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In the wider world, it has been a year of self-inflicted chaos. At home, there’s been a fair amount of chaos as well, for very different reasons.

On a technical end, two computers had failures that took valuable hard drives with them. I need to do more backing up of my data….

Once again, Fox Den is on schedule, with another twelve issues of Campaign out. #111 (the last issue) is due to go out May 1st. After that, I need to finish up a few things that would have been mid-month releases if I’d devoted the extra time and energy; namely Panzerfaust #51, Designing Wargames, and the last three issues of Guidon. That will still take me through near the end of the year, and I need to see about getting Grand Army out, as well as getting on to the republish of No Turning Back.

The blog is about the same. I’ve been occasionally scrambling for a post, and did have a two-day slip from the four-day schedule mid-year. I put out nine Paradox reviews this year, covering about fifteen months of releases, and have another four in the can. However, writing on those is currently at a standstill. Part of the reason for this is that Europa Universalis V is so good that I’ve been spending a good amount of time on it over the last couple months. RPG posts have been limited to one GURPS Dungeons & Sorcery spell collection and a review of Monsters! Monsters!

One side effect of the problems here is there was very little FtF gaming. The regular schedule with Mark and Patch is still going, but other than that, there wasn’t much. That said I, did try out a few things; of the new (to me) board games this year, most disappointing was Rebel Fury. I do like pieces of it, and want to like it, but I have too many problems with the combat. Oldest try-out is Renegade Legion: Centurion (ongoing), which show’s FASA’s common mix of great high concept, good ideas, and things that need a complete rework. France ’40, Ancient Civilizations of the Middle East, and No Peace Without Spain, are new members of series I’ve played before, and The Little Land is part of the Company Scale Series off-branch of GTS. That leaves Congress of Vienna as one other non-series game, and that was more ‘learning’ before putting it in front of the group; involved, but probably worth it. Finally, we just had a group game on the 28th, and tried out Terraforming Mars. Overall, that’s probably the best of them though ACME, No Peace and France are all very close contenders. (By the way, my ACME post got reworked and featured on Inside GMT!)

Meanwhile, there’s been lots computer game playing. Steam shows that despite coming out at the start of November, EU V took second place in time, and wasn’t that far below Stellaris. I had a few other new for me games: Tunic, is a nice adventure game, but far more Dex-centered than I expected (it’s meant to be akin to an early Zelda game), so I got stuck after the first real section. Age of Wonders: Planetfall is a… SF conquest game. That is, take the usual fantasy conquest genre of the AoW series and do SF instead. It works, but also goes for the same pre-built provinces with a limit on how much you can control as Endless Legend. This means I didn’t enjoy it much, and I’m now worried about AoW4. Finally, Atlyss has been a big surprise. It’s a solo/multiplayer action RPG; to a certain extent, there’s not a lot to it, being under development from a one-person show. But, it actually does combat and progression well, and is surprisingly fun.

Final Fantasy XIV has had a good year for me. Smudge and I are still struggling to get everything we want done, but we’re getting closer. Patch 7.4 just dropped a week or so ago, and we’re near to the end of the story there. I’ll probably have a writeup in a month. (I’ve been posting about FF XIV more regularly because of the lack of other posts ready to go….)

I’m down to two outstanding Kickstarters (Free Stars and Empire Builder: Europe), but both should be really close to delivery. Looks like my game spending was $460 this year, higher than I thought. Next year may not be any better, since GMT is threatening a couple of preorders in the first half of the year (Army Group South and Thunderbolt).

Reading went well, with me hitting 47 books this year. Massie’s Dreadnought is the best non-fiction book this year, but that was a reread that I’m glad to have finally gotten to (Catton’s The Coming Fury is also very good). The best new non-fiction would be Atkinson’s The Fate of the Day, but the field is less crowded than I’d like. Notably, The Training Ground, The Prize, and The Homicidal Earl were all good books with problems. On the other hand Sumption’s The Albegensian Crusade and Figes’ The Crimean War are both recommended. Over in fiction, I think The Cartoonists Club is the only non-series item I have to really recommend. I read the second and third Star Trek: Picard prequel novels, and Rogue Elements does get a recommendation from me. Caliban’s War is both too similar to the first book, Leviathan Wakes, and better done for The Expanse. Past that, there’s a number of series books I got to that competently carried forward the series without deserving a particular note, past already-written reviews.

I am still trying to be active on Bluesky and post links to most of my blog posts over there. Follow me to get notifications of reviews and games played.