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.......