Stag Party heaven

Last weekend was my stag party, organised by my son Phil who is also my best man. I didn't have the usual routine of paintball, go-karting, tequila slammers, strippers and waking up next morning chained to a lamppost in Glasgow. No, my stag party was.... a weekend of boardgaming! Phil specified retro games were to be played (because I'm an old classic presumably) although we didn't stick strictly to that rule as you can see below. My gaming friends Dave, John, Steve, Les and Simon turned up at Saturday lunchtime, as well as my son Gavin. Phil produced an amazing joint of roast rib of beef with all the trimmings, followed by an erotic apple pie (possibly a world first) to compensate for the lack of strippers. Here's a summary of which games were played and how I rated each experience (out of 5 stars):

Merchant of Venus
Experience rating: *****
Winner: Phil
I finished: 5/5
It's been too long - many years - since I last played this. I loved this game. Interestingly, so did Phil, who wasn't so keen when as a child he used to be pressganged into games with me. Sadly we had to stop after two hours so that Phil could make a start on cooking dinner.

Homeworlds (2 games)
Experience rating: ***
Winner: Phil, Phil
I finished: 2/2, 2/2
Played this for the first time ever. I lost the first game almost immediately by vacating my homeworld! Next play went better but I was overwhelmed by Phil's cunning aggressive play. Interesting game this, I love the theme and the luckfree tactics are interesting. I want to play it a few more times to clarify my opinion.

IceTowers (6 games altogether)
Experience rating: ****
Winner: Phil, me , Gavin, Gavin, Me, Steve
I finished: 2/3, 1/3 , 2/3, 3/3, 1/4, 3/4
Various people played this at different points over the weekend. It was very popular - easy to teach, quick to play, interesting tactics. Embarrassingly, I forgot a small but important rule - that you are not allowed to mine from a tower that you already control. Steve spotted my omission on the very last game of the weekend, so we were playing it wrong all weekend! Oh dear!

Shogun
Experience rating: **
Winner: Who knows?
I finished: probably 5/5
The dark side of retro gaming. Lots and lots of fiddly bits, fiddly rules, trash-talk and whining, and long, long, looong. We stopped at midnight and carried on next morning. Finally canned it after 4 or 5 hours total of play - no end in sight for at least another 2 hours. Not for me.

Railway Rivals
Experience rating: n/a
Winner: Steve
I finished: (I didn't play in this one. Steve beat Dave's and Les's scores combined!)

Blue Moon
Experience rating: *****
Winner: Les
I finished: 2/2
When everyone had left Les and I indulged in a quick game of Blue Moon. This time Les's Mimix ground down my Aqua. This game is just superb, every time I play I appreciate it more.

Thursday game session

Last night's game session was at Janet's, so at her request we were looking for games at the friendlier end of the complexity spectrum.

First up was Les's Fearsome Floors, which turned out to be a bit of a brain-bender. It seemed to bring out the analysis-paralytic in all of us. Though the theme is fun, the actual game-play seemed rather dry and hard-work to me. Having finally played it, I'm pleased I traded my copy last year. Les won easily. Perhaps the fact that I did terribly didn't help me feel well-disposed to the game?

Next I introduced IceTowers. I've never played it before, but it was simplicity itself to explain. Everyone got into the game with gusto. The only problem was some clutzy tower-spilling incidents with 6-players all reaching at once to make an urgent move - it sometimes resembled Twister more than anything! Good fun, and Janet proved to be the clear champion after 3 rounds.

Finally we played Diamant, a fun little game which I enjoyed (and won - that always helps!)

Now We Are Six

Another year, another blog birthday! Six years on, this has become a habit. Some months I'm more enthused than others, but it's hard now to imagine life without this little public outlet. I enjoy talking about myself (who doesn't?), and it's always great to get some feedback in the comments section. It shows there are real readers out there (not just stats). I get a buzz every time a comment is posted - keep them coming! And I will try to write something worth commenting on. Is that a deal?

Lent is well and truly over. Easter has been celebrated, and I consider myself free to buy games, books, CD's, DVD's - all those toys - again.

It was a good exercise - good for me to focus on the games already on my shelves and enjoy those without spending all my hobby time researching what to buy next. And it was good preparation for this autumn when I plan to leave my well-paid job at IBM and become a Masters student at London University. A year without game purchases can now be anticipated without too much anxiety.

Meanwhile, the fast has been broken with a purchase I have been holding off for a long time - poker chips! Finally decided that I really have to have these for 1825, Merchants of Venus, Acquire etc etc. I never thought I would be patronizing a site called gamble.co.uk (I hate gambling) but they were very helpful, sent me sample chips of two kinds - pricey NexGen chips and the cheaper 11.5 chips that have gold numbers hot-stamped on each side - and when these got lost in the post they promptly sent another sample. The cheaper chips (£1.50 for 25) looked fine to me, and the hot-stamped denomination is important to me, so I went for those, along with a bargain genuine alligator skin (simulated) case. Very pleased with them - can't wait to try a money game now!!

Mid-air with a model glider

I had a frightening experience today at Butser Hill. About 4 in the afternoon I was soaring the north face of the hill, having a great flight in light but thermic conditions, getting high, about 130ft above takeoff. I was the only paraglider in the air - there was one other pilot on the ground packing his wing away. But there were 4 or 5 model gliders flying the same ridge.

Suddenly - a model glider swooped out of nowhere and smacked into the top of my canopy, then tumbled off the trailing edge groundwards. "Shit!" I shouted, heart pounding, but was surprised to find I wasn't spinning or dropping. Looking up I examined the canopy and lines carefully - no damage! So I continued flying for another couple of beats, but I was rattled and had lost my rhythm, and did a clumsy slope landing a couple of minutes after the incident. (I probably should have landed straight away - wasn't thinking straight.)

I packed up slowly and walked back up the hill. I approached the model flyers (politely!) but apparently the guy who flew his model into me had already left. I was feeling angry at this point - at least he could have had the courtesy to stay around to speak to me!

Driving home, and thinking about it this evening, I have started to feel scared by the thought of what might have happened. 150ft above ground - hardly enough space to deploy a reserve. I always told myself that if I experienced a serious incident while paragliding I would quit the sport. Is this that incident?

I have filled out an incident report and will send it to BHPA tomorrow.

I feel like there was nothing I could have done to avoid this collision (a paraglider moves too slow to avoid a fast little model!) except maybe never fly at sites where models are flown. But that excludes nearly every site in S. England! Not sure what to do with this experience......

Nuptial games

My wedding to Sue is rapidly approaching. Rather than paying out thousands of pounds to caterers etc we are going for a more DIY approach, which has its stresses let me tell you - as we tactfully approach lots of friends with requests to bring a pudding, reorganise tables, or reheat curries for us. Oh well. At least everyone will feel involved. FULLY involved!

I can confirm that there WILL be a games session at this wedding. My lovely wife-to-be suggested this! It will happen in the interlude between eating the cake and the evening entertainments. About an hour and a half is scheduled for this (or other chillout activities, such as a walk in the woods), which allows time for a quick game of Ticket to Ride or Settlers - ideal relaxation after the stress of the speeches! Any other suggestions anyone for a good wedding-day game?

Three personal firsts

1) First time ever in a political demo: yesterday evening I joined Sue in Parliament Square for the CND rally against the Trident replacement. Worryingly, I also bought a brown corduroy jacket from Oxfam the other day. Am I turning into a leftie?

2) First time this season in the air: I just got back from a glorious afternoon paragliding at Butser Hill. I can still fly! It wasn't just a crazy dream.

3) First time for 30 years I've been offered a place at university: today I was notified that my application to do a Masters in Neuroscience at Kings was successful. Scary stuff - now the ball is firmly in my court.

I had another great pub session last night with Les in The Plume of Feathers. We managed to bag two tables which gave us plenty of room to set up Blue Moon City. First time we've played it 2-player: it worked really well, a very tense race which was neck-and-neck all the way to the finish. I got my final offering in just a turn ahead of Les, it couldn't have been any closer. We also had time for two rounds of Roma - I won both of these as well! Poor Les, he was very gracious about it.

Our previous pub session - a couple of weeks ago in The Fox - saw us playing Carcassone the City. By a strange coincidence the couple at the next table were huge Carcassone fans! Not boardgames generally, just Carcassone, so it was one-in-a-million that we happened to be playing Carcassone and not some other game that evening. Needless to say we have arranged to meet them soon for another Carcassone session, also hoping to draw them into the wider world of Eurogames......

Clippage

I am finally punching out the counters in my ASL Starter Kit #2. I have been doing this chore on and off for at least the last 35 years. I think the first wargame I ever punched counters for was Avalon Hill's Waterloo. Since then we have had personal computers, the internet, mobile phones, robot spaceships exploring the solar system - but wargame counters are exactly the same as they always were. They don't punch out properly, they tear, you get wispy bits on the corners. Note too that these products are from the USA - the most technologically advanced nation on the planet. I bet they are still using the same dies on the machines as they were in 1970.

One thing has changed though - for the very first time in my long wargaming career I am taking the nail clippers to my new counters. Very light clippage - no octagonal counters for me thanks - but clippage nonetheless.

A rashly public Lent commitment

Following Maggi Dawn's suggestion, I intend to give up buying toys over Lent. You know the sort of things: CDs, DVDs, computer games, books, and (gasp!) boardgames. It's gonna be tough.....

Online is where it's at...... for now

In the absence of real opponents I'm hitting the web servers.

Tipped off by Moritz Eggert (?) from The DiceTower, I am trying out HexWar, which allows you to play old SPI wargames by email. The free try-out, Napoleon at Waterloo, is a trip down memory lane for me. I got it when I first subscribed to S&T back in the 70's, and I used to play at lunchtime with friends at school. Back then my nickname was "The General".

I've also usually got a couple of games of Amun Re on the go at SpielByWeb - I'm not doing very well at the moment, though I did win one (somehow) a few weeks ago.

But hopefully soon I'll be at a table again looking my opponents in the eye.....

I played Napoleon with Dave last night. An old classic. (I mean the game, but could equally well apply to Dave!) My Gamma Two Games edition is dated 1974. We actually played with Dave's Avalon Hill edition (1979) which has much clearer printing on the blocks, but also has a battle board which unnecessarily (I thought) turns the simple battle resolution procedure into an ASL-style procedural nightmare.

I took the Allies. I played this game a lot when I was a teenager, and I thought I was quite good at it. What illusions we cherish about ourselves. Dave soundly demolished my forward deployment with a centre/left strategy. We switched sides, and I sent the Grand Army up the centre. Dave used cavalry screens to slow me down, and managed to link the Prussians with the English to defeat me again.

Sigh. The only way to salvage any self-esteem was to cynically introduce Dave to a new Euro, so out came Lost Cities, which I duly beat him at twice while he figured out how the game works. It was low work, but my ego was desperate for affirmation. Sometime you have to do these things......

A sad day for the hobby - Chris Farrell is retiring from blogging. Chris's writing about games was the gold standard as far as I was concerned, and his blog was always the first one I went to if BlogLines indicated that he had posted. His writing shaped the way I think about gaming, and he was responsible for pointing me towards so many great discoveries - Rommel in the Desert, Taj Mahal, Blue Moon City, and many others. I admire the breadth of Chris's enthusiasm - that his expertise encompasses euros, wargames, miniatures, CCGs and RPGs astonishes me. How does he find the time for all that gaming?! Above all, Chris knows how to write. I will miss reading his blog very much. Thankyou Chris, and enjoy your retirement.

I'm sure you'll agree that an overhaul of my sidebar was long overdue. This week my project at work has been cancelled so I've got time on my hands, giving me a chance to finally get around to it. Now all my blog links are handled by BlogLines, which will make it more natural to keep them fresh, I hope. I've also weeded out and reclassified my links to non-blog websites. In particular, have a look at the "Good Causes" section - this is stuff that matters to me.

You feeling lucky?

I'm just coming to the end of three games on SpielByWeb - two Amun-Re's and a Reef Encounter, and I'm feeling the need of more challenges! So here's an invitation to join me for a rollicking game of Amun-Re on SpielByWeb - it's called "Thutmose IV" and the password is "nimrods".

You remember what trials I went through trading my Battle Cry for a copy of Nexus Ops located in America?

Well, I finally broke the shrink wrap off Nexus Ops and played it through solo, and you know what? It was really worth all that hassle!

This game is such great fun, even solo. With other players it must be fantastic! It's the pinnacle of the evolutionary tree that started with Risk and went on to spawn Axis & Allies, Twilight Imperium and the rest. Ignore the Hasbro label - this one's been really well thought out. Easy to learn, quick to play, lots of incentives to get stuck in and attack, interesting special cards and special powers for the units. And I love the dayglo bits as well, the game looks really striking on the table. I suppose I would love it even more if the hexes were planets and the bits were spaceships, but that aside, it looks on first sight pretty much perfect for its genre.

Now to try introducing it to my local group of dyed-in-the-wool Eurogamers.....

Catching up

I've been falling behind a bit with my gaming news....

Last Monday (15th) I joined Les at the wonderful Plume of Feathers in Crondall for a game of Blue Moon. The new twist - we were each to bring two decks we had built using the Inquisitors rules. A first for both of us.

I had spent a good hour on Sunday building my Aqua-based deck, using the inquisitor Swift-Fist because I anticipated getting a chance to shuffle my discards back at some point. Les had spent 5 minutes in his lunch-break building a Mimix-based deck with the same inquisitor - my deck wiped the floor with him. Les's sloppy preparation exacts its price! On examination we found that Les's deck was 7-moons short, so that may well have contributed to his defeat.

Next up - my Khind-based deck vs. his Vulca-based deck. I won again, and this time both decks were correctly built!

We finished with a quick game of Aton, where Les rebuilt his self-esteem with a 50/32 victory.

Good company, good beer, great games. What more could one ask?

Valley games are planning to reprint Hannibal. I have a copy of the AH version, but I'm very tempted to preorder the new one as well.

Is that so wrong?

OK then - in response to popular demand: I wasn't there, but apparently Sue used a small selection of NanoFictionary cards, some of which were slightly modified to fit the characters and settings of the Ruth story in the Bible. E.g. "A distant City" was a perfect fit already. She prepped 3 creative people from the congregation, gave them a handful of cards, and asked them to prepare a little story. They told their stories in church, and everyone else voted for their favourite.

Sue then preached on the way that the stories we tell as a church community affect the way we think of ourselves and the way we serve God together. She meditated on the Ruth story and some of the alternative outcomes that could have come of those characters, settings, and problems. And on the way the Ruth story has been important to Jews and Christians ever since.

Hope that helps.

My amazing girlfriend Sue works for a small (and rather unusual) church in North London. She's not a gamer in the (slightly obsessive) way that we use the word around here, but she actually used Nanofictionary (slightly modified to fit the Book of Ruth) as the basis for the interactive bit of her sermon last Sunday!