Tag Archives: wargaming

The Four-Decade History and Future of NYC’s Trailblazing Metropolitan Wargamers

Editorial note: I wrote this article in May of 2024 on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of Metropolitan Wargamers. The article was originally published by SDHist here.

Background

Metropolitan Wargamers (MWG) was founded in 1984. The club is New York City’s premier and longest-operating gaming organization in the five boroughs with its own dedicated private gaming spaces.

MWG grew out of of the New York Wargamers Association (NYWA), founded in the early 1970s as an affiliation of local Napoleonic miniatures players. By the early 80s, some members of the group split off to form what would become MWG. The club’s first permanent yet short-lived home was on Steinway Street in Queens in a cramped second-story apartment with a couple of small tables and a leaky hole in the roof.

After losing this space, the club moved to its largest space at 20 Broadway in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. In the early 90s, the club was regularly listed in the “Opponents Wanted” section of Avalon Hill’s The General magazine. It touted “its own 2,000 square foot loft for boardgames and miniatures” and “facilities and members to play any game, anytime.”

Occupying the entire second floor of a warehouse, the Broadway space held six tables (plus a poker table) and lines of shelves along the walls holding miniatures, games and an enormous collection of military and history books and magazines. With a dingy couch, a threadbare area rug, peeling linoleum floors, overhead fluorescent lighting, a closet with a cold-water sink and toilet, and an industrial heater mounted to the corner of the ceiling, the Metropolitan Wargamers in Williamsburg reflected the grit of a Brooklyn since largely faded into memory.

For years, a small, dedicated group of about a dozen members struggled to scrape together money to cover rent and keep the club operating. The Broadway building was sold (and subsequently demolished) during the Brooklyn real estate development boom of the early 2000s.,After that, the club moved to its current location in the basement of a four-story, eight-unit 1920 apartment building at 522 Fifth Street in the heart of Park Slope, Brooklyn. (Entrance door pictured above.)

Set-Up

When the club arrived at its new Park Slope home, it was a raw, unused space. About $300 was initially invested in building new tables and shelves. It is still very much a semi-raw basement with a painted concrete floor and brick and stone foundation walls.

We have a front room with three 4’ x 5’ tables, each with multiple racks underneath to hold games in progress, plus a small 4’ x 4’ kitchen style table we salvaged off the street.

The front room at Metropolitan Wargamers.

Moving down a narrow hall, we have our “monster game” table measuring 8’ x 8’ which plays host to large footprint multi-month games such as World In Flames or Pacific War. The three tables at the rear of the club (two at 5’ x 8’ and one at 5’ x 10’) all have removable tops, handy for hosting months-long games like Empires In Arms or a big RPG dungeon crawl miniatures campaign.

The back room at Metropolitan Wargamers, featuring sand tables and walls of lined with miniatures and games.

Most uniquely, lifting the covers off two of the tables reveals sand tables for miniatures gaming. World War II miniatures games such as Battleground, Flames of War, O Group and Bolt Action have often been played on these sand tables.

A recent game of O Group in 15mm, with members and visiting guest from Detroit, on one of the club’s sand tables.

Shelves line the walls of the club, and first-time visitors usually gaze in awe at their contents of hundreds of games and thousands of miniatures. Shelves in the rear hold club-owned terrain – trees, buildings, gaming mats, rivers, roads, hills, and buildings ranging from historical periods to sci-fi and fantasy in multiple scales. A tall rack holds a dozen 4’ x 4’ sheets of plywood where more in-progress games can be stowed. Most of the shelves are rented by members to store personal collections of games and miniatures.

A 20mm Battleground game on one of the club’s sand tables.

Creature comforts at the club are few. There’s a refrigerator, microwave and coffee maker at the front, a tiny bathroom at the rear, and stairs up and out the back to a small private yard. The yard is used to spray-paint miniatures, and is where we’ll throw food on the grill during warm months.

The Battle of the Monongahela in 28mm using Muskets & Tomahawks rules at the club (figures and scenario by the author).

We finally installed free Wi-Fi within the past two years. Other than that, not a lot has changed since we made the move twenty years ago, and the club remains a bare-bones space solely focused on gaming.

Rules

So how do we manage this gamer’s paradise nestled on a side street in one of the more expensive neighborhoods in Brooklyn? We are fortunate to have a very good relationship with our landlord, who rents us the space for what is far below what he charges for one of his $3200 per month two-bedroom apartments upstairs.

Visitors attend for free as guests their first time at the club, and then pay a weekly fee of $15 whenever they stop by to play again. There’s an option for regular guest players to pay $40 per month for as much gaming as they want, provided they are there with one of our members.

Members and guest playing Root at the club.

The real magic comes in being voted in as a member of MWG after a 3-month probationary period of paying a monthly fee. With membership comes a set of keys to the club, granting 24/7 access to the space. That said, some visitors pay at the weekly rate for years without becoming members. For gamers largely living in small NYC apartments, the monthly fee of $40 for membership and $20 for a private shelf is a real deal.

Over the past ten years, membership has held steady at around 35 in number, give or take. We each pay our nominal fees, which pays for rent, utilities, cleaning supplies (one member pays no fees and handles all our cleaning and maintenance work) and whatever else comes up like building new shelves or replacing major things like the sink. Because our costs are relatively fixed, we’ve been able to maintain our very reasonable fee structure for years.

Father and son team James Jr. and James Sr. are often found playing big WWII hex and counter games, like Day of Days, over weeks on the club’s tables. James Jr. is just one of the people who have grown up in the club.

Modern gaming cafes in the city typically charge $15 for three to four hours of play, so the club is a bargain for serious gamers looking to clock many hours or even entire days of gaming. Unlike these café spaces, however, we are not open to walk-in traffic.And we don’t keep regular hours, so arrangements to visit are coordinated through an online club message board and via our social media channels on Facebook and Instagram.

Leviathans on the table surrounded by brick arches in the front room of the club. Second from left is Frank, our venerable eldest member and honorary Master of Arms.

Minors aren’t allowed without parents, but we’ve seen a few kids grow up within the club and come back to visit and play. We also don’t rent our space out, although we’ve been asked many times over the years.

Historical Notes

Membership has evolved greatly over the decades at MWG. Our founding members were largely working class first- and second-generation Italian, Irish and Greek New Yorkers who came of age in the 60s, 70s and 80s when New York City was a very different place. Stories abound with some members carrying knives and guns coming to and from the club in Williamsburg.

A day-long, 10-player game of MegaCiv at the club. Club founder Tony is second from left.

Today, about half our current membership reflects the modern influx of GenXers and Millennials who flocked to the city since the mid-90s. Our membership ranges in age from mid-20s to mid-80s. We’ve only ever had a few women as members at any given time. We’re fortunate to have many of the old guard around to share our history and that of the hobby with newer arrivals.

The games we play at MWG have also changed significantly. In its first decade, the club was almost exclusively home to historical miniatures gaming including Ancients, Hundred Years War, Napoleonic, American Civil War and World War II, all at multiple scales. Some board gaming from classic publishers like Avalon Hill and SPI also made regular appearances. Through the 1990s and into the 2000s, Warhammer Fantasy, Ancients and 40K rose to prominence, as did a greater interest in emerging Eurogames.

Club favorite Terraforming Mars shows up on the tables about once a week. Club founder Joe is at right.

While miniatures, including WWII, ACW, French & Indian War, Robotech, Epic 40K, Star Wars: Legion and Marvel: Crisis Protocol, have been played recently, most of the club’s gaming interests have moved toward a focus on modern board games and wargames in the past 10 years. RPGs have also continued to have a small but consistent presence at the club throughout its history.

Over its history, MWG has also been an incubator for game design and playtesting. A number of our earliest members spent time at the offices of SPI here in NYC in the 70s and 80s playtesting now-classic games. The club has included prominent designers in its membership, including Adam Starkweather (IGS, MMP) and Carl Fung (SCS and BCS, MMP), newer designers like Mike Willner (Prelude to Revolution, Compass Games) and Mike Lorino (Seminal Catastrophe, Vuca Simulations), and GMT Games Art Director Justin Martinez.

Members have won multiple awards at regional Historical Miniatures Gaming Society (HMGS) conventions. And the club continues to host visitors from across the country and around the world. That has included gamers from Spain, the UK and Australia.

Running an organization like ours has not been without its challenges. We’ve had more than a couple floods, weathered some internal controversies, and survived an extended shutdown during the COVID-19 pandemic (during which time most members continued paying dues and we received a grant from HMGS to offset a financial shortfall). Most recently there has been some conversation about changing our name to Metropolitan Tabletop Gamers to potentially broaden our appeal, but we continue to see new people show up almost every week just as we are.

Another club favorite, Lords of Waterdeep, often serves as the opening or closing game of a day.

In 2024, Metropolitan Wargamers is celebrating its 40th anniversary. I’ve been fortunate to serve as President of MWG for the past ten years, and it remains one of the more unique communities of which I’ve been a part. The hobby, the city, the club, and its members have all changed over the years, but our core personality has remained intact as a community of dedicated gamers.

Star Wars Legion: Terrain

Star Wars: Legion – Priority Supplies Battlefield Expansion, Fantasy Flight Games, 2018 — front cover (image provided by the publisher)

One of my favorite aspects of the Star Wars franchise is the environments in which the space opera is set. From the desert planets of Tatooine and Jakku, the snowy Hoth, swampy Dagobah and the volcanic surface of Mustafar, the universe created from the imagination of George Lucas is one of varied settings. Gaming this universe in miniature provides a great opportunity to model and play within terrain of all types. Judging from online photos from the wide community of players of Star Wars Legion from Fantasy Flight Games, fans of the game love terrain.

As a miniatures wargamer for over 30 years, creating and using terrain is one of the many rewards of the hobby. In building out my Star Wars Legion games I’ve relied on my existing collection of trees from Woodland Scenics and other manufacturers, thus creating a forested table like the forested moon of Endor from Return of the Jedi. I glue the trees to round, flocked bases to provide stability on the table and additional visual interest. I also have a big bag of scatter made up of clumps of foliage, lichens and small twigs that I toss around on my flocked green 4′ x 6′ playmat to visually fill in otherwise flat open space.

Fantasy Flight Games includes some simple plastic barricades in the base starter kit for the game and the Priority Supplies expansion with moisture vaporators, communication terminals and crates. I painted up all these pieces in simple layers of grey and metallic dry brushing, picking out some computer panel details in other brighter colors.

Moisture vaporators communication terminals, crates and barricades from Fantasy Flight Games

My existing terrain collection also includes a number of cast, pre-painted rocky hills from Gale Force Nine which can be used in just about any setting. Their Battlefield In A Box line offers a bunch of historical, fantasy, scenic and sci-fi terrain, and the generically-named Galactic Warzones pieces provide some great models for playing Star Wars Legion.

Rocky hill from Gale Force Nine and various pieces from Fantasy Flight Games

I picked up the bunker which is modeled on the one on Endor in ROTJ. Right out the box, the painted resin bunker is ready to play and the removable roof is a big plus for scenarios involving raids or rescue missions. Fantasy Flight also offers an official Imperial Bunker expansion that is slightly larger with additional detail like a sliding blast door. That said, at half the price, I am more than satisfied with the Gale Force Nine model.

Bunker from Gale Force Nine

Finally, Star Wars Legion arrived right at the time when 3D printing has been exploding in the gaming hobby. Countless manufacturers and individual hobbyists have created hundreds of custom, non-licensed models to fill tabletop Star Wars settings with all sorts of alien races, characters, spaceships, buildings and terrain pieces. I’ve grabbed a few spaceship wrecks from Extruded Gaming, each of which also comes with a small rocky outcroppings.

With my existing terrain and few models I’ve recently picked up, I’ve quickly pulled together a nice selection of tabletop scenario options. With Star Wars Legion the terrain possibilities are as vast as the entire Star Wars universe.

Spaceships wrecks from Extruded Gaming

Star Wars Legion: Rebel Commandos and Commander Leia Organa

As a first generation Star Wars fan, I’ve always loved the Rebel Commandos from the Battle of Endor in 1985’s Return of the Jedi. The gritty, rugged camouflage-clad fighters have always reminded me of World War II or Vietnam War soldiers, just the sort of realism found in so much of the Star Wars saga.

Having just jumped into Star Wars Legion from Fantasy Flight Games, I’ve quickly moved to boost my forces from the base starter set. Given my interest in the Rebel Troopers in the starter kit, it was a natural next-step to add the Rebel Commandos unit expansion to my collection.

I love the seven figures in this box with their flowing, hooded ponchos and five toting A-280 blaster rifles. The other two figures include a saboteur armed with proton charges and a crouching Mon Calamari sniper carefully aiming a DH-447 rifle with his fish-like eye. The inclusion of this alien race, along with a Dressellian, expands the story of the Rebellion stretching across systems.

Leading them all, I added the Commander Leia Organa figure to the squad. her figure strikes a heroic pose on the run, and blaster at outstretched. With the Rebel Commandos at her back, Leia is no doubt leading the charge of this small squad fighting for a free galaxy.

Mon Calamari Rebel Sniper and Dressellian Rebel Commando
Rebel Commando and Saboteur
Rebel Commandos
Rebel Commander Leia Organa

Star Wars Legion: Rebel Troopers, AT-RT and Luke Skywalker

Before I was a gamer or miniatures modeler, I was a fan of Star Wars when my mom plopped me down in a movie theater seat in the summer of 1977. Over more than four decades of movies, TV shows, cartoons, books, action figures, puzzles, board games, shirts and all things Star Wars, I’ve remained a huge fan and raised my sons as second generation devotees to the space opera franchise.

Star Wars games in my collection from Fantasy Flight Games

All that said, my Star Wars gaming has been limited until recently. I jumped in early with Star Wars X-Wing, and I’ve added a bunch of other Star Wars games from Fantasy Flight Games to my collection over the years including Armada, Imperial Assault. Destiny and Rebellion.

In 2019, I picked up a copy of Star Wars Legion at a discount, opened it up, looked at the models, leafed through the rules and put it back on the shelf. In the past month, my sons and I decided to give it another look. One of my sons went to work painting up the Imperials and I tasked myself with painting the Rebel units.

I’m generally not a fan of plastic miniatures, but at the large 34mm scale, the figures are a joy to paint. The Rebel units have a lot of personality and detail with a mix of weapons and gear. The AT-RT and Luke Skywalker models are also a lot of fun, adding diversity to the two squads included in the base starter kit.

I was a bit skeptical of the skirmish nature of a Star Wars game, given the general epic proportion of the saga. The base set is a huge value for the amount of stuff that comes in the box, and the quality of the painted-up models really pops. With my first figures painted and a new dive into the rules, my mind has been changed. I’m going to be quickly adding more from the Legion game to my collection and playing out my own Star Wars stories on the table soon.

Rebel Troopers
Rebel MPL-57 Ion Trooper, Unit Leader and Z-6 Trooper
Rebel Trooper Squad
Rebel AT-RT and Luke Skywalker
Completed Rebel Troopers, AT-RT and Luke Skywalker from the Star Wars Legion Base Set

French and Indian War: Comparing 28mm Miniatures Scales – British

Looking across my couple hundred British metal models, they are reflective of the diversity of the British in North America of the 18th-century. These include regulars, irregulars, colonial forces and civillians. Following on my recent post comparing 28mm Indian scales, I’m having a look at these British figures and their comparitive sizes for French and Indian War tabletop gaming.

My British collection spans about ten manufacturers and I’ve lined up a selection of miniatures in the photos below. Elsewhere on the site you can see the separate, detailed posts for Conquest Miniatures Regulars, Front Rank Light Infantry, Blue Moon British Royal Regiment, AW Miniatures Lights Infantry, Blue Moon British Regulars, Redoubt Enterprises Light Infantry and Galloping Major Virginia Provincials.

As with other sculpts in their lines, the traditional Conquest models (now distributed by Warlord Games) tend toward a 25mm scale along with those from Front Rank. On the other end of the spectrum, figures from Redoubt Enterprises and Galloping Major Wargames stand a head above other makers with their heroic-scaled 28mm. Two different sized casts from the Blue Moon Manufacturing shows how their can be significant variation even with the same manufacturer’s offering.

In the above, I’ve got common British Regulars (“Redcoats”) from both Blue Moon and Conquest side-by-side to show the extremes in scale. By keeping my units grouped by manufacturers when I play, I can generally avoid any of this standout size difference that practically disappears at arm’s length on the tabletop battlefield.

On the smaller side of the 25/28mm range, I’ve got three officers above from Warlord, Eureka Miniatures and Sash & Saber Castings. Again, I find these three companies mix pretty interchangeably with each other with accurately-scaled features and equipment details. (I also can’t speak more highly of the Sash & Saber models which launched a huge line of figures over a year ago. I syill have a bunch on my workbench in progress).

Finally, my British inventory holds a fair number of civillian models as laborers of frontier fighters. Workers from Front Rank and the Perry Miniatures American Revolution line have sharp, realistic scaling toward the 25mm side. As with their other castings, Galloping Major and Redoubt civilian figures offer a lot of animated variety at the larger 28mm size.

As with my Indian FIW models, its the variety to be found across manufacturers the weighs heavier than any difference in side-by-side scaling. The differences in kit, headgear, uniforms, poses and personalities are what call out to me strongest for the period and keep me coming back to the table again.

In Memoriam of Neal Catapano and The WarStore

If you’ve been a miniatures hobbyist over the past twenty years, chances are you may have had dealing with the The WarStore. What you may or may not have heard was the passing of the owner, Neal Catapano, this past week.

Housed on the property of Catapano Farms, on the North Fork of Long Island in Southold, NY, the online store had a two-decade history of serving customers near and far before closing suddenly in 2019. Founded in 1999 and just a few years behind online retail giants like eBay and Amazon, Neal’s online store was a bit ahead of its time in the gaming community. The modest online store held a broad inventory of modeling paint, brushes and supplies as well rule books, player aids and miniatures and terrain covering multiple eras, scales and interest from fantasy to sci-fi to historical. Neal was always my first stop before I had a look elsewhere.

Living in nearby Brooklyn and less than a three hour drive away, I regret I never made the pilgrimage to Southold but I was always grateful I received speedy responses to my inquiries and quick delivery of my orders. People notoriously groused online (as people do) about poor customer service, but this was never my experience in my dozens of orders over the years. To the contrary, I found Neal and the staff to be incredibly responsive to inquiries, order updates and special orders — an unfortunate rarity in today’s lowered expectations of impersonal customer service in an ecommerce world. With every online order, my heart always soared with the very personal email verfication:

“Hi! This is Neal at TheWarstore.com. Thank you Very Much for placing your order with us! This email is to confirm that we have received your order, an actual human being has reviewed it here at the store, and we will ship as soon as all of your ordered items can be readied.”

With the decline of local NYC hobby stores, Neal’s WarStore split the difference with a small, independently owned shop feel and the convenience of a 24/7 website. I looked forward to his quirky sale announcements, pre-release specials and holiday shopping messages. The online store wasn’t always the easiest to navigate, although it had improved by leaps and bounds over the past few years. Neal’s title of “Grand Pooh Bah” and his personal email of neal@thewarstore.com in all communication contributed to the small store experience increasingly absent from the modern world. Although a brick and mortar store had been an extension of The Warstore at one point in its history, it was through the unique online presence that Neal’s legacy was made.

When Neal announced an abrupt shuttering of the business in the middle of last year and a hurried final sale, I felt in the pit of my stomach there was most likely something deeper behind the decision. This past week’s news of his passing confirmed that feeling and charted the true passing of an era.

Rest in peace Neal and The WarStore where their motto spoke volumes to thousands of loyal customers: “We Bring the War to Your Door, For Less!”

French and Indian War: Comparing 28mm Miniatures Scales – Indians

Sometimes it seems the #1 topic all miniatures gamers have is one of scale and how miniatures from different manufacturers scale together. When I run convention games or post photos of scenarios online, people don’t ask about what books I used in my research or what sites, museums or archives I’ve visited. What they do ask about is manufacturers and scale.

So here it is, taking the first of a couple swings at addressing scale for French and Indian War tabletop gaming with a look at Indians from my collection. After some visual comparisons, I’ll weigh in at the end with some commentary about how I feel about the scale conversation.

Currently I have Indians miniatures from seven manufactures, each of which can be viewed in detail on separate posts: AW Miniatures, Conquest Miniatures, Galloping Major Wargames, Knuckleduster Miniatures, North Star Military Figures, Redoubt Enterprises and Sash and Saber Castings. In the photo below, I’ve lined up a sample from each manufacturer from what I see as the smallest on the left with Conquest all the way up to the largest with Redoubt.

In the next photo, I’m showing a zoomed-in look at the manufacturers on the smlaller side — Conquest, Sash and Saber and Knuckleduster. I find these three hew more toward a thinner, more traditional 25mm scale.

On the larger end of the spectrum, I’ve shown a line-up of North Star, AW, Galloping Major and Redoubt as the modern 28mm “heroic” scale.

Finally, I’ve placed two Indian leaders side by side with the Conquest model at one extreme and the towering Redoubt figure on the other.

So there you have it, some visual comparisons of what are broadly viewed as 28mm Indian miniatures. And with that, I have a lot of opinions.

The first one is that many manufacturers use different sculptors over time, creating variations even within one company’s lines of figures. For example, Warlord Games uses older Conquest sculpts in their FIW offering but have also added work from other artists. Companies like AW, Galloping Major and Sash and Saber have a lot of consistency in their models since they are owned and operated by the sculptors themselves. So, broad statements like “X manufacturer always scales well with Y manufacturer” are not always 100% accurate.

Next, my bias is toward metal castings and I try to avoid plastics. I like the heft of metal on the table, I don’t like to put in assembly time and I like how metal takes paint. This means I’m not looking at a very popular manufacturer like Perry Miniatures in the photos above. I have played with Perry plastics and I own some of their wagons cast in metal. Mostly, I find their sculpts are thin, with very acurate real-life scaling that tends toward the smaller end of the 25mm scale.

As a third point, few players I know put their heads right down on the table at figure eye level when playing. Figures used in actual play are seen at arm’s length or table distance of some three feet or more, obscuring fine differences of a millilmeter or two between models. Differences in models on the table can be further obscuredby keeping manufacturers together in cohesive units. I use the approach, and my “tabletop quality” of painting allows my miniatures to fight just fine (provided the dice are cooperating on any given day).

Finally, variety to me is so much more important than scale. With over 120 Indians painted up in my collection (and probably more on the way), I’ve always been more focused on the visual interest of the sculpts than height of one versus another. By stretching across seven manufacturers I’m supporting more companies and artists feeding the hobby and getting a ton more interesting looking Indian units on my table.

French and Indian War: Civilians and Settlers from Galloping Major Wargames

Gaming the scerios in the 18th-century wilderness settlement period of the French and Indian War period necessitates having some civilians models on hand. Aside from hacking an existence out of the American wilderness, settlers were often pressed into service as hastily organized militia. Incorporating this part of the era’s story into tabletop wargames makes for a lot of interest for fans of the period.

One of the most popular modern manufacturers of FIW 28mm metal miniatures is the UK-based Galloping Major Wargames. Born from the artistic skill of Lance Cawkwell, the company offers a big, ever-expanding line of figures for the period. Aside from the usual fighting units of British, French and Indian, Galloping Major carries a small selection of civilian settlers defending their homes and families, all of which I’ve snapped up.

To myself and many others, Galloping Major sculpts carry two main identifying characterics: size and personality. As 28mm models, these are defintely among some of the largest being made today. The casts are big and chunky — models hefty to hold, a joy to paint and a wonder on the table. While they may outsize some other manufacturers that veer more toward a thinner 28mm or 25mm scale, I find nothing about these models that ever makes them look too out of place with other figures once on the table.

In terms of detail and character, the company’s models are among some of the best. Particularly with these civilian figures, there is a lot of indiviuality here. The Settlers Defending packs (FIW AAC 1 and FIW AAC 2) contain a total of a dozen figures armed with guns, clad in everday clothes and topped with tricorne or broad round hats.

The real prize are the six figures in the Command and Characters pack (FIW AAC3) which contains an aproned baker or butcher armed with a blunderbuss, a preacher toting a bible and pistol, and, a man on the run with a knife drawn with a gun at the ready. The other three figures, perhaps local community leaders, are more formally dressed in long, lapelled coats and armed with pistols and swords. I chose to paint them up in provincial officer uniforms.

Having dozens of Galloping Major models, including all these civilian settlers, in my collection provides a variety of options and play opportunity, and I’m always looking forward to painting the next one.

The 2010s in Review: My Favorite Games

TopGames.jpg

The past ten years have been a big decade for gaming and for me as a gamer. I launched this blog (which I haven’t posted to in more than two years). I became president of Metropolitan Wargamers in Brooklyn, NY, NYC’s oldest continuously active gaming group, now in its fourth decade. And, I played a lot of games.

So, here’s my oddball list of 16 games I deem as my favorite of the 2010s. My list isn’t necessarily the most innovative games of the past ten years (although some are) and many are not widely popular (again, some are). These are the games that got back to the table over and over again as other new games came and went.

First up are a few games that capture my love of Marvel comic books and Star Wars from my 1970s childhood. Fantasy Flight Games has really exploded with Star Wars games over the past decade, and while I’ve played most of them, Rebellion and Imperial Assault are my standouts for capturing the story of Star Wars at the epic interplanetary level and as a sci-fi adventure campaign. Both games have incredible design, artwork and plastic miniatures which really speak to the toy nerd in me. The deck-builder Marvel Legendary also captures the teamwork which is the hallmark of Marvel heroes and villains. All three games take me deep into the real storytelling feel of being in the pages of a comic book or a movie.

My other childhood obsession was Dungeons & Dragons. Lords of Waterdeep captures the flavor of D&D within one its most fabled campaign settings dropped into a boardgame that feels like an adventure quest. Back to the classic RPG style of play, the D&D 5th Edition Starter Set brought me back to the table for the first time in years with a slimmed down all-in-one boxed rule set that felt akin to the fast-moving games of my childhood.

From superheroes, science fiction and fantasy, my love swings to American history. The American War of Independence plays out n my two favorite games of that period — Liberty or Death: The American Insurrection and 1775: Rebellion. In 1775, a simple block, card and dice mechanic allows play of the entire war in about 90-minutes and serves as a fantastic entry into the period and wargaming. With LOD, GMT’s COIN (counterinsurgency) mechanic of asymmetric conflict breathes new and nuanced complexity of the often-simplified formative American story.

From the American Revolution, my interest stepped back to the French and Indian War. This was the period that really fired my imagination the past few years with a dive into dozens of books and several long trips visiting historic sites of the era in Virginia, Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia and New York. A Few Acres of Snow was my first game of the period and remains one of hands-down favorites with its two player asymmetric, deck building that still challenges over multiple plays as the French and British. My miniatures wargaming interest also swung heavily to the FIW with Muskets & Tomahawks. The quick-playing, card-driven mechanics of the game really captures the clash of British, Indian, French and Canadian forces, and I’ve spent countless hours researching and writing historic scenarios for significant engagements of the period which I’ve run at multiple miniatures gaming conventions as well as my club. A new version of the long out-of-print rules is due in 2020, so I’m very much looking forward to what the game brings next.

Two other historical games I’ve loved deal with two difficult subjects that have significantly shaped American history. Freedom: The Underground Railroad tackles slavery and the fight of abolitionists to bring it to its end through exceedingly challenging gameplay that involves often heartbreaking choices of who does and doesn’t make it to freedom in Canada. Fast-forwarding to the 21st-century, Labyrinth: The War On Terror covers the endless war of the US and coalition forces in the Middle East. As the wars continue, the game has received updated expansions bringing the game’s events and mechanics right up to the current news of the day from the 9/11 attacks to the Arab Spring to today. Both games show the power of games as tools to model and understand history ways few others do.

With time at a premium, there were a few games that filled the gap for 30-minute or less time slots at the beginning or end of a long evening’s game session or when a quick game just fits the bill. The patterned tile placement in a Azul is great for my non-gamer friends as well as experienced players, plus, it has my favorite mechanic of pulling the very satisfying heavy tiles out of a bag. Fuse also has a tactile angle with fast rolls of dice placed into patterned puzzles to be solved against a nerve-wracking countdown app. Finally, The Mind takes a super simple deck of 100 chronologically numbered cards and turns it into a really interesting exercise in how we play collaboratively with others without the benefit of verbal communication.

I play a lot of the above games and others with my family, and one we’ve returned to repeatedly is Five Tribes. The game, set in a fantasy sultanate, scratches all the Eurogame itches of colorful wooden meeples, a modular board, beautiful card artwork and some easy to grasp but hard to master strategies. We’ve taken this game on the road more than just about any game in my collection.

Finally, I wasn’t alone in my obsession with the wildly-popular Root. The game combines so many things I love about games — fantasy, adventure, great art — in an asymmetric clash of woodland animals. With what it presents simply on the surface, the game taps into a wargaming feel that bridges all the games I’ve enjoyed so much over the past ten years.

Aside from all the games above I’ve enjoyed, I have to also celebrate the 2010s coming to a close on a personal gaming note. After some fours decades as a gamer, I was thrilled to co-found Campaign Games and launch a successful Kickstarter in the late summer of 2019 for Forts & Frontiers: The Feast of the Dead Deluxe. Combining the mechanics of D&D 5th Edition with my love for the story of 17th-century European-Indian history in North America, the game was well-received during Free RPG Day 2019 and continues to playtest well at conventions. To end the year and decade on the other side of the table as a game creator is a thrill I’ll watch unfold over the coming year and into the 2020s.

French and Indian War: Scottish Highlanders from North Star Military Figures

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In the early 1700s, Scots from clans loyal to the British ruling government had been recruited into local law keeping forces and later as more formal militia. Allowed to dress and employ traditional Highland garb and weapons, Scottish forces would serve the British military cause from the European mainland to Egypt to the Caribbean to India over the next two centuries.  Three Highlander regiments — the 42nd, 77th and 78th — would distinguish themselves in service of the Crown’s rule in the first major 18th-century conflict of British North America, the French and Indian War (1756-1763).

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The Highland Regiment Exercising on Glasgow Green, 1758 (artist unknown)

The 42nd (Royal Highland) Regiment of Foot set sail for North America in January of 1757 and landed in April. During their time in the colonies, these Scotsmen would participate in many key battles of the FIW, including the Battle of Carillion (1758) and the capture of Fort Ticonderoga (1759). After the war, the 42nd Foot spent time in Pennsylvania at Fort Pitt and Fort Ligonier before fighting in one of their most famed battles during Pontiac’s Rebellion at Bushy Run, Pennsylvania in August 1763.

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Aside from a general collection of FIW books, I turned to a copy of Osprey Publishing’s Highlander in the French-Indian War, 1756–67 by Ian Macpherson McCulloch. The book focuses on three Highlander regiments of the period, including the 42nd Foot I’ve chosen to model. The historic background, period illustrations and contemporary plates make this a great foundation for anyone wanting to learn a bit more about the Highland regiments of the period. One plate in particular portrays detail of uniform and equipment of a typical c. 1756 private of the 42nd Foot — just the inspiration I needed as I worked on fielding my very first Highlander models.

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I managed to score a half-dozen Highlanders from North Star Military Figures at half price during a recent close-out sale. Sadly, North Star is mothballing their FIW line of models for the time being as Studio Tomahawk works toward a future second edition of the popular Muskets & Tomahawks wargaming rules. I had previously painted up some of their French Canadian miniatures and I still have some of their Indians in my painting queue, so I was glad to add a few of their Highlanders to my collection while I could.

The 18th-century is fun to paint for the diversity of uniforms, weapons and mode of dress, and these Highlanders were no exceptions. This was my first go at tartan kilts, so I sunk some time into watching how-to videos online. I went with a simple technique of dark blue undercoat followed by layered grids of varying greens and greys to approximate the signature tartan of the 42nd Foot. Close-up it looks a bit pointillistic, but at arm’s length on the table I was pretty satisfied with the results.

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The rest of the figures were a bit more straight forward with red jackets and blue bonnets (or “tams”) with red balls on the top and red lacing at the brim. The officer also got some fancy stockings with an angled cross-hatched plaid of white and red. Having just six of the North Star Highlander models completed, I wish I had bought more before they became impossible to get. That said, I’ll be tracking down some more from other manufacturers so I can better field a large force of the 42nd Royal Highlanders.

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