We’re off to a great start, aren’t we? I say that I’m pushing the newsletter back to Wednesdays, and it’s a Thursday. This time, however, there are a couple of sets of extenuating circumstances.

Firstly, I’ve been poorly sick. Awwww. I came down with something fluey at the same time my son came down with Strep A, and it’s been a germ-ridden house of blergh for the last week or so.

Secondly, and more importantly, I’ve had to switch newsletter software. And I’ve had to do it with almost no notice. Every issue that’s landed in your inbox so far has been powered by Revue, a newsletter startup that Twitter bought. It was great, had nice integrations with Twitter, and was clean and fast. Yesterday I had an email telling me it was shutting down.

Cue some furious exporting, research, and overly-hasty decision-making, and here I am using SubStack instead. It’s a trial, for now, to see how I get on with it, so bear with me if there are any hiccups along the way, or if anything looks a bit janky.

I’ve not played much in my flu-addled state, so I’m short on things to add here. I managed to play some Battle Crest with my son, which was cool. It’s a mini one-on-one tactical skirmish from Button Shy games, and it does a lot with those 18 cards (Button Shy games famously use 18 card decks in a dinky wallet).

I also had a Kickstarter fulfilment arrive - Wayfarers of the South Tigris, from Garphill Games. I’m a huge Garphill fan, so I’ve been champing at the bit to see how their next trilogy of games will start to unfold.

Early impressions are very good. It’s a pretty heavy game, along the same weight as Paladins and Viscounts from the West Kingdom trilogy. The use of dice as workers is new to Garphill though, and the mixture of those with standard worker-placement is very clever.

There’s plenty of interaction too. Workers are placed on the central board (or more accurately, the cards surrounding it) and are up for grabs for whoever buys those cards. There’s a ton of other stuff going on too, and it’s going to be another of those games that I’m going to have to play multiple times just to understand the various interactions. So far, so good.

I’ve definitely not been up to writing reviews in the last week, but I’ve made some headway in my wargames article. If you didn’t catch it in the last newsletter, I’m writing a piece that looks at the morals of enjoying wargames. I’m using a lot of my own viewpoints and opinions, but I wanted to get a more experienced, maybe even more educated, viewpoint too. With that in mind, I reached out to some wargame designers who have agreed to chat with me.

So once I finally get the darn thing written, expect to see input from Volko Ruhnke (Fire in the Lake, Cuba Libre, A Distant Plain) and David Thompson (War Chest, Undaunted, Pavlov’s House). I’m really pleased they’ve agreed to help, and seem really enthusiastic to talk about the things I’ve mentioned too. I’m hoping to have it published by Christmas.

Once again, a heartfelt thanks for sticking with me. For those of you who support me on Ko-fi, it genuinely helps. I can almost (almost) cover my monthly hosting, which is amazing. Even if you aren’t a supporter, just knowing you’re reading gives me warm, fuzzy feelings.

If you’re new here and want to stick around, there are a lot of ways to do it. First and foremost, joining the growing list of supporters over on my Ko-fi page. It’s very cheap and genuinely helps me.

You can also join the Punchboard Discord server. It’s a small, friendly server with no pressure to talk or do anything really. Just hang out with some thoroughly decent human beings.

And finally, just spread the word. If you hadn’t already guessed SubStack has lots of options for adding buttons, so click this one while you’re at it.

I’ll aim to get one more newsletter out before Christmas, so for now stay safe, stay warm, and look out for the people closest to you.

Adam