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!

History is about people. And so, my three favorite historical non-fiction reads were all biographies – but of very different kinds.

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!

Betina Anton: Hiding Mengele

Josef Mengele’s life can be neatly divided in two parts. The first saw him rise to prominence in Nazi Germany for his medical research on “racial hygiene” and his subsequent human experiments at the Auschwitz concentration camp. After 1945, Mengele faded into obscurity, living a simple, but comfortable and unperturbed life in South America. Betina Anton covers both from a multitude of perspectives, including a plethora of interviews with the survivors of Mengele’s cruel experiments as well as those who knew him in Brazil, and even a documentary find of Mengele’s private letters. The book thus adds especially to the under-researched second half of Mengele’s life, giving a full picture of the casual and organized support for Nazis in hiding.

Mengele’s quiet life in South America contrasts starkly (and purposefully) with the continued suffering of his victims and their dependents, as well as with his own much more dramatic life before the end of the war, making you ask yourself how the world could allow such a man to go scot-free.

Geoff Mortimer: Wallenstein. The Enigma of the Thirty Years’ War

I have written a lot about Wallenstein this year. Obviously, that means I have also read a lot about him, and no book better than Geoff Mortimer’s biography. Despite its subheading, the book is concerned with dispelling the Wallenstein myth, created by his opponents after his death and re-interpreted (affirmatively or negatively) by historians for centuries. Instead, Mortimer presents Wallenstein as a not uncommon man of his time whose actions were rooted in his concern for the safety of his estate, and, when it came to choosing sides, his imperial-Catholic loyalty. Wallenstein was thus tied to the emperor, but needed peace to have his fiefs (gained from emperor Ferdinand’s expropriations in Bohemia and Mecklenburg) confirmed for good. When Ferdinand lost trust in Wallenstein, he was turned from a beneficiary to a victim of the same method – murdered and expropriated.

And my favorite historical non-fiction read of 2025 was…

Christopher Duffy: Frederick the Great. A Military Life

Frederick II of Prussia remains of the most fascinating historical personalities to me – as a politician, a writer, and, of course, as a general. Duffy’s biography focuses on this last aspect and does so in admirable depth and clarity. Of course, Frederick’s wars are covered (on a tactical, operational, and strategic level), but also his activities as a military administrator and organizer. It is in these latter fields where Duffy finds most fault with Frederick, whom he credits with having inherited the finest military force in Europe upon his accession and leaving his own successor a mediocre army. While Duffy thus does not shy away from pointing out Frederick’s mistakes and oversights, he also presents him as a very capable commander, whose battle plans were both daring and practical, whose rapid marches allowed him to contend with three great-power foes at the same time, and whose strategic resilience made him last long enough until his enemies’ exhaustion forced them to make peace with him – all of this in smooth, flowing prose, and with 50 detailed maps of all major battles and campaigns.

What were your favorite history books read in 2025? Let me know in the comments!

History is about people. And so, my three favorite historical non-fiction reads were all biographies – but of very different kinds.

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!

Betina Anton: Hiding Mengele

Josef Mengele’s life can be neatly divided in two parts. The first saw him rise to prominence in Nazi Germany for his medical research on “racial hygiene” and his subsequent human experiments at the Auschwitz concentration camp. After 1945, Mengele faded into obscurity, living a simple, but comfortable and unperturbed life in South America. Betina Anton covers both from a multitude of perspectives, including a plethora of interviews with the survivors of Mengele’s cruel experiments as well as those who knew him in Brazil, and even a documentary find of Mengele’s private letters. The book thus adds especially to the under-researched second half of Mengele’s life, giving a full picture of the casual and organized support for Nazis in hiding.

Mengele’s quiet life in South America contrasts starkly (and purposefully) with the continued suffering of his victims and their dependents, as well as with his own much more dramatic life before the end of the war, making you ask yourself how the world could allow such a man to go scot-free.

Geoff Mortimer: Wallenstein. The Enigma of the Thirty Years’ War

I have written a lot about Wallenstein this year. Obviously, that means I have also read a lot about him, and no book better than Geoff Mortimer’s biography. Despite its subheading, the book is concerned with dispelling the Wallenstein myth, created by his opponents after his death and re-interpreted (affirmatively or negatively) by historians for centuries. Instead, Mortimer presents Wallenstein as a not uncommon man of his time whose actions were rooted in his concern for the safety of his estate, and, when it came to choosing sides, his imperial-Catholic loyalty. Wallenstein was thus tied to the emperor, but needed peace to have his fiefs (gained from emperor Ferdinand’s expropriations in Bohemia and Mecklenburg) confirmed for good. When Ferdinand lost trust in Wallenstein, he was turned from a beneficiary to a victim of the same method – murdered and expropriated.

And my favorite historical non-fiction read of 2025 was…

Christopher Duffy: Frederick the Great. A Military Life

Frederick II of Prussia remains of the most fascinating historical personalities to me – as a politician, a writer, and, of course, as a general. Duffy’s biography focuses on this last aspect and does so in admirable depth and clarity. Of course, Frederick’s wars are covered (on a tactical, operational, and strategic level), but also his activities as a military administrator and organizer. It is in these latter fields where Duffy finds most fault with Frederick, whom he credits with having inherited the finest military force in Europe upon his accession and leaving his own successor a mediocre army. While Duffy thus does not shy away from pointing out Frederick’s mistakes and oversights, he also presents him as a very capable commander, whose battle plans were both daring and practical, whose rapid marches allowed him to contend with three great-power foes at the same time, and whose strategic resilience made him last long enough until his enemies’ exhaustion forced them to make peace with him – all of this in smooth, flowing prose, and with 50 detailed maps of all major battles and campaigns.

What were your favorite history books read in 2025? Let me know in the comments!

It’s been a minute three years since we last had a book & game pairing on this blog!

Today, we’re looking at Prussia in the Seven Years’ War (1756—1763). Our book & game for this topic are Frederick the Great. A Military Life (Christopher Duffy) and Friedrich (Richard Sivél, Histogame).

Check out my previous Book & Game posts here:

Eastern Front: Russia’s War and No Retreat! The Russian Front

Reformation Era: Four Princes and Here I Stand

The Second Hundred Years’ War: The Rise of the Great Powers 1648—1815 and Imperial Struggle

The Book & Game

Frederick the Great. A Military Life was published in 1985 by Routledge. It is a biography of Prussian king Frederick II (the Great, 1712—1786) dedicated to the military dimension of his life – not only his wars (on a tactical, operational, and strategic level), but also his activities as a military administrator and organizer.

Friedrich was published in 2004. Richard Sivél’s first published board game is a highly abstracted operational treatment of the Seven Years’ War in central Europe, focusing on Prussia’s desperate struggle for survival against the overwhelming odds of the Austrian-Russian-French alliance, personified by the eponymous king (Friedrich is the German form of Frederick). Five years later, a prequel on the War of the Austrian succession was published which uses the same basic system: Maria (Richard Sivél, Histogame).

Connections & Conclusions

My first contact with Duffy’s book was via Friedrich – it is one of the books referenced in the bibliography contained in the rulebook. A good choice, as it is the first treatment of the military dimension of Frederick’s life since imperial German times (and remains the definitive work on the subject until today).

Obviously, the book is more encompassing – after all, it treats not only the Seven Years’ War, but the entire 74-year life of Frederick. Yet the chapter on the Seven Years’ War makes up almost half of the book – testament to the importance of the war for Frederick (whom it turned from an energetic man in his prime into a hollowed out, aged king who had lost most of his pleasures along with many personal friends). The toll the war took on Frederick is showcased in many anecdotes both in the book and in the “small events” in the game.

Frederick represents a watershed in history. On the one hand, he expanded and modernized the Prussian bureaucracy which is so symbolic for the modern, often impersonal state. On the other, he was a roi-connétable, a king-warlord, one of the last monarchs to personally lead his troops into battle – those after him who did so had usually used their military success to also take political power which was then based on their continued martial prowess (like Napoleon). Yet in an age when the kings of Britain, France, or Russia remained at court and sent their generals to fight whichever war needed fighting, Frederick rode at the head of his main army, entrusting detachments to his generals only because he could not be everywhere at once.

And Frederick did his best to be everywhere. One of the most striking characteristics of Frederick’s campaigns is his masterful use of the interior lines, on which he performed sweeping forced marches from one theater of the war to another. The most impressive example is found late in the campaign of 1757: After Frederick’s offensive in Bohemia had failed, and France’s victory over the Hanoverian army in northwestern Germany opened the way for a French invasion of Prussia. Frederick marched his army to western Saxony, where he beat a combined French/Imperial army at Roßbach on November 5. The Austrians had used the opportunity to invade Silesia which had only been held by secondary Prussian detachments and were in the possession of almost the entire province… until Frederick’s army showed up, having marched 400 kilometers in a month, and expelled the Austrians from Silesia at Leuthen, the site of his greatest tactical victory.

These sweeping operational and tactical maneuvers are detailed by around 50 maps in Duffy’s book. Whoever is interested in the wars of Frederick will pore over them for a long time during the read and probably flick back and forth between the map section and the text to follow a battle description. While Friedrich prizes maneuver, it has to scale down the distances covered – the march from Roßbach to Leuthen would take five turns on the map (an entire game typically takes around 20 turns).

Thus, there is a certain disconnect between general Friedrich [the pieces are all named in the German fashion] moving on the map and the player role of Frederick: The general Friedrich is much less important than the historical Frederick-the-general. His piece starts in Saxony, which makes it likely that he will only ever do battle with Austria and their minor ally, the Imperial Army, but never venture far enough to fight against France or even Russia and its ally Sweden. If he remains in Saxony and Prussia elects to focus its defense against Austria in Silesia, Frederick might command only a small detachment, avoiding battle while pinning down Austrian forces and taking unglamorous retreats if he is engaged.

The player role of Frederick, however, oversees the entirety of the Prussian war effort (as well as that of Prussia’s minor ally Hanover, ruled in personal union by the king of Britain). The player has control over the maneuver of their generals of which Frederick could only have dreamt: News of a victory or defeat in East Prussia would have reached his army camp in Bohemia only weeks after the event, whereas in Friedrich the player can position the general in charge of defending East Prussia exactly where they want and have him surrender, retreat, or fight for his life according to the overall strategic plan.

Nonetheless, the game is very effective at conveying Friedrich’s psychological state: In the early game, the player might be elated by their power and success. As Frederick moves and draws cards first in the round, an aggressive player can attack their foes with overwhelming force – for example, a second-round attack on Austria means that Prussia has drawn its seven cards per round twice already (so, fourteen in total), whereas Austria has only drawn its five cards per turn once. This corresponds with the quality advantage of the Prussian troops early in the war which Duffy notes frequently. Yet Duffy also argues that this advantage was lost by the heavy casualties the Prussian army endured in 1757 and would never be regained. (Duffy contends that Frederick inherited the finest military force in Europe upon his accession to the throne, but left his own successor a mediocre army – this long-term criticism of Frederick is, of course, beyond the scope of the game.)

Correspondingly, the Frederick player will soon find that the time to play defense has come (if it hasn’t been from the beginning of the game). And as their once-impressive card hand dwindles under the repeated attacks from all foes, elation will give way to gloom. Whenever an anecdote is read as the end-of-round event, showing the historical Frederick at turns defiant, melancholy, or self-pitying, the Frederick player will be able to relate – as they will as Austria’s allies, one after another, falter and peace is made. Frederick might have won the game, but it will surely have taken a toll.

In that sense, Frederick the Great. A Military Life and Friedrich are a perfect match – the analytic and the immersive, the intellectual and the emotional. Give both a try!