Year in Review

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2024 in Review – Top 8 Books

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2024 in Review – Top 8 Books

I like to set myself a goal for the number of books I will read in a given year. In previous years this was fifty books, but I found that this constrained my choices as I often passed over big doorstopper volumes because they take too long to read which could imperil my chance of reaching my target. In 2023 I dropped my goal to forty books and barely hit that target, and 2024 proved to be an exact repeat – sliding in to the finish in the last weeks of December. For 2025 I may drop down to thirty-five to allow even more room for the kind of dense books I enjoy. However, I am also hoping to read more fiction, which generally goes much faster than the kinds of history I usually read. I’ve recently been getting more review copies of academic books which has been great (academic books are expensive!) but it also means I’m reading more dense history books and I need to put some more lighter fair in there as well.

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2024 in Review and My Top 7 Games of the Year*

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2024 in Review and My Top 7 Games of the Year*

Last year was one of meandering and trying new things to the detriment of repeat plays – my BGStats end of year report indicates that I played 48 different games, 42 for the first time. For all the new games that I played, I don’t feel like all that many really stuck with me a year later. I faced a few disappointments in terms of games I was initially excited about failing to deliver, and I played some old masterpieces which I enjoyed but maybe won’t make my favorite of all time lists. Trying so many new games also meant that I rarely spent as much time with each individual title as I would have liked. For 2025 I am hoping to spend more time with most of the games I play, digging a bit deeper into the designs rather than playing just enough for a review and then sticking it back on the shelf.

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2023 in Review - Top 7 Favorite Books

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2023 in Review - Top 7 Favorite Books

Every year I set myself a target number of books that I want to read before the year is over. For the past few years, that target has been 50 books and with only one exception I’ve managed to exceed it. However, while I managed to meet my target in 2022, I wasn’t entirely satisfied with how I did it. Reading 50 books didn’t leave much room for the kind of doorstopper reads that I enjoy from time to time. So, with that in mind, I decided to lower my target for 2023 to 40 books - and at the same time to be less stringent on what constituted a book for the purposes of recording my reading. I managed to read exactly 40 books, just barely making my target, but I also read some hefty tomes so I’m pretty happy with the result. Just like for 2022, I’ve decided to pull out some of my favorite fiction and non-fiction I read last year and discuss them, in brief, below.

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Most Anticipated Games: 2024 Edition

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Most Anticipated Games: 2024 Edition

I have been hesitant in the past to write about my excitement for upcoming games, partly out of a fear of getting absorbed into the Cult of the New but more so because it can be very hard to know when a given game might come out. The publication pipeline is at best vague and there is always the risk of delays or unexpected interruptions to production. I find it easier to not get too excited about games until I can grab them with my spindly hands. Still, I am not immune to hype and this year I thought I’d indulge myself a little and write about the ten games I’m most looking forward to that should be coming out in 2024. As an addendum, to show that I’m not all about that new cardboard smell, I’ve also added a list of the five games I already own that I am the most excited to hopefully get to the table this year.

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

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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).