Le Havre, Le Shmhavre

I played Le Havre last Saturday with my friends Vic and Sharon over at the London Mennonite Center. This was my second time with Le Havre, and I'm still not convinced. It doesn't help that I lost again - though by a much smaller margin than last time.

I suppose the root of my difficulty is that I'm not convinced by the theme. If I am going to play a big, long, complicated beast of a gamer's game, then I want it to have some relationship with reality. And to me, Le Havre seems totally divorced from any kind of real economic system that I have ever come across. What is this strange world where goods are picked up for free from the dockside, where you stockpile coal in case you want to build a ship, and where a business's biggest problem is feeding its workers? (Surely you just outsource the staff canteen?) At least there is no money/VP dichotomy. But basically this is "Advanced Puerto Rico", and I think I would rather play a few games of Race for the Galaxy instead, and still have time for something else.

It's like Beyond Valor all over again.

I've been thinking longingly about Napoleon's Triumph for a couple of years now, ever since I saw it on a table at MidCon, laid out in all its spectacular miniaturesy glory. But every time I see it in the games shop I pick it up and think "Ouch, £45. And after all, do I really need any more games?"

So recently I've been reading the reviews and listening to the podcasts and getting to the "must have" stage, so today I look on the Leisure Games website and - oh bother! - it's out of print.

I've waited too long, AGAIN!

(Like what's-his-name the elf who lingered too long in Middle Earth.)

But wait, The Orc's Nest still have one. I'll be down there tomorrow......

It's NOT Warhammer

I played Space Hulk today with Phil - twice through the first scenario "Suicide Mission" switching sides, but with the same result both times: the Marines got creamed in short order.

It's been a while since I played Space Hulk, but I found that this old classic still retains its charms: fast, good-looking, tense, action-packed, scary. And my recently painted "Blue Moon" squad got their first combat outing. Great fun.

Playing with the big boys

Last Saturday I went along to the London ASL club. I've been pushing counters around the ASL Starter Kits for a couple of years now, playing the occasional game with Phil or Nick, but now I decided to up the stakes a bit, take advantage of my current residence in the capital, and make contact with the serious ASL hobby.

I felt nervous as I approached Fleet Street Starbucks on Saturday morning: would I get the customary cold shoulder usually meted out to new arrivals at a games club? Would there be loud arguments about the relative merits of the SdKfz 6/2 versus the SdKfz 7/1? Would the play be very competitive? Would I be looked down on for my shaky knowledge of even the Starter Kit rules? I needn't have worried - I received a warm welcome, got introduced to lots of friendly and more or less normal people, the venue was pleasant, and I had a very enjoyable day playing scenario S12 "Over Open Sights" with Scott, who was coming back to ASL after a long break.

This deceptively simple scenario actually poses a tricky tactical puzzle to both players. My Germans had 7 turns to knockout or capture 3 American artillery pieces. Scott used his scant infantry resources to deploy a light screen in front of his precious guns, which were further back, with plenty of open space around them. It took me a long time to get through this screen, and I lost at least 50% of my fighting strength in the process. But I finally wore them down, and my luck started to change too, and Scott made the mistake of throwing in his reinforcements piecemeal, and I just about managed to capture all 3 guns by the deadline. Great fun, very exciting, and a real nail-biting finish. Big lesson learned: those artillery guns are terrifyingly devastating when they get a hit against infantry - so DON'T STACK in their LOS, even if you're in cover.

LASL meet once a month - I can't wait for the next one!

This and that

I'm still looking for PhD studentships or research jobs. In the meantime I'm putting together a design for an experiment I'm hoping to do in Gez Finnerty's lab on a part-time volunteer basis. It's an immunohistochemistry project looking at molecular mechanisms of plasticity in the barrel cortex.

But before that gets going, Sue and I are setting out on the Offa's Dyke long-distance path, starting from Prestatyn on Monday morning, and finishing at Chepstow two and a half weeks later.

But first there's a reunion dinner at my old school (Manchester Grammar) on Saturday. Quite looking forward to it - I just hope there's not too much boasting about careers/cars/houses at the table (as I have none of these things at the moment!)

I've just finished a cracking PBEM game of Amun Re against Tim and Don - I think it's my first win ever at this game!

Meanwhile my idiot son Gavin is having his wrist rebuilt this morning after a cycling accident yesterday. At least he didn't land on his head I suppose, and his bike is a write-off too, so I'm hoping he might use the bus in future.

The card-driven century

There is a scale of enjoyable wargaming experiences, with playing a poor game against an opponent with personality problems at the very bottom, and playing a great game against a genial and well-matched opponent at the very top. So playing Paths of Glory against my 25-year-old son Phil last weekend must be pretty much as good as it gets.

So here he is on Saturday afternoon, looking pretty confident as his British and Russian armies easily halt my 1914 offensives in the West and East.

But here's an altogether more frantic Phil on Sunday morning, as 1917 sees the collapse of Romania, Germans pushing through Italy into Southern France, and a breakthrough by massed German armies into northern France.

Anyway, the idea is we will play out the whole 20th century in card-driven wargames. So next up is Barbarossa to Berlin, and after that we tackle the Cold war with Twilight Struggle. It should be an excellent summer!

I've just finished reading Harry Pearson's hilarious memoir of a life in wargaming Achtung Shweinehund!. (Thanks Iain for the recommendation!) I particularly enjoyed the chapters about his childhood - Airfix kits, Waddingtons games, spud guns, Commando comics, war films, Airfix OO/HO figures - my own childhood obsessions are all there. The chapter about Action Man had me gasping for air - I can't remember when I last laughed so much.

C.S. Lewis wrote "We read to know we are not alone." This book is a funny and touching reflection on what it means to live with our compelling, fascinating, but socially rather embarrassing hobby.

A New Hope

Well I tried Ubuntu but was a bit baffled by the hoops I needed to go through to get my wireless card to work. Perhaps I'll give it another try one day....

So I went back to plan B which was to reinstall Windows XP from the partition up. It's taken me longer than I thought of course - all day yesterday and still tying up loose ends this morning, but the only insurmountable problem so far has been with Adobe Photoshop Album - I lost the catalog (it was under C:\Program Files which I did not backup - silly boy!) so about 5 years of careful tagging and organizing has been lost. I've still got my photos though - that's the main thing.

The old machine (a Shuttle box with an AMD processor) certainly seems to be running a lot quicker without 5 years of accumulated spyware so I think it was worth the effort......

A Feast

Last weekend turned out to be a bit of a feast of wargaming - thanks in part to a Saturday visit from Phil, who was keen to try plugging his PS3 into my home cinema projector in order to watch "There Will Be Blood" in glorious Blu-Ray surround vision. This plan sadly ran into technical problems of the why-is-this-plug-the-wrong-shape-for-that-socket variety. So we watched "Gone With The Wind" on old-fashioned DVD instead - at least, the first 10 minutes of it until Phil fell asleep. Anyway, well before this debacle unfolded we had spent an exciting couple of hours that afternoon with Up Front and the City Fight scenario. After a slow first deck I was feeling smug, with most of my GI's safely billetted in two building at range chit 2. Undeterred, Phil infiltrated the first building with scary Sgt Hauptmann who killed 2 of my boys with his SMG, then chucked his demo charge into the second building with decisive - and squad-breaking - consequences.

So, thrashed again at Up Front by my own son. But he made up for it by cooking a delicious ribeye steak for me immediately afterwards.

On Sunday afternoon it was over to Chiswick for a game of Unhappy King Charles! with Iain. At last I can knock this one off my list of shame! I didn't do very well as the Royalists (perhaps my heart wasn't in it). I lost Oxford early in the game, and inattention to the isolation rules cost me the South. Rupert did have his Macclesfield moment when he rubbed out Brereton (I love playing a game that features Macclesfield!) but that was hardly enough to stop the rot. We played for 5 hours and had to stop with 2 turns to go, but the outome was depressingly clear at that point.

I love this game. Yes. the rules are repetitive and wilfully obtuse in places, but it is a very well thought-out game on a fascinating subject. The history feels right - the way that big "panzer commander" armies are penalized at every turn is a good example of fine historical discernment being prioritized over the power-play urges of some grognards (which is earning the game detractors in some quarters) and I love it for that. Iain - we have to book a rematch, and soon!

If I forget thee Psion

Well there was a panicky moment after I had received back my Psion 5mx from Paul at Psionflexi, after I had excitedly loaded it with batteries and switched it on for the first time in how many years, after I had started feeling my way around the half-remembered interface and found that my hands still know how to use this thing (it's all in the cerebellum), after I had spent my tube journey writing a blog posting about DaveCon and feeling smug about the guy opposite me cradling an enormous IBM laptop, after I had rushed home on Friday evening excited to transfer my purple prose to my PC and thence to Blogger........after all this, I found I could not find my Psion PC link cable. Frustration, sorting through drawers of techno-junk, remorse, several visits to the loft, finally despair - was this whole "fix my old Psion 5mx and use it as a cheap and also ultraportable and also retro-chique laptop" idea a deluded waste of time and money?

Sunday evening - another trip to the loft and a scrabble around a previously unexamined "PS2 stuff" box yielded the prodigal cable! Hurrah! Now I can write stuff (especially blog postings?) on the tube - a somewhat moot point, now I come to think of it, seeing that my Research Assistant contract comes to an end the week after next, so the opportunities for blogging on the tube won't be there any more. Still, perhaps I will blog on my Psion while I'm sitting out in the garden in my string vest, with a bottle of whisky and a cheap cigarette, waiting for my next giro to come.......

DaveCon 2009

I spent last weekend in Salisbury enjoying Dave's hospitality, and catching up with my gaming group of yesteryear, including Nick, John and Steve. We played Powergrid. Imperium and Circus Maximus from GMT's Rome, and Odin's Ravens, but the highlight of the weekend (for me anyway) was a 6- hour Arkham Horror session on Saturday. What an immersive experience! And such a lavish production from Fantasy Flight! All sorts of clever touches. for example the way that different characters are more or less flexible about changing their stats. It was all a bit overwhelming at first. but once I had figured out that losing all your health/sanity brings nothing worse than a short spell of bedrest, I started to relax a bit. Even being lost in time and space - surely a fate worse than death - proved to be a handy bus service from one end of the board to the other.

Of course the game was too long - our 6 hours only brought us within distant sight of the end game. We seemed to be coping well enough to stave off disaster. but nowhere near well enough to win a sudden death victory. So there was a slight feeling of being suck in limbo. And the lack of serious consequences - like insanity or death - didn't feel quite right. I wanted to feel more frightened than I did. But it was an immersive experience game, and I'd happily try it again. Thanks to Nick for lugging it all the way from Cardiff and for patiently talking us through the rules. and thanks also to Dave for hosting a great weekend.

The list of shame

I have a shameful secret, hidden away inside the boxes of my games collection. Many of these games are brand new, unpunched, and have never been played (not even solo). It's my list of shame.

Empire of the Sun: fascinating subject, the nearest thing in history to a war fought in outer space. And the idea of a card-driven hex wargame sounds cool. It's just that I can't get through that rulebook.

The Burning Blue: again a very sexy subject, and a charismatic designer who actually interviewed Battle of Britain veterans for his research. But it's another massive, impenetrable rulebook - I just can't seem to muster the energy to read it.

Unhappy King Charles: another great subject, and beautiful graphic design. My excuse here is that it's a recent acquisition and I just haven't got around to it yet.

Successors: at least I've read the rules to this one. It looks very cool indeed, and I'm planning to punch the counters and get it on the table (hopefully with friends, not just solo) in March some time.

ASL Starter Kit #3: I've punched and played and hugely enjoyed the first two starter kits, but number 3 is sitting untouched in its box. Perhaps the tank rules frighten me.

In the Shadow of the Emperor: OK I have played this online, but have never got the bits out of the box and set it up in anger. This one is hard to sell to fellow gamers.

Reef Encounter: Again, I've played online but never on a table. Also hard to persuade people to try this one.

Verrater: Another gamer's game where the buzz faded years ago. Suggestions to play are met by blank looks.

Turning Point Stalingrad: This one really is shameful. A classic game, closely related to one of my favourites, Breakout Normandy, it's been on my shelf for years, and I've never even read the rules.

This Accursed Civil War: Another hefty rulebook, moreover a rulebook that has changed (and expanded) significantly since it was publised. I don't like moving targets - I get discouraged.

A House Divided: the counters punched themselves, the rules almost read themselves too, but I've never played it yet. My sure-fire ACW opponent Dave actually refused to play it!

Commands and Colors Ancients expansions 2 and 3: The first expansion is enough to keep me perfectly happy for years yet, let alone the extra scenarios that arrive with every issue of C3i.

Various Memoir 44 expansion packs: I think I've mastered the urge to buy any more of these until I actually play some of them.

Ambush: a kind gift from Marty, but alas, no time to sit down and really get to grips with it. And I kind of prefer soloing games that aren't solo games if you see what I mean - I like to feel I am preparing for a real flesh-and-blood opponent.

Attack Sub: I heard (on the Noise Before Defeat podcast) it's like Up Front. Another casualty of my wargame opponent drought.

So perhaps you can understand my New Year's resolution - play games, don't buy games. OK I'm unlikely to stick to that, but it's a good aspiration.

Fantastic news - Frankenstein is back!

LesCon report

Just back from LesCon - a weekend's gaming for 4 of us, comfortably ensconced in a luxury cabin in the snow-bound Forest of Dean, organized by the excellent Les Murrell. Travel was a bit fraught, thanks to the weather and rail strikes, but the weekend itself was great fun. Especially as I won more than my fair share of the games played:

Hansa My first play, and quite liked this, but still not sorry I traded my copy for Reef Encounter. This was my first win of the weekend.

Le Havre Wow! A real old fashioned gamer's game. Starts quietly, but the options explode. There are some AP-prone friends I would hate to play this with. I was totally out of my depth, and lost convincingly.

Race for the Galaxy Every time I play I enjoy this more. Paul won (but only after realizing that the funny little blue cardboard hexagons give you points as well!)

Princes of Machu Picchu At first this felt like a delirious hallucination induced by chewing too many coca leaves. But after a few turns started to make some kind of weird sense. I was very surprised to win this one, thanks to the arrival of the Spanish.

Vinci I had almost forgotten what fun this can be - especially with mature adults who don't get acrimonious about the kingmaking shenanigans at the end of the game. My third win of the weekend.

So thanks to Dom, Paul and especially Les for a great weekend. Looking forward to the next one.

The non-violent wargamer

A few weeks ago I took the plunge and became a Mennonite - the culmination of a six-month novice process where I was coached by my mentor (Kathy Thiessen) in "The Ways of the Mennonite". Basically this means I am now a member of tiny Wood Green Mennonite Church for whom my wife works part-time.

As part of my novice process I had to think very carefully about my attitudes to peace and war - the Mennonites are a historic peace church - and I came to the conclusion that a firm commitment to non-violence is required of anyone who claims to follow Jesus.

But wait a minute! What about all those wargames on your games shelf Peter?! And all those war movies on your DVD shelf? And all that military history on your bookshelf?

Well, I admit I am still more than a little in love with war and its mythology: Spitfires scrambling to fend off the Luftwaffe....Monty at Alamein....the squares at Waterloo....the English longbows at Agincourt.... I admire the military virtues: courage, comradeship, perseverance. And I am fascinated by the intellectual challenges of generalship, and the qualities of the great commanders of history.

And I love wargames. There is something viscerally compelling about playing a really great wargame (Breakout Normandy, Paths of Glory, War of the Ring, Up Front, to name a few) face-to-face with a genial but competitive opponent. Not sure I want to give that up, no matter how committed to non-violence I am.

"To depict is not to advocate" - that's one way I think I can square this circle. To enter imaginatively into the experience of other humans, even in extreme or violent circumstances, whether through books, movies, or games, may be to sympathize with their predicament, but does not necessarily involve condoning their actions. It would be fine (in my view), more than that, useful and constructive, for a pacifist to take a course in War Studies for example.

And so, with my copy of Twilight Struggle in one hand, and a CND newsletter in the other, bravely ignoring all internal contradictions, I proceed....

Gamelog

Roads to Leningrad: Soloing this at the moment. It's been sitting on the dining table for weeks, but my lovely wife never complains. This is a terrific design, I really like the flow of the combat phase, it's very hard to count all the beans in advance, you just have to put as much as you can in place, make your decisions and hope for the best. I suspect there's a lot of skill involved in playing well, especially as the Germans.

Tamsk: A great birthday gift from Phil. Although the physical production is nowhere near as satisfying as Yinsh or Dvonn, I love the tension and excitement of this game. It sheds the sober, thoughtful image of abstracts, and generates lots of fun!

Gouda! Gouda!: Another birthday gift from Les, this has proved to be a hit with Sue. It also went down well with her parents (although it seemed a bit too long with 4).

World War 5: Dinky little Risk-lite game with Icehouse pieces, just arrived as a freebie in the Looney Labs Christmas mailshot. If I play my cards right I may even get Sue to try this one.

Successors: Just arrived courtesy of GMT's autumn sale. Looks wonderful, I have to reluctantly admit that GMT games are getting physically nicer since they switched production to China.

Unhappy King Charles: This preorder is mid-Atlantic I believe, I'm looking forward to seeing what a CDG on this theme looks like. Could be a perfect marriage of politics and warfare.

Race for the Galaxy: the Gathering Storm: This is top of my current cravings. I like Race for the Galaxy a lot, don't often get a chance to play it, and would love to try out the solo "robot" in the expansion.

The Melvyn Bragg show covered "Neuroscience" yesterday. Big subject for 40 minutes! A bit like doing a show on "History" for example. They concentrated on functional imaging and consciousness. Hardly anything about pharmacology, molecular biology, genetics, disease etc. Still, good to hear "my" subject being covered on my favourite radio show.

Nim50dCon roundup

I played some great games over the weekend with a bunch of friends who came over for my 50th birthday spielfest. As I was the birthday boy, I got to pick what was played, and is probably why I enjoyed them all - old favourites and new (to me) outings alike.

ASL Starter Kit #1: Nick and I played scenario 2 War of the Rats and had a great time.The rules may be daunting, but once you've got the hang of it the game whizzes along, with buckets of tension and excitement.

Blue Moon City: Well I liked it a lot (and that's what counts), even if Simon and Nick ("Blue Moon Shitty")were less impressed.

Race for the Galaxy: We had two outings with this on Saturday. Sad to report that enthusiasm was waning after the second play, but I loved every minute of this. Great game, loads of intricate strategy to explore, I want to play lots more of this. It's left me very keen to get the expansion with its solitaire rules.

Dune was the big event on Saturday. The game ended fairly quickly, which I guess is common with inexperienced players. In turn 3's Nexus John and I saw the opportunity to go for a joint win. Unfortunately we didn't anticipate the other 4 players allying to stop us! 3 climactic battles later and the gang of 4 had got their (pretty lame in my view) win. Great game, generates a strong sense of story, I've had masses of fun both times I've played it.

Ticket to Ride Marklin: this went a bit slower than I would have liked, some people taking it a little too seriously perhaps? Good fun though, and I enjoyed getting a win.

Age of Steam: Sunday's big event. Believe it or not, this was first time for everyone at the table. I was very impressed. We got one rule wrong, consigning John to an undeserved bankruptcy. I really enjoyed it, despite losing hands down, always a good sign. I like having the feel of a heavy economic game in a 2-hour package.

China: I have been hankering after Web of Power (sadly out of print) for a while now, so I was delighted when Les presented me with China as a birthday present. We had one game, liked it, and another was suggested, so round we went again. I like it a lot - very nice minimalist area-control game. The map of China is slightly less interesting than Web of Power's Europe, but on the other hand you've got the optional fortress rule which adds a nice extra decision
point.

Thanks to everyone who turned up - as day guests or weekenders - and made it such a special weekend for me: Nick, Simon, Phil, Iain, John, Les and Trevor. We must do it again soon, even though I'm unlikely to be 50 again for a while!

Hmmm. Pay the difference (£600) to get our written-off car repaired? Or try living carless for a year?

A lucky escape

Iain, Chris, Raphael and I all wasted hours last week reading the rules to The Napoleonic Wars in preparation for our session on Saturday evening. Iain thought I had a copy of the game, I thought Iain had a copy, and Chris and his son just thought someone had a copy. Oh dear. But I think we all agreed that we'd had a lucky escape.

Instead we played Conquest of Paradise, which I enjoyed a lot (but I won so that always improves my opinion of a game). Iain wasn't very impressed - he felt that the game is too long to be so luck-dependent. He was unlucky with his exploration draws, I admit, but he also didn't play very well (although I would never say that to him of course).

Why I hate Facebook

It's slooowwww.
It's too flirty.
For example: why does it keep showing me ads for finding sexy local singles, no matter how many times I tell it I'm not interested?
I'm tired of seeing pictures of drunk people.
The interface is horribly clunky.
For example, I couldn't even figure out how to write on a friend's wall the other day.
It's a huge waste of time.
And most seriously: no-one reads my blog any more, they're all busy Facebooking!

Now Scrabulous has gone, the one thing I still enjoy about Facebook is playing chess with Phil. But there's other places we could do that. And it's sometimes nice to get people's news. But I'm trying out Twitter for that.

No regrets

I will be playing The Napoleonic Wars with Iain and Chris tomorrow, so naturally enough I am rereading the rules, which has brought back to me with pungent immediacy why I sold this game in the first place. On BGG I read quite a lot of comments along the lines of "great game - shame about the rules", but lets face it, the rules are a mess because the game is a mess. Especially the diplomatic rules. But a lot of the other stuff as well - army groups, conquest and submission, the interphase, etc etc. And why so many funny words, can't we call it a "space" instead of a "duchy"??

The developer Don Greenwood (may he live for ever) also developed ASL and Up Front (of blessed memory), and TNW has the same kind of style - exceptions piled upon exceptions piled upon tottering exceptions. Someone at GMT, Andy Lewis or Gene Billingsley, should have stepped in and said "This won't do. It really won't. Simplify it!"

Still, it was one of their biggest successes of recent years, so maybe I'm mistaken. But IMO it could have been so much better a game......

Temptation

GMT games have their usual amazing autumn sale this year. As a P500 customer I can get 50% off any two games. It would be criminal not to take advantage of a discount like that (even with the plunging value of sterling). I'm thinking about Successors, with either Napoleonic Wars 2nd edition (even though I sold my copy of the 1st edition after some unpleasant experiences - probably more the fault of my game group than of the game itself) or Saratoga or Under the Lily Banners or maybe even one of Vance von Borries' East Front Series games?

Who you gonna call?

I had a problem (War of the Ring figures still tacky 2 years after applying Games Workshop matt varnish).

I tried to fix it on my own (by dry-brushing over the top of the varnish - no good).

I asked the BoardGame Geek community about it (here).

They suggested an answer (Testors Dullcote).

I tried their answer (ordered a bottle of Testors from here - applied it to a few Isengard orcs - it works! - they look great too).

I love BoardGameGeeks!

Gosh I'm desperate for a wargame. Life isn't the same since my regular opponent moved to Ireland. Sue played Conquest of Paradise with me the other evening, bless her good heart, but only on condition that I didn't do any fighting. In the end I attacked some of the intrinsic warriors on the map, but I think I got away with that - she didn't seem to mind. But I really need a good old-fashioned hex-and-counter stand-up fight with someone......

The Coast to Coast walk was an amazing experience. Nearly three weeks in the open air - we got very fit and healthy. We had a couple of difficult days in the rain, but most of the time we had great weather. By the time we arrived in the Lake District we had become eaters of miles, and found it relatively easy to do the big climbs over Kidsty Pike and St Sunday Crag that we encountered. I picked up a stomach bug and we spent an unscheduled day in Borrowdale while I recovered, so next day we had to do two days' walk in one day to get back on schedule, 16 miles over Honister Pass and down the length of Ennerdale, but we coped with even that. It was a great feeling to finally dip our toes in the sea at St Bees; the tide was out so we had to walk an extra 200yds!

Photos are here if you're interested.

Tomorrow I walk across England

Or start to, at least. Sue and I are heading off on Wainwright's Coast to Coast walk, from Robin Hood's Bay on the North Sea to St Bee's Head on the Irish. It's 190 miles, but we're taking it at a leisurely pace, over two and a half weeks. That's quite a long time to go without gaming, blogging and BGG! Last time we did a long walk we took a tube of Icehouse pieces with us, but I'm not sure I can stand 2 1/2 weeks of Treehouse.....

The End

Today I finally came to the end of my year of living dangerously. This is the last day of my Neuroscience MSc, and I've just picked up my result from the notice pinned outside the course supervisor's office. This afternoon I travelled over to the Institute with my heart in my mouth, dosing myself with coffee and chocolate at St Pancreas to fortify myself for the shock. It was a Distinction! So I'm pretty happy with that, although I have an innate tendency to think I could always have done better, but in this case, well, I really couldn't. So I'm shocked, as expected - I think any result, distinction, merit, pass or fail, would have shocked me - but a warm glow of happiness is slowly filtering into my consciousness as well.

If only I could do this well at online Euphrat & Tigris....

Recent acquisitions

In spite of being an indigent student, I allow myself a modest monthly game-buying budget. I've been satisfying my urges with BGG trades for quite a while, so the budget has been piling up, and I've finally decided to spend some of it.

Attack Sub: I started looking out for this one on eBay after listening to a rave review on the Contact with the Enemy podcast. Sounds like a great theme and another card game from Courtney Allen the designer of Up Front has to be worth a try. And it would be a great one to try with Marty my local wargaming opponent on weekday evenings when time is short. Sadly Marty has moved to Ireland so not sure when this will reach the table now.....sigh.

Roads to Leningrad: I'm very excited about this one. Having recently harangued passers-by about hex-and-counter operational games, I thought perhaps I should invest in one. RtL is highly rated, if little known, and it's currently on sale at GMT, so I decided to try it out. I have to say the presentation of this game is nothing short of lavish. Beautiful, large, colourful counters, gorgeous maps, and generous play-aids including full-colour scenario cards. I'm really enjoying the sensual pleasure of breaking this out of its box, punching, clipping and sorting the counters; plus the intellectual pleasure of reading the rules (which are longish but seem very solid and clearly explained) and the playbook.

ASL RuleBook: Yes I finally caved in on this one, though there is still some internal resistance to shelling out for Beyond Valor as well! A friend is picking it up for me so I have yet to get my hands on it. I'm preparing myself for the shock....

Help me decide what to do next.....

As regular readers will know, I am coming to the end of a Masters course in Neuroscience at King's College London. And I just can't decide what to do next. Shall I try to stay on in the lab as a PhD student, working hard for long hours, perennially short of money, with an uncertain future at the end of it as a 50-something competing with 20-somethings for my first post-doc position? On the other hand, I would be working on one of two questions in science that really matter - how did the universe begin? and how does the brain work? - all the rest being trivia according to my supervisor Gerald Finnerty. Or shall I try to get a job in bioinformatics? As our knowledge of genetics mushrooms this is a booming field, and one where I might be able to use my 30-years of IT experience. But it could be quite difficult to get that vital first job. Or shall I go back to Egypt? Back to the commercial world of IT - giving up the dream of working in science, but at least earning a decent wage and building up some kind of pension fund so that Sue and I have a chance of retiring some day.

I've put up a poll - please vote, and post a comment as well. Help me to think this through.

The Drive on Metz, 1944

This wifeless weekend just gone also saw me punching and clipping the counters for Drive on Metz which came as a cover game in the latest issue of C3i. It's an introductory game from Jim Dunnigan the veteran designer of SPI in the 70's. I have happy memories of playing his Napoleon at Waterloo in school lunchbreaks (and more recently at hexwar.com) and this game is very much in the same mould - if enything even simpler and with even fewer counters (about 20!). It's a very simple ruleset with a completely bloodless CRT, which gives the game a strangely puzzle-like feel. This is not the place to go to quickly satisfy your wargaming bloodlust (try Up Front for that!) The carefully thought out victory conditions enhance this abstract feel - JD's experience clearly shows here, and it's a lesson many designers would do well to attend to. How many otherwise impressive wargames are let down by sloppy victory conditions (Paths of Glory - why all those VPs in Italy? Von Manstein's Backhand Blow - where's the incentive for the Soviets to overextend themselves?)

So, not a thriller (it's not Breakout Normandy!), but a possible gift to my potential wargamer nephew, or a quick lunchtime game if you're lucky enough to have an opponent at work.

PS C3i also included 4 new scenario cards for Commands and Colors:Ancients, and an excellent article on the Trafalgar campaign, which makes it £11 very well spent for me.

Seeing that my friendly local wargames opponent is betraying me by moving to Ireland (what's wrong with Tottenham Marty??) I need to look for alternatives. So I finally got around to trying out wargameroom.com. Sue is away for the weekend so, being at a loose end on Friday evening, I tried a game of Commands & Colors: Ancients. With all the seasoned players that hang around there I was fully expecting to get creamed, but was pleasantly surprised to get a win. I was very impressed by the software - graphically it's crude, but it is so great having a system that enforces the rules (unlike Vassal or Cyberboard for example). A bit more sophistication in the display would help, like highlighting attacks as they happen, or at least labelling the hexes, but overall it's excellent. Can't wait to try C&C:A again, and maybe move on to Twilight Struggle or Up Front (which has a clunky command line interface!) after that.

LesCon - the truth

Last weekend's LesCon was great fun. Very comfortable cabin in the Forest of Dean with great facilities nearby - I made three visits to the swimming pool and sauna. We stocked up with piles of food and booze when we arrived then basically hunkered down for an uninterrupted weekend of gaming. Here's what was played:

Up Front Quite a few games of this between various people. My favourite encounter was Paratroop Drop vs Nick - my plucky Brits just barely scraped a win on victory conditions.

El Grande The grand old warhorse of euros. Proved to be better than I remembered it, and I was pleased to get 2nd place (Nick won).

Wits and Wagers Late on Friday. I'm not a fan of party games, but this was OK I suppose.

Struggle of Empires Saturday morning's epic contest. Les quietly pulled off a surprise tie for first place with Dave (who was making a lot more sturm und drang on the board). I came 4th but enjoyed every minute - others seemed less convinced of this game's classic status.

Nexus Ops On Saturday evening I taught the other 4 this game and coached them through it. Dave won with his from-the-off aggression. Everyone seemed to have a lot of fun.

Bean Trader Saturday ended with this fun game. Marty showed his alarming negotiation skills. He should definitely have been a 2nd-hand car dealer, not a doctor.

Dune Nick had to head home late on Saturday for an archaeological emergency, so he missed out on this classic from the 70's. I was delighted to finally get a chance to play this. I won on turn 5 when my Fremen seized the opportunity presented by the overflowing Tleilaxu tanks and snatched Arrakeen. It took us about 3 hours, and the time raced by - there's always something interesting happening. I can't wait to play this one again.

Canal Mania Dave won this one, and I came in last. Very enjoyable light "railway" game.

Shooting Ducks Another party game to finish up before we hit the road back home.

Thanks to Les, Nick, Dave and Marty for making this such an enjoyable weekend. And thanks especially to Les for organizing the accommodation and making a wonderful cooked breakfast on Saturday morning. Mmmmm, black pudding.......

The red box

LesCon - which is actually 5 gaming buddies crammed into a log cabin in the Forest of Dean for a weekend - is fast approaching. I'm getting very excited now, and starting to think about what to pack in my red box. As a necessary discipline I plan to restrict myself to one medium size plastic crate of games, especially as 3 of us are car-sharing so space is at a premium.

I'm thinking of a small number of really good multiplayer games that will take 5, and making sure I know the rules well and am ready to teach them. Current candidates:

Dune (an Avalon Hill scifi classic - very highly thought of in some quarters. I could bring the DVD as well!)
Empires of the Ancient World (a Martin Wallace golden-oldie)
1825 (gentler and shorter than 1830)
Die Macher (the ultimate heavy euro - always wanted to try this)
My amazing poker chips

And perhaps a couple of quick 2-player wargames that don't take up too much space:

ASL Starter Kit 2
Up Front!
Crusader Rex (like Hammer of the Scots with sunshine)
Rise of the Luftwaffe (Up Front in the air! you can do the big bombing missions with more than 2)

And something special from Canada:

Crokinole

Oh dear, even this lot won't fit, so some will have to be left behind.....

Some interesting discussion around my recent post about whether to get into ASL or not. Voting was split, with 3 broadly for and 3 against me taking the ASL plunge. Iain Cheyne and Firestone both preferred the idea of EastFront. Intriguingly Chris Farrell said he would probably still be focussing on ASL if he still had opponents - but what would the gaming hobby have looked like without one of its most insightful commentators?! Marty was against the idea, which is highly significant seeing as he is my only regular wargames opponent at the moment. Andy made the interesting suggestion that I buy only the rulebook (I actually already have a tatty 1st edition), use VASL, and dispense with "the cardboard". Hmmm - surely wargaming would die pretty quickly if we all stopped buying the cardboard?

So where does that leave me? Still confused I suppose.......

Online challenge

Another readers' game anyone? How about Amun Re at SpielByWeb, name "Cingulate gyrus", password "nimrod"?

Crokinole love

My lovely wife Sue just returned from a two and a half week trip to Ontario, Canada for a conference of Mennonite pastors. When I collected her from Gatwick she had a mysterious package with her which turned out to be a truly wonderful gift for me - a Crokinole board! As you already know, Crokinole originated among the Mennonites of Ontario, so Sue was right in the heart of Crokinole country, and she bought my board direct from the workshop of Willard Martin where it was made.

We've had a lot of fun playing this already, although Sue beats me every time, having been intensively coached (I allege) by Canadian Mennonites while she was away. It's great - it's like having a pool table in the house, without having to build an extension to put it in.

Whether 'tis better

The big question is: to ASL or not to ASL. I have over £100 accumulated in my games budget, and I'm wondering whether to splurge it on the ASL Rulebook and Beyond Valor. They are actually getting rather scarce in the UK - most of the online retailers are out of stock - but on Saturday, on the way to Iain's, I got off the tube at Leicester Square and had a peep in The Orc's Nest, and there they were, pristine in their shrink wrap. I reverently turned them over in my hands for a few minutes, while the following thoughts went through my head:

1. That's a lot of money.
2. It's so complicated, will I ever actually play this?
3. 14 counter sheets, for all love! How long will that take me to punch and clip?
4. And how will I store all those counters anyway?
5. This is only the start - I would also need For King and Country, Yanks etc etc.
6. These are both out of print at the moment, this may be my last chance to buy them for a year or two.
7. There are some other cool games I could get with my £100. What about EastFront for example?
8. I have plenty of other wargames on my shelf I haven't even played yet.
9. If I get into ASL I'll never have time for any other games, anyway.
10. That's a lot of money.

So I balked. Put them back on the shelf and walked out of the shop. Did I do the right thing dear reader? Maybe I'll drop by the Orc's Nest again next time I'm in town......

MayDay Feast

The bank holiday weekend was a feast of gaming for me. On Saturday I went over to Iain's lovely home on the bank of the Thames at Chiswick. While we waited for James to arrive, Chris introduced Iain and me to Race for the Galaxy. I could tell this is an amazing deep game, but on my first time through it was all I could do to get the hang of the mechanics. Strategy will have to come later. (Fortunately I have a nice new copy of my own to study.) Then on to the main event - 1825 Unit 2. This was new to the other 3, so I was kept busy explaining the rules, shepherding everyone through the first few turns, answering rules queries, doing mental arithmetic for folks, and running the bank. Anyway, that's my explanation for my poor showing, as I came in last. James, who was new to any kind of 18xx game, did extremely well and got 2nd. The general verdict on 1825 was very favourable, so hopefully we'll do it again soon.

Next day Phil and Gav (my 20-something children) came over, cooked me an amazing lunch, and then demanded to play a game. I thought I would risk trying Puerto Rico on them, and was pleasantly surprised by how much they enjoyed it. The scores were very close - I just scraped a win with a quarry strategy, and the boys asked me if we could play again online, which we are now doing, at the clunky but effective www.pr-game.com.

Life without revision

Finished my last exam yesterday. Gosh it's been a long haul. I feel a bit bewildered and at a loose end - not sure how to get through a day without revising any more. Maybe I'll just do an hour or two today, just in case......

I've got the day off today - lab project starts tomorrow. So today is a pottering day. I think I'll be spending at least part of it soloing through an ASL Starter Kit scenario. Maybe I should get out in the sunshine at some point as well (sunshine? I vaguely remember that.)

Irresponsibly, I spent some potential revision time on Sunday creating my first ever geeklist. I'm so proud - 16 thumbs!

Getting my mind off brains....

A man can't be always revising for his neuroscience exams, so this week I have managed to fit in soloing an entire game of Clash of Giants II in between all the anxiety, depression, psychosis and amnesia. I played the Ypres scenario and had a fantastic time. The Germans managed to take Ypres but at the cost of seeing their left wing collapse and the French swarm back into Lille. This game was such fun solo I can't imagine how great it must be face-to-face! With a simple rule-set it very precisely captures the feel of WW1 mobile warfare - the constant worries about keeping in contact with friendly units on your left and right, the difficulties of co-ordinating large-scale movements, the slight superiority of defence over attack and the tendency for things to bog down. I like the combat system and the way that troop quality is separated out from raw manpower. And the chit-pull mechanic generates friction and anxiety aplenty.

In my opinion this is an absolutely classic operational-level wargame. I enjoy strategic wargames (like Paths of Glory or Europe Engulfed), and I've had mixed experiences with tactical wargames (ASLSK cool, GBOH not so cool). But for me this sort of thing is the apex of cardboard and paper wargaming: the traditional hex-and-counter operational wargame.

Euphrat & Tigris: always something new

I've been playing it for a decade but this game still holds surprises. I challenged Phil to a quick two-player match after lunch today in his trendy Shoreditch flat. Never seen a game go like this before. Every monument was on the board well before the end, and we made a serious dent in the cube supply. Final score 30:13 to me. I've never scored anything remotely this high in E&T before. How can such simple rules produce so much variety?

Two done, two to go

This morning's exam must have degraded all the structural proteins (like GFAP, actin, tubulin etc) in my brain. It feels like there's just mush in there this afternoon.

Spreading the word

Sue's family have been visiting this week (with strict instructions to keep out of my way during the day when I am revising). We played Through the Desert on Monday evening and Ticket to Ride Marklin last night. Leaving out the passenger rules speeded up setup and made a nice playable game that the less enthusiastic gamers (sister-in-law Maggie and niece-in-law Sarah who always wants to know "is it like Risk?") still enjoyed. Everyone was playing very nicely until nephew-in-law Tom suddenly figured out how to be nasty, and spent the rest of the game gleefully blocking his mother's routes. Sarah, who had spent most of the game stressing about completing her long route, won by a nice margin.

So Ticket to Ride lived up to its reputation as an ideal gateway game (ie a great game for people who don't like games).

Judgement Day

I've been revising since mid-January. That's two and a half months. I think that's the longest I've ever revised for anything, including my finals at Oxford. At last, it's nearly over. I had a relaxing day with Sue yesterday, pottering around Highgate, reading the papers and cooking a nice meal back home. Today it's one last look through my mindmaps for module 1 (yes, I have made a mindmap for *every* lecture in the course)then an early night and the first exam tomorrow.....

That was easy.....

Shiny new template only took about 20 minutes to get up and running. And the new customization features are a whole lot easier than fiddling with the template code. However, I see my little avatar on the right has confused things. And I would really like to be able to pull over my bloglines list and my google bookmarks without having to use code. One day soon perhaps.....

Hooked on victory?

I got a big jolt of dopamine - and whatever other euphoric chemicals my brain rewards me with - when I won the readers' game of Euphrat & Tigris the other week. And when I lost the next one by a similarly impressive margin I received an equivalent dose of dysphoria. (See how I'm thinking neuroscience these days? That's what 2 months of solid revision has done to me.) I can't deny that the big win (13/5/4/4!) was an especially memorable and pleasurable gaming experience, whereas the loss left me slightly grumpy and less motivated to play again. So I was wondering how important winning is to my enjoyment of the hobby. If I never win another game, will I continue gaming? I like to think that I'm a fair-minded opponent who gets most of his enjoyment from the playing not the winning - but how long would I last without an occasional dose of victory to keep me interested? We've all met people who take this too far - gamers for whom winning seems to be their only motivation for playing, and who are prepared to be very unpleasant opponents in order to get what they crave - but I'm not sure that I'm high-minded enough to do without the occasional win myself.

I won! I'm starting to like this game.....

I'm starting to come to terms with Combat Commander:Europe. It helps that I've finally - third try - managed to beat Marty. It was quite a satisfying win as well - it didn't feel too random or gamey. My main line of attack was held up by wire for several turns. By the time I finally cleared it (OK that bit was random) I had saved up a pretty deadly hand of fire combos, and caught his defenders in a deadly storm of FT and HMG attacks. They crumbled and fled.

So I'm starting to figure out which levers to press to make things go my way. Never give up the initiative card - if you do you'll never get that crushing attack result you're after. Never forget it's a card game - the state of your hand is just as important as the position of your troops on the map.

Nevertheless, it still feels lacking in authenticity compared with Up Front! or ASLSK. I don't think it will ever draw me into the same visceral experience that its towering forbears can do.

Anyone for another readers' game?

Anyone for Euphrat & Tigris on the BGG server? It's called Insula with password "nimrods".

Camden Lock Market went up in smoke last night. It's a shame, I liked the shabby hippyness of the place. Ans it's especially a shame as there was a little game shop - Village Games - which most likely burnt down with all the other little businesses there. They sold fancy Go sets and tarot cards and dice and stuff, but they also had quite a few Eurogames stacked on top of cupboards and on the floor. The whole shop was tiny, about the size of a pantry. I hope they were insured...

An open letter

My darling Sue,

You have probably noticed that there have been rather a lot of parcel deliveries to our home recently. There were two just before Christmas (Conquest of Paradise and Runebound), and another two just after (Clash of Giants II and Reef Encounter), and then a specially large one from the States last week (Commands and Colors:Ancients expansions 2 and 3). I would hate you to think that I have got some sort of compulsive game-buying disorder, so I just want to explain what's going on so that you can understand it's not like that at all.

The easy ones first: Runebound and Reef Encounter were BoardGameGeek trades - I swapped games I don't want (Hansa, Caesar & Cleopatra, and Tempus) for games I do want from some friendly geeks on BGG. It didn't cost me any money (except the postage, quite hefty in the case of Tempus) so I got all the fun of the new-game-in-the-post experience without the expense.

Next let me explain to you about the P500 items: Conquest of Paradise and the Commands and Colors:Ancients expansions. I preordered these from GMT ages ago - back in the summer when I had a well-paid job - so it's almost like getting a free gift in the post - from my old prosperous self. I don't think you can blame me for that - can you?

So that only leaves one: Clash of Giants II. This was in GMT's Christmas sale for their loyal P500 customers. 50% off any two games. I was very restrained - I only bought one, so in fact this was an example, not of extravagence, as might first be assumed, but of careful budgeting and prudence.

So there you are. I hope that's all cleared up in your mind now, and you understand why all those parcels were necessary.

Your loving husband,
Peter

Blue Moon heaven

This is a fantastic boon for me - Reiner Knizia's Blue Moon is one of my top ten games of all time, but I only know one other person (my good friend Les) who likes to play it. But now, there is a wonderful computer program that I can practice against. It's a free download!

And it beats me every time......

Bring it on

I didn't do very well in our Christmas challenge - 3rd out of 4, only managing to beat Phil, who had never played Euphrat & Tigris before. But never say die, I've opened another readers' game for you over at BoardGameGeek. It's called Nucleus Accumbens, password "nimrods".

Don't miss Phil's retelling of Frankenstein for modern audiences.

Thanks a lot Steve

Yesterday iTunes suddenly decided, for some reason, that it had no tunes in its library. Thankfully they were all still there (all 3800 of them) on disk, so all I had to do was point iTunes at the folder. Then there was the scary business of reloading them onto my iPod, which it no longer recognized of course. But the annoying thing is that all my playlists have disappeared, and all my ratings too. So I can no longer listen to my "Friday" playlist or my "5-star rated" playlist. Grr.....

Gaming token

My car got towed this morning. Initially I thought it had been stolen, but after a few calls I tracked it down to our friends at the Harringay council vehicle pound. Apparently I had been parked in front of a "dropped kerb" whatever that is. Aargh! £250 gone, what a waste! And how depressing.

But I am married to a wonderful woman. After I had recovered my car and was brooding in my study, Sue brought up a cup of tea, some chocolate, and this voucher, entitling me to a game of Conquest of Paradise (recently arrived in the post) with my wife. Excellent, my mood is lifting already.

Thing is though, a lot of wargamers would love to have a voucher like this. So I'm seriously thinking about eBaying it. It might even cover the fine......

Man flu

Some people (especially women) speak of "man flu" in a derogatory tone of voice. However, I can report that Sue and I have conclusively demonstrated the existence of this mysterious illness. We were both infected simultaneously last weekend with the same strain of virus, and started developing symptoms at the same time on Monday morning. However, my illness has clearly developed in a much more serious manner than Sue's, as measured objectively by the following signs:
- Groaning
- Blowing nose
- Grumbling
- Sneezing
- Self-medicating
- Coughing
- Lying in bed
- Wishing self dead
- Feeling too tired to do household chores
So there it is. You heard it here first - "man flu" is real.

The Christmas Challenge

Anyone for a readers-only game of Euphrat & Tigris over on BoardGameGeek? It's called Globus Pallidus and the password is "nimrods".

Excited!

I'm excited about wargaming at the moment. I'm excited because:

1) I'm meeting Marty tomorrow to play Hannibal: Rome vs Carthage. I used to play this a lot back in the 90's, it will be great to play this classic again. Marty has the new Valley Games edition with the controversial Mike Doyle artwork - it will be interesting to see how useable the new edition is.

2) I'm meeting Phil (my son) on Sunday to play lots of Up Front! And you just can't beat a good game of Up Front!

3) I've just ordered Clash of Giants II in GMT's winter sale. 50% off - that's exciting!

4) Somebody contacted me out of the blue on BGG and offered me a trade. So I swapped 2 games I didn't really want (Hansa and Caesar & Cleopatra) for one game that I pick up and look at every time I go in a game shop but put it down with a sigh because of the price label (Runebound). I'm very excited about Runebound - especially as I can play it solo. And I'm very attracted by the idea of the expansion decks. Term finishes tomorrow so I hope I'll get a couple of hours to try this one out shortly.

A Tale of Two Gaming Weekends

Part i – Cardiff 2nd-4th November

Here's a nice write up from Nick of a recent gaming weekend we had at his place in Cardiff:

After picking up Peter from the station (and a swift pint at our local nationalist pub!) we got home and started playing pretty pronto; first up Command & Colours. Replaying the Battle of Zama I was the Romans and Pete the Carthaginians and, true to historical form I won – quite easily. Swapping sides Pete got his revenge though I though it was quite close – and here’s something that I’ve found out about this elegant excellent game; that there’s a fine margin between winning and losing and that a seemingly stable (even winning) situation can rapidly veer out of control. In my case I made the mistake of leaving one block units within reach of his units – Pete took advantage of my folly and won.

After a spot of dinner there was the return of an old favourite – Railway Rivals. Dani joined in and duly leapt into the lead with Pete coming a close second and me having a right mare!! I was never in it – at one point I was 100 points behind the leader, though I was catching up towards the end. Rarely for this game the game was going to be decided on the last race too....and this put me in a quandary. Dani was ahead of Pete by 15, but she couldn’t run the last race – Pete and I could. If I didn’t run Pete would win the game, if I did and won Dani would win......choices........choices!!! Well no choice really – I had to race and fortuitously won though I could hear Pete muttering something like ‘under the thumb’ as my train entered destination town!

Next up was a game of Sechs Nimmt (Dani won again!!!!!) after which Pete then went to bed!!!!!!!!!!.......Ahhhh....I remember the good old days, sitting up ‘til 3 in the morning talking intellectual things over a good glass of brandy and a cigar..........errm well, playing some complicated game over cheap cider until our eyes couldn’t stay open any longer! Ah well......no more!

Still, I think I can forgive Pete (almost!) anything as for my birthday he gave me the first starter kit for Advanced Squad Leader. I spent the Friday night reading the rules to Pete’s rhythmic snoring (only joking.....he purrs!) and – despite being the worst written set of rules I’ve ever come across – I think I’ve become a true geek. The game is brilliant.

The Saturday was Up Front day – specifically a campaign version of the British vs Germans at Caen. This consisted of 10 linked scenarios with varying special rules (i.e. AFV reinforcements, night rules etc) and each side had varying points with which to build their squads in each scenario. The squads were built from a limited roster of soldiers and each individual could change (for better or worse) depending on what happened to him in a scenario. In effect it was the campaign game rules in the Up Front rulebook with minor modifications from a campaign system I found on the internet.

I wasn’t sure if it would work, but to judge from Pete’s reaction - and my own - it makes a brilliant game even better. Choosing your squad is difficult as it has to be tailored to the specific victory conditions of that scenario – if you have to close with enemy (i.e. reach range chit 4) then it’s important to stock up with chaps wielding automatic weapons (moving fire, good firepower close up), if you’re defending, rifles and LMGs/MMGs are the order of the day, if you’ve got to take a pillbox then a flamethrower and Demo charges are needed. But this is a choice that must be made by the player within the confines of the points allocated – and this choice becomes more difficult with each scenario as individuals become wounded (they come back 3 scenarios later), lose morale (from routing in the previous scenario) or die (forcing the owning player to pay VPs to bring them back – but only when all other soldiers with the same weapon have been used). After a few scenarios your squad has a different look and feel to it and (as I was playing the Germans) I was constantly reminded of that great film ‘Cross of Iron’.

Anyway – we only managed to play the first three scenarios and by that time the Germans were enjoying the best of it, though I suspect the Brits would have come right back into it. We both made mistakes – Pete sending on his AFV reinforcement (I got a Panther in the previous scenario.....how exciting!!) against a pillbox rather than a squad of vulnerable chappies – and me forgetting just how nasty a mortar is against infantry......even in a gully!! Nevertheless, we both enjoyed the game immensely and will certainly do the campaign again.

After a much needed rest (and curry!) we resumed (with Dani) a new Catan game ‘Struggle for Rome’. Advertised as an “educational” historical game it plays the Germanic tribes (each player represents 2 factions – a cavalry and infantry – of one tribe) crossing into the Roman empire raiding and then settling. Resource cards are gained much the same way as in usual Catan games and the first one to 10 VPs wins, with VPs gained for raiding, building cities (once a tribe starts this it can’t raid any more) and few other things. Despite getting some rules wrong (my fault) we finished and I won (getting the rules wrong didn’t affect the outcome........honest guv!!).

I’m not keen though – where the game says educational there should be an added bit saying “this game has absolutely no relation to what happened in the 4th and 5th centuries” – in effect it’s the usual unimaginative Eurogame-mechanism with a fake ‘period’ chrome. Furthermore it’s just a bit too easy and one-dimensional – there are only 2 strategies for each player and the game just gets too repetitive. Now if you could attack other tribes (as happened historically) that would open the game up completely – but it’s a Eurogame and while it’s OK to sack Roman cities it’s not OK to attack each other!!!!! Settlers of the Stone Age is altogether a better game – not because it’s (pre)historically accurate.....it’s nowhere close – but there is more variety and fun to be had. Interesting as they’re designed by the same person (Klaus Teuber) – but I suppose you can’t get it right all of the time.

After we finished no amount of persuading would get Pete to play another game (even Euphrat & Tigris!) so we all went to bed........well.... I sat up and stroked my ASL starter kit!!!!!

The next morning Pete had to shoot off early on Sunday – shame really – but I look forward to the next time. I certainly enjoyed myself – it’s rare that I even win one game against Pete!!!!

OP-free gaming

My experience of a con is often spoiled by encountering one of the several kinds of obnoxious person (OP) that this hobby seems to attract: know-it-alls, rules lawyers, whiners, analysis paralytics, or bullies, to name but a few. Finding yourself across the table from one of these as you embark on a long game - Civilization, Diplomacy, or 1830 for example - can be very depressing.

Thankfully, at MidCon last week I didn't meet a single OP. Almost as soon as I got there my friend old Nick Wells arrived and we had a happy couple of hours playing ASL Starter Kit and C&C:Ancients. And then things got even better when Vick Hall appeared - I hadn't seen him for a few years, but Vick was my editor when I ran a little subzine in A Little Original Sin, his postal Diplomacy zine in the twilight years of the last century. Vick is an ideal opponent - genial, courteous, swift, and a deadly player.

Next morning we set up Civilization (not Advanced) on a table and swiftly recruited two more willing volunteers, and were soon embarked on a 5-player game. Our new recruits (Steve Hilton and Bill Mayling) also turned out to be vice-free opponents, so our epic 8-hour journey through ancient history was a thoroughly pleasant experience. So here's to you: Nick, Vick, Steve and Bill - thanks for being ideal gaming partners and the very opposite of OPs.

MidCon manifesto

I'm off to MidCon this afternoon. It's a great boardgames convention held in a businessman's hotel in Birmingham, but it does have a rather Euro-ish flavour. So let's get a few things straight before I go. I will NOT be playing anything that involves:

- Collecting jewels
- Collapsing bridges in the Himalayas
- Impressing the king/queen/Cleopatra/your mum
- Fairies, elves, pixies etc

I WILL be playing games that involve:

- Building empires
- Crushing your enemies
- Getting rich and making everyone else poor
- Machine guns or death stars

I hope that's clear to everyone.

I spent last weekend in Cardiff, helping my old friend Nick to celebrate his 40th birthday by playing lots of wargames. Nick and I go back a long way. We first met in 1992 through the postal Diplomacy hobby, Nick introduced me to his gaming club in Salisbury, and we've been firm opponents ever since.

Over the weekend we played C&C Ancients, Railway Rivals, 6 Nimmt!, Struggle for Rome, and lots of Up Front! Nick had downloaded a campaign based on the 1944 struggle for Caen. This was an amazing wargaming experience. It gave a whole new flavour to each game to know that I had to guide my platoon through 12 scenarios, managing my roster for each engagement, nurturing green men, and finding replacements for casualties.

In the first scenario my plucky Brits were assaulting a pillbox. A Panther (a Panther!!!) turned up at the start of the second deck and after a few turns of being pounded by HE I decided to settle for a loss and get my men off the battlefield ASAP. In 2nd scenario we came back at night, with a (fairly puny) AFV for another crack at the pillbox. Unfortunately the Germans had laid some mines in the interval. My Staghound fought off Nick's infiltrator, but meanwhile my manoevre group was being killed off to break my squad. Scenario 3 had no pillbox - it was more like "Meeting of Patrols". At first I was doing really well, with my mortar covering an advance into a building at range 3. But Nick outflanked both my groups, wiping out the group in the building, and I withdrew with only 3 survivors for another loss.

At this point I had 13 VPs to Nick's 69! 9 out of my roster of 26 were KIA, and another 2 wounded. We had to pause at that point, but I have to say it is not looking good for the British.....

A great weekend, and I suppose appropriate that I lost pretty well everything we played - it was Nick's birthday after all.

Things are looking up....

It's always a slightly scary moment when you meet someone face-to-face that you have so far only got to know over the internet. Will he turn out to be a psychopath, or, even worse, someone with personal hygene issues? Thankfully Marty, who was fishing for local wargamers on BoardGameGeek, and who lives only a mile down the road, turned out to be neither, but was instead a charming and hospitable opponent when I met him on Monday.

He introduced me to Combat Commander: Europe, a game that has intrigued me without obsessing me, although I have been put off by negative reviews from Chris Farrell and the boys on the Point2Point podcast. We played scenario 3, with me in the attacker's role as the Germans. The mechanics of the game are nice and simple, with table-free resolution of fire attacks, and the cards add a whole dimansion of chaos and hand-management. And it is a chaotic game. Early on a fire broke out in the middle of the board, which continued to spread as the scenario wore on, so that by the end a large chunk of the battlefield was ablaze! New units popped up in strange places, and at one point I gained a hero who sprinted past the Russian HMG to capture a key victory hex.

I can't help making comparisons with the ASL Starter Kits. Compared to an ASL board, a CC:E board feels very small and cramped (in game terms - obviously the hexes are physically large). And the way the action unfolds feels strange when you are used to ASL's account of WW2 tactics. For much of the game we had infantry units in the woods blazing away at point-blank range without either running away or closing for close-combat. This felt odd - more like the American Civil War than WW2.

Still, I enjoyed it a lot, even though I lost by a huge margin, and will happily play it again. And now that I have a local wargaming opponent at last, I shouldn't have to wait too long!

Mainlining in Chiswick

I visited Iain's enviable home in Chiswick last Saturday, where we played 3-player 1829 Mainline. I played quite a bit of 1830 back when I was younger - in fact I used it as a gateway game, assembling a group of colleagues to play in the staff canteen once a week after work. They loved it! Non-gamers these days are soft, insisting on Settlers and Carcassone....

Anyway, 1829 was a bit of a surprise. It's very different to its stablemates. Francis Tresham has opened the whole thing up, introducing quite a bit of randomness with the share deal, and also opening up the board by removing restrictions on yellow tile-laying and the upgrades. And the bonus system gives the companies a way to get ready cash when they need it. The result is a free-flowing, less deterministic game, where there is less need to calculate ahead every last dollar for that critical train upgrade. I lost, but I liked it.

We had to cash up after three and a half hours in order to watch a certain rugby game, and I'm sure there was at least another hour and a half in the game. (And we were using my lovely new poker chips, which speed things up quite a bit.) So a touch long for what it is. It will never supplant 1830 or 1825 in my affections, but it's a nice change of pace, and a good introduction to the wonderful world of 18XX.

The price of knowledge

The gaming is getting very sparse now that my Masters is in full flow. (Even in the good times I manage less in a year than Brian Bankler does in a month!) Since I became a student I've played Lost Cities and Fluxx with Sue, soloed an ASLSK#2 scenario ("88s at Zon") and won a PBEM game of Puerto Rico. Oh and I've beaten my step-nephew Tom at Napoleon at Waterloo a few times on Hexwar.

It's all pretty scanty.

Was looking forward to a session with Iain Cheyne this Saturday, but England's dratted rugby success has curtailed that.

Oh well, at least there's Midcon next month to look forward to....

So at last, I'm a student again. Yesterday I enrolled at the Institute of Psychiatry (at King's College London) to do a full-time Masters in Neuroscience. Teaching starts tomorrow!

It felt strange to be with a group of 40 or so freshly graduated youngsters. There is only one other old guy - a psychiatrist from Slovakia - but the young folks are being very friendly and not treating me like some kind of freak.

The cycling is going OK so far, except for getting caught in a cloudburst yesterday afternoon. 11 miles each way, it's a fair old distance, but only takes me an hour and a quarter, about the same as tubing and bussing it. Only cheaper and healthier.

Tomorrow we do some chemistry revision and sessions on how to revise, how to do coursework, how to pick up your email, that kind of stuff. Then on Monday it's down to the real thing - receptors, amino acids and proteins, rat brain anatomy, etc. I can't wait....

Never attack across open ground!

My son Phil came over last Sunday for lunch and a game of Up Front!. We played City Fight 501 - thanks to a guy I've never met called Andy Maly who, many years ago, kindly posted me a whole stack of Up Front! articles from The General, all the away across the Atlantic at his own expense. If you're reading Andy - thanks again! I'm still reading them and using them.

Phil chose 3 small American groups, with reinforcements to come on later, while I spent the whole 501 points up front on high morale Germans, an MMG and a LMG. My firebase was awe-inspiring, as Phil found when he tried to rush me across open ground. He was inspired I think by Cpt. Winter's cries of "Keep moving!" in Band of Brothers. Unfortunately without adequate fire support these tactics led to a massacre.

Poor Phil, after Up Front! we sat down to watch Kiki's Delivery Service, but Phil was exhausted by his exertions and fell asleep before the appearance of the mandatory airship that you always seem to get in anime films.....

Computers ate my week

A frustrating week with my computer. Windows interface going screwy, and unable to connect to my wireless router. All these faults are intermittent, hard to track down. Hard to Google for answers when you can't get online. Think I've tracked it down to my cheapo wireless card from EBuyer - a new upmarket card is in the post.

I thought it'd take me a day to get my car listed for sale on EBay - with these problems it's taken me all week. Today I can connect to the internet and finally managed to get a nice listing into EBay. Just about to press the GO button, and suddenly I can't login to EBay any more. No idea why.

Sigh. I HATE computers.......

My other hobby is more dangerous

I got back yesterday from 2 weeks holiday to hear the news that a paragliding friend was killed at my club last week. Stick wasn't a close friend, but I have often flown with him and been helped out by him with advice on conditions or a pre-flight once-over before launching on the winch. He was always ready with a sarcastic remark and a twinkle in his eye. I'm really shocked that he's gone.

And of course, being human, I'm also thinking about how this affects me. Stick had hundreds, maybe thousands of hours under his belt. He was a far more experienced and better flier than I will ever be. Yet he was killed anyway. He had a frightening, painful, and premature death. I'm not particularly good at paragliding, it would be very easy for me to have an accident. In fact I've already had one (flew myself into a small tree immediately after takeoff).

And this comes shortly after meeting a guy in a wheelchair (not permanently hopefully) at Greenbelt - another paragliding accident.

So is it time for me to give up and concentrate on the boardgaming. Let's face it, no-one ever died playing Civilization (did they?)

I guess most long-term paragliders have reached this point at some time and decided - in the end - that the rewards of the sport are worth the risks. That you have to die some day - that cholesterol or cancer will get you in the end even if you never fly again. When I started the sport I think I would have agreed - I was single, in a boring job, a bit lonely, and probably didn't feel I had that much to lose. It's different now, I'm newly married to an amazing woman, I'm starting on a new path with my Masters course. I'm really looking forward to the next few years, I'm not ready to go yet. And I don't think that paragliding is quite the overriding passion for me that it was for poor Stick.

Never mind the birds - look, D-Day barges!

I spotted these concrete barges last Saturday while walking with Sue to the RSPB reserve at Rainham Marsh. They were used in the D-Day landings, apparently, and are now gently mouldering in the sunshine on the bank of the Thames estuary.

Have I finally lost my mind?

So after about a year trying to order a counter-clipping jig from a guy in the US, I decided to make my own. It was surprisingly easy - a redundant CD case, a hacksaw, some fine-grade sandpaper, and about 15 minutes careful work were all that was needed. The critical bit was filing away the corner until the amount of counter-corner showing was just right.

It certainly makes the clipping job quicker and far more accurate. As you can see I've been going through my ASL Starter Kit counters re-clipping them for absolutely uniform corners.

But the question remains - why would any sane person want to do this?

Tottenham MiniCon

I baptized my new home last weekend by inviting Dave (centre) and Nick (right) over for 3 days of wargaming mayhem. Simon (left) joined us too on the Saturday. On the menu were Nexus Ops, Sword of Rome, and Up Front!. Nick has sent me this excellent after-action-report, so here goes:

It’s always nice to go back to London – and especially so when there’s a bit of gaming in the offing. So despite a long and stuffy journey to a bit of London I wasn’t particularly familiar with it was great to finally arrive at Pete and Sue’s bijou little set up. I was immediately greeted with a plate of risotto and joined Dave and a friend of Sues at the dining table.....very nice.....very civilised. Well it was until the game we were playing that evening was described to me; it went something along the lines of (I think it was Dave who told me) “a game with funny monsters which move around a board fighting and occasionally picking up other monsters”. Oh yes, and some sort of mining was mentioned – but by that time all I was thinking was OH NO – IT’S BLOODY TITAN!!!!

Half a bottle of wine later I’d calmed down. The game’s actually called ‘Nexus Corps’ (I think) and it’s actually really good – not just because it’s nothing like Titan! Anyway Pete won, with me and Dave a very close 2nd=. By midnight we’d gone to bed with me and Dave leafing through the rules for the next day’s game - ‘Sword of Rome’ - and plotting......plotting!

Simon arrived at 11ish and we got started pronto with me as the Greeks, Pete as the Romans, Dave as the Etruscans/Samnites and Simon as the Gauls – and boy did they suit him! Initially, though, the Gauls were under the cosh big-time with Dave pushing hard and doing well. I was having less success trying to duff up the Carthaginians – but on the bright side everyone was leaving me alone. It took the rise of Pete’s Romans to give us all a collective slap in the face – in the first turn he chomped up the Volsci and bit by bit he built a very firm recruiting base with Rome as the centre of this spider’s web. By the 3rd turn it was clear that if differences weren’t made up Pete would pull away – so we did what every upstanding, honest and noble gamer would do.....we ganged up on him!

It worked too, but it took a bit longer than we thought. I was convinced I had him when I attacked from Neapolis – especially with a Solar Eclipse card (meant I could re-roll the combat roll and choose which one I wanted). I didn’t roll particularly well with either, but I still beat him – until he played the Quincunx card which meant he could re-roll his dice.......getting a 6, 5 and 5. OUCH. Still he was under pressure from Dave too so fortunately it wasn’t too much of a problem and in the following round I captured Capua from him. It put me ahead on VPs in the 4th turn but only by one.

In the meantime Dave and Simon were having an interesting relationship. The best way for the Gauls to get VPs is for them to raid – and of course the obvious target for them is the Etruscans. Naturally therefore Simon raided......and Dave reacted, denying Simon the VPs (by forcing him to use Gallic Solidarity to convert VP and recruiting areas he’d made Etruscan). As such they were both going nowhere and getting a little tetchy to boot. As an answer to the rise of Peter, Simon came up with a novel solution – he offered to Dave that he would only raid non VP areas, meaning that Dave would not need to waste time and troops converting them back (he didn’t want to use the Etruscan Bribe ability) and could concentrate on defending against and attacking Pete.

Dave accepted and in a very short time the board was dotted with raided areas (independent markers) and Simon was 2 VPs better off. Not bad going – except that he was now raiding Greek areas! Dave, though, had managed to push the Romans back pretty emphatically and things were settling down to the usual in-fighting between all players. Certainly Dave and I were thinking about duffing up a Gallic army – though I suspect Simon was considering having a go at me with his army in the south (with Brennus).

Unfortunately we stopped towards the end of the 4th turn (7pm!) – it was my idea but I thought that it would be nice to play and finish some other games before we dropped – and we weren’t going to finish ‘Sword of Rome’! We agreed a draw and I must say that I thoroughly enjoyed it. I think everyone played their country brilliantly (well perhaps not me as all I managed to do was take Capua and get trounced by the Carthaginians a few times) – although I didn’t agree with Simon’s Gallic strategy it worked well and was entertaining – though not perhaps for Dave! We MUST play again and we’ve got to try and convince Dave to like the game again (yes....it’s joined his long list of games never to play again).

So we then played 2 games of Euphrat & Tigris......and we learnt something. Pete had been practising......a lot! He absolutely stuffed us the first time while winning the second by a point. Fortunately Pete tired, sparing us more humiliation, scooting of to bed and Simon left for his part of London.

But it wasn’t the end for me....Oh No! Dave suddenly materialised out of no-where brandishing a box of ‘Hammer of the Scots’ suggesting a game and – like the stupid muppet I am (and maybe due to the fact that I was pretty pissed) – I said yes. We started at 1am – by 2 he’d wiped me off the board. Ah well – no different to any other time I’d played him then! As I trudged upstairs I pondered why I was so shit at ‘Hammer of the Scots’ – you see I’ve never won a game, Dave beating me at least 5 times in a row. It’s not the usual reason; I do like it. Then an idea hit me – every time we’d played it was either very early or late in the day i.e. I wasn’t awake yet or I was too pissed to think straight! I shall console myself with that (spurious) reasoning until Dave beats at midday one day.

On the final day Dave played Pete at Up Front – the return of an old favourite – with me moderating (as I know the rules pretty well). They played the City Fight scenario; Germans (Dave) against Americans (Pete) and it was a classic with the game being won (by Dave) outright only in the last play of cards, although he was ahead on VPs anyway. Dave left to go back to Salisbury (must be the ‘Hammer of the Scots’ that took it out of him!) leaving me and Pete to play a 501 City Fight game.

This is a satisfying Up Front version where you play the City Fight scenario, but each of you has 501 points to build up their own squad. As reinforcements coming on after later decks are incrementally cheaper you too can have that King Tiger tank (653pnts initially to 131pnts when it arrives on the 4th deck) – though realistically only for the final deck. Pete and Dave like to qualify this mentioning a game when I did just that; brought on a King Tiger only to have it blow up immediately when Pete fired his bazooka at it. I tell them to shut up......anyway it was a long time ago!

Anyway we played and I (the Germans) quite easily beat his Russians mainly down to Pete’s almost complete lack of rally and move cards.......and no.......I didn’t bring a King Tiger on! As a finale we played the Outpost Line scenario with Pete’s Germans stuffing my Brits – well what can you do with a bloody Bren-carrier? With that I thought I’d better leave – Pete had won so much he was looking peaky! My bag was twice as heavy as when I arrived after a visit to Finchley Games on Saturday and I fancied crawling into some quiet pub to look at my new purchase – ‘Command & Colours’! Mmmhhhh!

An absolutely brilliant weekend – many thanks to Pete and Sue. Hopefully we’ll do something like it again soon. If not there’s always MidCon.

A heritage project

I finally got around to painting the second squad of space marines in my vintage copy of Space Hulk. I bought this game - it must be 15 years ago - from the son of a colleague at work. Got it for £15 - the little sucker didn't know what he was parting with. Heh.

Anyway, it was pretty battered, with a split box, and various bits missing. Expansion sets included (in various states of disrepair). I've been lovingly, but slowly, restoring it ever since. I bought more genestealers to replace missing figures. I painted them and the first squad of marines. I sorted and catalogued the tiles, counters and doors. I bought new dice and a 3-minute timer. I patched split corners on the box.

All the while the game was being played from time to time. Amazing game - intense, tactical, atmospheric. Scary even.

And now the second squad is done. They look pretty good I think, despite the missing antennae. Time to get this baby on the table again.....

It happened again

So GMT sent me another deluxe map for Empire of the Sun - must have been some administrative error. It arrived this morning. Once again it had crossed the Atlantic without damage. Once again the postman folded it in half and stuffed it through the door. Once again I heard it happening (I was downstairs this time) but reacted too slowly.

Why is this happening to me?

Hey there just a minute mister postman!

So a while ago I preordered the deluxe map for Empire of the Sun from GMT Games. Not sure why, as I have not even read the rules or punched out the counters yet, let alone play it. But with the dollar as weak as it is, it's almost thriftless not to.

So my deluxe cardstock map and version 2 rulebook got all the way across the Atlantic Ocean without incident, arrived pristine and uncreased in the Tottenham sorting office, slipped unscathed into the postman's bag, survived all the way to my front door, where he carefully folded the envelope in two in order to stuff it through my letter-box. I heard the deed being done, I heard him fumbling at the door, but by the time I had realized what was happening and rushed pellmell down the stairs, it was too late. Sigh. So now my deluxe map is languishing under a pile of heavy games - maybe some day it will be straight again....