Capstone Games — Blog — Stuart Ellis-Gorman

2023 in Review and My Top 8 Games of the Year*

I’ve now been running this blog for two whole years, but somehow it feels a lot longer. I’ve been very pleased with how it has grown over the past year and I’m hoping to continue that growth going into 2024. I received several review copies of games this year which was really gratifying and allowed me to cover games that would otherwise have probably been beyond my budget - wargame blogging is not particularly lucrative. To mark the end of the year I want to reflect a bit on how I feel the last two years have gone and then, of course, provide my top ten games of the year. As per last year’s list, these will be games that I played for the first time in 2023 not necessarily games that were released in 2023 (although unlike last year this year’s list does is that were released during the year).

First Impressions - Fire and Stone Siege of Vienna by Robert DeLeskie

If the fact that I spent a month playing every game I could find on the 1565 Siege of Malta didn’t give it away, I have a bit of a thing for games about sieges. I think siege warfare is a fascinating and often underrepresented aspect of military history. In my own topic of study sieges were far more numerous and more important than set piece battles but it is the battles that most people have heard of. When it comes to game design battles again dominate, with siege games being relatively few and far between, but I am sympathetic to designers faced with the challenge of making a truly engaging siege game. It is precisely because it is so challenging, though, that I am interested in seeing how game designers approach siege games My fascination with siege games meant that naturally I would be interested in Fire and Stone Siege of Vienna, and it definitely didn’t hurt that the game is gorgeous. That’s why I was very pleased to be invited to be taught the game by the designer and play against Fred Serval on the Homo Ludens YouTube channel. The full video is embedded below and I would recommend watching it, but I also thought I’d give some of my thoughts now that I’ve had time to meditate on my first play of Fire and Stone.