Predictably, the paragliding school cancelled because of the weather, but we had an excellent weekend anyway, a highlight of which was cycling up to and along the Ridgeway in warm sunshine. During this trip the limitations of my Specialized hybrid bike in real off-road conditions became painfully apparent. Anyone want to buy it off me?

Our trip finished with the film "Enigma" about the Bletchley Park codebreakers in World War 2. About 15 minutes from the end it was interrupted by a power cut and we were evacuated from the cinema, so I don't know how it ended! Has anyone seen the film and would be willing to fill me in?

A progress report from James on his quest to acquire every game ever published:

Saw Steve's report so thought I would write in with what I have got up to game-wise, in the last few weeks.

I have an opponent in Aldershot and we meet once a week for a wargame. Last week was Wilderness Wars the Tournament scenario and after some great Indian Raids by me (French) I was one VP away, when Louisberg and Quebec fell in six card plays by use of amphibous landings and surrender cards. I thought I had it in the bag up to that point.

Today was ASL, and it gets better as you play more and more. I could drop all other games (what a statement). Also played Rosenkonig: a great 2 player small box game.

Purchased GMT's Red Badge of Courage and what a monster that game looks, the box recommends a weekend to play. At last an honest time estimate on a wargame!

Also on the games front I have taken to trawling charity shops, this week's finds were Avalon Hill's Kremlin (£2) and Game of Nations, the Gibsons 1977 game of fighting for oil in the Gulf (£1.29) - no rules though. Can anyone help?

Feedback from Gavin: For heaven's sake don't buy a leather jacket! Phil is right - you'll just look like a dodgy old geezer. Instead, buy a marvellous 21st birthday present for your number one son!

If you run a spoof news site what do you do after something as horrifying as the WTC attacks? Well The Onion has decided, and it's pretty stunning. See for example God Angrily Clarifies 'Don't Kill' Rule: "I tried to put it in the simplest possible terms for you people, so you'd get it straight, because I thought it was pretty important," said God

Opinions wanted

I just got a refund from the Inland Revenue! I was thinking of spending it on a leather jacket. My trendy son Phil says Don't do it Dad, you'll just look like an old man trying to look young.

Does anyone else have sartorial advice to offer? Votes on an email please!

A very short game report from Steve:

Played Dave at Bull run card game last night. I won but it was probably because I kept drawing powerful artillery cards every 5 minutes rather than any skill. I also met Dave's dog which was cool.

Yes, I've got lots to do this evening - go to Tescos, cook and eat tea, pack a bag for the weekend, put my bike and bike rack in the car, remind Nick to feed the cat etc etc. But at the back of my mind is the thought that tonight is a Ceroc night, and perhaps I could get over there by 9 and put in a couple of hours on the dance-floor. Not a good idea really - I've got a long day tomorrow - and I've already been once this week.

I need help....

This is why I can't do a nimrod session this Thursday - I'm going to the ParAvion paragliding school this weekend and I need to put my affairs in order before I go.

No nimrod session this Thursday I'm afraid. Just can't fit it in this week. Hopefully next week will be OK but I'll let you know nearer the time.

I'm sort of encouraged by how things are going. Although it's a small group of people there does seem to be a level of enthusiasm for meeting to play multi-player games. Nick is back in the fold, John is becoming more active, and James's enthusiasm is a real boost. And I think people are doing quite a bit of 2-player gaming as well. I hope I will be able to make Thursdays a regular event, and it may be better attended as the nights draw in and sitting in the garden seems less attractive!

Maybe a big set-piece game one weekend would be a good idea, something like Advanced Civilization or Pax Britannica? And is anyone interested in joining a party up to Midcon 2-4 November? Let me know.

It takes a Scot to give us this bracing, unsentimental analysis. Anne McElvoy: The rest of the prattle about needing to understand what drives people to such extremes, like some social worker ministering to the world's guerrilla movements, is beyond satire. Behind it lurks a cynical argument masquerading as a liberal one – that you can buy off terrorism.

Had a great weekend's gaming. Went up to Nick's flat on Saturday afternoon to play Paths of Glory. I drew the Central Powers, and we decided to play with the optional rules and the extra cards from the Player Guide. I kicked off with Guns of August, and Race to the Sea shortly afterwards allowed me to cut off the Belgians in Antwerp. Nick and John (who had just turned up) accused me of timidity, but I played Entrench and sat on a fairly conservative line just inside France.

We paused from POG so that we could play Empires of the Ancient World with John, which was great fun Even if I came last I had the satisfaction of sinking the other two in big naval battles in the last turn. Nick produced a truly excellent curry and John beat us at Carcassone to round the evening off.

On Sunday afternoon Nick and I picked up the POG game again. There was a confusing tussle in Russia, then Nick brought in the Italians who broke through into Austria. Then he launched a very effective sequence of offensives on the Western Front, evicting me from France completely. Unfortunately for Nick, his focus on the West allowed me to encircle 5 Russian armies and 2 Italian armies in one turn.

We wrapped it up at that point (after 6 turns). Although Nick was rightly discouraged by his lost armies, my position in the West was shaky. If we had continued I would have urgently SR'd German armies back from the East, while attempting to get an outright win by snapping up Italian and Russian victory points. By no means a sure thing, and it could easily have swung back in Nick's favour.

What a great game this is! Looking forward to playing it again soon. Thanks Nick.

Fergal Keane in Saturday's Independent: In all the debates we have had we have missed that fundamental moral equation. When a man commits mass murder he has made a choice. No individual forces him into that act and no history can be blamed. It is down to him. This is true for the hijackers as it is for those who sent them on their mission. The so called progressives who have sought to characterise this attack as the inevitable consequence of American foreign policy should bury their heads in shame.

Last night's nimrod session, though attended by just 3 of us - myself, John and James - was good fun. We decided to play 1876, a "micro-1830" which is set on Trinidad. The game has a very small map, only three companies, and just one 4-train, 5-train and 6-train. Everything happens very quickly. Especially when John is playing, who was cruising to an easy victory when we wrapped it up at 10:30. It's amazing how this little game packs most of the flavour of 1830 into such a small space.

David Aaronovitch: They argue that the US, alone among nations, should have no reason to get angry when its citizens are killed

James Lileks: I’m tired tonight. I’m tired of people who can watch 5,000 people from 62 nations burned alive and crushed to death, and think: well, you know you had this coming.

And Howard Jacobson writes with his distinctive despairing insight:
So on we go, surfing the channels for more, sitting up half the night, watching over and over, conscious, at the same time, that we are doing exactly what the perpetrators mean us to be doing. Marvelling at their work.

Scarily intelligent columnist Anne McElvoy talks a lot of sense in yesterday's Independent:
Terrorists committed a mass execution of American citizens. This must, of course, be America's fault. It had it coming for being arrogant. It had it coming for supporting Israel. They had it coming for being so big and rich. In short, it had it coming for being America.

Sadly, respected blog-pioneer Dave Weiner at Scripting News produced a typical example of this crazy attitude:
People don't sacrifice themselves for no reason. Let's find out what it is. And if we did something wrong (no doubt we did) let's apologize, ask for forgiveness, and then ask how we can do better.

Nimrod Session

Please come over to my place this Thursday at 8pm. I think we will probably play Samurai and perhaps an IceHouse game if time permits. But bring your own ideas and games with you....

I've always thought the Foreign Office was a moderately useless organization, but the Travel Advice on their website is actually up-to-date. I was amazed! (The last time I looked was about was about a week after the massacre of the Nepalese Royal Family, an event which the Foreign Office website seemed to be blissfully unaware of.) So I've signed up for email updates on travel to Nepal so that I will know whether it's wise or not to go over there in December as planned.

Having just filled in my tax return I'm pleased to be getting something useful for my tax pennies.

Had a great time on Sunday at James' place. We kicked off with Wilderness War - the tournament scenario - which I thoroughly enjoyed. As the French things are starting to turn against me in this scenario, with large British reinforcements and competent generals (like Wolf) arriving. But I was able to make plenty of successful Indian raids, burning stockades and settlements and slowing down James' offensive towards Montreal. In the final turn James was left with too much to do in too little time. This is a fantastic game, beautifully produced (except for the usual ultra-thin GMT map), a notch below POG in complexity, very enjoyable and reminiscent of We the People. It took us about 5 hours but of course James had to spend a lot of time explaining the rules to me.

We finished off the afternoon with two enjoyable fillers: Titan the Arena (James won), and Lost Cities (I won). The latter is excellent - really interesting tactical play with very simple rules.

Thanks to James and Emma for their hospitality and an excellent lunch!

I guess most people are feeling the same way, but a weight of depression settled on my heart yesterday as the reality of the tragedy in America started to sink in. It hasn’t lifted yet. I feel as if I’m going through the motions at work, living in a daze.

I’ve always loved history, and with that perspective I thought I could be fairly philosophical about bad news. After all, the history of mankind is just one bloody massacre after another. But today that thought doesn’t seem to help. I feel sickened and weary of this age-old procession of violence and hate. This world is often so much like a paradise, but as a race we seem so determined to turn it into hell-on-earth.

Last night I went to the choral society’s first rehearsal of the autumn. We are singing the Brahms Deutsches Requiem. When we came to the climax in the second movement:

Den alles Fleisch es ist wie Gras

Behold all flesh is as the grass

It was so desperately sad, I don’t know how we kept singing.

Heaven on Earth
We need it now
I'm sick of all of this
Hanging around
Sick of sorrow
Sick of pain
Sick of hearing again and again
That there's gonna be
Peace on Earth

U2, Peace on Earth

On a day when all the big news websites are impossible to access Dave Winer's Scripting News Weblog is doing a reasonable job of keeping up-to-date with the unfolding tragedy over in the US.

I've got an identity at last! Apparently I belong to Generation Jones.

prolific: beyond the polder is my weblogging twin!

Monitor the moves you learn with this Ceroc checklist.

Types of Cerocer is pretty cutting!

How not to Ceroc is actually the only useful guide to the Ceroc moves I have found.

Ceroc stages: I'm definitely at the the "Dammit I wish I didn't have to eat, sleep or drink so I could spend more time Cerocing" Stage.

Actually there are very few Ceroc resources on the web at all. I've blogged the best of them here, and there are websites for local and national clubs as well. I guess everyone is too busy enjoying themselves dancing to be messing about with websites!

Fluent Dance - a great essay on Ceroc, really captures the experience (that I'm currently going through) of learning to dance for the first time. I watched myself transforming from a fellow who loathed dancing into one who couldn't stop himself from trying.

In today's Telegraph Jonathan Sacks says: In a world run by MTV, nobody has time to think.

The Irish Times says Bono ripe for sainthood. If nothing else, U2 have served the church by not leading the youth of Ireland astray, the direction traditionally favoured by rock bands. The worst they can be accused of is a series of bad-hair decisions during the 1980s, a time of general lapse in this regard.

(via the ever-fantastic Relapsed Catholic)

Wow! Have you seen what the sun is doing today?

These current solar images from the SOHO mission are blinding!

James Lileks is finding that you learn from your children:

Last year fall and winter arrived perfectly - Gnat had given us both a sense of each day as a dense & concentrated object, and we paid attention like never before.

Nimrod Sessions

I'm quite heavily booked up for the next two weeks, so no Thursday sessions until 20 Sept I'm afraid. I didn't want it to be like this, but hopefully I will get my life under control shortly!

Today Heather is practicing Pronoia: "The opposite of paranoia; the sneaking suspicion that the whole world is conspiring to shower you with blessings. Symptoms include sudden attacks of optimism and outbreaks of goodwill."

A writer I admire discusses a writer I worship - Yancey on Chesterton

Well, I'm back on dry land (and at last it has stopped rocking beneath my feet). On last week's passage I was reading "Master and Commander", which was even better second time around. And not surpisingly a lot of the nautical terminology made a lot more sense to me in these surroundings. I have a few ideas revolving around my head for making a solo game of this wonderful book. This website devoted to Patrick O'Brian will be an invaluable resource if I get round to working this up.

Whatever next? - PhotoShop tennis!

Fine bunch of nimrods you are!

No-one turned up last night! Humph. But I was determined to have a nimrod evening so I actually finished glueing my IceHouse pieces together. Now I can play IceTraders, Martian Go, Zarcana etc. Groovy!

Anyway, I'm so disgusted that I'm running away to sea - on the lovely Irene Jack. So no more postings for a week.

Read Robert Locke's refreshing plea for an open mind about evolution. Excellent stuff!

About Board Games is a massive resource - and I'd never even heard of it before today. Loads of game-related stuff.

For example they have a fascinating interview with James Ernest, the founder of Cheapass Games.

From Kory Heath - an illuminating discussion of game design, elegance and emergent phenomena. It would be interesting to think about these ideas - which Kory has developed through his interest in abstract games - in relation to elegant wargames (they feel elegant to me, anyway) such as Paths of Glory or Krieg.

This is not a drill.

Come over to my place Thursday (23 August) at 8pm. We might play Samurai. We might play 1876. We might play Cosmic Encounter. (Why not? Let's live a little!) My paper IceHouse pieces might even be ready for action. Bring wine and beer. Eat Steve's corn-chips.

And I promise not to cancel this one.

Having spent Saturday night sleeping in a marquee (don't ask), I was napping at 2pm on Sunday when James arrived hungry for a Paths of Glory foursome, closely followed by Dave and James. I was still feeling groggy, so I let James and Dave slug it out in the grand old manner, while I had a quieter afternoon teaching Steve the game and having a much gentler war of it.

The slugathon next door came to a spectacular conclusion when James managed to lose about three quarters of the German army in France, and Dave gave a fine example of his trying not to look smug face. My Germans were dealt a lesser but still bruising setback by Steve's Brits at Calais. After poor James left for home we gave my new Aquarius deck a quick outing, which everyone agreed was great fun, and more thought-provoking than the hippy graphics would suggest. A great nimrod afternoon - thanks guys.

Andrew Maly's Up Front Page is still there, after all these years, and back issues of Mike Nagel's (now defunct) Relative Range.

Amazingly, Andy has also published the whole UpFront! Rulebook as HTML. What a labour of love! Mind you, this game deserves to be loved.

Big congratulations to Phil, my younger son, who achieved great results in his AS-levels. Here are his grades:

A Law
A Sociology
B English
C Art

Well done, Phil!

John Cooper's four-eleven is one of the weirdest, but also most strangely compelling, weblogs I have come across. He just records whatever is happening to him at 4:11pm every day! He is part of the Looney Labs crowd so his entries are quite often games related. He also has some sort of science job and I'm still trying to figure out what it is from the limited snippets of information in enigmatic entries like this:

010703 tue
"That's our big guy," I say, pointing to Hardy, our lab's six-foot diameter sphere. Then Sandy and I turn to exit the cleanroom.

Isn't it always the way? When I'm looking forward to a quiet evening at home to catch up with chores, I always seem to get button-holed for some urgent task just before I leave work! But the people concerned have just given me a Lions rugby shirt, which is a really nice gesture of appreciation. And it's still only 6pm, so it wasn't actually that much of a sacrifice!

More from Gavin, who writes:

Kill me now! I have just ordered my first ever real BOARD GAME! After reading about "Kill Dr Lucky", I decided I had to have it. And it was only a fiver! Bargain.

[If any potential advertisers are reading, please note the revenue generating potential of this weblog.]

Gavin has also had an article published on www.bbc.co.uk/bristol!

Had a great time on Saturday at Jonny and Caroline's new beach-hut down at Bournemouth. It was a bit blowy, but regular cups of tea kept us warm, and we played boules, rounders, and even went for a dip, as well as having a massive barbeque. Lots of people there, with lots of little kids running around, it was great!

A bit of serendipity had a feature on Radio 2 yesterday about beach-huts, pointing out www.beach-huts.co.uk where I can search for one of my own to buy! However, there are many more wanted than for sale or to let adverts.

Gavin really needs to work on his negotiating skills.

When I offered my tape-chewing VCR to anyone who wants to risk it, Gavin offered to give me £30 for it!

Talking of Gav, the vote about his plastic surgery is balanced on a knife-edge, so go over there and vote NO to save him from a future with numb lips.

Apologies to anyone who was planning to come, but I'm cancelling this Thursday's session at my place (16 August) as I am going to the Proms!

Does anyone want a VCR?

I replaced mine this weekend, because it occasionally chews up tapes. I'm not willing to risk my Star Wars trilogy! It's a Toshiba, only three years old. It may be relatively simple to fix. If you want it you can have it.

Friday evening picked William up and drove over to James' place deep in West Wiltshire. Met Emma, his wife, who is not only pretty and charming, but also a keen games player. Easy to see now why James always wears a happy smile!

We played Linie 1 (I can never get my head round this game), Castle (intriguing - but has little rules printed on cards which you need to read from the other side of the table), and Kill Dr Lucky. The last one was the highlight - like Cluedo, only fun. Instead of detecting a crime you have to commit it! You wander around a big house looking for a nice old man called Dr Lucky, then attempt to kill him! This is a great piece of game design, elegant, amusing, and very tactical.

Thanks James for a great evening, and for feeding and watering us so generously.

Observations of a Game Tester is a great piece of writing which shines the clear light of experience on what makes a good game. It also puts into words many of the reasons why I enjoy mucking about with games so much.

Good grief, a massive archive of IceHouse games!

Well, is Happy Fun Die a game? It's certainly the funniest set of game rules I've read in a while.

Place your vote at Planet Gaz for whether he should have his jaw operation. As his Dad, I'm campaigning for a big NO vote!

I was as irritated as the next man when Seamus Heaney pipped JK Rowling to the Whitbread Book Prize: but I'm listening to him reading his translation of Beowulf as I drive to work this week, and I have to admit I'm bowled over by it.

More tantalising details of the forthcoming Napoleonic Wars. Better start saving for 2002 straight away - there's going to be this, Barbarossa to Berlin, and Ancients Battle Cry, just for starters.

killingthebuddha is fantastic.

Any nimrod with an interest in the Napoleonic Wars will be pretty excited by this news from GMT Games. Oh there's a bright day gonna dawn.......

James Lileks is fascinating today for his American-eye view of The Royle Family.

Betty Bowers is a Better Christian Than You - pretty bad taste but very funny! And a fair target?

There will be no gaming at my home this Thursday, but James has kindly invited us over to his place for a session on Friday (10th August). Please contact him (JamesCros@farming.co.uk) if you need directions. (I know I do!)

The Cheapass Games Double Secret Web Page looks interesting, especially Brawl. Kickboxing teenage girls in leotards, sounds good to me!!

Stuff this! I'm going out on my bike......

I'm also spending far too much time in front of my PC this weekend when I should be out in the sunshine. Unavoidable, as it is work-related. Upgrading a development box to SQL Server 7. Lost one of their databases unfortunately - oops! Hope no-one notices.

Hmm. Still glueing my paper Icehouse pieces together. Good grief, there are lots of them......

OK, as promised, here are some Things that Grind my Nads

Guys gesturing at me when I overtake them

Chocolate on my new keyboard (Phil!)

John Humphreys

Overfishing of the North Sea

Bad losers

Erm......can't think of anything else. I'm just not angry enough!

Good grief, the ultimate in design-your-own religion! - the SpeakOut.com Religion Selector. Worryingly, I came out as 100% Eastern Orthodox or Roman Catholic. Which confirms what I have suspected for a while, I'm just not cut out to be a Protestant!

Low turnout at last night's nimrod session - just William!

Where were you all? Enjoying yourselves doing something else, I suppose.....well, that's just not acceptable!

We played Space Hulk, great fun, I won both times, but William seemed to enjoy the game nonetheless.

No session next week, I'm afraid, normal service resumed Thursday 16 August.

Do I come across as too enthusiastic?

Reading my recent posts I get that impression. All these positive feelings can be a bit wearing. There are lots of things that grind my nads too, maybe I should write about them sometimes? What do you think?

nervousness.org is an intriguing, attractive idea. The website links up people who want to contribute to some sort of object - a journal, a box of things, a photo project etc - which is passed around by snail mail, accreting contributions as it travels the globe. Amazing! Count me in!

My son Gavin and 3 of his fellow students have developed a game called ScribblyDraw, which is a kind of online version of Pictionary. This weekend they were contacted by Compuserve who want to offer Scribblydraw as part of their online gaming service!! Wow, I hope he remembers his old Dad when he's rich.

Cool, Conway's Life is a long-standing interest of mine and, now that I'm busy glueing together my new Icehouse pieces, here comes MARTIAN LIFE for me to play with them.

Fun nimrod session last night. Steve, Dave and John turned up. We played Lord of the Rings and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves. The game managed to create this sense of rising panic as we stumbled from one disaster to another, the Ring-Bearer (Master Samwise Medhurst at that point) falling into the hands of Sauron on the very slopes of Mount Doom!

Minden Games publish Retro ASL - the whole ASL experience distilled down to 28 pages!

Is there such a thing as a Ceroc nimrod, I wonder? Probably not, too many females involved. Ceroc is a French Jive apparently, you can go along Tuesday or Thursday evening to Salisbury Cattle Market (I'm not making this up!) and have an hour's Beginners instruction, then a chance to revise while the Intermediates have their class, finally a freestyle session which is the best bit - it's like a party, everyone dancing, and you don't get left to sit for more than a few minutes before some girl drags you up for another dance. I've been going along for 3 weeks now, after initial hesitancy I'm really starting to enjoy myself now as I get a little bit more confident with the moves. Excellent fun! And a great chance to hold hands with dozens of women in one evening.......

My Paper Icehouse pieces have arrived. Only took a few days from the US. My next step towards apostasy is to get hold of some aquarium gravel and glue these babies together...

I've finally managed to buy something off ebay!!! The Star Wars trilogy on VHS, the original versions (not ruined by the new special effects). Great condition, got them for £16.

Manorcon was very enjoyable. It was good to have William and Dave along. The new venue (Shackleton Hall on Birmingham University campus) was a bit more spacious than Lake Hall. My room was OK but the food was a deep fried death diet as usual! On Friday I played History of the World with the fancy (and fiddly) new Hasbro set. I was leading for ages – always a big mistake - and finished 3rd of 6.

On Saturday I signed up for Advanced Civilization, really enjoyed it. Played Babylon as usual. A run of early catastrophes left me trailing badly, so I was really pleased to finish 4th of 7. That took 7 hours, so I wandered around dazed for a couple of hours, then joined Nick Kinzett for a game (doctored Kinzett-style) of Lord of the Rings. Great fun, loads of atmosphere, and interesting to cooperate rather than compete for a change.

On Sunday I coasted, introducing lots of people to Battle Cry and getting another game of Lord of the Rings too (this time we all died horribly on Gorgoroth). Dave was swimming with the 1830 sharks, hoping just to learn a few tips from the experts. Against all expectations he won!

The games trading is always a highlight of Manorcon. I managed to get rid of two of my games (Battle Hymn and Carrier), but bought two as well (Throneworld and Lord of the Rings) so no relief for my storage problem back home.

Great weekend. Maybe I’ll sign up for MidCon this year?

Met this guy Pete Phillipps at Manorcon, who was there with various ASL nimrods running a tournament and trying to recruit people into his evil sect. Like most evil cultists he's a really nice guy. Here is his fanzine View From The Trenches which includes a PDF introduction to ASL with a map and counters for a starter scenario. I found it an excellent read even though I'm only marginally interested in ASL.

HANKISMS is a hilarious if irreverent take on comparative religion. I think my favourite is Greco-Roman.

This website dedicated to the Japanese artist Kawase Hasui is stuffed with beautiful images.

Attention! Attention all nimrods!

No session at my place this Thursday I'm afraid - I don't want to peak early
before Manorcon this weekend!

But you are invited over on Thursday 26th July. William will probably bring
Samurai over, and surplus people can play Battle Cry or Space Hulk perhaps.

Let me know if you can make it.

Hmmm. What games shall I take to ManorCon this year?

To sell:

Pacific War (? I once spent weeks learning the rules, do I want all that effort to go to waste?)
Battle Hymn
Carrier
Empires in Arms (? it's a nice looking game, I just never ever play it)


To play:

Empires of the Ancient World
Titan (oh bliss, a chance to play Titan!)
Battle Cry (I was hoping Nick would be bringing his copy too, but he's dropped out this year)
1851

Musn't take too many, as I don't want to spend the weekend explaining rules to people!

The Center for Ludic Synergy is an extremely weird and amusing game site.

GMT website now has an official Historical Paths of Glory scenario.

Two game reports for last Thursday's session. The first is from James:

Attendees last Thursday were Robin, Simon, William, Peter (host) and I. Peter had set up Empires of the Ancient World on the table and explained the rules to Simon, Robin and I.

The game is turn based and you can do a number of things on your "go" either attack by force or diplomacy, trade with neighbouring regions or recruit one of the available armies or units. As I had rolled the six and had to go first I picked up the Military Commander card, it looked good and it was for that reason I picked it up ( a lot of my game playing is on that basis, ohhh dear) everyone else also spent a peaceful round "educating" the neutral nations or picking up new units. Peter picked up a large galley and on his next round he started his conquest of the Mediterranean by unprovoked attacks on William and I. That was it and then the call to arms went up and this resulted in everyone bashing Peter. Throughout the game William grew steadily in the East, Diplomat Simon expanded his nation around Italy with little military attacks, Robin defended France, Germany and Britain well and I held Spain and Africa with the aid of my Military Commander, that on numerous occasions allowed me to deploy Pikemen infront of opponents charging cavalry (ouch).

We only managed two of the four turns by 10:30 so called it an evening there and totted up the scores.William won, myself second then Simon, Robin and Peter last.

A great game with a very clever card system.

Ohh by the way does anyone play Advanced Squad Leader, or interested in learning (Shameless Plug).

And now William with his version of events:

We started to play with William rolling highest to start (despite his absence from the room due to the curse that is mobile phones). He chose the rich Middle East and proceeded to build his empire around Cappadocia. He was hindered by Peter who immediately went for the Eastern Med and Egypt and West Turkey. Between their turns Simon started an empire in Italy and James in Britannia. Robin took Iberia, being the only place left with an amphora.

The game didn't start well for Simon who during the uprising phase narrowly missed out on losing his starting nation, Italy, because he had a fort there. He spent the rest of the game using his Ambassador to build a big empire and having nowhere to go but get trampled by surrounding nations.

Peter tried to attack all of the sea lanes but everybody fought back. Having painted the word 'Target' on his forehead he never really recovered.

Robin build quite a nice empire but spent too long being destoyed by James who proved to have a better army than Peter.

After two rounds it was 10:15 so we tallied up (so much for a two hour game). Having three amphorae helped William build up a large trading empire and having only one nation (Peter) on his borders wasn't attacked too much. It did no harm either that the neighbour was Peter who, busy expanding elsewhere, got no help while pointing out that William was the real threat hidden in the East.

The final score was close but William just beat James (62 pays 55 points) after a rout of Peter's army from his last Turkish holding in the final turn.

More feedback on my ethics dilemma:

Evil Gavin says: Nooooo don't do it!

Unfortunately Gavin is my son, so I have to think about setting him a good example and boring stuff like that....

John Toomey says:

When Christians celebrate Christmas, they celebrate the birth of Christ, not the fact that the pagan holiday Saturnalia was replaced by a Christian holiday in order that the enthusiasm which already existed could be harnessed (versus attempting to generate new enthusiasm).

When today's artists rave of a work of a past master, they revere its execution, conception, impact on audiences, etc. -- not necessarily the religious ideals which it represents.

When you use Tarot cards to play a game, you're celebrating the joy of a good design, not an archaic system of beliefs.

Thanks John, I like your phrase "celebrating the joy of a good design" - that's how I feel about some of the classics eg 1830 or Civilizaton.

Tom Synge says:

Your ethical dilemma is an interesting one. My initial reaction is strongly against the purchase. In the same way, I would not suggest that you go out and buy a ouija board even if it is a central feature of determining actions in Spiel des Jahres 2002!

My principal concerns are:

1 That other people might see you, a practising Christian, using a deck of tarot cards and draw incorrect conclusions, possibly along the lines of "oh, so tarot cards are fine then" or "Hmm, Peter is losing it".

2 That your family and friends could be influenced by your decision to use them - although your son is presumably old enough to make his own decisions.

3 That this is a subtle form of temptation via something that is close to your heart. Although you can say now that you are going in with eyes open, it could lead further.

I am not familiar with the game, but could you not make up a set of alternative cards with the same values and distribution?

Thanks a lot for that Tom. Actually the rules for Zarcana include a section about adapting a standard deck, so maybe this is the sensible route to go. I'm also thinking of ordering the $5 paper Icehouse set before I commit to the £30 plastic set.

It's great to get all this feedback - I did wonder if anyone was actually reading my weblog!

Went to see Tomb Raider last weekend (my uncle made me go!) What a dismal, boring, monumentally stupid film. And what a wasted opportunity, too. This could have been a post-modern classic, playing with identity, virtual reality, gender, fame, and teen culture. We should have seen Lara playing a Playstation game where she has to get a spotty teenage virtual boy through his school day. We should have seen her having repeated nightmares of swimming through an underwater maze and drowning again, again, again. She should have said "I sometimes get this feeling I'm being controlled." She should have taken us on a guided tour of her home and taught us how to make her jump. She should have shot lots of dogs. She should have cut a lonely, slightly sad figure throughout the movie (instead of wandering around with a motley crowd of servants, commandos, villains, archaeologists etc.) We should have seen her on stage with a huge video wall behind her showing U2 dancing to her music.

What a waste. The Lucozade advert had more intelligence and humour in its 90 seconds than this whole tiresome movie.

Don't forget the nimrod session at my place tomorrow evening. Planning to play Empires of the Ancient World. Email me for details.

Just found Chris Lawson's nice Euphrat & Tigris website. Mmmm! Maybe we should play this tomorrow?

Blackwater Station is a great resouce for the 18XX enthusiast. It made me nostalgic - why don't we play these in Salisbury any more?

More feedback on my ethical dilemma (see 4 July) from Steve (of the excellent nutlog):

Well you asked for it. I think you should get the Deck ;).

This is an interesting poser for me because it's made me put myself in your shoes, and I may not entirely share your belief system. :) But it's good to have a challenge...

I think it's ok because you will be using the deck for gaming, rather than anything occult, which would contradict your belief system. Quite simply, meaning is more important than symbolism, and you won't be using the tarot deck for anything which goes against the 'meaning' of your beliefs. Though you may be uncomfortable with the symbolism, but I think that's more an aesthetic question than an ethical one ;).

Then it becomes an issue more like - 'Should I paint my bedroom blue or white?' - rather than a question of right or wrong.

This is the first advice I've had that tells me what I wanted to hear - so I guess I will follow it!

Steve doesn't share my belief system - but he also probably doesn't understand the force of the games-collecting compulsion that I'm subject to - so I guess these two factors balance out!

An interesting (but possibly irrelevant) aside is that Charles Williams (close friend of CS Lewis) wrote a terrific book based around the Tarot (but also rooted in Christian world-view) called "The Greater Trumps".

Anyway, voting currently stands at: 2 Against, 1 Wishy-washy-you-decide, and 1 For. Any more?

This page on the ManorCon website gives excellent descriptions (with pictures) of some of my favourite games of all time.

There's still time to book for ManorCon by the way. It's 20-22 July, it will cost you about £50, and you can cadge a lift up there with me and Dave. Don't miss it!

Another fantastic ebooks resource at Christian Classics Ethereal Library - only if you are interested in theology, I admit. As well as supplying books in Microsoft eBook Reader format, they have developed a variant of HTML called.......and this is not a wind-up........THML, or Theology Markup Language!

I've had two responses to my ethics dilemma (see below) so far. One dubious, one adamantly against. Rats. Come on all you woolly-minded liberal types, tell me it's OK to go ahead and buy the cards!

4 nimrods + 2 bottles wine + 2 euro games = fun evening. In the event Dave, James and John turned up last night. We played Carcassonne, which was excellent - simple rules, nice components, lots of brain-teasing decisions - and Wyatt Earp, which is Rummy with chrome, good fun, nice Wild West atmosphere.

Let's do it again next Thursday.

Note to myself: The Civ Page has a colour image of the Civilization map including the Western Expansion. Edit it! Print it on cardstock! Use it!

I've been hit by a Gaming Ethics Dilemma!

Zarcana is a game of war, journeys, growth, life, and death. Icehouse pieces are your minions, spreading out across a world composed of tarot cards.

I really want to play this game - and all the other cool-looking games you can play with the Icehouse pieces. But I am a bit reluctant to get a Tarot deck. A long time ago when I became a Christian I threw away in disgust my trusty Tarot cards that I used for fortune-telling. 24 years later would it be wrong to buy a new deck - not for semi-occult purposes, but for wholly laudable nimrod purposes?

Advice on email please - I reckon you've got a couple of days before I crack anyway.....

Mike Nagel has just put together a very nice website for the Down In Flames series of games, well worth a visit!

More droolworthy news from GMT - I read on Consimworld today that they are developing a card-driven game about the Napoleonic wars, and that they have bought the rights to the Ancients version of Richard Borg's Battle Cry. Oh yummy!

And of course Wilderness War and Zero! are now available, and we can look forward to 30 Years War later this year, and Ted Raicer's Barbarossa to Berlin next year.

But if I think about it in terms of constraints on my time and money, all this is really bad news actually......

Here are a few photos of me abseiling for charity at work last Friday, looking slightly gripped I have to admit. It was great fun though, much better than sitting at my desk! I raised about £50 and my colleague Shameem bagged over £300 for Happy Child Mission - companywide it must have been a couple of thousand at least.