It is slowly becoming a habit that, at the start of the new year, the Regular Opponents and I gather in the Frozen North (Darlington) to bring in the day after New Year’s with a celebration of Wargaming.

In the past, the Creative Regular Opponent has usually run a single massive game of Chain of Command and we’ve played from lunch to dinner, only stopping once our hunger has overwhelmed our love of dice rolling. This year, however, we decided to try something a little different – a taster session, where each of us brought or chose a game to play and then we got to see a whole selection of possibilities. And I have to admit, as much as I like our massive games, playing new and exciting things (or introducing my friends to them) was a really fun day.

However, the day started with a sharing of presents.

As I’ve mentioned in the past, my ultramodern warfare projects are set in ChargeReal, an alternative universe set in approximately the modern day but with a few modifications and tweaks to allow the setup of whatever situation or series of events I want to play, without causing any potential problems with players or commentators. Building a whole world up is a monumental task but it is definitely something I’m enjoying.

As I am an incredibly practical/lazy man, my world-building is not particularly visual. I know many people sit down with a piece of paper, draw a map and then start filling it in. In contrast, I start by thinking about which interesting geopolitical situation I want to make, work out what nations it needs to border and then create a spider map to show the connections and work out a rough location. For example, this is what the current region

Look, I know I’m in the middle of packing up to move but it’s close to the end of the year, I just had the new BPRE box arrive in my hands (more on that this week) and Spectre earlier this week sent me an email talking about how they are no longer selling their ruleset. It’s a lot all at once and it’s got me thinking a fair amount about the main wargaming genre I spend my time in (even if fantasy is chasing up behind it at a concerning speed). So I’m going to throw words into this blog post and see what comes out of it.

Also, I just need to stress – the thoughts in this post (like everything on the blog) are my opinion. If you disagree, I’m interested to see what other people in the community are thinking.

First up, the big news from