Well I don't know about you, but I'm not quite sure where that year went! I know it seems to be a truism that the older one gets, time seems to speed up anyway, from very young childhood when the odd hour in the back seat of the car could seem interminable, prompting the usual exclamation of 'are we there yet?' from my younger sister and me, to now when the days seem to simply fly by.
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| The last age-of-sail models completed in 2025 saw this pair of French brigs added to the Trafalgar collection in April, using some rather fine 3D printed hulls from Henry Turner to better represent these two vessels in my Trafalgar 220 project for 2025. |
Not only that but when you get to a certain age you start to realise that you likely have more yesterdays than tomorrows so you'd better get on with things while you can still see straight and the dribbling isn't thinning the paint too much.
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'the plan changes on first contact with the enemy'.
At the start of the year I posted my completed Enterprise class frigate using a 3D print from Simon Mann, and building up plans to commence the Nile Collection. However four years exposure to super glue putting multiple ship models together, fully rigged had finally irritated my nasal passages enough to convince me that now was a good time for a change of plan. So in April 'The World got Turned Upside Down' with the recommenced work on the American War of Independence collection in anticipation of the 250th anniversary of the American Declaration of Independence in 2026. |
The other aspect of the planning I tend to do, so as to avoid reeling of another year and thinking that there goes another opportunity to indulge the passion in this particular theme and collection, or to play that certain battle scenario that I'd always said I wanted to do, always based on the maxim;
'fail to plan, plan to fail',
However, having a plan is all very well but it is important to remember and to keep in mind the other truism and indeed military maxim that should be emblazoned on the heart of every historical wargamer;
'the plan changes on first contact with the enemy'.
So it seems that these themes seemed to have influenced my past year, and I find myself looking back to my previous Year End Review with a bit of a rye smile, in that the plan certainly changed, and with good reason, but also very much with an eye on 'the better get on with it' theme that I touched on in that review when looking at other projects I had in mind, still to be completed but at the time still very much on the back-burner.
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| Vince's arquebusiers built in February 2025 made a refreshing change from rigging 1:700 ships, together with a more colourful change of palette, that and relearning old skills of painting 28mm figures. |
Four years of age-of-sail ship building and exposure to super glue fumes was causing my nose irritation and that, and the pleasure I had in putting together a unit of Arquebusiers for my mate Vince for a planned Pavia refight, convinced me that 2025 required a new theme despite the plan to build a Battle of the Nile collection of models, hence in April of this year my AWI collection returned front and centre as my new project, ready to get some battles run in celebration of the 250th anniversary of the American Declaration of Independence in 2026.
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| The Trafalgar 220 project got a great warm-up game at Exeter Legionary in May as the Trafalgar collection took centre stage for 2025, to culminate in a two day anniversary game with the NWS at Yeovilton in October. This was the first time we used Far Distant Ships with over seventy models on the table and the rules worked marvellously for this size of game. |
Of course I still had some important age of sail games I wanted to run, this year being the 220th anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar, and I was enjoying working up David Manley's Far Distant Ships (FDS) Fleet Battle rules that we used successfully in 2024 to run the Battle of Camperdown.
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| The culmination of the Trafalgar 220 project with a two day anniversary game with the NWS at Yeovilton in October. Great fun, and a fitting way to honour the Immortal Memory. |
The fun with ships continued throughout 2025 with my good friend Captain Steve introducing me and I suspect many others to the delights of yet more age-of-sail fun with his series of games recreating the Anglo-Dutch Wars using his glorious collection of 1:1200 Langton models and a fitting tribute in the year that Rod Langton, who had a great influence on my own hobby, retired from trading. Thank you Rod for your contribution to the hobby of historical wargaming and age of sail gaming in particular.
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| Captain Steve's marvellous collection of Anglo-Dutch Wars 1:1200 Langton models, featured regularly in 2025 and received great feedback with his series of AAR's and fleet reviews. |
My year with the ships concluded in November when the Devon Wargames Group and friends gathered at the Fleet Air Arm Museum for a weekend of wargaming and socialising, and during which I ran the Battle of Cape Finisterre 1805 otherwise known as Calder's Action, again using Far Distant Ships.
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| Battle of Cape Finisterre 1805 otherwise known as Calder's Action played at the FAA Yeovilton in November with the DWG and friends. |
So for the foreseeable the ships will step back from my focus for the next few years as I turn my attention to 'The World Turned Upside Down’, but I'm rather hoping to indulge the itch every now and then, perhaps with a bit of Anglo-Dutch fun with Steve, and some small ship actions that I have a mind to work through, with the collection of frigates and brigs completed too date, more anon.
Perhaps one of the most enjoyable highlights of 2025 for me was a project long in the planning that reached a successful conclusion in March as the carpet went down and the new furnishings went in to my refurbished wargames room.
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| My oasis of contemplation and planning with books and figure collections close at hand to inspire other collections and projects. |
My room is an oasis of contemplation and planning with books and figure collections close at hand to inspire other collections and projects, and I intend to feature more games in it in the forthcoming months with friends.
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| The Portuguese capital, Lisbon, provided the first port of call this year, a place I had longed to visit in the wake of my Talavera and Peninsular War project a few years previously and a wonderful venue for history buffs. |
Another theme of the blog that also inspires my hobby and I hope entertains others is the occasional little and big trips as JJ's goes on Tour to various places and explore a bit of history along with the other delights of cuisine, culture and scenery that new places have to offer.
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| A glorious model of the Portuguese 44-gun Principe da Beira, built in 1774 on display in the Lisbon Maritime Museum. |
In February Carolyn and I got a bit of winter sun and flew down to Lisbon for a few days before catching a train north to Porto.
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Lisbon saw JJ's maintain the maritime theme as Carolyn and I got onto the water of the River Tagus to see Lisbon from a different angle and absorb more of her historic waterfront.
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Portugal is a lovely country to visit and we have always enjoyed ourselves on previous visits, with this trip enabling me to tick off some really important historic venues along the way as well as enjoying the odd piece of Piri Piri Chicken.
Porto was one of the venues we weren't able to include in the big 2019 tour of Peninsular Battle sites, and given that the Crossing of the Douro was a major game I had worked on previously, I was really keen to see the place and how close our tabletop fight had captured the layout of the town.
Travelling up the river on a repurposed port-wine barge and past the monastery to see the actual beach from where the 3rd (buffs) set off to take possession of the seminary on the opposite bank was a real thrill.
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'More than half the Buffs had passed, and the Seminary was beginning to be adequately manned . . . '
One of our several refights of the Battle of Porto back in 2014, and eleven years later I got to see the real thing. |
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| The rearward facing wall of the Seminary and the slope behind up which the troops from Hill's brigade climbed from the river. |
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Across from the Seminary, and where our boat turned about to take us back to Villa Nova, the beach from which Hill's brigade boarded their barges to make the hazardous crossing to the Seminary can clearly be seen today below the hights of Avintes.
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Hill's brigade, crossing the Douro, 12th May 1809.
'In a quarter of an hour the first vessel was over, and a subaltern and twenty-five men rushed up into the empty enclosure of the Seminary, and closed the big iron gate opening into the Vallongo road, which formed its only land-exit. The men from the other barges were just behind: they set themselves to lining the garden wall and to piling up wood and earth against it, in order to give themselves a standing-place from which they could fire over the coping.' |
The travel fun continued with a proper summer break in Kefalonia and Ithaca during which I managed to get to visit the Homeric residence of King Odysseus as well as experiencing my first minor earthquake!
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| The view of the Ionian Sea from the Palace of Odysseus in Ithaca, identified in 2010, and likely looking from Penelope's former window |
The year culminated with a long anticipated trip to Stockholm and Sweden in November to celebrate Carolyn's significant birthday and soak up a bit of Swedish culture that included a visit to the world famous Vasa Museum.
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The Vasa Museum was a place I had long looked forward to visiting and surpassed
all my expectations. Well up there with some of the best museums I have had the
pleasure of seeing. |
Alongside the trips other adventures have continued to feature such as my regular calendar of show dates that this year included Partizan in May, Attack in July and Colours in September.
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| The Yarkshire Gamer presented Germantown at Partizan which given my current project work immediately grabbed my attention. |
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| Bill Gaskin's Seven Year's War Game was a real treat at this year's Partizan |
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| Steve L, Tom and Mr Steve enjoying the vista of Bill Gaskin's Seven Years War game at Partizan. |
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| 'By God sir, those really are regulars!' |
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| This very nicely turned out Pacific Air War 1:700 participation game, seen at Attack in the summer, caught my eye. |
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| An unexpected flypast of WWII warbirds coincided with our visit to Colours this year. A marvellous bonus to the day. |
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| Dave Brown's Waterloo game was a real treat for the eye at this year's Colours show. |
In April I laid out my plans to recommence work on my AWI collection that saw some of my previously produced units for my Mohawk Valley project get an upgrade to be included in The World Turned Upside Down project designed to look at fighting large and small battle scenarios from the American War up and down the thirteen colonies with a view towards producing games to coincide with the upcoming 250th anniversary of the American Declaration of Independence next year.
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My first upgraded unit were these generic brown uniformed Continentals showing off the low profile sabot bases from Supreme Littleness Designs and the battalion arrangements around three, four, five and six similarly sized sabots to easily flex units for different scenarios, sometimes carrying colours and other times not.
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Since the first unit of Continentals, three units of militia, and another five units of Continentals have followed alongside British light infantry, and six battalions of British regulars to join my couple of guns, Hessian Jagers and six mounted officers with another unit of Continentals and British regulars to be showcased in the New Year. giving me a firm foundation of a collection as we head off into 2026.
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| The 35th Foot was one of my first new British regular regiments to join the collection and participated in my test battle, 'The Battle of Telegraph Hill' played at the DWG in June this year using Rise and Fight Again rules from Stand to Games. |
The club game organised with my pal Jack was an opportunity to reacquaint myself with the delights of Rise and Fight Again (R&FA) as well as getting to envisage the kind of game I am hoping to produce with this collection.
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| 'The Battle of Telegraph Hill' played at the DWG in June this year using Rise and Fight Again rules from Stand to Games. |
In addition to using R&FA I have also been in contact with Nigel Marsh, creator of Carnage & Glory II that Steve and I had so much fun with when playing the Talavera Peninsular War collection and I aim to get up to speed with the Seven Years War set that will also work for AWI.
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Thanks to the help from Nigel Marsh to update my C&G II playing system from its last incarnation that I was using back in 2018 for my Talavera project, I'm really looking forward to getting the AWI version of the rules up and running in my future games for those of us who enjoy the amazing wargaming simulation C&G produces. If you are unfamiliar with the rules you will find fifty odd posts in my links in the right hand column demonstrating why I love playing Carnage and Glory.
Carnage and Glory II |
The plan I started to layout in my post back in April has developed in the succeeding months since those first thoughts started to crystalise in my minds eye.
In that post I very much saw the 16-figure, four base battalion/regiment being the core formation of the collection with the sabot basing arrangement facilitating flexing in and out of that arrangement for larger and smaller scale scenarios, an aspect that typifies battles in the AWI with forces ranging from the tens of thousands to the tens of hundreds.
That vision is still a core principle to my collection but I have started to work on a more variable battalion look for my big-battle set up of the 12-figure to 24-figure arrangement to cater for battalions of anything from 250 to 400 men plus.
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| I now have the complete set of British Grenadier Scenario books |
I now have the complete set of British Grenadier Scenario books and it is interesting to see a similar evolution in them with the original book very much focussed on a 1:20 big battle scale and as the inclusion of smaller actions in later books became more common, 1:15, 1:10 and even 1:5 figure to men ratios crept in, to no detriment to the original rules and their concept.
These scenario ideas will be games I intend to run on my table as stand alone scenarios as the collection develops to cater for them, with a focus at present on building the American and British units for the two Brandywine scenarios, Cornwallis's Attack and Knyphausen's Battle in time for a 250th anniversary game in 2027.
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| Most of my army is styled towards Howe's Philadelphia Campaign, but other specific look-units will follow for other theatres within the wider continent. |
The look of my current forces are very much focussed towards Howe's Philadelphia Campaign and will cater for actions fought throughout the continent with a plan to develop additional forces for a more specific look such as the Saratoga and Mohawk campaigns and some specific units that will create a very 'Southern' look for actions fought in the Carolinas.
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| My visit to Colours in September 2025 allowed me to add to the terrain collection to be constructed in 2026. |
Alongside the figure collection I have amassed a collection of buildings and terrain, mostly mdf offerings, but some resin ones that will need constructing in the coming months.
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| My ideas for developing a campaign system around the great boardgame Washington's War, is also developing alongside my new collection. |
As well as stand-alone scenario games I am keen to develop my ideas with the boardgame Washington's War, which Steve and I have played to death and have never grown tired of, as every game seems to produce one very different from another, and we have both mused over transferring the battles it produces to the tabletop, with all the political and strategic narrative the game creates.
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| An example of my own army generator using ideas from The World Turned Upside Down, from Wargame Vault, but redesigned around Washington's War. |
I have so far developed an army and commander generator based on the maximum 3:2 force structure outlined in my April post and have a battle-terrain generator in draft which I intend to adjust to accommodate my terrain collection as it grows.
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The similarly named campaign system to my own current project is a ready to go AWI campaign game
from Real Time Wargames and available on Wargames Vault.
Real Time Wargames |
As an aside to my campaign aspirations, if you are of a similar mind, I recently discovered a really great campaign module for the AWI ready to play, that has provided ideas for my own efforts with Washington's War and is available in PDF from Wargames Vault.
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The campaign map in The World Turned Upside Down can be printed in two A3 or four A4 sections, and the game comes complete with counters and campaign rules.
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I'm really excited about my current core project and am looking forward to showcasing new units, terrain and games as and when the collection allows, whilst also continuing with the blog to present other wargames and history related stuff, alongside the occasional JJ's on Tour diversion, that I think you might find interesting.
Alongside my project work and the continuation of the blog, I'm also looking forward to more family time in the year ahead as I have become a Grandpa, to my granddaughter Robin, and have a family wedding to look forward to in May 2026.
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| The Devon Wargames Group and friends at this year's Clotted Lard. |
After having had the honour of forty-five years chairing the Devon Wargames Group, since its formation back in 1981, I have decided to step down at the end of April, and return to the 'back benches' as I reckon that amount of time is long-enough for anyone and with the club now boasting some forty odd members, a solid team of club officers leading the way, and with a good number of folks younger than me, with ideas of their own to develop, it's time for the club to explore new avenues in wargaming which I hope will be the future.
So one way or another I expect 2026 to be a year of great change and new horizons and I am very excited for the future.
I wish you all a very happy New Year in 2026, and as always, more anon.
JJ
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