospective
Stuart Gorman
The Battle of Castillon – A Reflection

Today is the anniversary of the battle of Castillion. A year ago today I submitted the final draft of my manuscript for Castillon: The Final Battle of the Hundred Years War to my editor. Now, once again on the anniversary of the battle, my book is out and I thought it would be interesting to write something about the experience of writing it. 

If I’m honest, though, I feel kind of disconnected from the book now. I finished it over a year ago, and while I’ve re-read it in that time as part of proofreading and making the final tweaks to the text, as a project it has felt finished for a long time. In the intervening time I moved to South Korea and started a new job, and I haven’t had much time to think about what that day in 1453 might mean to me still. 

The Battle of Castillon – A Reflection

Ancients

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Hoplite by Richard Berg (and Mark Herman)

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Hoplite by Richard Berg (and Mark Herman)

I didn’t quite click with Mark Herman’s SPQR, the second volume in the Great Battles of History (GBoH) series that he co-designed with Richard Berg, but I’m nothing if not willing to give a series a second shot. With the recent reprint of Hoplite, volume 15 and the most recent entry in the series, I decided to give it another shot. I was drawn to a few things about Hoplite that I hoped might fix elements that hadn’t quite worked with me in SPQR. Firstly, this is a Richard Berg design and I’m nothing if not a Berg fan. I have had bad experiences with Berg games, but even when I don’t like them, I am generally fascinated by Berg’s takes on history and game design. While I have enjoyed several of Mark Herman’s games in the past, my taste and his are not exactly aligned. The second thing that drew me to Hoplite was that it promised to be a little simpler than earlier entries in the series – stripping out some of the complexity that Berg felt didn’t apply to ancient Greek warfare – and that it was now a chit-pull game. Something I admire about GBoH is how it seems to change significantly between volumes – taking the core but adapting it to each new topic. For that reason, I felt it warranted a second shot. I’m happy to report that I have enjoyed Hoplite quite a bit more than my first dalliance with SPQR, but I’m also still not entirely sure I’m a fan of the series yet.

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SPQR: Deluxe Edition by Mark Herman and Richard Berg

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SPQR: Deluxe Edition by Mark Herman and Richard Berg

I am a massive fan of Richard Berg’s Men of Iron system, but I bounced off Great Battles of the American Civil War (GBACW) pretty hard. This meant that I approached SPQR, the second volume in the Great Battles of History series, with both excitement and trepidation. Men of Iron and GBACW were originated by Berg, while in contrast Great Battles of History started as a Mark Herman design before it became a collaboration in subsequent volumes. I want to recognize that up front, because in this review I will probably be talking a lot about Richard Berg because it is his hex and counter designs that I am more familiar with – I know Herman’s card driven games better than his traditional hex and counter designs.

There is no denying the legacy of GBoH, I can see its legacy in many of the games I have played, including Men of Iron and Ben Hull’s Musket and Pike, and tracing that lineage as I was playing it was really interesting. This is a system with an impressive legacy to go with its significant heft in terms of scope and rules weight, I can see why it has more than a dozen volumes and a significant fanbase. In my case, I had an interesting time playing SPQR and I’m glad I’ve tried it, both for its influence on later designs and for aspects where I think it is still superior to those games, but at the end of the day I don’t think SPQR is a game for me. In this post I hope to explain what clicked with me and why ultimately I decided to pack it back into the box and pass it on to someone else.

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First Impressions - Tetrarchia by Miguel Marqués

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First Impressions - Tetrarchia by Miguel Marqués

I was lucky enough to be invited to guest on a teach and play of Tetrarchia Second Edition, published by Draco Ideas. I’ve been interested in trying this game after I was very impressed with Draco Ideas’ game 1212 Las Novas de Tolosa, and I was excited to give it a shot. You can see our full replay as well as an extended discussion on a variety of topics in the video below:

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Revisiting Commands and Colors: Ancients by Richard Borg

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Revisiting Commands and Colors: Ancients by Richard Borg

I played a lot of Commands and Colors: Ancients in college - I convinced the board game society to buy the base game and its first two expansions and for my enthusiasm I was tasked with stickering all three boxes! Luckily I love putting stickers on wooden blocks, so I didn’t mind in the slightest. After I graduated, though, I didn’t play it nearly as much because I didn’t own my own copy and it was harder to borrow the society’s copy when I was no longer an undergraduate (as a post-grad I could be a member but I rarely had the time for hanging around that I used to).