I've just come back from a very enjoyable weekend away with my friends on the Workshop Team. We stayed at Jordans Youth Hostel which is one of those simple shacks in the woods that the YHA loves to buy. It was all very cosy and well heated, with radiators in the bedrooms and shower block, and a nice wood-stove to sit around in the lounge. We went for a long walk on Saturday in the Chiltern Hundreds (whatever they might be) and visited the Friends Meeting House next door on Sunday morning. This is a beautiful, historic building linked with William Penn, founder of Pennsylvania. Entering the austere, panelled meeting room was like stepping into a time machine. Sitting quiet and still for an hour was a huge challenge for me, difficult and demanding but also peaceful and reassuring, and I have tremendous respect for these people for whom this is a weekly spiritual discipline year in year out, for a lifetime.

I took a collection of accessible games with me, and was pleasantly surprised by the uptake. Debs and Viv learned Lost Cities, Zendo went down well with Trish, Matt, Viv and Debs, and we had an epic game of Lord of the Rings on Saturday night, with me overseeing proceedings and about 8 people actually playing (Merry was inhabited by a weird triple personality comprising Sue, Trish and Linda). This is a great game for non-gamers and always succeeds in drawing people into the drama of the story. The last hour was a really intense struggle to get across Mordor with everyone concentrating hard and discussing every single card play! Sadly they succumbed at space 56 but it was a great effort.

I have uploaded a few photos of the weekend here.

This is sweet - Phil is asking me for help with a console game. After years of being held in contempt by the boys for my feeble abilities at games such as Quake, Gran Turismo, WipeOut etc. Phil is stuck in Final Fantasy X, unable to beat a boss that I vanquished about 50 hours ago, and he wants me to talk him through it. Respect my Leet Skillz!

Andrew Sullivan: Society is dead, we have retreated into the iWorld:
Even without the white wires you can tell who they are. They walk down the street in their own MP3 cocoon, bumping into others, deaf to small social cues, shutting out anyone not in their bubble.

Every now and again some start unconsciously emitting strange tuneless squawks, like a badly tuned radio, and their fingers snap or their arms twitch to some strange soundless rhythm. When others say “Excuse me” there’s no response. “Hi”, ditto. It’s strange to be among so many people and hear so little. Except that each one is hearing so much.

I've been meeting up with my new gaming buddy Les in local pubs to play two-player eurogames. It's a very pleasant way to spend a weekday evening, and when your gaming activity attracts the curious attention of the attractive blonde barmaid, well that's doubly pleasant.

Games we have given an outing so far:

San Juan - clever adaptation of Puerto Rico, not just the theme but many of the mechanics too. Plays well with two. I'm not a huge PR fan so this would not be near the top of my list, but it's enjoyable enough. I won with the help of the chapel - just keep burying someone every turn!

Scarab Lords - great pub game, lots of cursing. I think we are pretty evenly matched.

Minotaur Lords - sequel to Scarab Lords with upgraded production values but a serious balance problem. The blue deck seems to be unbeatable. An unusual slip from Reiner.

Hera and Zeus - this has been sitting on my shelf for years so it was great to play it at last. I really enjoy this one, it has a lot of interesting tactical possibilities. One each so far.

Blue Moon - this is great stuff, a really top-class game. Beautifully produced and fascinating Magic-style combat. Les has a playtesting credit in the rules so unsurprisingly he outclassed me. Played three times last night and I lost them all.

There's a price to be paid for being a wargames geek. Oh yes. For example, when I was a kid I was modifying a plastic French Napoleonic soldier with my craft knife when the knife slipped and nearly sliced the top of my left thumb off. Blood everywhere, lots of it, recriminations from frightened parents, and a hasty trip to casualty. 35-plus years later the scar still opens up and bleeds a little in cold weather, just to remind me. Ouch, it's hurting right now as I type......

I don't really need to blog about the weekend as Phil has covered it all already. He's recorded all the salient points - lots of relaxed time with Phil, lots of good food and wine, the pub quiz with some new friends from church, and of course the sound whipping I received at Europe Engulfed (the 1942 one-mapper). I do love this game, but gosh it's hard on the Germans in Russia. I made several boo-boos, and you really can't afford to make any slips at all - the pressure of the Russian replacement rate builds up so quickly. And I would love to see someone who really knows what he is doing play this game - I'm sure there are some vital tricks and tactics which I just have no clue about yet, that could make the challenge more possible for the Germans. (I have worked out a 1941 one-map scenario, just for the purposes of practising Barbarossa, which Dave is helping me playtest and which I will post shortly.) Final point from Phil's post - do I really have a ridiculous number of hobbies?? Answers in the comments please....

T H E ::: B U R N I N G ::: B L U E

This new wargame from our very own Lee Brimmicombe-Wood looks complex - it is a follow-up to his Vietnam air game Downtown (GMT) - but the theme is such a big hook. Severely tempted to pre-order it even though I would probably only get as far as punching the counters and gazing at the map.

Two Battle of Britain veterans, John Greenwood of 253 Squadron (Hurricanes) and John Freeborn DFC of 74 Squadron (Spitfires) have been helping the designer in his research for the game. Lee Brimmicombe-Wood is enormously grateful for their kind assistance, recalling events from 64 years ago and clearing up many matters of detail.

There are some amazing interviews with these veterans on the website. Not the usual stuff, Lee is focussing on technical issues such as HF vs VHF reception, command and control, interception rates, visibility etc. It's amazing how much these guys remember after 64 years!

I'm auctioning off some more games over the next few weeks. First up on eBay are a mint shrink-wrapped copy of Thirty Years War (this is a duplicate copy I was shipped in error by GMT - there's no way I would get rid of my first copy of this game) and a slightly less pristine copy of Western Front Tank Leader. Bidding for Thirty Years War is going well, but Western Front Tank Leader (a game which is abundant and a bit dated) is stuck on a quid at the moment. Why not make it two quid? - still a bargain!

I quite enjoy the process of selling on eBay - presenting the game nicely and selecting some good marketing text makes a big difference to the end price.

What a cool idea, I want to join in!

moleskinerie: The Wandering Moleskine Project:

We are happy to announce the launching of the 'Wandering Moleskine Project' @ Moleskinerie. Several notebooks will be sent on their way from various points around the world, and scans of pages will be posted as they are filled.

-Participants are entitled to use one page of each notebook and to send it on to the next recipient within one week of receiving it.

-The notebooks are to be mailed/passed along to the next person on the list.

-You are pretty much free to write/draw whatever you desire, provided your entry does not deface or alter the notebook or others' entries.

-Participants are requested to scan their entry and to send it to Moleskinerie when mailing it to the next recipient.

Well I got to play Flandern 1302 - the game I picked up on my recent trip to Germany - a lot quicker than I anticipated. With boardgame newbies as well. Kez and Joe, my two ex-nephews, were over last weekend to visit Phil. You can read a graphic report of their epic Saturday-night bender in Guildford over on Phil's weblog - and another on Kez's weblog. I can't believe I was seriously considering going along with them at one point - I'm sooo glad I chickened out at the last minute! I would still have the hangover now. Sunday morning in the flat was very quiet as you can imagine, but I had been fiddling with Flandern 1302 on the coffee table all weekend trying to learn the rules, and after lunch they were all keen to have a go. Everyone seemed to enjoy the game a lot. The way the game works is fairly simple to explain and understand, it only takes an hour or so to complete, and the subtleties of the tactical possibilities gradually dawned on us as the game went on. What helps a lot for newbies is the pacing of the game, which starts slow and gentle with players choosing between possible tile lays on various fairly empty cities. Eventually the first city is completed and ready to score, and from that point onwards there is a gathering sense of urgency as the cities get scored more frequently, you are starting to run out of tiles, and everything becomes urgent all at once. Phil won easily on 46 and I trailed badly, finishing on 19. I like this game a lot, and can't quite understand its low rating on BGG. Perhaps this is a result of its low profile as it has not been published in English. However all the components are language-free and there is a reasonable translation of the rules available on BGG. It is beautifully produced and it doesn't cost a lot (22 Euros). Highly recommended.

I played a Hammer of the Scots rematch with Neil last Wednesday. This time we chose the Bruce scenario and I took the Scots, who start the game heavily outnumbered but with the King already crowned and on the board. This scenario has a very different feel to the Braveheart one - without Edward I's overwintering ability the English effectively have to start again every year, marching a fresh levy back up into Scotland to have another go at penetrating the bottleneck into the highlands. I managed to keep Bruce and Galloway alive for several years and with the help of the Norse the Lowlands were kept in ferment for much of the game. Meanwhile of course I was using the King to clean up the Highlands. There were several big battles with stunning reversals of fortune, but Neil was never really able to halt the slow ratcheting progression of nobles declaring for Scotland. I think I was luckier than Neil with dice and cards, and drawing the Norse early helped a lot too. We got it all finished in 4 hours. First time in a long while that I have won a game of Hammer, and first time ever as the Scots.

I've just had an enjoyable weekend in Germany visiting my friends Bruce and Louise who live on a British Army camp near Dusseldorf.I especially enjoyed the half hour I spent in a big toy-shop in Aachen browsing through their shelves of boardgames (while my god-daughter Eleanor was downstairs having her face painted). The shop was called Teddy& Co, and it looked like a big chain a bit like The Entertainer in the UK. The difference was the amount of space given over to boardgames - about a third of the 1st floor - with lots and lots of serious games on the shelves, and two large tables with a big box of demo copies for customers to try out. What a contrast with toy shops back home where games marketing is limited to a sad pile of boring crap like Cleudo, Monopoly and Trivial Pursuit at the back of the shop. No wonder the average Brit thinks that boardgames are boring given the pathetic dross they are exposed to on the high street.

I bought Flandern 1302 on impulse for 22 Euros and downloaded English rules when I got home. I will let you know how it plays as soon as I find out.

Well I just got burned by an Internet scam. I have always prided myself on being too clever for this sort of thing, but I fell for it today. I received an email from EBay (apparently) which started:

In an effort to protect your eBay account security, we have suspended your account until such time that it can be safely restored to you. We have taken this action because your password may have been compromised. Although we cannot disclose our investigative procedures that led to this conclusion, please know that we took this action in order to maintain the safety of your account.

Then it gave me a list of alleged security breaches and asked me to follow a link to EBay where I would reconfirm my account details. I actually got as far as entering my credit card number and security code before I noticed the lack of a padlock at the bottom of the browser. Looked up to the address bar and saw I wasn't at EBay at all - I was at gtman.co.kr. Damn! Just glad I am not so thick that I didn't notice in time to cancel the card before any harm was done. But I still feel stupid......

Enjoyed a Struggle of Empires rematch with the Farnborough guys last night. This time I got completely stuffed, and Keith, who played very carefully, won by a good margin. I'm not exactly sure where I went wrong this time, but here are some ideas that I have been chewing over ruefully:

- I wasn't clear in my mind about whether I was focussed on Europe or the colonies.

- I bought too many fleets and not enough armies. And I lost quite a few of the armies in battle too.

- I let my unrest situation get out of hand. This wasn't intentional, it was partly to do with the number of battles I lost.

- My idea was to let other people do the fighting, and sneak second place in as many areas as possible. I wasn't really allowed to do this, I got attacked on numerous occasions when I was just minding my own business trying to earn a few honest points. These peace-loving Euro-gamers suddenly get very aggressive when you put a few simple combat rules in their hands!

- I didn't make enough use of the tiles. At the start of the game while other players were picking up strategic advantages like Militia or Mercenaries, I was pursuing a few short-term gains.

Great game, very enjoyable even though I was losing - there's always interesting stuff going on and you can always spoil someone's fun a bit with Pirates or Slave Revolt.....

I've been on a course this week (about planning Microsoft networks) at a company called Azlan, which was clearly started by a C S Lewis enthusiast. The classroms are named Octesian, Mavramorn, Restimar, Dawntreader, Cair Paravel etc. Romantic names for slightly soulless rooms where workaday stuff like authentication, remote access, encryption and routing protocols get discussed.

The canteen is not at all your average corporate food outlet. They don't seem to have been outsourced to some faceless catering giant for a start. It is staffed entirely by chubby middle-aged women with big smiles. The food is like your mum used to make. Every break time there is a big plate of freshly baked cakes or pastries or biscuits available, different every time as well. I've been holding out for days, eating the salad at lunchtime and taking fruit for the breaks (chubby middle-aged ladies don't really do fruit) but today I've caved in. I'm sampling all the tray-bakes, and I had fish, chips and mushy peas for lunch. I feel like I'm a schoolboy again.....

My son Phil is back home for a while, using my flat as a base while he looks for a job in London. This means I am slipping comfortably back into a foodie lifestyle which is doing my waistline no favours at all. Yesterday evening was a good example. I was commanded to pick up some tomatoes, some basil leaves, and three sweet potatoes on the way home. From which Phil produced this amazing, delicious dish featuring baked pastry slices topped with basil tomatoes and parma cheese, along with mashed sweet potato and salad, all washed down with a nice Cabernet Sauvignon. After which we sat on the sofa in an alcoholic haze and watched Rick Stein doing more cooking and eating. Don't know how much longer I can go on like this before I a) gain 3 stone b) run out of money or c) go down with gout. But it's fun while it lasts.

And talking of foodies, I discovered a nice blog today called Daily Bread.

Played Struggle of Empires yesterday evening over at Keith's. My initial impressions of this game are very positive. It is reminiscent of Empires of the Ancient World, with its simple map, confusing rules, three turns each divided into several rounds, a generic rather than specific historical situation, and a blending of Euro influence game and multi-player wargame mechanics. I think Struggle of Empires is a significant step forward from the earlier game. In particular, the alliance auction is a very clever mechanic which prevents the game from being a typical multiplayer beat-up-the-leader negotiation game, and pushes it more in the direction of El Grande or Web of Power.

There was quite a steep learning curve - for the first turn (or "War" as the game calls them) we were groping around in the dark. The game felt a lot more complex initially than its 5 page rulebook would indicate. There are an awful lot of options to choose from every time your round comes along, and it's hard to make those choices at first when you have no idea how they will play out. But by turn 2 we were starting to speed through the rounds more confidently, nevertheless time ran out and we had to wrap it up at 11:30 at the end of turn 2.

I was playing Britain and came in first with a big lead over the rest. I think this was partly because I grasped early on that the best way to score well is to come second in many areas rather than first in a few. Ironically the guys in the Farnborough group, who profess not to like wargames, did a lot more aggressive military plays than I did.

The components also endear the game to me, the graphic design gives a nice 18th Century flavour, and I like the simple stylized map where complicated things happen. I hope we will play this one again soon while it is still fresh in our minds.

Phil came over for a visit last weekend. After a classic walk on the Sussex Downs on Saturday, we sat down in the evening to play the Advanced Squad Leader Starter Kit, scenario S5 - Clearing Colleville. Phil as always played the Americans (indulging his "Band of Brothers" complex). The Americans have overwhelming superiority of numbers in this scenario, and Phil quickly assembled a big fire-group of 24 factors which made a short work of some of my key squads on the outskirts of the town. However they only have 5 turns to clear the town, and I was lucky with some of my rally rolls, and also got my own fire group working on his forward squads, while Phil was consistently unluck with is rally rolls. In the end 5 turns was no-where near enough.

Once again ASLSK proved to be an accessible and fun intro to the ASL world, with a compelling feeling of realism that gets you imaginatively involved with the game. Looking forward to Starter Kit #2.

I like the look of this (via Jonny Baker who else?) simplechurch: Something is happening across Britain today: a new kind of church is beginning to appear; increasing numbers of christians are starting to gather in homes, colleges and work places. Living out a 24-7 faith, they are missionally focused with a 'go to them' dynamic instead of a 'come to us' invitation. These churches are small, fluid, organic, reproducible and most of all simple; so simple that any believer would respond by saying "I could do that!"

There's a new boardgame blog Spiel, which, in spite of the German name, is UK based. Welcome aboard, Garry!

Out of the Wrapper
I have been acquiring far too many games lately. This is partly because of several pre-orders coming to fruition at the same time, and I also blame the GMT sale which was just too ridiculously cheap to turn down. As a result I have a backlog of new games I really want to play but haven't actually got round to reading the rules to yet.

• Revolution (Phalanx): This was a must-buy, simply because it has the words "Francis Tresham" on the box. The map and components are gorgeous, and the rules do not look too demanding. But I suspect that actually playing the game intelligently will be hugely demanding.
• Rommel in the Desert (columbia): Another beautiful production. It looks like my ideal wargame - concise rules, great subject, lots of short scenarios, fast moving, high depth/rules-weight ratio.
• Von Manstein's Backhand Blow (GMT): a traditional hex-wargame with some twists. Another one that I hope will sit within my high-interest/low-complexity target zone. I have fancied this game for a while (in spite of the vaguely obscene name) so I snapped it up in the GMT sale for £15 including shipping.
• This Accursed Civil War (GMT): I bought this in the sale too, but what actually arrived in the box was Thirty Years War. GMT gave their usual excellent response and are air-mailing the correct game out immediately. I've never found a horse-and-musket tactical game that I can enjoy, but hoping this might be it.
• Grand Illusion (GMT): I preordered this a while ago, and it is shipping this week. Ted Raicer seems to be incapable of producing a boring design, and he has made World War 1 his very own era. I hope this lives up to expectations, but I'm a bit disappointed to hear of map errata before it is even published.

You would think that should be it for a while, but as you can see my recent acquisitions are all wargames, so to redress the balance here are a few Euros that I still crave.

• YINSH (Rio Grande): components look good enough to eat, and looks like a deep, fascinating abstract game at a bargain price.
• 1825 (Tresham): I would like to introduce the Farnborough group to 18xx games and this is probably a kinder gentler way of doing it than taking 1830 along to the next session!
• Struggle of Empires (WarFrog): we will be playing this on Thursday but I already have a feeling I will love it.

So what shall I put on EBay to make room for all this new stuff?

• ThroneWorld: I don't like the board or the resource chits, and realistically I'm unlikely to ever play this.
• Western Front Tank Leader: just looks very old-fashioned these days.
• Triumph and Glory: I can't decide whether to sell this or give it another try with the new (Borodino) rules. The subject is a major hook, but is it just another Berg fiddle-fest?
• Thirty Years War: I like this game a lot, but I now have a newly arrived shrink-wrapped copy to sell!

Oh wow,Saba Douglas-Hamilton......what a girl. Look, forget the big cats, just keep that camera pointed at Saba, OK?

Whiskey River is the Most Inspirational Blog of 2004, and well deserved in my opinion. Such a simple format, but deeply nourishing whenever I dip in.

The Astronomy of Middle Earth is a detailed investigation of the astronomy of Tolkien's imaginary world. (via TajMahalFred)

I've finally updated Member Profile on BoardGameGeek with details of all my games. I think I have included nearly every game I own, and rated everything I have played. Notice the nice bell curve! I have tried not to give everything 7 or above, which means that some games I quite like are only given 6 or even 5. I have also been posting a few game session reports in an attempt to earn enough geek gold for one of those avatar thingies. And yes, maybe I do need to get out more.....

I had another epic game of Europe Engulfed (1941 Campaign Game) with Dave last weekend. 16 hours in total over Saturday and Sunday - I have to say I was a bit jaded by the end. Especially as I lost.

I was playing the Germans, and I confess I was out to teach Dave a lesson. Last time we played (Dave was the Germans) he let it be known that he thought the game was unbalanced in favour of the Allies. So I had been reading all the strategy tips I could lay my hands on, determined to show him that this much-loved wargame is in fact very well-balanced indeed. I was ready to show him how Barbarossa should be done. Or so I thought....

Hubris and Nemesis. I didn't even take Moscow. And although I got as far as the Don river, that was fairly short-lived. That winter attrition combined with the emergency conscription and the arrival of the Russian elite units is really punishing. And by mid-1942 Dave had got a foot-hold in Pas-deCalais which I never managed to dislodge - and the effort to do so diverted vital troops and WERPS from Russia. (My one real caveat about this game is that it seems strangely easy for the Allies to launch opportunistic "snap" invasions of Europe very early in the war - doesn't quite gel with what I've read of history and the enormous preparatons required for D-Day.)

So yes, I admit it, there is a steep learning curve for the Germans in this game, but I am determined to climb it. A one-map 1941 scenario would help a lot, so that I could practice without setting up the two tables needed for the full game. Perhaps I could adapt Rick Young's 1942 scenario. It's a great game, and although I felt jaded on Sunday, by Wednesday I'm feeling hungry again for the next one.....

Blue vs Gray is a unique strategic wargame which I really like. I don't get many opportunities to play it sadly. The Wargamer have only just got around to reviewing it (is it even still in print?) but they seem to like it too: Each card type deals a different ability that ensures that no two games are going to be alike – different maps, different orders of battle and leaders, different effects and bonuses – all makes the Civil War eminently replayable. I can't stress enough how fascinating this is; it's a big draw to come back to this title multiple times.

Does anyone have any ideas for a new strapline? "Boardgame geeks of..." was appropriate when I lived in Salisbury and belonged to a gaming group there, but seems less appropriate now that I am the only living gamer (as far as I know) in Farnham.

Guardian Unlimited | Columnists | How can religious people explain something like this?: Earthquakes and the belief in the judgment of God are, indeed, very hard to reconcile. However, no religion that offers an explanation of the world can avoid making some kind of an attempt to fit the two together. And an immense earthquake like the one that took place off Sumatra on Sunday inevitably poses that challenge afresh in dramatic terms.

Howls of outrage about the new look to be placed in the comments for this posting. Thanks.

This very useful QuickStart for Brettspielwelt is rather hard to find from the front page - I only reached it with a Google search.

Fantasy Flight's new card game Senator looks intriguing - is this the long dreamed-of playable alternative to Avalon Hill's classic monster Republic of Rome?

I got completely stuffed at Scrabble again by Gavin last night. He was over 100 points ahead of me at the end. Very disheartening - for years I could reliably beat him every time without too much effort. Gavin reckons his new form is the result of 9 months of unemployment spent watching Countdown.

Kris Burm is the designer of Gipf, Yinsh etc and describes himself as the world's only professional abstract game designer. There's an interesting interview with him at MindZine. He sounds discouraged: Often they don't even know how a game works anymore; they just look at the box, turn it around once or twice, shake it a few times and ask themselves aloud: 'can I sell it?'.

PS I am getting really tired of this template. Look for big changes in the near future.....

Feeling a bit conflicted about my blogroll. I've been freshening up my links a bit today, and decided to split out game-related blogs and websites from the rest. I've always resisted this, on theological grounds. No wait, bear with me. I never wanted to split out links to Christian bloggers and websites because this smacked of putting my faith in a separate box that doesn't connect with the rest of my life. So I decided to leave them all mixed up with the other stuff for people to stumble across by accident perhaps. But now I've split out my gaming links, why not the faith-related stuff as well. The way it is now, doesn't it look as if gaming is more important to me than my faith? Maybe. But this is a gaming blog more than anything else, so I think it makes sense to pull out the gaming stuff in my blogroll. Meanwhile my faith stays mixed up, yeast-like, with all the other stuff. For now.....

Do you think I worry about this stuff too much?

I had an enjoyable gaming session last night with Les, Keith and Trevor. We started off with San Juan, where I got off to a shaky start, investing in violet buildings before I had got my production sorted out, and came in last. Discussing what to play next we discovered that both Keith and I had brought a copy of Amun Re along, so it was obviously meant to be. When we started I felt as if I was making the same sort of mistake all over again - I forgot to buy farmers for my first area, I was so desperate to get pyramids built, and for the rest of the game I seemed to be short of money compared to the others. On reflection I suspect this is why I won - the other 3 were so focussed on making money, which they did very successfully, that they were in danger of forgetting about victory points. It was simple things like getting complete sets of pyramids and winning or at least tying the most-pyramids contests that gave me a big lead by the end. It was a bit of a skinflints' game - again reflecting everyone's financial focus - with generally very low prices paid in the land auctions, and small sacrifices to Amun Re. Great game this, I want to play it lots more.

Possibly the funniest Session Report ever (but you do need to have played Amun Re to get it): The following is a translation of an ancient Egyptian text found in a crude clay pot buried long, long ago on the banks of the Nile. Carbon dating of the ink on the papyrus indicates that this was written sometime in the neighborhood of August 8, 2004 B.C., possibly at 3:15 in the afternoon.

(via Mikko Saari)

ASL Starter Kit 2 is now available for preorder!

ASL Starter Kit #2 - GUNS! features the ordnance and light anti-tank weaponry of the Advanced Squad Leader series. ASL Starter Kit #2 contains the refined rulebook from ASL Starter Kit #1 with new rules added and old rules clearly marked so that no rereading is required!

ASL Starter Kit #2 is a complete game, everything you need to play the scenarios in the game is in the box!

ASL Starter Kit #1 is not required to play ASL Starter Kit #2, although players may wish to own the maps and scenarios from that module.

moleskinerie: Moles need skins too: A few days ago, I learn of this website, moleskinerie: legends and other stories. I go there, of course. It’s a weird amalgam of images of other people’s moleskine notebooks and huckstering for crap like a clock implanted in the belly of a Buddha. I detect the spoor of an online cult of the moleskine.

The gaming situation continues to improve, thanks to the Farnborough group. I met up with them again the week before last to play Modern Art - which was new to me, believe it or not. I got stuffed, of course - this is the archetypal Knizia game, subtle, carefully balanced, deep. Needs lots of play to get good at.

Then last week I met Les at the Plumes in Crondall (excellent pub, lovely beer) to play two-player Euros. We did a couple of rounds of Scarab Lords and then San Juan. Les cheerfully put up with me winning everything. I had played San Juan before at BayCon but thanks to Les's patient explanation I actually started to understand the game this time round.

And of course with Gavin at home for a few weeks I recently received the obligatory Scrabble challenge. The days when I used to beat him every time are well and truly past - I never got a look in this time.

They finally arrived at the weekend - with some birthday money my Mum had sent me I ordered a batch of classical CDs from Europadisc. I am really enjoying unpacking these and listening my way through them:

Bach - St Matthew Passion, Gardiner, Archiv
Brahms - Complete Symphonies , Günter Wand, RCA Classics
Beethoven/Mendelssohn - Violin Concertos, Munch, Heifetz, RCA
Rachmaninov - Piano Concerto No.2, Ashkenazy, Kondrashin, DECCA
Beethoven Symphonies 5 & 7 - Kleiber, VPO, DG

The Kleiber in particular has lived up to expectations - I knew this recording had a special reputation but Beethoven 5 is so familiar I wasn't expecting too much. In the event it raised the hairs on the back of my neck.

It helps that I have been fiddling with my hifi. One of the (few) advantages of being single is that you can move your hifi when you want to. It is now set up in the optimum position opposite the sofa with the speakers nicely spaced. And it sounds superb. It is getting on in years, nearly 20 years old now, and it still sounds great. Mission CD player and amp, with Ruark speakers, it was a substantial and not very wise purchase when I was a young man with a growing family, but gosh it has given me a lot of pleasure in the years since.

In another conversation at the weekend, Esther was communicating to me her enthusiasm for the School of Theology run by Holy Trinity Brompton. It sounds very appealing, as a follow-on from Workshop, with perhaps a different perspective on the same issues, and I am seriously considering applying for next year.

I have been reading Jim Wallis's "A Call to Conversion", a deeply challenging book which is pushing me to reconsider my aversion to "radical Christianity". At Workshop this weekend Sue pointed me to the Sojourners website which has lots of thought-provoking material. Rather US-centric, but required reading.

Have a look at my new website for Street Children of Peru. I admit the design is not...ahem...completely original, but I think it works quite well:

For a boy abandoned and living on the street there is only one goal - to survive however he can. He will turn to begging, stealing, scavenging and prostitution. Street Children of Peru works with Scripture Union of Peru to break this spiral of desperation.

Rob McGovern has started a new blog called Spiritual Exploration: which I intend to use to look at Church, belief sets and structures of denominations and what can be learnt from them, Church (including looking at house / peace churches), faith, bible readings, religion and anything else that I think fits in that particular realm.

It's been a bit of a gaming drought for me lately, but last weekend really made up for it - the heavens opened and down poured the rain!

The weekend started on Friday (my birthday) with a trip to Salisbury and a very pleasant lunch with Phil at the Lemon Tree. The food was great and Phil was on good form. Then I picked Dave up from Amesbury and drove over to Cardiff in the gathering dark. Nightmare queueing on the M4 from the bridge onwards, and Nick's directions were only moderately helpful due to his mixing up of "right" and "left", but we reached his flat in the end, only to be immediately dragged out again by Nick to his local pub, where we drank a nice local mild and chatted with a scary Welsh ex-para about rugby and Iraq.

Saturday was a gaming epic, one of those occasions that will stick in my mind for a long time. 14 hours of Europe Engulfed, living on breadsticks, wine, and takeaway leftovers, with only a couple of 15 minute breaks. It was marvellous. I took the Western Allies, Nick (newish to the game) was the Russians, and Dave played the Axis. We were playing the 1941 Campaign Game, so Dave had a lot of fun the first couple of turns carving through Nick's army. For some reason he kept attacking all through the mud and snow of winter, severely damaging his own strength without significantly hurting the Russians at all. Nick took his emergency conscription and with the arrival of the Siberian elites started to fight back. He needed a bit of encouragement from me to get aggressive as he was still feeling nervous from his 1941 experience, but once he got going the Germans found themselves in desperate straits.

Meanwhile I was making a couple of strategic mistakes - forgetting my Alexandria income, and as a result not taking my first ASW build, and mistaking the weather in Africa at a crucial point which robbed me of an early chance to clear out the Italians with a Special Action. In the end it took me a whole year to collapse Italian morale. Then we waded ashore at an undefended Salonica, and were within an inch of taking Ploesti before Dave got his defence organized. By 1943 the Russians were pocketing large groups of German blocks on the Polish border, while I exploited Dave's slack defence of France with an uncontested landing at Bordeaux, followed by an armoured breakout which had my units rattling around Germany while his armies in France fought to regain supply.

Exhaustion finally stopped us 12:30 and November 1943, but it was pretty clear by then that Dave had lost.

Next morning we got up at 9, ate an enormous cooked breakfast courtesy of Nick, then played Amun Re. I was really pleased to get a game of this at last, and it lived up to its promise. A really intriguing enjoyable game. Dave won. Then it was Euphrat & Tigris in which I just scraped a win (it went to the 2nd tie-break with Dave). It was 2:30 by then and time to leave the Welsh sunshine behind and drive home into the English rain and another working week.........

Richard Berg, designer of the Great Battles of History game series, likes the new Alexander movie: The Good News is that the extended Gaugamela scene is far and away the best - and most accurate - scene of its kind I have ever seen on a movie screen. This is a spectacular piece of visual movie making, and also a remarkable attempt to show How and Why things happened in an ancient battle. This, alone, will keep you happy for the next 2 hours . . . Wanna see just how a phalanx worked? Go see 'Alexander'.

Last night I met up with a new and very genial group of gamers just down the road in Farnborough. This contact only came about through nimrods - so this site has been good for something at last. We played Puerto Rico, a game which I enjoy but have never done well at. I came 3rd out of 4 but wasn't too unhappy with this - I was only 4 points behind the winner. Probably my best PR performance ever - that says something doesn't it?

This weekend it's Workshop and tomorrow I am giving (half of) the first lecture of the day. Subject: "Gospel of Peace" which is a bit ironic from a wargamer but hey......

Neil Gaiman once wrote an essay on cities that became embedded in Sim City 2000: Occasionally I idle time away by wondering what cities would be like, were they people. Manhattan is, in my head, fast-talking, untrusting, well-dressed but unshaven. London is huge and confused. Paris is elegant and attractive, older than she looks. San Francisco is crazy, but harmless, and very friendly.

Saturday's party went really well. I spent the afternoon preparing crostini toppings and Caesar salad as guests started to trickle in - Gavin and the Baron arrived first at about 3pm, followed by Nick and Dani who had already made a start on the drinking, as they stopped in at a local pub on their way from the station. By 7pm I had a crowd of hungry partygoers who I finally released into the kitchen with feeble admonitions to "remember there are lots of other people still to arrive!"

I was really impressed with how many people turned up and their willingness to make longish journeys to be there - thanks everyone!

As the normal people gradually left for home we were left with a few die-hard gamers. I retired at 1:30am after a hard-fought game of Perudo, but others went on to play Settlers which only finished at 4am, with a rare victory for Nick!

I was up at 10am next morning cooking breakfast for 8 people, then it was off to the pub for lunch with the last few dregs of the party. What a great, sociable way to spend a weekend, and an effective antidote to 46th birthday blues (which was the intention all along.)

Here are a few photos of some of the lovely partygoers.

MMP have done the defensive fire example from the ASL Starter Kit as a very nice Flash demo.

I have this theory that you can tell a lot about the psyche of a European nation by the shape of its sanitary-ware. Take Austrian WCs for example, with that weird tray which offers up your soilage for examination before you flush it away. And the first thing I noticed whan I arrived here was the shape of the Spanish urinals - two sort-of knee scoops so you can really get up close, and big embracing wings to hide you from your neighbors. Are these seemingly macho Spanish men actually paranoid about letting other guys see their johnson??

And yes, there´s also a lot of other good stuff to see here in Seville apart from the urinals.....

I'm off to Seville tomorrow with Mum. I can see it all - drunken nights in the tapas bars, crazy flamenco dancing in the small hours, screaming for blood in the stands at the bullring.....

Games: The Cultural Elaboration of Play:

Cultural artifacts, of all sorts, begin at first as 'traditional culture' and, as means of replication spread, eventually become 'designed culture.' Thus, cuisine begins in traditional cusines such as Mandarin or Escoffieresque French, and ends in modern fusion--chefs inventing novel dishes by comining cooking techniques and ingredients in a fashion that would astound and possibly disgust the chefs of the 19th century. The story begins as oral story-telling, and ends in a publishing industry that produces tens of thousands of novels every year (most with scant readers)--not to mention film, experimental theater, and the rest. The game begins with slowly-evolving folk games, and ends with the vigorous spread of innovative game styles. Culture begins with tradition, and ends in a an artistic medium.

So games are cultural artifacts. What basic human trait, then, do they complexify, as all cultural artifacts complexify some fundamental human impulse--cuisine with food, for example?"

Career tip: Don't accuse your boss of nicking stuff.

I played Hammer of the Scots with Neil on Tuesday evening. He was new to the game (and to wargaming generally) but had conscientiously read through the rules 3 times. I warned him how difficult it is for a beginner to win as the Scots, but ancestral solidarity dictated that he play them anyway. Neil is a veteran Diplomacy player so he has a sound tactical brain - that's my excuse anyway for the fact that he won! Right from the start he was very careful to avoid battles unless he had a good chance of winning them. I suffered from Edward's absence for much of the game. Towards the end a "tipping point" was reached where Scots recuitment overtook my ability to march troops up from England every year, and in the final year my position just crumbled. Very enjoyable evening but a real brain-burner - we both reported "hang-overs" next morning.

ScrappleFace: Father of Deconstructionism Dies, If 'Death' Means Anything: In lieu of flowers, friends of Mr. Derrida are urged to devote their lives to convincing at least one young person that there is nothing to which it is worth devoting one's life. (via lollardy)

eBay is weird. I wasn't really expecting much from my copy of Wooden Ships & Iron Men, after all, it is pretty abundant and not that interesting (in my view). Sure enough it sat there on £4.99 until within 2 hours of the deadline, then everyone started bidding at once and it reached £27.70!

Cool!

What can I sell next? I know - Rommel in the Desert. I am aware that Columbia are about to reprint the game, but someone may be happy to pick up an earlier version for a fraction of what it will cost to buy and ship it from Canada.

I am suspicious of the New Revised Standard version, with its determination to render the Bible into politically correct English. (I'm an ESV man myself.) Walter Wink - the eminent theologian - thinks otherwise:

All these excellences (and there are too many to count) will probably be eclipsed in the public mind by the NRSV’s treatment of sexist language. Be ready for the argument that the translators have violated the Greek text in order to curry the favor of feminists. That is all bluster. The care with which this part of the mandate has been achieved is everywhere evident. The fact is that sexist translations are inaccurate. To use "men" when women are clearly included is not just insensitive, it is incorrect.

Finally - FINALLY - after a 2 month wait, I got airborne today. 11 flights, doing progressively more and more scary things such as speed bar, big ears, and - on the last two flights of the day - asymmetric tucks! Now from my reading of the paragliding forum over at Xtreme.com, I have come away with the fixed idea that an asymmetric tuck = death. So imagine how I felt when my instructor (Andy) told me to deliberately induce one.....

But in the event it went surpisingly well. These modern DHV 1 wings are so bomb-proof, it just dropped gently groundwards and swung towards the collapsed side a little, but as soon as I let go of the risers it went "phloop!" and reinflated itself immediately. How could that kill anyone?

Andy told me afterwards he was a little surprised how enthusiastically I went for the tuck and that approx 30% of my wing had been collapsed! Woops - went a bit mental there. But paragliding is like that - you are either totally frozen with fear or ridiculously over-confident. Often experiencing both states of mind in the same half hour.....

Does anyone want a free ticket to see Siegfried at English National Opera on 27 November? I have decided I would rather spend a weekend in Cardiff playing Europe Engulfed with Nick and Dave than watch the next episode in this incoherent, soulless production. But it may appeal to someone out there! First one to contact me gets it.

Well I'm not sure about this eBay selling lark. My two games went for £23 altogether. By the time I've paid commission to eBay and PayPal, and accidentally undercharged for postage, I've netted about £19. With all the hassle of photographing and weighing them, setting up the sales on eBay (which I admit was quite fun actually), parcelling them up and queuing in the Post Office for half an hour to post them, I'm just about making minimum wage! I've got Wooden Ships & Iron Men up this week, after that I think I will review the games-culling strategy.

I wonder if there is not such a good market for wargames in the UK as there is in the US, so you get an inflated idea of their value if you look at what they are fetching on eBay over there?

Had a great time playing the ASL Starter Kit scenario 1, "Retaking Vierville", with Phil over the weekend. I was the Germans and had a really difficult time against the firepower of the American Airborne. This was a lot more fun than I had expected from reading the rules, which are fairly impenetrable. The rulebook is short however - less than 10 pages - and generously illustrated with very useful examples of play with big full-colour diagrams. The most useful thing was an unofficial play-aid downloaded from BoardGameGeek. So many thanks to "mbtanker" whoever you are - without this we would have really struggled.

Phil - who hated Memoir44 - thought that this was "the real thing". I think we're both in serious danger of getting hooked.

Form an orderly queue please for the first two items in my eBay games clearance: Krieg! and Stellar Conquest.

Sniff. I'm going to miss you two......

From a state of total ignorance, I have now switched over the last couple of weeks to obsessively anticipating the arrival of War of the Ring, even going so far as to reserve a copy at the Aldershot Games Shop. This is all thanks to a tipoff from Iain C, which just goes to show the danger of reading gamers' weblogs. This game looks like a beautiful presentation, with really clever gameplay features like the way the various free peoples of Middle Earth get reluctantly drawn into the war, and the way Frodo's quest is handled so that his progress is often hidden from both sides. If you're a Tolkien fan it's very hard to read an after-action report like this one without being drawn in - it reads like an "alternative history" of Tolkien's War but nevertheless an exciting and plausible one. And I get the feeling that this game was generated more as a book-spinoff than a movie-spinoff. IT MUST BE MINE!

I am learning the rules to Sword of Rome at the moment and working through the example of play. I'm really impressed so far - this is a 4-player card-driven wargame with very similar mechanics to that old classic Hannibal. The period is very appealing to me. And this level of complexity is just right for me. I got quite disillusioned with Barbarossa to Berlin, a promising evolution of the card-driven wargame, whose rules turned out to be painfully full of fiddly exceptions, and which underwent several major rules revisions in the year or so after it was released. The card deck in my set is liberally plastered with amendments on yellow stickies. No fun.

Sword of Rome was a P500 pre-order from GMT, so arrived on the doorstep as a Christmas-like surprise gift from my months-ago self. P500 is a bit habit-forming. There are some very interesting new titles on the list at the moment, and I have put my name down for 3 of them: Grand Illusion, Empire of the Sun and Clash of Giants 2. This is in addition to Twilight Struggle and Command and Colours: Ancients which I ordered earlier this year. Oh and there's Rommel in the Desert from Columbia too. I'm feeling quite exposed on the preorders front.

Which is why I am contemplating becoming an EBay seller and having a proper clearout of some of my games. Both to generate some cash to fund these new purchases and to clear some shelf space, as my collection has already overspilled its bookshelf into the airing cupboard. And you know I have so many games sitting there that I never play and probably never will again. Why am I hanging onto them?

For your interest here is a list of the ones that I may give the chop, along with my estimate of their resale value and my reason for selling:

The Napoleonic Wars (£30) - always leads to quarrels.
Squad Leader plus 2 gamettes (£20) - too many rules, fiddly bits.
Triumph and Glory (£35) - usual shoddy effort from Berg.
West Front Tank Leader (£10) - just looks shabby by today's standards.
RoadKill (£20) - far too long for a joke game.
Krieg (£15) - will never play again now I have Europe Engulfed.
ThroneWorld (£20) - not sure, maybe should hang onto this.
Advanced Civilization (+ AH Civ) (£60) - I've seen the light. Civ was better.
Vinci (£15) - always ends with recriminations.
Medieval (£20) - another Berg rush job.
Barbarossa to Berlin (£20) - too many errata. EE trumps it.
7th Fleet (£15) - needs more time, table-space and plexiglass than I possess.

Played two games of Memoir44 with Phil this week. I thought he would love it, as he loved Up Front! and has watched Band of Brothers through about 12 times. We played the St Mere l'Eglise and Sword Beach scenarios. However I made the mistake of beating him both times, and I was surprised when he went all nimrod on me, and started complaining about the game being implausible and historically inaccurate. He was particularly irritated by the ability of infantry to pick off tanks at 3 hex range. In my view his defeats had more to do with his habit of leaving his men standing around in the open having a fag-break next door to towns full of heavily armed Germans.....

Just for the record my recent Hornet Leader campaign ended ignominiously, with me being relieved from command after five missions because I had lost 4 pilots KIA, and their planes as well. How unreasonable! Everyone makes mistakes.

There's a good interview with Ted Raicer over at wargamer.com, where he talks about his latest World War 1 design for GMT, Grand Illusion, which sounds very interesting indeed. At the end of the interview Ted says something I firmly believe myself - we are living through a Golden Age of boardgaming.

Just that I think that our hobby today has a degree of finesse in the artwork and the design, even in the quality of play…some people play these games online enormous numbers of times. I know people who have played Paths of Glory hundreds of times. We talk about the 70’s and the early 80’s as the Golden Age of Wargaming. There was SPI and there was Avalon Hill. Certainly in terms of numbers of people in the hobby and the money involved that was the Golden Age. But I think in terms of the quality of product, the look of the games, and, as I said, the quality of the play, this is probably the Golden Age of Wargaming.

I picked up Memoir44 a few days ago to cheer myself up - this is the benefit/danger of living only 5 miles from the Aldershot game shop. I played solo through the Operation Cobra scenario last night and really enjoyed myself. It was a tense situation with the Americans needing to push forward to get the victory locations, and the Germans slowly pulling back through difficult bocage terrain and hitting back with their elite panzers when able to do so without overexposing them. I loved BattleCry, even though I have no great interest in the ACW period, but I think I will love Memoir44 even more. Can't wait to get a real opponent - Phil is coming home on Sunday in a weakened post-typhoid state, he'll do.

Much as I admire GMT it is a shame that they are sitting on the Command & Colours: Ancients design. Doesn't look like they will be able to publish for a year or two, and then it will be only cardboard standup figures.

I would love to see a Command & Colours: Lord of the Rings game. I wonder if anyone has considered that yet. Or I could just go down to Games Workshop for some figures and design my own...........

My Dad died suddenly last Friday. I expect I will get back to blogging again when I am feeling more cheerful, but it will probably be fairly quiet here for a few weeks.

If I have to visit many more sick family members I think I will scream. First my Dad, then Gavin and now Phil. How come I never get to be the one sitting in a hospital bed getting visitors and sympathy?

Not much gaming news lately. Although my last posting was slightly tongue in cheek, it is true that paragliding has taken over a bit.

Nevertheless, in spare moments I have been indulging in the guilty pleasure of playing Hornet Leader. Why guilty? Well, it's a solitaire game about the Americans bombing things - mostly Middle Eastern things - and I just don't feel very comfortable with that vision of the world these days. But all the same, this is a very fine game indeed, despite its early 90's vintage. I am playing the Iran campaign, and lost two, yes two, of my pilots on the first mission. That left me with a lot of victory points to make up in the remaining 5 missions, but I got off to a good start in mission 2.

You should see the prices that this little classic is fetching on eBay these days. No wonder.

Well after two amazing days I have come to the conclusion that paragliding is bloody dangerous. After about 20 flights dodging trees and fences, and featuring alarmingly hard contacts with the ground, I am convinced of this fact. Don't let anybody tell you otherwise. But I am worryingly unworried about it. The incredible, dreamlike sensation of being airborne, inhabiting the breathing silence of the air like a bird, seems to be worth all. In fact, is there anything I would not sacrifice to this new addiction? Safety, life and limb? What good are they if I cannot fly? Money? A useless incumbrance unless spent on flying gear. My job and my home? If they are too far from the best flying sites then I will happily trade them in. Sunday worship? Well, gosh, it depends on the weather. The love of a good woman? If she is likely (as most are) to demand at some point "It's that hobby or me?", then I suppose I'll continue to live alone. My boardgames collection? Well.... you've got me there. But they may be seeing a bit less use than they used to....

Thursday 12th August 2004, about 9:30pm, at the Fox in the Bourne, Farnham: the end of a 20-year epoch.

Part of my evil strategy for keeping the boys cowed and submissive was always to play them at games but never let them win. Especially chess. Finally, after 20 years of chess humiliation, Phil has beaten me. Not just beaten me, thrashed me. I tried to warn him about the taboo against killing your own father, and to remember Oedipus, but all to no avail. It's over.

Not so much time then for gaming these days, but I still managed to fit in an epic game of Europe Engulfed with Dave last weekend. We started the 1942 scenario on Friday night, and continued through Saturday. The previous time that we played (at Hay-on-Wye) when my Allies heavily defeated Dave's Axis, Dave was heard to grumble that he didn't see how the Germans could have done any better. So it was very satisfying to take the Axis last weekend and soundly beat him again. Case proven I think - this scenario is balanced!

I kicked off in turn one with a successful grab of the Onega swamps. This of course choked off the flow of lend-lease to Russia, and prompted Dave to switch to a West-first strategy. Denmark was invaded before the close of 1942, but Dave never managed to clear it, and before the end of the game, after many turns of costly conflict, I was able to destroy his beachhead for a victory point. He also came ashore at Calais and later Normandy, but in spite of building fleet points nearly every turn he was hampered by the double supply cost of his Denmark force. In the East I was able to ride out the winter storms and managed to avoid a replay of Stalingrad.

It was really great fun for both of us, and I can't recommend Europe Engulfed highly enough to anyone who is at all interested in wargames.

I've been spending a lot of my free time paragliding just lately - well, not paragliding exactly, more like sitting around in a field under a baking sun, waiting for wind conditions to improve enough to make an actual flight possible. Sigh. Yes, it's a long process, I've actually spent 5 days up at Green Dragons paragliding school now, but have only actually completed about 3 days-worth of training. And several other days were booked only to call in at 7am and find the weather was not right. So - I'm a little discouraged I suppose, but still very motivated to continue, and with luck I hope to complete my Club Pilot before the summer is over.

I've never been to a blogmeet before, but here's one that might tempt me - the Greenbelt Bloggers Gathering.

I've just had an amazing and challenging couple of days at Green Dragons paragliding school. Today especially. The wind conditions were very light, meaning that I hardly got off the ground this week. Potentially a complete washout. But this morning a brilliant instructor called Steve gave me a museum piece to play with - an ancient square paraglider from the early days of the sport. He got me practising reverse launches with this thing, and the simple and forgiving nature of the wing allowed me to really build up confidence. In the afternoon I continued ground-handling practice with a couple of more modern paragliders - ADG Havanes - and found I was getting really confident keeping the wing under control. All I need now is to get back in the air again and my happiness will be complete.

There is something dreamlike about this whole business of learning to fly paragliders. It still seems like an impossible dream - because of the weather conditions I have hardly left the ground so far. But today I really began to realize that I am learning the skills that will very soon make it possible for me to fly properly. There's a combination of fear and intense longing sitting at the bottom of my stomach this evening. I feel like I'm at the threshold of something I have wanted for so long, but never really believed was possible for me......

OK it's a bit of an extreme way to get an opponent, but Gavin's appendicitis means that I now have a captive gaming partner at home. He can't move very fast you see, because of the stitches. Last night he was unable to get up before I had set up the Icehouse pieces for a game of HomeWorlds. Played it twice, capturing his home system with a big red star cruiser both times, then, desperate for revenge, Gav challenged me to Scrabble. It was a tough struggle - he got an early lead which I clawed back in the middle game, but had it snatched away by a 48 point power-play from Gav. Good fun. No rude words either, unusually.

Gavin got through his latest medical crisis. I spent most of yesterday in the East End of London, sitting beside his bed of pain at Newham General Hospital. After many delays he was finally wheeled into theatre at 4pm, and was out again by 6. What amazed me was how the operation produced an instant improvement - he was almost immediately back to his old chatty self, in spite of having a fresh 2in incision in his abdomen.
 
Full marks to his boozy friends, who turned out in force at his bedside - James, Steve, Nicky and various others I didn't recognize.

Kids! Who'd have them? After an exhausting few weeks I had pencilled in tomorrow as a much-needed day of rest and recuperation. But breaking news: Gavin is having an emergency appendectomy at Newham General Hospital tonight. So my day of recuperation will be spent rushing down to the East End to mop his brow etc.

And the reason I had to look for a new home for my bank details, is that the screen of my Psion 5mx just blew up again - for the third time. Enough is enough. It was a wonderful little machine in its heyday, and looked after me for about 6 years, but I've become become unwilling to shell out another £100 to repair the screen every time it goes. Fortunately it still works if you hold the clamshell open about an inch, which is uncomfortable for prolonged use, but gave me enough visibility to do what was necessary to get my vital data off it.

I know it's very uncool to blow the trumpet for a Microsoft product. But I've just started using Microsoft Money. Within the first week I have been made aware of about £75 sitting in my current account that I was unaware of. I'm still on an evaluation copy, but when I buy it it will cost me about £20. So it's already paid for itself 3 times over.....

Sitting at work writing scripts, listening to The Huckleberries and feeling homesick for Salisbury.......

Fantastic post from Maggi Dawn on the Trinity and worship (via Jonny Baker):

If a relational understanding of the Trinity is the context of our coming to worship, there is no longer a need to please or impress God in order for him to bless us with his presence. We do not need to create, as it were, a good enough party to wake God up and make him think he might join us. It's quite the other way around. The Trinity are already having a party of their own. There they are, communicating, loving, worshipping, laughing, dancing, always and forever, without a break. Grace, love and adoration flows constantly between the Godhead. And, if you look again at Rublev's icon, you'll see that there is a fourth, empty place at the table - an implicit invitation. Come and join us?

Here's another gallery, this time some blurry photos of the final afternoon at this year's Workshop. What a lovely bunch of people! Thanks for some great times everybody.

I went cold turkey on my caffeine addiction yesterday. This was prompted by an incident on Sunday - I was taking a breather from Workshop and dropped into the Clapham Junction Costa for a latte. Enjoyed it, but as I got up was hit by a wave of dizziness and nausea that lasted for at least an hour. Not good. Decided to cut the ties.

So I spent yesterday in a sleepy headachy haze, dutifully sipping Redbush or mint tea. Went home, ate, lay down in bed slept for 11 hours. Feel a bit more normal this morning and managed to tough out my breakfast craving for a cup of tea. Hope this will get easier....

ConsimWorld is going to a subscription-based service. I've spent a lot of time over the years reading ConsimWorld postings, and occasionally contributing too, but I'm not sure I want to pay for the privilege. With BoardGameGeek thriving there are other ways to get the game info fix I crave.

Here's a new photo gallery of boardgamegeeky goings on at Hay-on-Wye last weekend. (Oh great, now they've changed Blogger so that it frigs around with my HTML without my permission! That just about puts the tin hat on it. I hate Google and Yahoo. A plague on both your houses!)

I used to love my Oddpost account. It was so cool, and noone else knew about it, and it had the best spam-nailing algorith on the planet.

But from now on it's not Oddpost, it's Yahoo. And that's just not cool any more.

Well, NimrodCon has been and gone. Just got back, exhausted, and after gorging on Chinese takeaway food (were we just hungry or did I need to prove to myself that we are really back in a civilized country where you can get food after 5:30pm?) I am now ready to report how it went.

Pretty good really.

There was a strange syndome that affected Simon, Phil and myself, the symptoms of which were, after driving to an adjacent country to meet up with a bunch of boardgamers for a long weekend, the patient finds that he does not actually feel like playing boardgames. Sadly Simon did not recover from this. Phil managed a few rounds of Lord of the Ring: the Confrontation and Railway Rivals. And I confronted my disease head-on by playing Europe Engulfed (1942 scenario) with Dave. Eight hours hard graft, much of which, weirdly, was played before an audience. Quite a few of the company seemed to find it an enthralling spectator sport. At certain key moments, for example my big Summer 1943 offensives that sealed Dave's Stalingrad pocket forever, you could have heard a pin drop. Being watched really added to the pressure, and it was the most intense wargaming experience I've had for a while. Gratifyingly, I won. Launching a 1942 invasion in Belgium seems to be a workable - if hair-raising - approach.

Other highlights were enjoying Phil's wonderful cooking, walking the ridges of the Black Mountains in showery weather, and playing Zendo in pub (the excellent Kilvert Arms). Thanks to Dave, Nick, Danni, John, Steve, Robin, Simon, Phil and the Celtic Lodge for making it a great break.

So now we know what to think about religion too. Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Guide to British religions:

Are you a Zoroastrian? What do Catholics, Sikhs and Hindus believe? Find out with our guide the main religions practised in the UK today. You can find guides, important dates and links simply by clicking on the religions below.

Nice idea, but you might pick up some odd ideas. For example, the Charismatic Renewal are very keen on celebrating Epiphany, Ash Wednesday, and Ascension Day for example. Really?? (Thanks Rob for the link)

Nice review of Memoir 44 at The Wargamer:

Old plastic army men never die; they just get lost under the couch. The army man is a resilient little figure that rarely fails to command the attention of young and old alike. Platoons of plastic have a way of drawing the eye and triggering an urge to make machine gun sounds; it’s practically a reflexive response for some.

It's a pain really - I had decided not to get this for a while in a bid to cut down expenditure on new games. But having read this rave review I've now got the cravings all over again....

Very interesting review of Knizia's Blue Moon at the Games Journal:

Blue Moon effectively offers a game with the versatility of Magic, but with the wallet-crunching collectibility of those games tempered somewhat. While there has been considerable overlap between the worlds of board gamers and collectible card game (CCG) players, it is probably fair to say that there is a certain amount of antipathy towards trading card games from many players of 'German-style' games. The apparent rule that the CCG player who buys the most wins the most, and the need to purchase and trade to explore certain strategies or tactics, can seem bizarre. While I would argue that there are also many good points to such games, the clear influence of collectible card games on Blue Moon will add an interesting element to the debate, as this non-collectible game comes not just from the workshop of one of the most prolific of board game designers, but a man who is on record as a skeptic of the CCG format for games.

Finally, some substantial gaming to report. Phil came home on Saturday, and we started as we mean to go on with lots of two-player conflict, for example Lord of the Rings: the Confrontation. The Dark side kept winning, until at last Phil figured out how to win with the Good guys.

Then on Sunday I went over to the Alder Valley Games Society where I played some more LotR:tC (shamelessly pinching Phil's strategy insights) until more people turned up and I was introduced to RoboRally. What a great game, a really good idea cleanly implemented. I did terribly, managing to program myself down a ventilation shaft, with no help from my opponents - not once but twice. Really enjoyable fun.

I had much more mixed feelings about Duel of the Ages. Fiddly, fiddly, fiddly! The interlocking map boards were badly warped in David's (new) copy, making the clever jigsaw idea totally unworkable. Trying to manouevre the fiddly little player markers over this warped wobbly and disconnected surface was enough to raise anyone's blood pressure. (Just emphasises to me how far the Americans are behind Germany these days in game production standards.) OK the core mechanics - basically a skirmish wargame - are solid enough, but the weird scenario is very very strange, and seems to be totally unexplained in the rules booklet. What the heck is going on? Genghis Khan running around with a laser rifle taking pot shots at Annie Oakley?? What are these towers? What is going on with the labyrinths? What does it all mean?? Not convinced, though I might possibly play it again, especially if someone figures out how to flatten the playing surface.

Wargameroom.com -- Real-time Internet Wargaming!: Wargameroom.com is a website devoted to the real-time play of sophisticated boardgames over the Internet. Programs now available for BtB, EE, H:RC, PoG, UF, WtP, and WW

I downloaded and had a quick play with the Europe Engulfed module. OK it has a somewhat 1980s interface, but it's pretty amazing to be able to play a complex game like this online at all.

I met up with an old schoolmate last night, a guy that I haven't seen for oh.... 28 years. We talked about all sorts of things of course, but along the way Laurence confirmed Phil's favourite theory, that "You need to get a dog, Dad. Chicks go for guys with a dog." Ironically Laurence, because he is a happily married family man, is in a position to own a dog, and reports that he has discovered this whole dog-walking subculture which apparently is rich in nice-looking women who think he is a great guy because he looks after his dog. Ironic isn't it that I, who actually need to meet these nice dog-walking girls, am not in a position to own a dog because of my single life-style.

OK I admit it - I've been exploring the Wizards of the Coast website, where I found this article with some good advice that is applicable to all kinds of boardgaming, not just Magic. Forgotten Lore: Mind Over Magic:

The great players all compete with discipline and mastery over their emotions. Any player can win if he or she gets a great draw, or if an opponent is mana-hosed. It takes a great player to overcome a poor draw to claim a victory. Within the playing community, there are many ways to describe various facets of this ability: the Jedi mind trick, the good-player draw, or most often, luck. What is seldom recognized is that good players seem to get lucky more often because of their inner game. First, they build their deck to minimize the impact of a lousy draw. Second, they play with calm discipline even when things aren't going their way. Again, the focus is not on the almighty win, but on being wholly present in the game. The distinction might be a fine one, but I believe it holds nonetheless.