Recommended

Still enjoying The Great British Baking Show as a cozy watch. But even if you don’t watch it, here’s a great phrase — “A total bag of pants” (meaning a disaster). Has entered my lexicon and I’m experimenting with all the “<container> of <garment>” combos. And also watching Prue Leith (an 80 year old proper British Matriarch type, but with an Austin Powers 60’s flair) innocently ask things like “Tell us about your beaver,” or “I am interested in your large nuts” never gets old. Sadly only have a series or two left to watch.

Maybe

The 9th Configuration — An insane 70s movie (although released in early 80) set in a military insane asylum where the inmates apparently have access to a Hollywood prop department to enact whatever crazy stuff they want. Written, Produced and Directed by William Blatty (fresh of The Exorcist) so the studios were willing to let him do whatever he wanted. Some great scenes and mostly great but nonsensical dialogue. I had to watch it in chunks. Definitely a noble failure and not a cookie cutter movie.

Grantchester — A Masterpiece Mystery that is definitely ripping off Father Brown¹. (Except that the priest is Anglican? Church of England? In any case, Not Catholic and it’s post WW-II instead of WW-I). But I like Father Brown and this is close enough for me. But as the series goes on it gets less about the mystery of the week and more about the main character(s) being miserable, and lost a fair chunk of the joy². (Netflix only has the first four of the ten(!) seasons).

In the Mouth of Madness — A (90s) rewatch of which I remembered almost nothing. Attempts to capture Lovecraftian dread, but the execution isn’t quite there. Some genuinely creepy moments but also too reliant on “repeated dream awakenings” and re-used footage. Amazing to think that John Carpenter did this a decade after The Thing, because the monster effects are a step down; less is more would have been so much better here³. But …. any schlock horror movie is elevated by David Warner & Jürgen Prochnow looks very anti-christ-like. Clever ending, but “ah, that’s clever” clever instead of a gut punch. I think it works better if you simply lop off the last few minutes.⁴

The Long Kiss Goodnight — (90s Rewatch, pt II). Shane Black makes another Shane Black movie. Action movie? Check! Partners who don’t like each other? Check! Banter? Christmastime? Checkity Check! Sadly this isn’t up the the heights that Lethal Weapon started, but its not bad.

Nobody Wants This (S2) — A reasonable ‘comfort food’ romcom/sitcom. Sometimes veers into cringe, but it understands that a romcom/sitcom must be funny (and heartwarming) so that both Mr. and Mrs. Tao will watch.

Under the Skin (book) — Read this after watching the movie (see Sep-Oct). Good, but in a very different way (books can show inner monologues, movies are visual). I think that the near silence of the movie was a good choice, but that necessitated changing the story to make it much more ambiguous. Note — Not for the squeamish.

Wick is Pain — Documentary on the John Wick Franchise. Reasonable if you liked the franchise. What impressed me was seeing stunts that I said “Obvious CGI” in the theater and then discovering that the CGI was only for the environment, not the stunt itself, which was real. (The building fall at the end of John Wick 2)

Maybe Not

Turned Off / Not Recommended

“Oh, Hi!” — I saw this recommended by Marginal Revolution. The plot is that a young couple go on a weekend vacation, find some bondage equipment, he gets tied up and (after sex) reveals that he doesn’t consider this a serious relationship, at which point she leaves him tied up and tries to convince him that she is girlfriend material. BUT nobody is sympathetic. She’s crazy. (It’s established that she considered stabbing her last boyfriend). “Leave him tied up” isn’t played for laughs, and isn’t funny. On the other hand, she’s right. You don’t go on a weekend trip alone after dating for four months and expect her to think it’s a fling. In Re: “Crazy girl” vs “Idiot Boy” I find both guilty. Turned off at the 30 minute mark (or less), tried to continue a few times. Failed. Now re-reading Marginal Revolution I realized that “better than expected retelling of…” isn’t necessarily an endorsement.⁵

Tenet — This finally showed up on streaming and … man; was Christopher Nolan trolling us the entire time⁶? “What if I just didn’t have a plot at all, but did as much cool stuff as possible?” Turned off before the hour mark; tried again and couldn’t get through another few minutes. It’s like a Bond movie with truly excellent set pieces and locations. (Off-brand Bond but not skimping on quality). Plus Time-travel special effects. But when you break it open it’s just Nelson Munz “Hah hah!”-ing you, the sucker audience.

1. OK, its an actual series of books on its own that started a few years ago, and the author’s father was formerly the Archbishop of Canterbury, but still … ︎
2. After finishing season 4 I realize that part of that was the requirements to switch the lead actors. ︎
3. Such as the people in an oil painting moving. If they never moved on camera and if you thought they had but weren’t sure, it would have been creepier. ︎
4. For example — Sam Neill’s character “sees” the carnage in the hallway (a ‘less is more shot’, where you see vague shadows and hear screams), realizes the door keeping him the sanitarium is busted … and then chooses to retreat to his room & close the door. ︎
5. But then I see it’s on his years best film list, so uh, whatever. ︎
6. No, mostly he’s pretty good. I guess this was just a misfire. ︎

Now the year truly comes to a close. Let’s look back at the eighth full year of this blog.

You can read all of the Farewell 2025 posts here:

• Farewell 2025 – New-to-Me Games!
• Farewell 2025 – Historical Fiction!
• Farewell 2025 – Non-Historical Games!
• Farewell 2025 – Historical Non-Fiction!
• Farewell 2025 – Historical Games!
• Farewell 2025 – Best on the Blog!

The overall blog statistics are pretty meaningless – both last year and this year are skewed by WordPress sending my Farewell 2024 – Historical Fiction! post out to a bajillion people (from Dec 26 to Jan 8), which makes it easily the most popular post of each year (providing more than a fourth of my total views this year). If you factor that out, 2025 has been a good year on the blog, but slightly behind the (organic) record of 2023.

The posts doing particularly well have been the usual suspects, that is, the Most Anticipated Historical Board Games post in January, and the evergreen strategy posts for several games published over the last year. It was nice to see that a few of my research-intensive posts in the American Revolution and the Wallenstein series also did well.

Most of my readers come from the United States (also skewed by the Historical Fiction anomaly, but not entirely), as well as other Anglophone (UK, Canada, Australia) or European (Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, and France) countries. Especially the Dutch have made a leap up… maybe because of my post on the history of Amsterdam? Welkom, anyway.

New arrivals in the top 10 of the countries from which most views stem are Sweden and Poland in a joint Baltic effort.

If you compare views with population numbers, there are possibly no more loyal readers of this blog than the fine people of Ireland, closely followed by Hong Kong, whose views eclipse those of huge countries like Japan, Brazil, or India. The Irish have been devoted to history, board games, and history in board games for some years now, for which I am grateful. The Hongkongers are new in their excitement for the blog – welcome! If you are from Hong Kong, leave a comment below!

I can only speculate what brought people to this blog (but maybe you can enlighten me with a comment, especially if read this blog, but don’t comment often or ever). Here is, however, what I think was the finest which I published this year – as per usual, with six instead of three entries, and without crowning a winner. Let’s go!

“Give Me Liberty, or Give Me Death!” (American Revolution, #2)

Most of the history articles on this blog are about what people in the past did – the politicians, merchants, soldiers of times past. Yet I also like to dwell on what they thought, and thus I’m very happy to have written this post on the political philosophy of the American Revolution, its core value of liberty, and the promise and limitation of that idea. It was also an opportunity to engage with the still-compelling documents of the Revolution – Common Sense and the Declaration of Independence.

Tariffs, Onshoring, and the Board Game Industry

It’s been a wild year politically. Almost forgotten by now is the Great Tariff Rollercoaster of April 2025, in which the American federal government announced tariffs on imports from almost all other countries and then engaged in a flurry of raising, lowering, and holding off on them that made everyone’s head spin. By now, the 145% tariff on Chinese goods imported by US buyers is long gone, but at the time it seemed like an existential threat to US board game companies manufacturing their games in China (so, almost all of them), and given that the current US administration will still be in office for another three years, one worth revisiting.

Wallenstein: Rise

This blog often gives me the opportunity to learn about new subjects. Wallenstein was one of them. I approached the post about his life with not more than a general knowledge about his role in the Thirty Years’ War… and then was sucked into a research rabbit hole in which I read over 2,000 pages about the guy. The result is a four-part series and the longest, most detailed board game assisted biography I have ever written about anyone.

Frederick the Great. A Military Life / Friedrich

…and this blog also allows me to re-visit topics and games with which I have engaged for years (and sometimes decades) now. Frederick II of Prussia is such a person, and Friedrich (Richard Sivél, Histogame) such a game. Reflecting on their insights on Frederick’s campaigns, the command and control exercised, and Frederick’s psychology was a delight.

Amsterdam in History and Board Games

Amsterdam is one of the iconic cities of the world. It is a symbol of art, commerce, and progress, and unique in its canal-structured urban layout. Unsurprisingly, these characteristics have also inspired board game designers. I have told Amsterdam’s 750-year history through the lens of the many board games set in Amsterdam – which gives a glimpse into what the city stands for in the popular imagination. As both this and my earlier Venice post were so much fun to write, I should do more city histories!

Immersive Weimar Playlist

One of my brighter new ideas was to link historical board games to period music. Of course, that works particularly well from the 20^th century on – the age of the music record. I started with an immersive playlist for your next game of Weimar (Matthias Cramer, Capstone Games/Skellig Games/Spielworxx), full of everything that was hot at the time – from traditional songs to jazz, from movie tunes to workers’ songs. It will surely not remain the only such playlist.

And thus concludes the year 2025 on this blog. I hope you had as much fun reading it as I had writing.

I wish you all an excellent year 2026, full of joy, health, and success!