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

Games: The Cultural Elaboration of Play:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cool!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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