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BigBoard Gaming · Aug 15, 2026

WARNO #5 · week ending 15 August 2026

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BigBoardGaming · BigBoard Gaming

Seventy-four videos across twenty-eight channels — and for the third week running, the most-watched thing on the roster wasn’t a game.

Note: Videos now catalogued by Era!

Zilla Blitz’s Upcoming Wargames + Giveaway took 8,453 views and eighty-nine comments in twenty-nine minutes. His Top 7 Board Wargames, with designer Hermann Luttmann, took another sixty-two comments. Three of the four most-watched videos this week were a news round-up, a top-100 list and an unboxing. The first actual playthrough appears at number seven. Guys! Really? 😊 ….

That is not a complaint about anyone. It is a pattern now, and it has been building since Issue 3: talk out-argues play, every time, by a wide margin. People will watch a game being played. BUT….They will argue about a game being discussed, and the comment counts show it.

Fourteen of this week’s seventy-four videos were commentary, unboxing or magazine coverage rather than play. Nearly one in five. Worth knowing when you’re deciding what to trust before a purchase.

WWII is down to about a third. Twenty-six of seventy-four, against forty-six percent two issues ago. The spread holds: eleven WWI, nine ACW, five Cold War, three apiece for Renaissance and Napoleonic, and one each for Ancient, Age of Sail and Contemporary. Thin at the edges.

And a small oddity worth flagging: Gaming with ER Bickford spent the week reading magazines on camera — Fire & Movement 68, Moves 98 and 99. Nobody else covers the back catalogue. Which is cool as I have new bit coming from my firing Line series featureing issue #68

Aaron Plays — CHARGE!! | Combat! Eastern Front | The Assault

Eighty-one views. Sixteen comments. That is a twenty-percent comment rate on a twenty-eight-minute playthrough, a ratio the big channels do not get anywhere near. Small audience, and every one of them is talking back.

Watch him take a single shot apart on camera, castigate the German MG 34, his poor leadership of the Soviets as they are mowed down and stitched up! But there is hope. The next video carries on!

That is what actually playing a game sounds like, and it is why sixteen people had something to say.

81 views · 16 comments · 28 min · WWII —

Episode 15, THE NET TIGHTENS, followed it — 40 minutes:

  • The talking-head block owns the top of the chart. Zilla Blitz twice; The Discriminating Gamer’s Top 100 Games 2026 in two parts (2,692 and 1,436 views).

  • ASL had its usual disciplined week. ASL Academy ran Scouting Report 89 on the new Journal and Episode 54 on monster campaign games — thirty-two comments apiece, the most engaged non-Zilla discussion on the roster.

  • WWII, still the biggest block: MMP’s We’re Not Dead Yet Ep 48 played Hill 253.5 (1,480 views, 62 min); Pushing Cardboard unboxed Pacific Fleet and In Fours to Heaven; Gaming with ER Bickford ran Bastogne (SCS).

  • Napoleonic: The Discriminating Gamer on Congress of Vienna (2,019 views); Chewie Matt ran Battle Commander — Montebello over two parts.

  • Ancient, and it’s the only one: The Players’ Aid reviewed Bretwalda from Phalanx, 1,552 views.

  • ACW had a good week: Camp Sawyer took two sessions over Three Days of Gettysburg — Longstreet’s Assault; Bill Needels went at Culp’s Hill; The Players’ Aid unboxed Rebel Tide.

  • Age of Sail gets a look in — Cardboard Commander unboxed Sails of War.

  • The magazine corner: Bickford on Fire & Movement 68 and Moves 98 and 99.

(Full ERA arranged list is in SUSTAINMENT below.)

  • The Players’ Aid had the week — eight posts.

  • A Wargamers Needful Things on Battle Commander: Napoleon’s Italian Campaigns, and a genuinely unusual book review — Charles XII Warrior King from Karwansaray.

  • PAXsims — three posts, the professional corner: the Connections US 2026 AAR, Medevac!, and a Women’s Wargaming Network session on public-health gaming. [Editorial note: PAXsims is the professional source on this roster. This week leans policy rather than hobby.]

  • The Boardgames Chronicle on strategy materials for Inferno, the third Levy & Campaign volume.

Buy me a whiskey!

[ Political & Non wargame vids removed.]

Probably more like Middle Ages…but pre gun poweder! A Strategy game with modest abstracted combat in it. It only just qualifies as a wargame…But Im generous like that.

A Wargamers Needful Things — 3 - Battle Commander: Napoleon’s Italian Campaigns by Sound of Drums · 2026-08-13 - Charles XII Warrior King by Karwansaray Publishers · 2026-08-12 - Sound of Drums new games on Gamefound and other information · 2026-08-10

PAXsims — 3 - Armchair Dragoons: Connections US 2026 AAR · 2026-08-14 - Medevac! – The Fight to Save Lives · 2026-08-14

The Boardgames Chronicle — 2 - Five years of Cube4Me – anniversary sale · 2026-08-16 - Strategy & Training Materials for Inferno: Guelphs and Ghibellines Vie for Tuscany, 1259-1261 · 2026-08-11

The Players Aid — 7 - Unboxing Video: Lonely Cairn: The Franklin Expedition 1846-? from Catastrophe Games · 2026-08-15 - Video Review: All Are Brothers: Solferino 1859 from Legion Wargames · 2026-08-14 - Castelnuovo 1539 from Draco Ideas – Action Point 2 · 2026-08-13 - Discussion Thread: In-Game Retribution…is that a thing that is acceptable? · 2026-08-12 - My Favorite Wargame Cards – A Look at Individual Cards from My Favorite Games – Card #89: Frederick Douglas from For the People 25th Anniversary Edition from GMT Games · 2026-08-11 - Interview with Sam London Designer of Common Sense: An American Revolution, 1775-1783 from GMT Games · 2026-08-10 - Solitaire Video Review: Crusaders: The Siege of Acre 1291 from Blue Panther · 2026-08-09

[Data-hygiene notes: forty-three of eighty-three videos came back unclassified from the gather — cleared by hand this week. The durable fix is a content_type field separate from era: unboxings, top-tens, channel updates and magazine reads have nowhere to go at present and all land as unclassified. “Age of Sail” is a newsletter bucket, not a canonical era.]

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