2020: Best Year Ever
At least from a wargaming perspective. You wouldn’t know it from looking at the blog, but I’ve had more wargaming related fun over the last twelve months than any decade of my life since leaving high school. Dozens of games, multiple projects to completion, the start of an ambitious...
On the Eve of War
The War of the Trossian Succession Approaches! The fourth of five armies takes to the field in dashing black and capped in yellow. This time around it’s the not-quite-Prussian army, all 38 stands of 1-inch square menace. That leaves just the not-quite-French army and a whole lot of terrain,...
Glen Cook and Fishing For Stars
Oh, Glen Cook, I wish I knew how to quit you. Last of the Dinosaur Published authors to command my allegiance, Glen Cook is a modern master. He is everything that George Rape Rape Martin’s fans wish that fat old pervert was. With the Starfishers Trilogy, Cook paints a broad...
Around Masks, Don’t Relax
“Masks on in public,” is a common refrain in my household. Oh, the subtext. Subtext so thick you could stir it with a spoon. Let’s stick with the surface level interpretation of that phrase for today, shall we? The drawing of the lines around the Masked Eloi and the Maskless...
Island 19: A Tale of the Bermuda Triangle
Steer clear of that Jon Del Arroz fella – he is a bad influence. This time he tempted me into parting with my hard earned fiat money in pursuit of a grand old adventure story called Island 19: A Tale of the Bermuda Triangle. You can back this project yourself over...
We Are Hama
Been thinking about this scene a lot lately. You know the one. An old and senile king has been corrupted by his handler into thinking that the best thing to ever enter his throne room, a man in white, poses an existential threat to him. They both thought the...
Twargame Advice
A world of advice on using Twitter to get your wargaming fix: Stay away from the #warmonger tag. It’s for people who don’t do a lot of wargaming. They like “thuh comm-MUNE-itay”. You get lots of ads for milktoast content providers and soy-based podcasts. A lot of paint-by-numbers figures...
My Dog and My Gun
I mean, dogs can be very dangerous in the wrong hands. So why do dog owners have more rights than gun owners? I think we should bring the ownership laws of those two possessions into better alignment:...
Essentials of Fantasy
There aren’t any. Sure, there may be a pretty hefty list of really important books in the fantasy genre. Books like Starship Troopers, Lord of the Rings, and Harrison Bergeron should be on everybody’s reading list, but the genre is big. Really big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big...
Be As Wise As Serpents
In our modern days of enlightened up-side-downism, deducing what the deuce bedevils some far flung corner of the world can be a tricky proposition. Take the current conflict in the Nagorno-Karabakh region of the south Caucasus, for example. The Ionian Peninsula is a crossroads claimed by a lot of...