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....

Stay of execution

Thanks for the comments everyone. I think BattleLore can stay for now.

Last night I actually got around to playing the game. Les and I fought 3 battles: Agincourt (scenario 1) which I lost 4-2 as the English, and then Wizards & Lore (scenario 5) twice, which I won each way (6-4 and 6-2).

The basic game is good but a little lacking in tactical nuances compared to C&C Ancients. But once we got into the Lore cards it became a much more challenging and fun experience. I'm looking forward to trying it again with creatures and war councils!

One issue remains - I don't want to get onto the expansions treadmill with this one. But with the wealth of scenarios available on the Days of Wonder website, I think there is plenty of replay value in the base set for now.

Shall I get rid of BattleLore?

I need your advice dear reader. A gamer in the UK has offered me a trade on BoardGameGeek - my BattleLore for his Mare Nostrum (plus expansion).

Why was my BattleLore marked for trade in the first place - you may ask? I was excited about it when I bought it (must have been to shell out £45) but have only played it solo so far. To be honest I am wary of getting sucked into another Commands and Colors collecting habit. I already like Memoir 44 (and have most of the expansions) and LOVE Ancients (and already own the first expansion, with the next two pre-ordered). I'm not sure if my budget or my time or my my interest can sustain a third C&C series.

Also - I was excited about the idea of C&C with a fantasy theme, but I have to say I was a bit underwhelmed by the tongue-in-cheek way this was done in Battlelore. Dwarves in kilts forsooth! For me, fantasy has to take itself very very seriously. High art or not at all, thankyou very much.....

Random unjustified grumpyness about a new game

I played Phoenicia at Swiggers last week, and I enjoyed it (even though I got stuffed) but a day later had an uncharacteristically insightful thought - isn't this just Puerto Rico all over again? What's the difference? OK Phoenicia has auctions, but I'm not keen on auctions anyway (unless I'm playing RA!). Auctions seem to me to often be a lazy option for the designer who can't work out how to balance the different paths available to the players. I think to be honest that I haven't played Puerto Rico nearly enough yet - I have only just begun to explore the strategies in the game - so why do I need another tech tree/workers/resources/money/VPs game to worry about. One is probably enough for now (especially as it's still the BGG number 1) So, to the PBEM website!

Looking for a gaming home....

Now that I'm a North Londoner, I'm looking for a suitable gaming group near my new home. 3 options present themselves:

1) Finchley Games Club. About 5 miles away. They meet on Thursdays in a cricket pavilion with a bar. About 20 people turn up, but the majority seem to be playing a long Formula De season (which leaves me cold), so the evening I visited there was only one other multi-player game going on (Phoenicia). (I got stuck playing 2-player Carcassone - yawn!) It's a friendly club, but quite expensive - £10 to join, plus £2.50 a night, but you do get a 10% discount at Leisure Games - not to be sniffed at!

2) Swiggers. About 7 miles away. Meets every Wednesday in the Shipwrights Arms on Tooley Street. (Once I start studying this will be on my way home from lectures.) About 25 people, and all sorts of interesting games get played, including playtest prototypes by published designers. I've been twice now, the second time (last week) was a great evening spent playing Phoenicia and Tempus. It's free, and you get a 10% discount from Pevans games! The atmosphere is a bit like a con - lots of games to choose from if you are prepared to chat people up.

3) London ASL Club. About 6 miles away. To satisfy my wargaming urge I am considering going along to this monthly meeting in Chancery Lane to get some ASL Starter Kit experience. Meets on 2nd Saturday of the month. I haven't managed to get along yet so not sure what it's like. But I know I need more than Euros - I also need something with machine guns....

I enjoyed the readers' game of Tigris and Euphrates over at TNE.meyerbros.org. I just missed a win - it was settled on a tie-break! If anyone fancies a rematch I've set up another game called "Though the Desert", password "nimrods". If you read this, feel free to join in!

The Desert Fox

I finally met Iain Cheyne yesterday evening, and played him at Rommel in the Desert. We have been meaning to do this for about two years, but our diaries only coincided yesterday. We played the Gazala scenario, with Iain as the Axis. We're both relatively new to the game so we were a bit intimidated by the rules and the bewildering choices available at the start. Iain kicked off with a big advance towards Tobruk inflicting heavy losses on my infantry that stood in the way. However stong reinforcements were on their way up the coast road from Egypt, and I was able to do a short left hook and isolate his two attacking groups. Iain failed to break through the cordon and so a significant force was disrupted and later destroyed, including two of his elite armour units. After that my attack lost steam and I failed to capitalize on my victory. With the last of my supplies I did a quick run down the coast road to seize Benghazi, but Iain was able to pull back in the Buildup phase, and supplies were too depleted for either of us to do much with the second month. I finished with a Positional Victory.

This is an amazing wargame, incredibly tense and exciting, and very true to the dynamics of the desert campaign. Richly deserves its classic status.

Ahhhh....

I've finally posted some photos of our wedding on Facebook.

Call me Tyres.....

As part of my "Living in London can be Fun" programme, today I cycled off (in between the showers) in search of the Spaced house. I didn't know its exact location, only the district, so I printed off a cycle route from London Transport and set off, trusting to luck. Sure enough I found the place after 15 minutes quartering the back streets of ********. Cycling is the ideal mode for this sort of search - a car would be too fast, and walking would be far too slow. It felt weird to be there in the flesh, having stood outside that building so many times before, but only through the medium of whatever episode I was watching at the time. It felt a little sad too to find that directly opposite is a huge building site, which will surely change the character of Meteor Street for ever.

On the other hand....

The thing with PocketCiv is - there's a lot of scribbling and rubbing out. Maybe I need to make up the "deluxe edition"? And the lack of opponents makes it feel slightly...flat.

Oh well. Maybe I have to organise a game of Civilization at MidCon this November after all.

The best things in life....

I'm very excited about PocketCiv. One of my all-time favourite games is Civilization, but finding opponents and time to play is very uncommon these days. Trumpeted Civ-lite games have failed to satisfy, but this one is different. It's solo for one thing, so the opponent problem vanishes, and it's not actually that light either. The clever trick is that this can be played on pencil and paper - all you need is the deck of event cards and the rules. This means that this can be played in odd moments on the train or at home, and thinking about your little paper civilization and its problems rapidly becomes a small obsession. My first attempt got wiped out in Era 1 by a sequence of earthquakes, sandstorms and volcanoes. Undeterred I drew a nice coloured map of Egypt and set off again - the gods were kinder this time and I have just finished Era 2 with 4 cities. Harder times ahead I expect though! This is great stuff - if it wasn't free I would call it my best purchase for some while.