I just bought the Buka Invasion deck for Blue Moon. Some interesting new ideas - you can play a card upside down as a bluff, with a value of 2. Your opponent can call your bluff and win a dragon if he catches you out! They also have ships that you can load up with cards and then dump them all in one go.

Les and I are planning to have our first Blue Moon deck-building contest. Not sure if we are going to use the Basic deck-building rules, or use the Emissaries and Inquisitors decks? Either way the Buka gives me a few extra options and maybe the chance to catch him out!

Something doesn't want me online any more

Recent events have been conspiring to evict me from the internet.

First my BT line stopped working, so my phone and my broadband router no longer work. It's going to be a week or two before I can arrange for an engineer to visit when I am at home.

And now my PC has died as well. I switched it on last night while I made some phone calls (on my mobile of course). Went back to it half an hour later and found it still rebooting - again, and again, and again.......

I think I know how it happened. Last time I was closing down I went to switch off power at the wall, and before I had thought I had switched off in the middle of its closedown sequence. So I am pretty sure I crashed the disk.

I have a recent backup of data, and a less recent backup of my photo library. So I may have lost some recent photos.....

I may have to buy a new disk (which I needed anyway) so I can rebuild the system without formatting the old disk. Sigh. That will be a day's work easily. I don't know when I will have time for that before January.....

Our very own Essen

Last night - two of the hottest games from Essen! Just me, Keith and Trevor, at Trevor's home. First up was Space Dealer. I've been anticipating this a lot ever since I first heard about it. First impressions - it's a bit confusing, easy to make mistakes and build something you can't power, or set off in the wrong direction or with the wrong goods. Atmosphere of knock-about fun, together with hastily-made strategic decisions. I enjoyed it, but need to play a few more times, and with the advanced rules, to get a clearer idea. Just beaten to a win by Keith with 19 points to my 18.

Next was The End of the Triumvirate. Like Space Dealer, this immediately gets into my good books with its theme. If I can't be a space freebooter, then surely the next best thing is to be a Roman politician-soldier! I liked this a lot. I very much liked the simplicity of the mechanics, the tricky interplay of the various sub-games, the short run-time, and the clear and evocative components. After one play it gives the impression of being well polished and balanced, but time will tell of course. Easily an 8 at the moment, and very keen to play this again.

Welcome to anyone visiting from today's Guardian interview. I hope you're not feeling too confused - this weblog is mainly about my other pastime, boardgaming. But I do occasionally write about paragliding too, as at here, and here, and here. I hope you can stick around......

MidCon notebook

I am usually nervous when I walk into a convention for the first time (unless it's one I organized myself). Will there be anyone I know? Will it be a friendly con? Will I get invited to join a game? Or will I spend hours and hours wandering around friendless watching other people play games?

I needn't have worried. Within minutes of walkimg into the game rooms at MidCon I was greeted by a cheery Nick Kinzett whom I know from ManorCons gone by, and I was quickly sitting down to a game of The World Cup Game. Great fun this, with some clever ideas, like the simultaneous resolution of all the group games. I am not a fan of sports games, but I enjoyed this one. We were playing Nick's 1966 board, and my Russians got knocked out by W. Germany in the semi-final's, who went on to take the cup.

After that it was Railroad Tycoon, a 3-player game with Nick K and Steve Jones. I have heard people raving about the physical presentation of this game, but I have to say I was not impressed. Some of the worst faults:

- Gratuitously huge board with lots of wasted space. I spent the whole game stretching over the two tables to reach my network on the East Coast.

- Warping boards. A huge gap kept opening near Washington, a particularly busy area of the map.

- Terrible colour matching. It's especially easy to get confused between blue and purple.

- Some very impractical bits. Those plastic locomotives everywhere, falling over and slipping off the track, and making the situation impossible to read at a glance.

- Some just plain ugly bits. All those brown plastic water-towers. And the "elephant" - a black wooden locomeeple? Surely we could do better than that?

Nevertheless, it's a very interesting and challenging game, and I enjoyed it very much, despite losing hands-down.

Next up was Tara , an abstract game set in Dark Ages Ireland. The box said about an hour. Three hours later the four of us finally gave it up - it seemed impossible for anyone to make a bid for that second throne without the other three players thwarting him. Surely we were playing a rule wrong?! If not this game, though pretty and clever, is sadly broken.

Next morning: a late start, a huge breakfast, then a long day of uninterrupted gaming....


Um Krone und Kragen. So far I've not had much success introducing this to new players. But it was a minor hit here at MidCon. I was first of 5 to reach the King, but Dave Dudley snatched him from me in the final round.

Nottingham. This is rummy with thieving - a lot of thieving! About half a dozen different ways of stealing cards off your opponents. Great fun. And I won!

Then another game of Railroad Tycoon, with no less than 6 players this time! I started building in the New York/Washington area, competing with Nick Kinzett. I took an early lead in VPs, and from then on Steve Jones was relentlessly chasing me to catch up. By the end of the game he was only 5 VPs behind. I had failed to meet my Tycoon criteria, and I felt sure that he had. I was right, but it only gave him another 4 points, so I won by 1 point!! This was the highlight of the weekend for me, a very gratifying victory against stiff opposition. The whole game took about two and a quarter hours - not bad for a 6-player epic.

Last game of Saturday was 5-player Puerto Rico. I was feeling a bit rusty. Josh (2 seats to the right of me) was a PR newbie and getting a LOT of coaching from the other 3, so it took a lot longer than it should have. I came in 2nd with 37 points. Enjoyed this in spite of the length - I had forgotten what a good game PR is.

Retired to bed about 10:30, so Sunday morning was not such a late start. But breakfast was huge again!

First game of the new day was New England, ably taught to us by Mike Head. This looks a bit drab and unintersting out of the box, but the game play is subtle and interesting without being overtaxing on the brain. I would definitely play this again. I came 3rd out of 4.

After this another game of Um Krone und Kragen was requested. There were 5 of us this time, including Lindon Gordon who was new to the game but proceeded to win.

This was all I had time for sadly, After spending a happy hour unpacking and reading the rules to my newly purchased Space Dealer, I had to leave to catch my bargain basement train reservation back home.

On the buying and selling front, I sold Scotland Yard for £10 in the Bring and Buy sale, gave away Slick! (yes I gave away a game - makes me feel chilled just thinking about it!), and bought Space Dealer (which I am very excited about) with a convention discount.

It was a very sociable and friendly con for me, thanks to Nick Kinzett and the guys from the Halesowen Boardgaming Club. I will certainly be looking to go again next year if at all possible.

MidCon newbie

I am off to MidCon tomorrow, the annual convention organised by the British postal diplomacy hobby, held in a hotel in the centre of sunny Birmingham. MidCon was already a familiar landmark when I joined the hobby back in 1992, but strangely this is the first time I have ever got round to going. I have missed ManorCon for the last few years, so I'm really looking forward to being back in a Con environment, with a long weekend of solid gaming to enjoy.

Talking of play-by-web, there's a new readers-only game of Samurai at MaBiWeb. "Howl's Moving Castle", password "nimrods". See you there!

I've been enjoying my dip into Play-by-Web gaming. Samurai on MaBiWeb with nimrods readers was great fun - we cracked along at several turns a day, and got each game finished inside a week. I lost the first one badly, came close on the second, and won the third.

I've also been playing a pick-up game of Shadow of the Emperor on MaBiWeb. This is going much slower, but even so I am enjoying my first ever run through this one, as I have never managed to persuade anyone to try it face-to-face. (You can watch it here.)

I have also started a game of Amun-Re on SpielByWeb (here) with friends from London Mennonite Centre, which took about 6 months just to get started. (This is what you might expect from Mennonites and their leisurely style of decision-making.) The interface on SpielByWeb is nowhere near as pretty as MaBiWeb and does not have the option to confirm or reset your move. On the other hand MaBiWeb has been suffering from outages the last couple of weeks.

All in all, this is a great way to get some Euro-games played without setting aside dedicated time online to BrettSpielWelt, and I plan to continue with it.

At last! The recognition I deserve

I was interviewed by a journalist from the Guardian last night about my paragliding hobby. It was a phone interview - she does a small weekly column on people with ordinary jobs but extraordinary pastimes.I really enjoyed the experience - I don't often get the chance to talk at length about one of my obsessions with someone who genuinely wants to hear my answers! Most people nod politely for a few minutes then change the subject. It will probably go out in the Monday Guardian Media section in two or three weeks time. I will keep you posted....

Player or Collector?....the sequel

Hmm. Maybe it's not as easy as I thought to shake off a well-embedded collector addiction.

Last Saturday morning saw me in the Post Office with my copy of Battle Cry, a wad of bubblewrap, and some scissors, packing the game into a newly purchased cardboard box (£2.79? You're joking!). Safely taped up, I took it to the counter to post off to my BoardGameGeek trade partner in the States who is sending me a brand-new Nexus Ops in return. "That will be £36.50 please," said the cashier, guiltily. "How much by surface?" I croaked, turning white. "That is by surface, sir. It's just over 2kg you see, which means you have to use ParcelForce. It's also too large to count as a small package."

Oh dear. A quick rejuvenating cappuchino to think things over, then back to the Post Office to buy some brown paper (99p) and rewrap the game, discarding the cardboard insert that fills half the gamebox with fresh air (98g, not insignificant). I proudly carried the completed parcel back to the counter. £9.30 this time, not so bad if I forget the cost of the unused cardboard box and the cappuchino. Not to mention the anxiety of worrying about my parcel getting squashed for the next few weeks until it arrives safely in the States. Hmm, I'm starting to wonder if trading on the Geek is really for me after all.

An hour later I was in Aldershot for a for a morale-raising visit to The Games Shop. They had End of the Triumvirates on the shelves (£29) which I duly picked up and turned over, tempted to make a purchase. But what's this? A fresh copy of Reef Encounter! Only £27, and much heavier than End of the Triumvirates too. Maybe I should buy this instead of Triumvirates? Or maybe I should skip Reef Encounter and buy Triumvirates? And then there was Beyond Valor (£59) lurking temptingly at the back of my mind and at the back of the shop. Indecisive and confused, I left without buying anything. OK I pre-ordered BattleLore but that hardly counts as a purchase, as no money changed hands (yet).

Oh yes, one other item I noticed before I left - a copy of Nexus Ops knocked down to £15. Roughly what I spent in the Post Office this morning......

Breakout Normandy (or not!)

I've been very busy lately, and so I was planning to have a quiet weekend on my own, enjoying my flat and the nearby countryside, and recharging my batteries.

By Saturday evening, being alone all weekend didn't seem such an attractive proposition, and I was also feeling seriously in need of some wargaming action. Something inside me snapped, and I called Dave....

By 2 o'clock on Sunday afternoon we were setting up Breakout Normandy in my living room. Dave was in high spirits - we used to play this a lot back in the nineties, and it was exciting to come back to it. The rules, however, were presenting quite an obstacle, and we got off to a slow start, constantly referencing the rule-book to make sure we had got the procedures more or less correct. The first turn of course is particularly complex as you have the D-day landings to work through with several special rules for the amphibious assault to worry about.

I was playing the Allies, and it went badly for me from the start. One naval bombardment and two air attacks on the coastal batteries around Omaha beach produced precisely nothing, and the inderdiction rolls knocked out about half of my units assaulting Omaha. And the assault rolls went really badly as well, and I forgot to use my Advantage for a mulligan. The end result - a pile of spent and disrupted units cowering on the shoreline at Omaha beach under intact German fortifications.

The other landings went a little better, but it took me 3 days to sort out the mess at Omaha, with a rescue mission from the Brits at Gold beach next-door valuable diverting resources from the fighting around Caen. So halfway through the game I was way behind any realistic timetable for getting the 10VP needed for victory, and I actually ended the game (at 11pm) with only 4VP (which was better than I had thought I would manage!)

One tactical highlight for me was clobbering a bunch of spent SS units in Bretteville with naval fire - in his haste to get them to the front Dave had forgotten how vulnerable a concentration of spent units can be to bombardment.

There is much to love about this game. Unlike many wargames, elimination of units is fairly unusual - the real struggle is against exhaustion and disruption. A D1 is a good result against a powerful unit - it means it won't be troubling you again until the day after tomorrow. And you are constantly struggling against the friction of bad assault results and enemy bombardments which can quickly leave you with an army which is largely unable to move or fight for the rest of the day or perhaps even longer. Even though my chances were largely ruined in the first turn through a combination of bad planning and bad luck, I enjoyed the rest of the game immensely - attempting to rescue the situation and get an effective offensive organised was fascinating and enjoyable, even though I had no real chance of winning. A classic wargame, and well worth dusting-off. Even if it does mean that I am not as rested this morning as I might have been.

I didn't make it to my local games group this week, but here's a report from Keith:

Had 4 players last night for Canal Mania (me, Les, Lance and Jon) ashamed to say the game still took 3.15 hrs altho' Jon had to learn the rules and Lance was telling us about Essen. And like our last encounter of Tempus when Lance pipped you by a point, I was miles out in front and was pipped by Lance by 1 point. (He's competed most contracts and I was 2nd=, reduced to 3rd on the value of the contracts). Another Dick Dastardly/ Devon Loch finish.....

Name of the games club? It has to be the Buena Vista Social Games Club.

Samurai again anyone?

Samurai went a bit better this time. I thought I was winning, but Jason snatched it away from me at the last minute. Another game anyone? "Princess Mononoke", password "nimrods".

Collect or Play?

What are you, a collector or a player?

A lot of my boardgaming activity this year has centred around wishlists, eBay, BGG trade manager,P500, game shops, maths trades, preorders, release schedules, and trips to Oxfam. Hobby activities have been buying, selling, trading, reorganising, reshelving, cataloguing and rating my games collection.

What's missing from this list?

Ah yes - actually playing the games. Not enough of that.

So this autumn i am making a concerted effort to stop collecting and start playing games.

To that end I am dipping my toe into Play-By-Email - so far on my second game of Samurai and having great fun!

I am inviting people to my home for game sessions.

I am seeking out opponents for 2-player wargames.

I am booked into Midcon in November for a long weekend of solid gamimg.

I will be playing on Vassal and BrettSpielWelt when I can.

I may have a go at email Diplomacy, for old times' sake.

I may even seek out a local ASL cell and see if I can get some coaching.

All in all, this could transform my hobby......

Creative Commons

I'm not sure how they are doing it, but people are stealing my great blogging ideas before I get around to posting them. Last week I was turning over ideas for a posting about BattleLore and how the information about how magic will work on the battlefield had been a bit of a turn-off for me, only to find that Mary had posted the same ideas (only better) before I even wrote mine down. Then a few days later I was planning to write an ironic piece on "Why I Hate Boardgaming", only to find that Yehuda had just posted a characteristically thorough treatment of the same idea.

Not sure what's going on here, or how these people are tapping into my creativity - but please stop it immediately!

Well that was all over very quickly! Mainly due to my incompetent play, our nimrods-readers-exclusive game of Samurai finished early with 4 ties. Anyone for another go? This time it's called "Nausicaa", password "nimrods".

More gaming last night with the Farnborough group. (Actually, since Keith moved only Trevor actually lives in Farnborough now, so maybe we should call it something else....). Les had asked me to introduce Tempus so, having got home from work a mere 15 minutes beforehand, and pausing only to grap Tempus, a beer and a bag of savoury snacks, I arrived at Les's flat barely on time and hastily set up the game. It proved fairly easy to teach - the game is straightforward and simple - but there was a foul-up at the end of turn one when Trevor attcked Les even though he only had three hexes. We had to rewind a few actions unfortunately which left Trevor with a rather boxed-in situation.

I have to admit I thought I was cruising to an easy victory, but I had underestimated Lance who beat me by one point to win with 23. I think I became fixated by that little aircraft at the end of the epoch track, and neglected to spread out into as many spaces as possible - not that many were available without a fight.

Biggest disappointment was the time - well over 3 hours for what is supposed to be a sub-2hr game. This group is remarkably slow, even compared to my Salisbury group (and I thought they were slow). I feel that they sometimes treat a gaming evening as a relaxing social time instead of what it obviously should be - a relentless, nose-to-the-table, time-trialled, blood-soaked boardgaming machine.

I like Tempus. I like the way it keeps everyone moving around the board in search of the latest fashion in tribal terrain - no chance of positions stagnating. I like the variable map. I like the simplicity and accessibility. I don't like the graphic design - it is almost impossible to distinguish black from purple pieces under electric light. And the murky terrain colurs are also puzzling sometimes. As are the city tiles. I will certainly be taking a paint brush to the purple wooden pieces in the near future, or replacing them with scavenged bits from another game....

Festival of War 2006

Don't be too disturbed - it was not really a celebration of war, just a gathering of my old gaming friends from Salisbury to play a few games - especially two-player wargames - and spend some time eating and drinking together. Dave and Steve were first to arrive on Friday morning, closely followed by John, but Nick didn't turn up until 6 and insisted on a few pints in the Railway Exchange when he did arrive. It was ideal gaming weather on Friday - pouring with rain - so we had no qualms about staying indoors hunched over the tables. The weather did improve as the weekend went on but failed to lure us outside, except for a quick trip to the local game shop on Saturday afternoon, where we spent so much between us that we managed to negotiate a rare discount!

A quick run-down of what was played:

Friday

2 games of C&C Ancients, both times the Bagradas scenario. John's Romans beat me in a close struggle. Steve and Dave's game was abandoned due to player incompetence.

Dave's USA lost to Steve in the 3rd turn of Twilight Struggle.

I started a game of Twilight Struggle with John.

After dinner John beat us all at Through the Desert. In case you're wondering, this "John won" theme continued throughout the weekend. Sometimes I'm tempted to just not invite him....

Saturday

My USA lost to John's Glasnost card on turn 8 of Twilight Struggle.

Meanwhile Nick gained an unprecedented Euphrat & Tigris victory over Dave and Steve.

After the game shop binge, we played a much anticipated game of Struggle of Empires. I really enjoyed this, even though my Netherlands was condemned by Nick's aggressive bidding to alliance with Steve for most of the game - being the 2-player alliance in a 5-player game we usually got the worst of it. John won (again!) Unfortunately there were some post-match recriminations as I prepared dinner - Dave felt that Nick had reneged on an agreement. My feeling was, more fool Dave for trusting Nick in the first place! I was a bit surprised by all this - one of the charms of Struggle of Empires for me is that the alliance auction removes the scope for a lot of the negotiation and unpleasantness that you often get in multi-player empire-building games. But I suppose there is still room for a bit of deal-making and breaking if you really want it.

Pacified by dinner we sat down to a Wings of War dogfight - no room for negotiations here! I managed to fly off the table again, but the others were kind and let me off. In the end I was shot down by John's Nieuport.

It was getting late so I pulled out Um Krone und Kragen as a light filler. Surprisingly Nick and Steve found it anything but light - in fact Steve dropped out altogether pleading his brain was fried. I won this one (not John!)

Sunday

Sunday morning saw folks leaving for journeys home, but Dave and I had one last game of C&C Ancients, the Trebbia scenario. Dave (with Steve's help) took Carthage. The Mago ambush never materialized, but it was a knife-edge struggle. Dave's phalanx did great things, as did the elephant "Stompy", but Stompy died in the end, and I just scraped a 7-6 victory. What a great way to end our festival. Wargaming doesn't get much better than this!

Let's see if anyone still reads this rag....

Does anyone fancy a play-by-email game of the Reiner Knizia classic Samurai? Go over to MaBiWeb and sign up for a game named "Spirited Away" with password "nimrods". See you there!

The Death of Blogging

Well, I still am enjoying my time off work - I have been doing some more paraglidng this week. Yesterday was an especially....

WE DON'T WANT TO READ ANYTHING ELSE ABOUT PARAGLIDING. THIS IS SUPPOSED TO BE A BOARDGAMING BLOG.

Er, yes, OK. It's just that yesterday was a particularly good day at Butser Hill, and I....

ENOUGH ABOUT YOUR RECKLESS OUTDOOR ACTIVITIES. HAVE YOU ACTUALLY DONE ANY BOARDGAMING LATELY?

Well, not much to be honest. I started soloing an ASLSK scenario.

WHICH ONE?

S2 "War of the Rats".

AH YES, ONE OF MY FAVOURITES. WHICH SIDE WON?

I didn't finish. I cleared it down again, so that I could set up Twilight Struggle.

BIT FLIGHTY AREN'T YOU?

I'm trying to learn the rules of Twilight Struggle ready to play it with Dave this weekend.

IS THAT ALL THE GAMING YOU HAVE DONE RECENTLY? CALL YOURSELF A GAME BLOGGER?

Well I've been doing some clearing out of my games collection. I took a few down to Oxfam (Star Wars Monopoly, a Compendium, something else I have forgotten already) and I have been doing some trading on BoardGameGeek - I swapped Medieval for Tyros and sold Triumph and Glory. I also want to trade away the D&D Boardgame and the 1995 Acquire, but no takers so far. Plus I have an auction currently running on eBay for Grand Illusion.

INTERESTING. BUT IT'S NOT REALLY GAMING AS SUCH IS IT.

Oh, I was forgetting, I met up with Les in the pub on Monday.

HOW MANY GAMES DID YOU PLAY?

Three.

(SIGH) THAT'S BETTER THAN NOTHING. I SUPPOSE. WHAT WERE THEY?

Aton - I enjoyed that. It felt like a big game in a small box. I suppose it's an area control game of sorts, with a few clever variations on the theme. I won (just). Then we played BattleLine....

ONE OF MY FAVOURITES.

....where Les scraped a victory after a hard struggle. Finally we played Um Krone Und Kragen. I ran away with that one, and I'm not sure if Les enjoyed it much - he was struggling to read the icons on the cards.

I NEVER HAVE THAT PROBLEM. IS THAT IT THEN? ANYTHING ELSE?

Well, not really. But there will be more - lot's more - this weekend. After the success of last year, I am holding the Festival of War again at my home, from Friday through to Saturday. Nick, Dave, John and possibly Phil and Steve are expected to come.

STRANGE NAME. I THOUGHT YOU WERE A PACIFIST?

Well, let's say I'm heading in that direction. But it's just a gaming weekend really, with an emphasis on 2-player wargaming. That's the idea anyway - last year it was mostly drunken Beowulf.

I SEE. WELL MAKE SURE YOU WRITE IT UP PROPERLY NEXT WEEK.

OK, will do. But, er.... who are you anyway? You remind me of a character from a Terry Pratchett book.... what was he called now?....

NEVER YOU MIND. LET US JUST SAY THAT NEXT TIME WE MEET, THE OCCASION MAY BE MORE.... FINAL....