I've sadly neglected this blog, posting nothing at all so far in calendar year 2014. Seeing as this month begins the centenary of the Great War, I think it's a fitting time to try and breathe a bit of life into this small journal.

Since this is "a blog on reading and gaming the history of the Great War", I'm going to commit to doing both, as intensively as I can while the rest of life revolves around me, for the next four years. I'd like to say that I'll report on a game and a book every month over that time, but that would be setting an overly ambitious bar. I can promise to deliver a post a month, and I hope I'll manage closer to a post a week on average.

I think that both my game library and my printed library will be more than able to stand up to those requirements, even if my schedule can't. Besides the miniature games I've mentioned here already (TFL's Through the Mud and the Blood, If the Lord Spares Us, Corps Blimey, Algernon Pulls It Off, and the postwar Triumph of the Will), I have Great War Spearhead (now finally available in its comprehensive second edition), Soldat and The Last Crusade, and Wings of War/Wings of Glory.

The boardgame contingent, though, is even larger.

1914: Glory's End (XTR/Command magazine)
1914: Offensive à outrance (GMT Games)
1914: Twilight in the East (GMT Games)
1918: Storm in the West (XTR/Command magazine)
The Big Push: The Battle of the Somme (ATO)
Bloody April, 1917: The Air War Over Arras, France (GMT Games)
Blue Max (GDW Games)
Clash of Empires: August 1914 (3W/The Wargamer magazine)
Clash of Giants and Clash of Giants II (GMT Games)
The Cossacks Are Coming! 2nd Edition (Oregon ConSim Games)
A Fatal Attraction: The Gallipoli Campaign (ATO)
Grand Illusion: The 1914 Campaign in the West (GMT Games)
The Great War in Europe (both the XTR/Command magazine and GMT Games editions)
Jassin 1915 (Khyber Pass Games)
The Kaiser's Battle (SPI/S&T magazine)
Landships (Clash of Arms Games)
Lawrence of Arabia (3W/The Wargamer magazine)
Marne 1918: Friedensturm (Hexasim)
No Prisoners (Decision Games/S&T Magazine)
Paths of Glory (GMT Games)
Pursuit of Glory (GMT Games)
Rock of the Marne (MMP)
Serbia the Defiant/Romania: Transylvanian Gambit (SPW)
Sideshow: The German Campaign for East Africa (SPI/S&T magazine)
To The Green Fields Beyond (SPI)
Togoland 1914 (Khyber Pass Games)
When Eagles Fight (XTR/Command magazine)
World War I (SPI)

Plus, on related post-war topics:

Ataturk! (Khyber Pass Games)
Reds! The Russian Civil War 1918-1921 (GMT Games)
Rise of the House of Sa'ud (3W/The Wargamer magazine)
Rossyia 1917 (Azure Wish Enterprise)
Russian Civil War 1918-1922 (SPI)

I think I have a couple more of Khyber Pass's products, and I have my eye on several GMT P500 games (a new edition of Glory's End and When Eagles Fight coming as a double title; Serbien Muss Sterbien, by the designer of Offensive a outrance; Eagle of Lille, an expansion for Bloody April; Gallipoli, 1915; and Illusions of Glory, an East-Front game using the Paths of Glory model).

Even were I able to review one a month, that would nearly fill up the four years I've alotted myself. We'll see how I get on.

Next up: a review of my bookshelves.