Keith came over yesterday evening for a game of 1825: Unit 3. This one is set in Scotland and is specifically designed for 2 players. Because I opted to spend £220 on private companies, Keith got a 60% share in the Caledonian Railway, which proved to be a real money spinner. Neither of us were very aggressive about pushing the pace, so the Caledonian hung onto its fleet of 2-trains for much of the game, and every time it paid out Keith was getting a 60/40 advantage over me in cash and share price gains too. I got the rules about company offer sequencing slightly wrong - I thought the second company offered had to be NBR which has difficulties getting going until the 3-trains come out. We played for about two and a half hours before we scored up - there was probably at least another hour left in the game. Keith came in about £150 ahead of me. He is far too polite to say but I got the feeling he didn't enjoy the game that much. Keith is a dyed in the wool Euro-gamer, and as we played I tried to imagine how this game must look through his eyes - compared with today's streamlined and polished products from Germany, 1825 seems very old-fashioned. It has lots of sharp edges in the rules - complicated exceptions that don't seem to add much value - you need a calculator to play it, and it's just so long! Nevertheless, I love it. Shame that it will probably stay on the shelf in the absence of local opponents!

Yesterday Keith very kindly presented me with a copy of Nicholas Palmer's Comprehensive Guide to Board Wargaming which he picked up in a second-hand bookshop. What an amazing nostalgia trip! Back in the late 70's I used to borrow this book repeatedly from Oxford library and pore over it. What a pleasure to have my own copy at last.

Tag: boardgames

Great Gaming Venues #2: John's House

Location: 8/10 A secluded leafy corner hidden away off grimy Devizes Road in Salisbury. Beautiful semi-wild garden running away into the trees.

Architecture: 8/10 An interesting old terraced house, I would guess nearly 200 years old. Lots of interesting corners and steps up and down. A fine front room with big sash windows.

Facilities: 4/10 John has no gaming table, so we usually end up sitting on the floor. This makes my back hurt after the first hour or so.

Catering: 5/10 A bit variable. You will usually be offered a huge mug of instant coffee and not a lot else. But occasionally a fine wine gets opened.

Soundtrack: 7/10 Obscure renaissance polyphony or baroque concertos, played on John's impressive B&O system.

Games available: 8/10 John has quite a lot of Euros and wargames available. El Grande, Web of Power, Frag or the dreaded Illuminati would be typical choices. John also occasionally lays on a big figures wargame event. This will be very tense, with limited information, chain of command issues (especially if your CO is Steve!) and a spectacularly laid out battlefield.

Other inhabitants: 6/10 A big nervous fluffy cat that loves to sit in a game box or wander across a board scattering bits with its big nervous fluffy tail.

Drawbacks: Parking issues - it's very easy to park in the wrong place and destroy John's carefully nurtured good relations with his neighbours.

Tag: boardgames

My life has become an empty meaningless shell......

Yes, I completed Final Fantasy X last night. After a couple of attempts at Braska's Final Aeon, I finally got lucky with Yojimbo who delivered two Zanmato's in a row. I love that guy. But then we had to kill him! Anyway, a visually stunning conclusion to this epic which, nevertheless, left me more confused than ever about what was actually going on! And I'm glad that Steve had warned me to keep watching right to the end of the credits, where a little teaser awaits.

I can't believe I've actually finished this game. I probably started (on a second-user copy) over two years ago, and since then it has consumed about 95 precious, irreplaceable hours of my all-too-finite life. But I don't begrudge it, it's been an amazing ride. This is the first time I have ever completed a computer game - it's very unusual for me to get absorbed in this way.

What next? Well Prince of Persia is sitting there on the pile waiting to be played....

It's very slack at work at the moment, so I've taken the opportunity to tidy up my list of game blogs. It's really grown! There are a lot of new bloggers talking about games - let's hope a good proportion of them keep going past the initial fizzle-out point and become established weblogs.

I've also tidied up my naming of these blogs, for example, "tajmahalfred" doesn't seem to call himself that any more. But the headline name of his blog "Musings, Ramblings, and Things Left Unsaid" is too wide to fit on my blogroll, so I've just called it musings. In spite of the unwieldy and boring name this is one of the best gaming blogs around.

Of the new boys, pearland and lumbersmiths look especially promising.

Tag: boardgames

I've just had an incredible weekend flying at South Cerney airfield near Cirencester. Andy took a group of paragliding students and club members from Green Dragons up for the weekend. The club flyers took part in the accuracy competition that was being held there, and the rest of us got some excellent coaching from Andy and Pauline in winch launching. Saturday morning was a bit frustrating, as we went though hours of ground-handling to get our forward launches sorted out, but by the late afternoon we were getting up into the air on the winch - at first low flights with no release, but as the sun sank towards the horizon higher flights (perhaps 500 ft? it's time I bought an altimeter!) with release from the towline and the chance to do some turns and look at the view. It was just an incredible feeling to be up there in the wind and the silence and the evening sunshine.

We were camping on the airfield but walked down to the local pub for an uproarious time (3 of the club are ex-paras with a good fund of stories), but I regretted the beers next morning. Beer on an emptyish stomach after a day of dehydrating activity is not a good idea!

Next day the flying was even better - winching up to 700 or 800 feet and doing circuits back to take-off made the headache disappear for a few minutes.

I'm really hooked on this sport now. I shall be rushing round the M25 this evening after work to catch another couple of hours on the winch at Green Dragons, I'm booked for more hill training next weekend, and I'm planning to take my wing to the French Alps in September to take it to the next level!

Tag: paragliding

I also got a game of Lord of the Rings at work on Friday! It was a bit weird how this came about. It's a bit slack at the office these days, and on Thursday a few of us were sitting around in the cubicle chatting about books and films, and we got onto The Lord of the Rings. My colleague Steve immediately brought up the subject of the game, which apparently I had told him about enthusiastically a few months previously (although I have no memory of this conversation), and asked me to bring it into work next day.

So four of us ended up playing at Steve's desk over Friday lunchtime, when everyone else was down the pub. Steve, James and John were all non-gamers basically (apart from Monopoly and Risk, the usual culprits) but the game went really well, with the team getting off to a lousy start but recovering well and managing to score 57 in the end. We whizzed through in 90 minutes, and everyone enjoyed themselves a lot. There is talk of a longer session at my place some time, and they are spreading the word too - another colleague called Matt asked me if he could read the rules this morning! And Steve has bought a copy from EBay!

And so the virus spreads......

Tag: boardgames

Les and Trevor came over last Thursday evening for a game session. A few weeks before I had suggested that we choose a "Game of the Quarter" - in other words a game that we would play every time we meet for a few months. The idea is to get away from the syndrome of playing new games every session, with the result that you never get the "meat" out of a game before you skip off to the next one. So after a bit of email to-ing and fro-ing we settled on Taj Mahal.

I missed the first play of our Game of the Quarter a couple of weeks ago, so I read through the rules beforehand, and Les and Trevor turned up confident that they knew how to play. It soon became apparent that they had missed a couple of quite important rules on their first run-through. For example, they seemed quite surprised when I told them that they were entitled to place a palace whenever they won a vizier, princess etc. They had been playing that only the king places a palace!

Once we had got the rules straight the game whizzed through. Trevor was the elephant man, Les was for networks of palaces, and I'm not sure what my strategy was, other than hanging on to the +2 special card at all costs. In the event I just snatched a draw with Trevor, with Les in a respectable 3rd place.

We still had time for a fun game of Ra - another Knizia bidding game, so not much of a contrast there. But two superb games.

I'm glad we picked Taj Mahal as our first "Game of the Quarter". It's important to choose a game with enough depth to reward repeated plays, and I'm sure that Taj Mahal will deliver this.

Tag: boardgames

Great Gaming Venues #1: Nick's Flat

Location: 7/10 A fairly respectable leafy street in West Cardiff. When I visited I wasn't mugged once and my car wasn't even stolen. Nearby attractions include The Robin Hood (Charlotte Church's local) and an excellent Chinese takeaway.

Architecture: 7/10 A pleasant flat in a large Victorian stone-built terraced house. Nick's enormous collection of history and archaelogy books graces the walls.

Facilities: 5/10 The gaming table is a little too small and has rounded ends. So the corners of the Europe Engulfed map stick out over the edge. Don't bring your own copy - let Nick's corners get bent.

Catering: 9/10 Nick is a genial host and an excellent curry chef. Prepare yourself for heavy alcohol consumption.

Soundtrack: 8/10 Cocteau Twins, Pink Floyd, David Bowie, The Who

Games available: 5/10 Nick has a smallish collection of superannuated Avalon Hill games such as Republic of Rome and Hannibal (which he shamefully fails to look after properly) and a few Euro games like Settlers of the Stone Age and Attika.

Other inhabitants: 8/10 Dani is Nick's attractive and intelligent girlfriend. She is a challenging opponent at Euro games. She is also German so please don't mention the war too often.

Drawbacks: If you even think about stopping gaming/drinking and going to bed before about 2am you will be repeatedly called a "big nonce".

Workshop finally came to a close last weekend - until we start again in September. Here are some photos from Sunday. It was a happy day, but sad too to say goodbye to all the students.

Just one attack, and it comes very close. I have a friend who knows someone who lost a leg, and another friend has two neighbours who died. What must it be like in Baghdad at the moment, when 800 Iraqi civilians a month are losing their lives in terrorist attacks? What kind of an impact does that have on a society?

The trauma can offer a breathing space; and in that space there is the possibility of recognising that we have had an experience that is not just a nightmarish insult to us, but a door into the suffering of countless other innocents, a suffering that is more or less routine for them in their less regularly protected environments. - Rowan Williams

I worry that we are being a bit premature congratulating ourselves on our British stiff-upper lip in the face of terrorism. I wonder how stoical and restrained we would be if we were getting about one major attack a week like the Israelis were in 2002?

I went to see Star Wars Episode 3 last night. Portentious, dead-in-the-water script mixed with cut-scenes from a video game. Lots of pretty stuff to look at, emotional involvement nil. The best bit of the evening was the trailer for The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe which looks surprisingly promising. I just hope thay don't over-Jacksonize the battle scenes, if you know what I mean. Battles in Narnia are very small affairs, a typical army is a handful of humans and a few hundred talking animals at the most.

Here are some initial thoughts on Empire of the Sun from John:

I have just finished a game of Empire of the Sun with Dave. Worked quite well, though I wouldn't have designed it that way. Some missed opportunities, the cards are more of a random element to a conventional game than the exquisite torture of competing strategic priorities that you get in POG. Plus putting all the cards into one big pot means that 1945 things can happen in 1942, which is a bit odd to those who actually know what is supposed to happen. Can't help but think that PoG plugs a few more of the 'oh I'll just send the complete German Army off to Turkey' type problems. Infrastructure was pretty critical in the Pacific and took time to organise, the length of the Allied supply line to the SW Pacific was phenomenal - 8000 odd miles if I remember correctly.

Good thing though is that it handles the airpower and fluidity of the Pacific theatre well and the one year scenarios are actually playable in an afternoon - well a long afternoon anyway. Japanese tactical victory today, for the 1942 scenario, though they didn't take Burma or the place with the funny name on Java, so the Dutch East Indies were holding out - complete with a poor, isolated US Corps. Though the collective wildlife of the Aleutian islands was learning Japanese and Guadalcanal was safe for Emperor-worship.

Last weekend was the third "NimrodCon", our annual trip to Hay-on-Wye to enjoy 4 days of boardgames, books and beer. It was an enjoyable weekend, with very good weather after a brief initial "Welcome to Wales" spell of rain. Celtic Lodge was more comfortable than ever, with a couple of new sofas in the lounge, and chairs and a table on the new balcony overlooking the garden and the river. We made good use of people's talents - Phil cooked us all a lovely vegetable curry on Friday night, and on Sunday Nick took us to a couple of standing stones up in the mountains and gave us the benefit of his archaeological knowledge. I spent a bit more time in the bookshops this year, picking up two Don Camillo books, John Keegan's "The Face of Battle", and "The Hardest Day" a book about the Battle of Britain. Phil came home with 3 classic cookbooks (Mrs Beeton, Elizabeth David, and Delia Smith). And we made better use of Shepherds as an excellent place to relax with coffee and cake and chat or read the paper.

Oh yes, we also played one or two games.......

Yinsh - I played this a few times with Phil and with John, and Phil taught Nick how to play as well. I wasn't sure that an abstract game would go down well, but everyone enjoyed it a lot and vowed to buy their own copies as soon as possible.

Lord of the Rings: the Confrontation - I played about five games of this with John and with Phil. The good guys won every time. Naturally enough there was a discussion with John about game balance.

Illuminati - I managed to avoid getting roped into this late on Friday evening. Although I quite like the concept and the humour, it just takes far too long for what it is, and in my experience it tends to be a fairly bad-tempered game as well. I think Phil won, but I'm not sure - I was tucked in bed and fast asleep when they finally finished.

Struggle of Empires - as I predicted, this was the big hit of the weekend. Five of us had a lot of fun playing this on Saturday afternoon. It took over 3 hours, partly due to explaining the rules, which was a little too long. I played Spain, but never formulated a clear strategy, instead just reacting to events and accumulating a lot of unrest through loss of armies and fleets, several at sea. Steve (England) seemed to be in the lead until the last few rounds when John (United Provinces) really pulled ahead.

Titan - oh dear! I was actually hoping for a quite 2-player game with Dave, who is a fellow enthusiast. However, when I mentioned this on Sunday morning lots of other people volunteered to play - people I strongly suspected of being Titan-phobes. People can change, I thought, I'll give them another chance. It din't work out. John and Phil got knocked out early, cursing the game. Steve found it difficult to make the many decisions required in Titan within a reasonable time. He finally got knocked out just before our 7pm deadline, leaving me Dave and Nick as survivors. We scored up and I won, but Nick also professed a desire to never play the game again. I was disappointed, but have made a mental note to only play Titan with fellow enthusiasts from now on.

Euphrat & Tigris - playing against Simon, Dave and Steve, who all know the game, was a real pleasure. I felt I was being badly punished by Dave's blitzkrieg tactics, so was surprised and very pleased to come in second.

Zendo - was played in the pub on Friday night. Good fun, but a bit intense with this group of over-competitive gamers!

NanoFictionary - Phil got this out in the pub on Sunday night but it was aborted after a glass of beer was spilled all over the cards. I felt sorry for Phil because a) this is one of his favourites and he was excited about teaching us b) he only possesses about three games, so to see one ruined by beer was a hard blow.

Lord of the Rings Risk - Dave was very excited about introducing Steve, Phil and Nick to this. But sadly it didn't catch anyone else's imagination in the same way. People actually drifted away (bad form), and poor Dave was left on Monday morning completing the game in solo mode.

Finally, here is a link to my photos of the weekend.

This is so unfair! Here I am, aching to go flying again, but stymied by British weather, leg injuries, and my unreasonable manager refusing to give me time off - and what do I see out of my own window this evening? Two paragliders (probably paramotoring actually) happily soaring across the Surrey sky about a mile from my home.

It's been a good week for gaming. I met up with Les on Monday in the Fox to play Blue Moon. I've finally bought my own copy of this excellent game, plus a few extra decks such as the Terrah and those guys with the giant caterpillars (can't remember the name just now). Pleased to be able to report a 2:1 win. Then yesterday it was a game session at Trevor's place, with just 3 of us plus Trevor's boy Oliver, who joined us for the first game - Manhattan. I quite liked this - but very abstract, and needed to go....ahem....a little faster than we actually played it. Still, it's fun to screw over an opponent by stealing his tower at the crucial moment. Then it was on to Medici - I usually struggle with auction type games. I wonder if my wargamer's mind tends to think in aggressive/defensive categories when I'm gaming, which are not much use in an auction. All that matters here is accurately estimating the value of what is for sale. I went for commodities rather than points, which did indeed give me a late surge, but not enough - even so I was pleased to come in second. (I'm pretty poor at other auction games too - witness Ra, Modern Art, Amun Re etc.) We finished with Ave Caesar, a quick fun family game of chariot racing but without (disappointingly) the whips, wheel-knives and hamstringings that I remember from the films....

High Flight

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings,
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds - and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of - wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there,
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up the long, delirious burning blue
I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or even eagle flew.
And, while silent, lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

- Pilot Officer John Magee, Spitfire pilot, killed 1941
(via the ConsimWorld forum on GMT's upcoming Battle of Britain game The Burning Blue)

Blogger admin news - I have removed the "legacy" comments from this blog. The code provided by Enetation was producing javascript errors, which seemed to slow down loading of the page. So I ripped it all out. Sad about this, as I have lost a record of your sage comments over the last few years before I switched to Blogger comments. Grrr - Enetation is rubbish, I wouldn't recommend it to anyone.

Over at GameWire an interesting interview with Craig Besinque, designer of classic wargames Rommel in the Desert and East Front: Currently I am working on Hellas, a strategic ancients game on the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta, which will be out this summer. It is based on the Hammer of the Scots/Liberty system, with provision for naval warfare and sieges. The design target is a simpler, faster (12 page rules, 4 hours) but still high-quality game with good period 'feel' on one of the more crucial military struggles in western history.

I am not a huge fan of computer games, but I have been steadily working my way through Final Fantasy X for the last couple of years or so. I don't put in a lot of time - just odd bursts of a couple of hours every few weeks. Then I put it aside until I next get the urge to return to the strange and beautiful world of Spira. Last weekend I breached an important psychological barrier - I finally managed to beat the third(?) incarnation of Seymour on Mount Gagazet. A few months ago I got my ass totally kicked by him, and since then I have been wandering around the Calm Lands levelling everybody up (even the useless Wakka), earning enough money to buy Yojimbo, and gathering my courage for another trip up the mountain. It was a great feeling when we returned to the battle and Yuna unleashed a queue of Aeons all on overdrive attacks, dispatching Seymour to the Farplane in about 5 minutes flat. And as a bonus Phil was there to witness my moment of triumph!

So at last I've reached the ruins of Zanarkand and the end can't be far away now. 80+ hours on the clock - I will be sad to say goodbye to this game. Sure there are a few annoying characters - Wakka, anything to do with chocobos, and even Tidus gets on my nerves sometimes. But I really feel I have lived the story with the characters, and I've been amazed again and again at the incredibly beautiful locations I have visited along the way. It baffles me how all this can fit on just one disk. I wasn't exactly an early adopter - I bought the game 2nd-hand, long after all the PS2 geeks had completed it and moved onto something else. Now it's nearly time to look for the next thing - I wonder what FF X-2 is like?

Less than 3 weeks now to NimrodCon - the annual gathering at Hay-on-Wye with my Salisbury gaming buddies. And the big question in my mind as I'm looking forward to the trip is: what games do I pack?

At the moment my thinking is still gelling, but it will be something like this:

A couple of short wargames - Rommel in the Desert and Memoir 44 perhaps?

A few pub-friendly games - Blue Moon, Yinsh, Lord of the Rings Confrontation

Some really good multi-player games - Struggle of Empires (this lot will LOVE this one), Taj Mahal, 1825, Flandern 1302, Amun Re

And because it's on the Tshirt - Titan

Oh dear, that's rather a lot already isn't it! And I have just received requests from Simon for RA and Euphrat & Tigris to be brought along too. If everyone else brings the same number of games, there's no way we can do more than scratch the surface in four days. And of course there is a lot of walking, browsing of book-shops, and sitting in the pub to be fitted in as well. Maybe we should make it a week next year?!

I wish I had known about this when I lived in Salisbury - apparently there is a game shop in Frome called Wassail Games, which is associated with a group that meets in the Packhorse pub every Thursday, and runs a game convention every July. Sounds like a lively scene over there!

I spent last weekend on pilgrimage, walking the 72 miles from London to Canterbury with about 80 or 90 other folk. As well as a pilgrimage this was also a sponsored walk to raise money for St Martins Connection, a charity that works for the homeless in London. Four days of tramping, starting in Trafalgar Square, toiling down the Old Kent Road in Friday's boiling heat, regularly refreshed with tea and cakes by the WI or the Church of England along the way, stopping overnight at churches or (on Saturday) a priory, having our feet lovingly cared for every day by a team of podiatrists (angels from God!), and finally braving Monday's thunderstorms before our first glorious sight of Canterbury Cathedral in the distance. It was a great trip, and I met lots of great people along the way. My legs are slowly healing up now, and I can almost walk without a limp today. These are a couple of sketches I did at rest stops, and here is my photo gallery of the journey.

It feels as if I have been spending a lot more time and effort lately reading and memorizing rules and pushing counters around solo than actually playing games with real opponents. Over the last couple of weeks I've been through this process with 3 fairly meaty games: Revolution, von Manstein's Backhand Blow, and Rommel in the Desert. On Saturday all this effort paid off at last when I drove over to Amesbury to visit Dave, and was able to talk him into playing Rommel in the Desert. It was great, a first class wargaming experience. It took me about 1/2 hour to explain the rules - some of the concepts, like the turn structure and the supply rules - are a bit tricky until you see them in action. But once we got going, it flowed really well. We played the Crusader scenario, with Dave as the Germans (as usual!). On the 3rd month I successfully double-bluffed Dave on the Initiative phase, and as it turned out that was crucial - my position was beginning to collapse, but when we counted up our pieces at the end it was an exact draw - that extra card would have swung it for Dave. This is a very satisfying, exciting game, and I hope it won't be too long before I get another chance to play.

This year's award for "Best Description of Mark Herman" goes to Taj Mahal Fred with: "the Zeus from whom whose head the Athena that is card-driven strategy games sprung."

In other news - I spent last weekend in London helping at this month's Workshop session. As we approach the last session in July things inevitably get a bit discouraging as the attendance of both students and tutors drops away. Which is a pity as some of the best material comes in the last few months. We had a fantastic day on Sunday with Stuart Murray lecturing on Christendom and Jesus-centred theology, why tithing is pernicious and unscriptural, and why we get far too many sermons in church.

Also on Saturday evening I visited the National Theatre for Henry IV part 2. It was my first time in this ugly but marvellous building. I bought just about the last cheap seats before the show sold out, but they were fine, with a perfectly good view of the stage and not too far away either. Old theatres might more have atmosphere but modern theatres invariably have better sightlines. The production and acting were superb and Michael Gambon of course was awe-inspiring as Falstaff. And Adrian Scarborough as a hyper-frail Silence was hilarious.

Not that much gaming lately. I met up with Les at the Plume of Feathers last week for some 2-player games. I introduced him to Yinsh, then sat back rather complacently to watch him struggle through his first game. Foolish of me - he won! After that we played Blue Moon. Les has a lot of experience at this one - he features in the playtesting credits - so I was delighted to win all 3 games that we played!

I have also been fiddling with Von Manstein's Backhand Blow - you know, that enjoyable time of first making acquaintance with a new wargame, where you punch out the counters, read the rules with growing anticipation (not always, sometimes it's with growing dismay!), spread out the map under plexiglass and play through a few turns solo.

As Swiss Tony would say, it's very much like making love to a beautiful woman.

I'm very impressed with VMBB so far. I like the low counter density and the larger counters. And the rules are simple, clearly laid out, and easy to understand first time through. Even though they are split into Series Rules and VMBB-specific rules, this does not produce an exception-fest as the specific ruleset builds on rather than contradicts the series ruleset. I like the way the Schwerpunkt segments make you focus on accomplishing just one or perhaps two things each turn on the battlefield, and the C3i points which model the way the initiative ebbed away from the Soviets as the battle went on, and the tactical chits which introduce a lot of uncertainty into combat and discourage simple odds-optimization play. I hope I will get a chance to play for real soon (before I forget the rules again!)

Who needs search results? Make a pretty picture instead! Montage-a-google is a simple web-based app that uses Google's image search to generate a large gridded montage of images based on keywords (search terms) entered by the user.

Guardian Unlimited: Ten unmissable examples of New Games Journalism - I momentarily got quite excited about this, until I realized that they were talking about computer games. Still, some fascinating reading here.

My team won last night! Yes, Corpus Christi College Oxford trounced University College London in the finals of University Challenge, and today I am basking in reflected glory. The triumphant victors - the bald guy who bounced up and down in his seat whenever he knew the answer, the chinese italian guy who has clearly done NOTHING except memorize encyclopedias since he was 3, the guy with the trendy haircut gone wrong who never answered anything unless it really really mattered, and the guy with floppy ginger hair who just could not conceal his utter joyfulness every time they banged another nail in the coffin of those losers from UCL - these are my fellow corpuscles, and their honour is my honour.

However, watching them did remind me of my time there back in the late 70s, when the place was full of similarly intimidating brainboxes. I arrived at Oxford fresh from the experience of being one of the cleverest boys in my school, to suddenly feel totally out of my depth swimming in this river of intellectual sharks. Along with the glory, watching the winning team last night also brought back some memories of that unnerving time.

I met up with the Farnborough gamers last night, and gave them a good stuffing at Settlers of Catan. These guys are pretty hard-core Euro-gamers - they go to Essen and have their names in the credits for some of Reiner's finest - but surprisingly Settlers is new to them. They even use the wussy setup on the card instead of the random setup. Keith got an early lead until I managed to snatch the Longest Road off him, Trevor was obsessive about Soldiers and Robbers (I swear most of his cards were pinched off Keith rather than earned legitimately) and John struggled on the margins. Everyone was a bit unwilling to trade, but the dice seemed to go my way and after an initial dry spell I was steadily showered with cards.

Next I introduced them to Knizia's Samurai, which went down very well especially with Keith. John won and I came in last. I love this game but I'm starting to realize that I have not the slightest clue about what constitutes good play. I need to do some serious thinking and see if I can find some decent strategy articles.

It's finally happened. I'm in love, head over heels in love - with 25 sq meters of orange and grey nylon. Yes I took delivery of a crispy, shiny new Gin Bolero Plus paraglider on Sunday. Not only is it a thing of great beauty, but it also immediately made my life *much* easier in terms of getting the wing over my head, having it stay there without a struggle, and then getting off the ground. No more exhausting battles with grotty old school wings. And once in the air it was a joy to fly, responding gently to every weight-shift or touch on the brakes. And for the first time I experienced the sensation of lift, getting wooshed up into the air as I rounded the corner of the western bowl at Green Dragons. This happened twice over the weekend. Not sure if it was thanks to the conditions or my growing confidence or my new wing, but it was an incredible feeling, one I could easily become addicted to.....

At the risk of casting doubts on my sexuality, can I just rave for a moment about Acorn Antiques the Musical, Victoria Wood's new show, which I saw yesterday with my Mum at the Haymarket Theatre. Phil says disparagingly that Victoria Wood is a one-trick pony. Well if that's so (which I dispute), it's a great trick.

It was Julie Walters' bingo night (well that's what the programme said) so we were treated to Ms Wood herself on stage as Mrs Overall. There was so much funny dialogue in this show, which I had expected, but I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the music (which Victoria also wrote) - wonderful bubbly stuff with great tunes. There was even a touching love-song thrown in, delivered absolutely straight by Miss Berta. My favourite was Mrs O's song about her preference for tray bakes over sex (a favourite VW theme) and there was also a great 70's disco pastiche with some incredible crotch grinding dance moves from Duncan Preston.

I love the English quality of Victoria Wood's humour, the use of place names for bathos ("I'm a Brummie - that's God's way of making you live in Birmingham"), her affectionate taking a rise out of nostalgia (in the middle of a conversation about breast enhancement: "In my day we used two Cornish pasties. If he didn't fancy you naked, at least no-one went hungry"), the frequent allusions to the ailments of old-age for comedic effect, the deflating of sex's grand promises, the perfectly accurate capture of regional (especially Lancashire) patterns of speech. It was hilarious, heartening stuff. Among the cast Celia Imrie in particular was wonderful, and only Neil Morrissey grated slightly. I'm very tempted to go back and see it again when Julie Walters is on.

Saudi Police Arrest 40 Pakistani Christians:
Saudi Arabia’s religious police arrested 40 Pakistani Christians while the group met privately for worship last Friday morning in Riyadh. The house church gathering was a joint Catholic-Protestant prayer service held weekly in Riyadh in recent years.

According to a Riyadh source, several carloads of muttawa (Islamic religious police) from the Committee for the Propagation and the Prevention of Vice raided the worship meeting just before noon on April 22.

Surrounding the house, the police halted the sermon ... then proceeded to beat some of the worshippers, upsetting the furniture and breaking Christian artifacts and symbols as they searched through the house.

Google Maps is amazing - only in Beta at the moment and a bit flakey, but already so much more quick and clever than StreetMap and MultiMap. (via Sashinka)

I haven't done that much gaming recently. The week before last I played 80 Days Around the World with the Farnborough group. This was a reasonably interesting but not gripping game - the timing mechanisms are quite clever, but the whole thing is a bit linear with no real strategic decisions to make as far as I can see (but maybe that's why I lost!) And then there is Yinsh, a beautifully produced abstract game, a bargain at £15, which I picked up from Playin Games in Bloomsbury. I've played this a few times with Phil, it's a great way to fill 20 minutes with intriguing tactical gameplay. Excellent.

The matter is quite simple. The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand we are obliged to act accordingly. Take any words in the New Testament and forget everything except pledging yourself to act accordingly. My God, you will say, if I do that my whole life will be ruined. Herein lies the real place of Christian scholarship. Christian scholarship is the Church's prodigious invention to defend itself against the Bible, to ensure that we can continue to be good Christians without the Bible coming too close. Dreadful it is to fall into the hands of the living God. Yes, it is even dreadful to be alone with the New Testament.

- Soren Kierkegaard (via Sojourners)

Today is this weblog's 4th birthday. I find it hard to believe I have been doing this for so long. My 2nd ever post was about which games I was going to sell to make some space. I'm pleased so say that I have indeed sold all those games, but the space problems are still with me. Oh well. My home may be overflowing with games that I never play, but at least I have my weblog......

I visited the John Virtue exhibition at the National Gallery today. Came out feeling inspired and did this sketch on Jubilee bridge.

I have finally posted a photo gallery of Phil's 21st birthday, which took place last weekend. It was a great time, and I really enjoyed the company of the guests (from left to right): Jo, Nimmo, Will, Famous Jon, Kez, Tom, Gaz, and Ruth. I gamely tried to keep up with them, and I matched beer for beer and bet for bet all through the BBQ and the poker game, but by the time we got to the William Cobbett I only had energy left for one pint before I crawled home in a daze - the rest of them kept going till about 3am, finding after hours drinking facilities at the Art College apparently. Amazing stamina these youngsters have......

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Lab fireball 'may be black hole': A fireball created in a US particle accelerator has the characteristics of a black hole, a physicist has said. It was generated at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) in New York, US, which smashes beams of gold nuclei together at near light speeds.

Are these guys completely nuts? Haven't we got enough problems, without the possibility of a mini black hole escaping the lab and tunneling down to the centre of the earth - then eating the planet from the inside out? Try sending Bruce Willis to nuke that.......

I don't know if I am losing my stomach for wargames - not the moral dilemmas of sending piles of cardboard to a certain death, that has never given me more than occasional twinges of conscience - the problem seems more that I am losing my appetite for mastering 20+ page rulebooks, punching hundreds of counters (that don't want to be punched, they want to tear, tear!), and assimilating a constant trickle of errata. As a result I have a growing backlog of brand-new wargames that I haven't played or even punched yet, sitting on my shelves and at the back of my mind like an accusation of bad faith. Here is the litany of shame:

Grand Illusion Ted Raicer's latest work on the Great War, this looks very innovative with its enormous hexes and battle board. In my mind at least though Ted is getting a reputation for shipping unfinished work. Barbarossa to Berlin was a major example of this tendency - it has been hugely revised since it was published and can now only be played with yellow stickies on just about every other card to remind you of the changes. But worryingly Grand Illusion has already had one fairly major rule change since release. This sort of thing puts me off making the effort - maybe I should stop reading ConsimWorld?

This Accursed Civil War I have yet to find a tactical wargame that I really enjoy, they are usually fiddly with lots of markers on the map and lots of exceptions in the rules. This one has one big advantage going for it though - Richard Berg was not involved. I have high hopes and would love to refight Naseby, Marston Moor etc. And those double-size counters look so cool. This also has the draw of being the first of an ongoing series so learning the rules could pay off in the future. Must get punching!

Von Manstein's Backhand Blow If tactical is not my thing then I have loved some operational games in the past - Breakout Normandy for example. I was drawn by this game's reputation for simplicity and elegance, and I like the big counters and low counter density. Another one I would love to play but just haven't had the time for yet.

Rommel in the Desert This doesn't quite count as backlog. I have already put a significant effort into learning the rules, and set it up solo a couple of times (although this one is a favourite with the cat - I found a half chewed German AT unit under the armchair the other day). The problem here is finding an opponent - it's a complex game and I'm a bit short of experienced wargamers in these parts. Maybe I can entice Dave over for a day....

Empire of the Sun Alright I haven't received this one yet but it's coming any day. And this game is *complex*, I'm sure of it. The whole Pacific Theatre in card-driven format, by Mark Herman no less. Couldn't resist the premise - having owned and drooled over but never played Pacific War for about a decade - but have I got the stomach to actually play this one?

The weekend's most blatant self-indulgence was these lovely PX200 lightweight headphones from Sennheiser (picked up on Saturday from Basingstoke's hi-fi shop on Feathers Lane). I spend a lot of time at work listening to my CD Walkman while I'm writing code or whatever, and I was getting a bit tired of the cheapo earbud phones that came with it. These new phones are great, they are enclosed so that office noises are excluded and my neighbours don't have to listen to my stray sound, they have much better bass than the earbuds, and I can hear so much detail. For example, I could never make out what was said after the cough at the end of Led Zeppelin's "In My Time of Dying". But now I know.....

A couple of drawings from my moleskine, from my trip to Austria the week before last:

This one is my usual drawing style - fairly delicate, just trying to register what I'm seeing as accurately as possible. It was done from the Kristallhutte cafe on HochZillertal during one of my frequent coffee breaks.

This one is my other way of drawing - more focussed on the drawing than what I'm seeing, using heavier pen marks and using the direction of the marks to build up textures. It was done from a sunny bench outside the hotel in Schlitters, relaxing after a hard day on the slopes.

Am I the only man who does this I wonder? When I am shaving I sometimes run the blade over my ear lobes. It's depressing, but as I get older bits of my body that used to be smooth are now growing hairs. And bits of me that used to be hairy (like the top of my forehead) are becoming less so. Being 46 years old means: having to shave your ear lobes.....

I'm still playing Final Fantasy X, but I've reached a point where I need some help to get past the next challenge (for those in the know, I've just retreated from Mt Gagazet back down to the Calm Lands, where I am trying to level up my party enough to defeat Seymour...again!) Most FFX walkthrough sites are blocked by the proxy/firewall at work, but Bella magazine isn't blocked - and they have this great Final Fantasy X Walkthrough - by Lisa! So thanks to a women's magazine I can plan my next moves from the office when I should really be working.......

Reminder to self - consider booking up for Crucible: Creating Church on the Margins:

Christians in Britain (and across western culture) are facing profound challenges and fresh opportunities. The long era of Christendom is coming to an end. We now live in a plural society, with multiple religious options alongside secular assumptions, in which Christianity has largely lost its position of dominance and privilege. Although we seem to be declining in numbers and influence, this new environment offers many new possibilities – if we have the courage and imagination to grasp them.

Crucible is a new training programme for Christians with courage and imagination.

Last week in Austria was great fun. I actually think I am getting better at skiing. The conditions were quite difficult - icy in the morning, slushy after lunch - but I only fell over three times, a record for me. And I was taking the black runs with no problems at all. Most days I got up early and skipped breakfast so as to make the most of the morning - if I have to choose I prefer skiing on ice to slush. On two days I also made the 2-hour journey up to the Hintertux Glacier. At 3250m it was much colder up there and the snow in much better condition, so those were awesome days for both scenery and skiing. It was an Oak Hall trip so I was with a large group of Christians - which I realize might sound pretty dreadful to some of my readers - but for me it was a great friendly atmosphere and I made several new friends. I took Zendo along with me but only managed to lure people into a game once. Anyway the holiday was so busy that gaming was pretty low on my priority list, for once.

This is where I shall be from Saturday, skiing in the Ziller valley in Austria. If there is any snow left of course - the last fall was the week before last. It doesn't look too bad on the webcam but a big dump of fresh snow would be lovely. Here's hoping for cold weather and lots of precipitation. I want Spring to be postponed for at least a week, if that's OK with everyone......

Apologies, I am mucking about with comments on this blog, and it's not going very well so far. I want to move over to Blogger comments, but leave the legacy comments (Enetation) still available for you to read, while subtly discouraging you from adding any more legacy comments. So the link to the new (Blogger) comments is at the right hand side at the bottom of each post. My idea is that there will be a little reminder in the middle where there are legacy comments available, something like a '*' or '(2)'. But Enetation doesn't seem to want to play ball at the moment, so it's all a bit of a mess for now. So just remember, the new comments system - the one I want you to use from now on - is on the right. OK?

Greg Costikyan has a touching obituary for Redmond Simonsen:

Before I go into the personal bit, I'll explain why you should know Redmond's name, even though you probably don't: Redmond coined the term game designer. Before he did, we had no good term; game inventor, game author... but he put his finger on what we do. Redmond established the look for the graphics of the board wargame. Redmond wasn't the first to design a fantasy/science fiction boardgame, but he almost single-handedly established it as a successful genre... And Redmond was a kick-ass game designer in his own right. Go find a copy of StarForce: Alpha Centauri, or Sorceror.

The Elements of Drawing is a searchable and browsable online version of the teaching collection and catalogues assembled by John Ruskin for his Oxford drawing schools.

Ruskin assembled this collection - including many Turners and many of his own drawings - as a resource for his drawing classes. Now this amazing resource is available online! (There seems to be a problem viewing expanded versions of the pictures, but hopefully this is a temporary glitch.)

Radio Free Nepal - anonymous blogging and photos from Nepal where the king has suspended democratic government indefinitely. This picture shows 83-year-old Nepali Congress leader Bal Bahadur Rai being taken away by police during the protest rally in Kathmandu on Monday.

At last I'm starting to feel normal again after the weekend - all my paragliding muscles had got very lazy since last October, so when I finally got the chance to fly again on Sunday it left me feeling very sore indeed. Fantastic day though - in spite of the on/off wind conditions I got 5 flights before the end of the day, but of course, because I don't know how to soar and top-land yet, that meant 4 exhausting walks back up the hill lugging the harness and glider! And they made us practice our parachute landing falls all over again, which was a bruising experience in its own right.

With all the excitement of restarting my paragliding training, there has still been space for some gaming. I played 1825 with Phil on Saturday, and we enjoyed it very much. It goes well as a 2-player game, and the kinder, gentler stock-market makes for a less confrontational game than 1830 et al. Phil beat me by a good margin.

I also met up with Les on Monday for an evening of Blue Moon in the pub. This game is intriguing with real depth of play that I am only just starting to get into - plenty of appetite for replaying this one.

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.