I wasn’t a happy chappy when I wrote my reflections on 2024. I did lots of stuff, but only played six games, and didn’t achieve many of my annual goals. It was a wargaming disaster. So what is on the megalomaniac agenda for 2025? Do I tone back my ambitions or try to make up for lost ground? Megalomaniac, right, so it has to be “make up for lost ground”. Same goals as last year, plus a few. As usual I present this as a brain dump of my active projects, i.e. those all projects that are more or less “in progress”. The list is then split into three parts: likely in 2025, unlikely, and background activity.
Modern Warfare
Modern technology in small scale wars. WW2 could be in the Industrial Warfare or Modern Warfare periods. I have arbitrarily lumped it into the earlier, Industrial, period because in wargaming circles “Modern” usually means post-WW2. Sub-categories: Korean War, Arab Israeli Wars, Spanish Sahara, Portuguese Colonial War.
2024 Reflections of a Megalomaniac Wargamer and Amateur Historian
My goals for 2024 were typically overly ambitious – some would say megalomaniac. As usual I didn’t achieve them all, in fact hardly any. This year was a wargaming disaster.
Burmese Battlefield Reinforcements
I was pretty happy with my Burmese battlefield but our Experiment in Ningthoukhong proved I needed more. More temples. More houses. More roads. More bunds. All this kit can do duty in the Burma Campaign in WW2 and most of it is good for Vietnam.
Steven’s growing collection of wrecks
I have a growing junk yard comprising nicely painted, but wrecked, vehicles. Nominally these are potential objectives for Crossfire, but I’ve only ever used one wreck. That was the Fieseler Fi 156 Storch for Papa Eicke. The rest of my junk yard are, well, waiting for inspiration for a Crossfire Scenario. These are all 15mm scale.
2024 Confessions of a Megalomaniac Wargamer and Amateur Historian
2023 went pretty well although there were a few bumps and I still didn’t complete nearly enough of my plans. So what is on the megalomaniac agenda for 2024? Well, you’ll see below. As usual I present this as a brain dump of my active projects, i.e. those all projects that are more or less “in progress”. The list is then split into three parts: likely in 2024, unlikely, and background activity.
2023 Reflections of a Megalomaniac Wargamer and Amateur Historian
My goals for 2023 were typically overly ambitious – some would say megalomaniac. As usual I didn’t achieve them all, less than I was hoping, but it wasn’t a bad run.
ANZAC M113s – Revisiting the APCs to get for my Vietnam Project
Having done quite a bit of research on ANZAC/Australian M113s in Vietnam, I’ve decided to change my plan for collecting them. I’ll recap my original plan from 2020 (ANZACs in Vietnam – Steven’s Wargaming Project), have a look at the kits I have today, and then outline my new, slightly more megalomaniac plans.
ANZAC M113 Callsigns: Australian APC Tactical Signs in Vietnam
I’ve started looking at my ANZAC project for Vietnam. I’m hoping I’ll be able to start making progress on this in 2023. But I got stuck on the tactical signs for the Australian M113s. Despite having a few books on Vietnam, I had no information on the tac signs. So I did some research. I found two pretty good sources: Ian Johnston’s “Australian M113 Armoured Personnel Carriers in the Vietnam War” and M Heaust: M113A1 APCs at Long Tan 18 August 1966 and a bunch of slightly more dodgy sources. Then I added in a bit of guess work. Here is the result.
2023 Confessions of a Megalomaniac Wargamer and Amateur Historian
So 2022 went okay. And now it is time to lay out my megalomaniac plans for 2023. I will try to tone them back a bit as, despite a lot of activity, I achieved depressingly few of my goals last year.
As usual I present this as a brain dump of my active projects, i.e. those all projects that are more or less “in progress”. The list is then split into three parts: likely in 2023, unlikely, and background activity.
2022 Reflections of a Megalomaniac Wargamer and Amateur Historian
My goals for 2022 were typically overly ambitious – some would say megalomaniac. As usual I didn’t achieve them all, less than I was hoping, but it wasn’t a bad run.
Books – Reorganising my history bookcase made me think about my interests
My big history book case is in the living area and not surprisingly my wife gets annoyed when the books get messy. Recently I tidied it up. Aside from the fact it took hours – which I didn’t enjoy – I found it interesting what this filing task highlighted about my interests. Aside from my enduring interest in all things Spanish and Portuguese, it turns out I have quite a big interest in World War II (okay, not so surprising), and a huge interest in Colonial Empires with a side order of Cold War.
Liberation – An A4 Insurgency Campaign
I was looking at the tokens I designed in for Using Political Tokens for Military-Political Climate in an Insurgency Campaign and realised they weren’t very easy to make. They are round and double sided. Doh! So I decided to redesign them as square. And that led to doing the entire Campaign on an A4 sheet of paper. This campaign can be for any insurgency but I have the Portuguese Colonial War in mind. This is the third iteration on Simulating Politics in a Wargaming Campaign with Political Tokens – an idea I borrowed from Kapitan Kobold
2022 Confessions of a Megalomaniac Wargamer and Amateur Historian
I am pretty happy with my efforts in 2021 and now it is time to lay out my plans for 2022. As always they are crazy megalomaniac plans. 2021 proved that even pumped I can’t achieve all my annual goals. But I’ll try.
I start with a brain dump of my active projects, i.e. those all projects that are more or less “in progress”. The list is split into three parts: likely in 2022, unlikely, and background activity.
2021 Reflections of a Megalomaniac Wargamer and Amateur Historian
My Confessions of a Megalomaniac were my 2021 aspirations. How did I do? I started the year with huge ambitions, and didn’t achieve them all, but it wasn’t a bad run.
How does my Burmese battlefield look?
I am always impressed by Brett Simpson’s Pacific War tables for Crossfire. He inspired me to improve my jungle terrain. More jungle will be useful for Burma, Portuguese Colonial Africa, and Vietnam. I made some steps before we played the Pick up game in Burma, but I wanted to make my tables even better. So I’ve been bolstering my crossfire terrain and now have Pagodas, rice paddies, Bamboo groves, boulder fields, rock fields, palm trees, ravines, depressions, Burmese houses, jungle undergrowth (not featured here), crests (not featured here) and cliffs (not featured here). Some of these I’ve posted about previously, and some are yet to come. Now, after all that effort, I wanted to know two things. Do I have enough jungle terrain to fill a table? Does my jungle terrain look good enough? So I got it all out and threw it on a 6’x4′ table. I can definitely fill a table. And I reckon the table looks good enough, not perfect, but good enough.