Goonhammer Historicals: 2025 Year in Review

In December 1864 William T. "Uncle Billy" Sherman concluded his March to the Sea by capturing Savannah, Georgia. Sherman burned his way through Georgia, taking the idea of Total War - inflicting the hell of war on everyone, not just soldiers - to the local populace and making them not want to support the war anymore. General John Bell Hood ransacked most of the garrisons in the lower southeast on a failed trip into Tennessee (maybe one of the worst military blunders in US history), leaving only around 13,000 Confederate soldiers to oppose Sherman's 60,000+. Sherman wrote to Lincoln:

SAVANNAH, GA., December 22, 1864 (Via Fort Monroe 6.45 p.m. 25th)

His Excellency President LINCOLN:

I beg to present you, as a Christmas gift, the city of Savannah, with 150 heavy guns and plenty of ammunition, and also about 25,000 bales of cotton.

W.T. Sherman, Major General.

Reflecting on the campaigns and major miniature wargames of the year, we didn't quite make the difference that Uncle Billy did in taking Savannah - but quite a few new products, rulesets, and ideas hit the tables in 2025 that we wanted to recap here. This is in no particular order, just the order they came up in our brains.

Victrix Really Hits Their Stride

Goonhammer has been reviewing Victrix kits for a while, but they've really opened up their design and manufacturing, producing not just their usual middle age and Napoleonic era kits, but also delving deep into 28mm WW2 and even producing a ruleset, Pillage. We'll say this more coming up, but the massive availability and competition in the plastic miniature market is making it so much easier for new players to get into Historical games. While stalwarts like Warlord Games, Perry Miniatures, and Gripping Beast are still there and doing well, competition always proves good for the consumer. Victrix also brought in-house their shield transfers from LittleBigMan Studio, making it easier to get transfers and miniatures all in one go. Many of our contributors took advantage of their Black Friday sale to grab some items!

Wargames Atlantic Continues Releasing Tons of Minis

Wargames Atlantic has been releasing minis for a few years now, with Goonhammer having reviewed many of them. They like to crowdsource ideas on their Facebook page, resulting in some really niche miniatures - like the historical zombies or the new civilian sets. Their prices are very competitive with any other manufacturer and they fit well with most other minis you can buy out there.

While they had a small dustup with their founder outing himself as the former owner of Wargames Factory (and promising to make good on some debts), they continue to move on and produce a high volume of easily accessible plastic kits. Honorable mention to them for the huge variety of STLs they have available in their MyMiniFactory store as well. WGA, along with Victrix and others, has absolutely opened wide the plastic historical miniature selection available to the gamer.

Wargames Atlantic Grenadiers. Credit: Tubaglue

Chain of Command 2nd Edition

Rules publisher TooFatLardies enjoyed their 20th (by our count) year in 2025, having first produced rulesets in 2005. While they've covered almost every historical period available on the mass market, they're very well known for Chain of Command, their WW2 platoon-sized ruleset that emphasizes command, control, and friction. Chain of Command has been enjoyed for over a decade by grogs around the world, with tons of extra content put out like Pint Sized Campaigns, new platoon selectors, and theater sourcebooks.

Wargamers love Chain of Command because it's further down the path of simulation than some competitors - tabletop commanders don't always get what they want, and real life tactics generally work well in CoC. It is much better for specific realistic scenarios and playing through connected scenarios using weather, terrain, etc.

Chain of Command 2 Cover Art

Chain of Command 2nd Edition came out this year and didn't drastically change everything, instead reinforcing what worked well and redefining some aspects that didn't. It was an absolutely huge ruleset release that sets the standard for interesting wargames design. It was followed up by a campaign supplement At the Sharp End and the updated way to play huge games, Big Chain of Command.

TooFatLardies also decided to produce a Patreon that will provide extra content to gamers usually in the form of battle reports, video how-tos, etc.

3D Printing

While we've already lauded the efforts of a few plastic miniature manufacturers, we have to plug the 3D printing world here as they've really come through on the historical side of miniature design in 2025. While we don't see plastic miniatures going anywhere for a while, 3D sculpted and printable miniatures for really niche armies were produced this year that makes it so much easier to do really cool projects and campaigns. It can be difficult to wade through the endless thumbnails of D&D or dark fantasy miniatures but it can definitely be worth it!

The 3D resin printed steamboat. Mugginns' Sharp Practice game at FlintCon.

Tariffs

Ah yes. Historical wargamers were hit probably harder than just-40k bros because most of our favorite vendors are relatively tiny and don't have entire job descriptions that deal with this kind of thing. Many wargame vendors were shut to the USA for a few weeks or more earlier this year, and now most of them have a 10% tariff tax on stuff they send us. Obviously not their fault at all, but it's a detriment that gamers will take into account when they plan out purchases or hit that 'Pay' button when making an impulse buy.

Firelock Games' Port Royal

Firelock has been banging the drum for pirate-era sailing and ground combat wargaming for years but in 2025 they hit on a really cool idea - what if pirates, but small warband sized forces, in dense urban combat terrain, with a detailed campaign process. It's a bit basic to describe it this way - but you could think of it as Mordheim Pirates if you're old enough to remember that game.

They ran a Kickstarter campaign and produced plastic minis, cardboard terrain, a rulebook with tons of accessories including tokens and cards. You can see our review here. This is a great entry into the era - as you can grab a warband and paint it up, then build it up into a bigger force with sailboats, cannons, etc.

Port Royal Action

Sheer carnage. By the end of Turn 5 (of 6 in the scenario), Chris' French were in possession of 3 Plunder Tokens and had inflicted 4 casualties. Cody's British had only one Plunder Token (the man carrying a second having just been shot) and had inflicted two casualties. The disparity in the resulting Strike Points led to Captain Montfort deciding that discretion was the better part of valor and ceding the field to Lestrade's company. (credit: Cody)

Bolt Action

Later in 2024 Warlord Games released a brand new edition of Bolt Action, their immensely popular tabletop WW2 wargame. It is extremely easy to get into, with affordable plastic miniatures and easy to learn rules. Along with a new edition they've been producing new army books for the major countries - Germany, USA, Britain, Soviet Union, and soon to be Japan. It's been a bit of a tougher road for those players who choose to do a minor power, like Slovakia, which totally lost its rules in the new edition. Others, like Hungary, have rules in a sort of index to get you by until their book is released.

While not strictly Bolt Action (but built on top of it), Konflict '47 received a new edition as well. K47 was around for a while before, but seemed a little less fleshed-out than it could have been - and it seems like it'll be a major priority for WLG going forward.

Hungarian Gendarmerie Credit: Alex S.

Goonhammer Projects

As an editorial team we always try to come up with certain time periods or aspects to cover for an extended period of time each year. This year we decided on the Eastern Front in WW2 as a project we could publish throughout the year. We hit many major topics, from the ground war to the air war. It's especially poignant with all of the new rulesets being released (including V for Victory, which is on our list to review) and 0200 Hours, which, while not a new ruleset, finally hit our tables and wowed our team.

We also made a commitment to learn and write more about traditional wargames - the hex and chit, cardboard type. While it's fair to say this is an area where we can definitely work harder, this is a brand new way to game for much of our team.

The Silver Bayonet

TSB is one of our favorite warband wargames here at Goonhammer Plaza. We've reviewed every release and even run Goonhammer sponsored events at AdeptiCon. 2025 saw the release of TSB: Britain - the Bones of Albion, a campaign where players are tasked with going to the tiny island to find stones that were blessed by ancient British druids so they can bring about the apocalypse. While it didn't include any new warbands, it did bring about newly sculpted middle age and Roman age zombies that are pretty sweet.

North Star sculpted some sweet terrified civilians for our Silver Bayonet games. Credit: North Star Military Figures

Historical Terrain

While 3D printing has brought about new frontiers for terrain in our games, MDF companies just keep getting better at their trade. Early on, MDF buildings were very simple structures with not much detail. Now we're getting fully-detailed fully-printed buildings that are easy to glue together and have on a table that night. Of particular note, Sarissa, Bandua, Black Site Studio, and MicroArts Studio are doing tons of new things and opening up lots of new campaign areas that we previously didn't have access to. Early in the new year we'll have a review of MicroArts Studio printed terrain that works great for WW2 Eastern Front.

Indie Games and Vendors

Black Site Studio has been very busy releasing smaller zine-style games as well as bigger products, like Don't Look Back, their cooperative horror game. To bring it in line with historicals, they released Don't Look Back: 1698 and delivered it early this year. Players take on the role of extremely faithful, superstitious, and horrified people in Northwood, the town that is the center of DLB.

Greathelm - Credit Bair

Malev Da Shinobi released Greathelm, a tiny game of 6-12 minis played on a regular piece of paper. This was a huge hit in our Discord, with folks posting up their painted warbands on the daily.

Bad Squiddo Miniatures' Annie kept up her march to produce amazing female miniatures for every conflict with her Women of WW2: Resistance miniatures that were Kickstarted and delivered in late 2025. These minis will add flavor and history to many different forces that a gamer puts on the table for WW2.

Ken Burns The American Revolution

Clocking in at 715 minutes spanned over six episodes, Ken Burns once again hits us with a major documentary to make us re-think our lives. While his Civil War piece is definitely his most well-known, he's made a lot of strides since then and the American Revolution documentary is better produced, better sourced, and more impactful. PBS is under assault from the current American regime, which makes these documentaries even more important. With 2026 being the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, you can count on many wargamers watching this series to get prepped for some Sharp Practice campaigns.

Ken Burns American Revolution. Credit: PBS

Final Thoughts

While we've captured a few releases and ideas here, there are definitely more - what do you think has been a major hit or miss in 2025? What are some trends that you see happening or wish to see happen? Drop us a note in the comments below or tell us on our Discord.

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Tags: 2025 | historicals | Goonhammer | Year-in-Review