Philadelphia Inquirer | U.S. has gained little if Bush lied about reason for war

I trusted Bush, and unless something big develops on the weapons front in Iraq soon, it appears as though I was fooled by him. Perhaps he himself was taken in by his intelligence and military advisers. If so, he ought to be angry as hell, because ultimately he bears the responsibility.

(via Rebecca's Pocket)

Tate Collections

Turner Worldwide brings together online over 2,000 works by Turner held in public and private collections around the world. The project provides online access to these works alongside Tate’s own Turner holdings, creating a comprehensive online catalogue and rich central resource of information about Turner’s works outside Tate.

Independent's front page today:

A global search by the Tate gallery has unearthed 500 lost works by JMW Turner. Some have never been seen in public; others have not been displayed since the death of possibly Britain's most important painter.

While I'm here I must just mention a great game of Euphrat & Tigris I had at my place last Wednesday. I scored 12, against Dave's 9 and Simon's 8. Until the screens were removed, I had no idea that I was so far ahead. It had been a fairly bruising game, and I wasn't really expecting to win.

Over the last couple of weeks I have experimented a couple of times with playing The Lord of the Rings as a solitaire game. Frodo goes on his quest all alone, and gets 4 cards at Rivendell and at Lothlorien. He also gets the two cards for being the ringbearer at the end of each board. It worked very well - there was still a tremendous feeling of rising pressure from the events and the corruption track, even though all the decisions were down to me and there were no other players to throw spanners in. The first time I lost very early, on the Shelob's Lair board, but the second time I actually completed the quest and destroyed the ring - a new experience for me, even in playing multiplayer! Next time I'll use it as an opportunity to learn the rules for the Friends and Foes expansion which is waiting at home on the gaming table for its first outing.

Whit-Sunday

He loves Himself and every creature by the Holy Ghost, inasmuch as the Holy Ghost proceeds as the love of the primal goodness whereby the Father loves Himself and every creature.

Aquinas: Summa Theologica

Hmm. Blogger is back today, but it's making me nervous. Yesterday I got switched to "Blogger New" and was presented with a blank slate - all my posts for the last two years had disappeared! This sort of thing just makes me nervous. How long before they lose everything permanently? I think the problem is they just have one guy over there running the whole system. I can just imagine it - no test environment, making live changes on the fly, working all night to fix self-inflicted problems. I've worked in that sort of environment myself and it's not much fun for anyone, including the customers. Hopefully at some point the new owners will impose some sort of change control discipline. I suppose I shouldn't grumble, it's not as if I'm paying anything for this.....

Blake Haber's page pertaining to the subject of the game called "Baduk" in Korean, "Weiqi" in Chinese, "Igo" in Japanese, and "Go" in English. (via Mikko Saari)

Phil came over yesterday, on a brief rest & recuperation break from University. We had a great political argument over dinner, just like old times. I've been feeling a bit wobbly on the war recently, shocked I suppose by the levels of violence we had to employ to achieve our objectives in Iraq. Phil performed a valuable service by trotting out all the dumb conspiracy theories and knee-jerk anti-Americanism of the left, reminding me of how much I am repelled by the rhetoric of the peace movement. Thanks Phil!

Thanks to John for pointing me at The Geek Test. What a relief! I only scored 16.76%.

Chris Lawson provides an excellent set of expanded rules for "Lord of the Rings", and lots of other goodies as well.

And this article (pdf) from David Farquhar gives an insiders view of the game's design process.

We can now play Cosmic Encounter online! (via Terminal City Gamers)

I would love to be a writer - successful, famous, and (most importantly) popular with the ladies - but this sort of thing is just so difficult: 12 Exercises for Improving Dialogue (via Sashinka)

I am going through a bit of a Knizia phase, but in order to convince myself that this hobby isn't really that expensive, I have ordered Ra and Taj Mahal from Discount German Games at amazingly low prices. Slight drawback - these are the German versions, but shouldn't be too much of a problem....

Last weekend I walked the Clarendon Way between Salisbury and Winchester. It took me two days, with an overnight stop in Nether Wallop, to travel the 30 miles. Every morning I drive 45 miles in roughly the same direction to get to work. It's a weird feeling to pace out with aching muscles and blistered feet a stretch of country that usually slips past the car windows so effortlessly. Who says England is densely populated? - it doesn't feel like it when it takes two days on foot to get from one town to its nearest neighbour.

Lots of beautiful scenery, especially the heavily wooded, folded country near Tytherley. One highlight of the trip was finding a slowworm on the path (until he crapped on my hand). Another was the Wykham Arms at journey's end. They have a pot of HSB sausages behind the bar which they sell with mustard for 45p each. This is the ideal accompaniment for a pint - now I never want to drink beer any other way.

Xiangqi: Chinese Chess: Xiangqi, or Chinese Chess, is an extremely popular game in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is currently played by millions (or tens of millions) in China, Taiwan, Thailand, Singapore, Vietnam, Hong Kong and other Asian countries. Xiangqi has remained in its present form for centuries. It is believed that both Xiangqi and Orthodox Chess derive from the original Indian game of Chanturanga.

Beat Simon at Euphrat & Tigris last night, thus avenging my humiliations at Hay. Dave dropped by to give me a bottle of wine, then John dropped by and drank it! It was interesting playing E&T with just two. It was a real knockabout game with lots of conflicts, much of it over one big kingdom, battered by catastrophe tiles and strung out along the board. A close result, 20/19 - much better than the 3 that I scored last time I played!

Isn't the internet wonderful? Going round Hay-on-Wye's second-hand bookshops I was looking out for a children's science-fiction novel I remember clearly from my early years, about a voyage to Mars made by a professor in a home made space ship launched from his garden. I had completely forgotten the name or author of the book, and have never met anyone else who knows the book. I can still clearly remember the beautifully drawn illustrations. It was one of those books that I desperately wished to believe was true.

Anyway, I finally got round to searching the web for this book - 15 minutes with Google last night turned up the details, thanks to David Drake for whom it is also an early literary memory. The book is "The Angry Planet" by John Keir Cross. David's description brought it all flooding back:

The Angry Planet is in form a typical children's SF novel of the period. A Scottish scientist builds a spaceship in his back yard. He and a writer-friend fly to Mars in it. Three children in their early teens, staying with the writer, stow away on the spaceship.

The atmosphere of Mars is breathable. The planet is inhabited by the Beautiful People--willowy, intelligent folk with a fringe of cilia which serve them as hands--who inhabit glassy cities, and their racial enemies, the Terrible Ones--massive, tentacled monsters; also intelligent but utterly evil.

The humans visit the Beautiful People's city; one of the children is captured by the Terrible Ones but escapes; and there's a climactic battle in which the humans aid the Beautiful People against the monstrous foes. The humans return to Earth.

The really strange aspect--for a children's book--is the theme. The Angry Planet is a clear story of the battle between Good and Evil. Evil wins.

Even better, thanks to AbeBooks I have tracked down a copy in Leigh on Sea for £5, and I now know that the talented illustrator was Robin Jacques. I wonder what else he did? Time for another Google....

This week's game of Euphrat & Tigris is looking less hopeful - maybe I will play Taj Mahal Online tonight instead. It looks beautifully done, and it's a chance to play before I purchase (as Taj Mahal is next on my insatiable game craving list).

And Chris Lawson's excellent Euphrat & Tigris FAQ - plus other stuff including the rules in English.

And Euphrat & Tigris page at BoardGameGeek, with loads of material, including some useful play-aids.

And Tigris & Euphrat stuff from Carl-Gustaf Samuelsson (and large numbers of other Eurogames too).

I'm hoping to get a game of Euphrat & Tigris this week so if I intend to win (which I do) I need lots of stuff like this - Euphrat & Tigris strategy tips from Chris Farrell

News just in from Phil (who obviously hasn't got quite enough to do at University these days):

A hungry ferret has caused panic on a train by racing around carriages and eating the driver's lunch, a train company says.

I have a lot of respect for David Warren, especially his refusal to accept received wisdom and his willingness to kill sacred cows. His latest contribution to public sanity is to unmask the "Baghdad blogger":

Salam is the scion of a senior figure from Iraq's Baathist nomenklatura. He was brought up at least partly in Vienna, which is the OPEC headquarters; his father was therefore an oilman, and possibly a former head of Iraq's OPEC mission. Another clue is a hint that his grandfather was an Iraqi tribal chief; from which I infer that his father was one of the Iraqi tribal chiefs that Saddam Hussein rewarded for loyalty, outside the Tikrit clan.

The nimrods weekend at Hay-on-Wye passed off successfully, with no-one getting murdered (although William came pretty close). Things that surprised me about our weekend away together:

Everyone turned up. I was expecting one or two last minute dropouts from unreliable people.

Dave was drunk within about one and a half hours of arriving.

You can't get take-away food in Hay on a Sunday.

I didn't win a single game. Not one.

Hay-on-Wye has a game shop.

John turned up in a brand-new Mercedes.

Walking was popular - I had plenty of takers for long walks on both Saturday and Sunday.

Tikal ended with an argument.

Things that didn't surprise me:

Nick consumed an unfeasible quantity of booze and fags.

Nick spent large amounts of money on books about coins and archaeology.

Before we left Dave stripped the fridge of leftover food and drink to take home with him.

I ended up doing all the washing up.

No-one wanted to play The Napoleonic Wars.

Everyone wanted to play Liar Dice variants.

Kill Doctor Lucky ended with an argument.

All things considered it seemed to be a successful weekend. The bookshops and the countryside both provided welcome relief from the gaming tables. People were already talking about when we could do it again, so I think everyone enjoyed themselves. I think I did too.

Greg Costikyan offers us a free game:

Dot Boom is a satirical card game of the Dot Com era. Each of up to five players takes the role of a major venture capital firm (like Eine Kleine Perkins or noidealab!), investing in dubious companies like iPotemkinVillage and Thiefster, and trying to take them public. The game is over when the "dotCrash" card comes up, at which time the player with the most money wins.

I don't understand this website but William says it's "really good" - GameWyrd - Battle Imps - The Battle!

Lost Cities for 4 Players:

Partnership games are particularly fascinating, as the interaction happens on two levels, within the partnership and between the opposing groups. Whenever I play a partnership game, I wonder why I design so few of them (only Digging springs to my mind). When the question was raised, if Lost Cities could be extended to more than 2 players, I seized the opportunity.

It's come at last - the Nimrods weekend starts tomorrow, as eight of us (Steve, Dave, John, William, Nick, Simon, Phil and myself) find our way in various cars trains and buses to Celtic Lodge in Hay-on-Wye. The place sleeps 10 max, so we have nearly maxed out. I'm amazed and really pleased by the take-up on this. Hopefully it will be a big success (ie nobody gets murdered) and perhaps we will do it again next year.

Anyway, last night I was compiling my final list of games to take, with lots of suggestions from Dave - "You've got to take x"...."Oh, and you've got to take y".... "Oh, and you've got to take z (kids game in enormous box)"..... Ignoring most of Dave's suggestions the list is looking like this (dependent on how full the boot looks):

Formula Motor Racing (fluffy but fun)
Hammer of the Scots (short absorbing wargame)
Puerto Rico (I haven't begun to play this enough)
Euphrat & Tigris (a gamer's game)
Aquarius (more fluff)
Chrononauts (fluff)
18xx (anti-fluff)
Battle Cry (for a tournament?)
Hera & Zeus (I feel like a 2-player euro)
Settlers card game (and another)
Lost Cities (and another)

Quite a lot of short games there, not many wargames. I think these choices are a big reaction to last weekend's 14-hour Krieg marathon.

It was good to see Gavin - my estranged son - over the weekend. One of the pleasures of growing older is sitting in your favourite pub sharing a glass of beer and a chat with your son. This was something you dreamed about years ago when you were banished to a freezing, empty room round the back of some "family-friendly" pub out in the sticks somewhere, trying to enjoy your half-pint (because Dad was driving of course) with a couple of bored and fractious kids.

Chris Farrell's Top 14 Overrated Games

Advanced Civilization took a classic, if overly long, game (Civilization) and eliminated the strategy and player interaction elements, increased the length and complexity by 25-50%, and turned the whole thing into little more than an accounting exercise - all in some bizzare quixotic goal to add "realism" to a game that was never intended to be, and still isn't. It's amazing to me how much the intervening 10 years has increased my understanding and appreciation of good games; were Advanced Civilization to be released today, I would probably be able to immediately identify all the problems and avoid playing it, but I was just blissfully unaware at the time.

I played Nick at Krieg! over the weekend, wasting 14 hours of glorious weather on Sunday and Monday crouching over a map of Europe. And basically I regret it. It's not just that I was well on the way to losing (with Moscow fallen a Soviet collapse was on the cards.) I enjoyed the fighting retreat across Russia (especially the bit where I destroyed an overconfident Panzer Army), I enjoyed the seesaw of fortunes in North Africa, I enjoyed inserting a Soviet tank corps into Konigsburg and later holing them up in the Pripet marshes where they stubbornly refused to die. But it just takes so long - after two solid days of gaming we had only reached summer 1942 for goodness sakes. Sorry Nick, it was fun (in parts), but I just don't see why I would ever play this again when I could be playing Barbarossa to Berlin instead.

Here's a big article from Stephen Agar giving lots of detail about Albion, the amateur wargames zine that I subscribed to in my teenage years - The Origins of Postal Diplomacy in the UK

The last ten issues of Albion are probably those most remembered by mainstream PBM Diplomacy, which was taking off in a big way as Albion was entering old age. By now Don's formula was clear - a 50 page issue every two months or so on a wide selection of wargames and boardgames, a kind of Sumo's Karaoke Club before its time.

I've been thinking some more about how I got sucked into the hobby, and I am still confused about the order things happened in. How did I ever get to know about "Albion" for example, or afford the sub? I remember starting a wargames club at Manchester Grammar School - I must have been aged about 12 - which started with miniatures but quickly moved on to cardboard and hexes, as well as Diplomacy and Kingmaker. From that time onwards I was known as "The General" by teachers as well as pupils, which later became "Strategos" when I moved into the classics stream. At one point I started work on a game about the Gallipoli campaign, producing a detailed map before (fatally for the project) I had decided on the rules. Another design project was a Diplomacy variant based on the idea of exploring the New World without foreknowledge of what the map looked like. This was more successful, and got played a few times at school. Two decades later - having long lost the original game - I produced this variant again from scratch as "Columbus", which was played postally in various Diplomacy zines quite a few times over the last decade. I must publish it on this website some time.....

When I went off to University I dropped the whole hobby for many years - marriage and childraising intervened - until in my mid-thirties I purchased a copy of Diplomacy and found a flier for the postal Diplomacy hobby inside. My teenage games collection was mostly handed to friends or taken to jumble sales by my mother, and I sometimes ruefully think of the classics that I lost that way: "Red Star White Star", "Triplanetary", "Conquistador" (S&T version), "Flying Circus", "Sniper".......sigh.

In response to a current discussion on ConsimWorld I've been scratching my head and trying to remember my first wargame - I *think* it was "Waterloo" (AH) but can't be sure at this distance of years. It's rather disturbing that I can't even remember how I got into a hobby which has been such a major part of my life. I know my friends and I had been playing wargames with Airfix figures and ships for years - I always lost the naval battles because my friends were prepared to shoplift from the model shop so they had much bigger fleets than me! It must have been round about the age of 11 or 12 that we discovered hexes and cardboard. I remember playing "Napoleon at Waterloo" (the S&T freebie) in the classroom every lunchtime. And I'm sure "Conquistador" got played on a bench in the physics lab. There was a thick amateur zine called "Albion" which stoked my enthusiasm. And at an impressionable age I had two postal games of "Anzio" with Tom Oleson (who developed the 2nd edition), the first of which I won! Scratching together pocket money for a few months subcription to S&T, exploring games like "Flight of the Goeben" or "Winter War" - ah, happy days.....

Big changes at Columbia Games:

Declaration of Independence

We at Columbia Games are changing our way of doing business. After 30 years, we have concluded that our products can best be sold directly. To improve product output and customer service, all Columbia Games products will henceforth be sold ONLY by mail order, telephone, or via www.columbiagames.com.

And to celebrate they are running a 20% sale until 27 April. They have also done a big tidy up on their website. But sadly Columbia games will soon disappear from your local game shop.

Talking of Columbia, I've just bought a copy of Pacific Victory from Ebay which looks superb - I spent a happy hour last evening sticking the little stickers onto the little blocks. My exciting life....

This post from GMT's Tony Curtis is a bit of a shocker, showing the precarious state of GMT's finances. Time to show some support and buy a few more games in their amazing 50% sale.

Nimrods: two years old (last Saturday) I must be getting a bit blasé about these anniversaries, as I forgot to blog this on Saturday. Two years of blogging - does that make me mainstream yet? What would nimrods really like as a birthday present? For Blogger to stop losing half its archive links every time I publish, probably!

Phil is fighting a rematch of Barbarossa to Berlin with me this week. I don't like to admit it, but he really got me worried this time. The Germans were in Moscow after only three turns - Stalin escaped on the last train out of town before they arrived. Thankfully I got a big reinforcement card last turn or my goose would be well and truly cooked. But as it is I'm feeling quietly confident at this point.....

Airbattle, Air Combat Wargames - this is Lee Brimmicombe-Wood's website. There are some nice pictures of map and counters for Downtown (amazing quality considering this hasn't been worked up by GMT's graphic designers yet), but the game I'm really interested in is The Burning Blue.

airbattle.co.uk is a website devoted to the development of "raid scale" air combat wargames. The games share many common rules and principles that allow the recreation of large scale air battles.

Downtown - The Air War Over Hanoi, 1965-1972

Elusive Victory - The Air War Over the Suez Canal, 1967-1973

The Burning Blue - The Air Defence of Great Britain, 1940-1944

WorkingWounded.com | Games | Lingo Bingo: Tired of boring meetings? Use all that jargon to your advantage by playing Lingo Bingo. (via Caterina)

A blogger's prayer:

Forgive us our sins,
For blog-rolling strangers and pretending they are friends,
For counting unique visitors but not noticing unique people,
For delighting in the thousands of hits but ignoring the ONE who returns,
For luring viewers but sending them away empty handed,
For updating daily but repenting weekly.

At www.next-wave.org.

Barbarossa to Berlin - Post match report from Phil:

It was a bright April day when my father and myself decided to engage in a game of Barbarossa to Berlin. In keeping with household tradition I took the Germans, and father the Allies, or more specifically the Russians. It's a very good game for the lightweight gamer such as myself, as the system is rather a beauty to pick up easily. I decided to play the Von Paulus pause card at the start and hope that the Winter advantage would bring me a rapid advance. Sadly, such an advance did not go as planned. I gained victories in the south, only to be resisted in the north. The victories I did gain were too small due to rubbish die rolling on my part. Then the killer blow, Dad won massive gains in North Africa (which I had chosen to ignore as I hate Italians - not in a racist way, in a cute way) which slammed down my victory points. Then in his usual style he pulls out a card and rule which I have no forewarning of, to reduce my VP's to just 1. I was pretty desperate to push on in the East to try and regain VP's, but one more crappy die roll later and a Russian counterattack rolled into Kiev in round six of turn 5 effectively ending the game.

It was great fun, and much better than the first world war one, whose name escapes me. I want to play again, and this time there will be no mercy. Oh, and I can still whup him at Up-Front, which is by far the best and hardest game in the world.

So why all these posts about alternative worship? Isn't this supposed to be a games weblog? Well yes, but this blogger is also a Christian - although you might not guess this from watching me play Escape from Atlantis say. And one of the things that keeps me interested in my blog is that it's a fruitful way of making notes to myself, tagging things that occur to me during the day to follow up later. I've been dissatisfied with some aspects of my Christian experience for years, especially church life and Sunday worship, so when I became aware of this alternative worship movement for the first time today, I had to put down some markers to myself that this is something I need to investigate. I found it by a serendipitous route - Caterina pointed me to Jordon Cooper who is involved with Worship Freehouse which tapped me into the loop....

AltW Theory - Chillout

It became possible to use in church the music you were hearing at home, at work, in the bar at night. Nothing sets a atmosphere as powerfully as music, and church could be given the feel of everyday life instead of something set apart. And the music was picking up sacred meanings in church, which would then be retained when it was heard in other places. Or the music was picking up sacred meanings through encounters with God in other places, which could then be replayed for others in church.

the worship freehouse

What is alternative worship?

It is what happens when people reinvent church for themselves, in forms that fully reflect the people they are and the culture they live in. That's the people they really are and the culture they really live in, not sanitised Sunday-best versions!
It's an attempt to make spaces where people can be real, and relate honestly to God and one another without 'religious' masks or imposed forms of behaviour. In practice this involves a complete reappraisal of what a church service actually consists of - what it's for, how it's led, what kinds of things can happen, what kind of language is used, where people sit and what the space looks like.

Vaux_Greyspace

Different spiritualities have always evolved out of different cultures: they are front-ends that gives expression to the same hardware of faith. At Vaux we are interested in discovering an urban spirituality: some way of doing faith that takes the context of the city seriously. Much of the main-stream church has labelled what we do 'alternative.' But we have no interest in being viewed as main-stream by an organisation that is itself so marginal. We are concerned with presenting our faith in a way that our culture would see as mainstream. We believe that this is in continuity with the way of Christ.

William has been playing games over the weekend:

I had a couple of people over last night and won only one of the 4 games of kill Dr. Lucky (and none of the many games of Bogart or Perudo) we played. Maybe it was your hosting curse come to haunt me? No, it can't be as I won at 10 die poker in 2 out of 3 games (3 games = how long it took us to realise we didn't like it). And then I triumphed at Linie 1 despite having to use a massive loop to reach my 2nd station. I had forgotten how good Dr. Lucky was, we played using Cluedo pieces which I think worked really well. The first game took ages and my Miss Scarlet failed in two attempts to do the
old boy in in the Master Suite using nothing more than a feather pillow and again he survived her attempt with the Civil War Cannon in the Armoury and Revolver in the White Room until he was taken out by Col. Mustard with a Big Red Hammer in the Piazza of all places. The second game finished after about only one loop of the house when Mrs Peacock showed him the (8 point) Monkey Hand in the Foyer. (I never knew she had it in her!) I cought up though in the next game when he was tempted in the Dining Room with Bad Cream. By the last game we played my opponents were better players and Mrs Peacock had worked out how to use the Civil War Cannon in the Armoury and he didn't last more than a couple of laps of the house.

I like Kill Dr Lucky - don't forget to bring it to Hay-on-Wye William.

This preview of the gorgeous Medieval Cards is a bit frustrating, as I was charged for this game (under GMT's P500 scheme) last October and it still hasn't been printed yet.

Battleground God

Can your beliefs about religion make it across our intellectual battleground? In this activity you’ll be asked a series of 17 questions about God and religion. In each case, apart from Question 1, you need to answer True or False. The aim of the activity is not to judge whether these answers are correct or not. Our battleground is that of rational consistency. This means to get across without taking any hits, you’ll need to answer in a way which is rationally consistent. What this means is you need to avoid choosing answers which contradict each other. If you answer in a way which is rationally consistent but which has strange or unpalatable implications, you’ll be forced to bite a bullet.

I didn't do very well at all:

You took 3 direct hits and you have bitten 1 bullet. The average player of this activity to date takes 1.37 hits and bites 1.09 bullets.

(via BurntToast)

Our friend James, who used to be such a nice, sensible lad, has been sucked into one of the strangest little subcultures that hide in the dusty corners of boardgame geekdom - the Advanced Squad Leader hobby. He actually travelled up to Blackpool recently to spend a weekend at an ASL conference called, appropriately, Berserk. Here's a brief post-con report from James:

I loved ASL at Blackpool. This link will take you to the site where I feature in two of the 2003 photos.

It took me six hours to drive up on Thursday afternoon and arrived at 19:00 paid the hotel bill of £20 per night (bargain), found my tutor from Bournemouth, had a drink, started my first game. I felt very welcome from the moment I got there they were a really friendly lot. Played 5 tournament games, won three lost two, so was really pleased. Lots drank eaten and played. Great.

Eric Zimmerman has a cool little website. I'm intrigued by the photos of gallery games, and there are some good essays about game design, games and culture, that sort of thing..

Rules of Play is a book on game design to be published later this year (with a chapter from Reiner Knizia):

Games have become as much a genre of pop culture as film or television, but game design has yet to develop a theoretical framework or critical vocabulary. In Rules of Play Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman offer an impassioned defense and definition of this emerging field. Their goal is to create a unified methodology for looking at all kinds of games and to understand game design as a design practice. The authors, active participants in game culture themselves, intend their book to act as a catalyst--to help game designers explore new ways to create games and develop concepts, design strategies, and methodologies.

(via Terminal City Gamers)

Philip is currently playing Barbarossa to Berlin with me. I am very proud of my son.

A recent email from Phil: And how come you never mention our gaming experiences on Nimrods? You're ashamed of me aren't you?

The irrepressible Kathy Shaidle: And I heard an Iraqi on the news this morning, yelling "Thank you Mr. Bush!" Call me a psychopath, but losing my friends and alienating my co-workers was all worth it just for that.

I'm considering doing the Coast to Coast walk later this year, and this site has an excellent accomodation planner. I've had an ambition to do the Coast to Coast for many years - every year there is some good reason to postpone it, so I think I should just pick up the phone and start booking. No more excuses!

Happy Birthday to Phil - 19 today! I bought him a box set of Beethoven symphonies, a recording by VPO and Karajan. I judged that full-blown emotionalism was more likely to appeal to a teenager than stripped-down period authenticism. Remarkably (considering he spends much of his life watching MTV) Phil seemed very pleased with my gift.

BlogShares - Fantasy Blog Share Market - what a great idea! I remember a game like this that used to be played postally. You traded currencies in parallel with a current Diplomacy game. The prices varied with trades, and you lost your holdings in currencies of countries that were eliminated . I did very very badly the only time I ever played, well below random performance. The experience helped me form a conviction that I should never speculate in real markets like the Stock Exchange - a conviction that has served me well ever since. But I will certainly try playing BlogShares.

William - the king of fluff - alerted me to this stash of free fluffy games from Cheapass Games.

Some clear-sighted comments from John Keegan: Because the war has taken such a strange form, the media, particularly those at home, may be forgiven for their misinterpretation of how it has progressed. Checks have been described as defeats, minor firefights as major battles. In truth, there has been almost no check to the unimpeded onrush of the coalition, particularly the dramatic American advance to Baghdad; nor have there been any major battles. This has been a collapse, not a war.

GMT's latest projected game on the P500 list is Downtown. This looks like a new concept - an operational level game about aerial warfare.

Downtown is the first of a new genre of air combat games that model entire air raids in detail. The US player is the raid commander, marshalling packages of 30-70+ Air Force or Navy aircraft, comprising bombers, fighters, defense suppression, jamming and recon ‘planes. The North Vietnamese (DRV) player manages a network of AAA and SAM anti-aircraft defenses supported by a ‘thin red line’ of MiG fighters.

This is an excellent article, that brought nasty flashbacks of my own miserable early teenage years at school - Why Nerds are Unpopular:

I know a lot of people who were nerds in school, and they all tell the same story: there is a strong correlation between being smart and being a nerd, and an even stronger inverse correlation between being a nerd and being popular. Being smart seems to make you unpopular.

New Scientist: Tiny molecular daggers that latch onto fibres stab and destroy microbes have been created, meaning "killer clothes" may soon be available. (via Rebecca's Pocket)

So Gavin's huge pile of unwashed laundry isn't down to laziness at all - he's just prophet ahead of his times. One day we will all live like this.

Another webzine - Pulp.net - this one's about litritcher.

Google Acquisitions Create Movable Bloggerland: Asked whether this was a shot across Microsoft's bow, VP of Microsoft's Platform Group Jim Allnose said "Absolutely not. People are already blogging with Microsoft software. You just download the .NET framework, install some service packs, grab a few things from MSDN, install Sharepoint Team Services, and upgrade everything to Office 2003. Once you do that and upgrade to Windows Server 2003 which ships in the next few weeks, you're ready to go. It's simple, and we think it represents the future of consumer-based blogs."

I'm trying to sell my house at the moment, so that I can move closer to my job in Hook. Farnham seems nice - it's only 10 miles from work and 5 miles from the Game Shop in Aldershot. Here's my house details. Looks good doesn't it? Shame no-one seems to want to buy it....

The Games Journal is a nicely done web magazine. This month has reviews of Sunda to Sahel and The Antoni Gaudi Tile Game amongst other things.

Last Saturday I had a great afternoon playing Nick at The Napoleonic Wars. We played the 1812 scenario, with Nick as the French. I had some lucky rolls, especially on the Spanish partisans, which allowed me to clear most of Spain before Wellington marched over the Pyrenees into France only to get killed in battle. Nick's invasion army only reached Smolensk, severely punished on the journey by the Russian Winter (what a powerful card!), but he did manage to capture St Petersburg. In the end there was a margin of only 2 keys, but I just scraped a victory.

I can't understand why this game didn't get a better reception from the rest of you. With Dave it was "I don't see how the French can win" or "I don't see how the French can lose" depending on which side he was playing. And with John it was "But you can't recreate the movements of the 5th Pomeranian Hussars on 12th October 1813". And it wasn't fluffy enough for William. I think I will take it along to Hay and see if I can convince you lot to give it another chance.....

James sent me a link to this article in the New York Times: As the Battles Heat Up, War Buffs Turn to Maps and Play Board Games

GMT are building up an archive of articles from their C3i magazine (and here). Lots of good stuff here, in PDF format. As most of these magazines are out of print and hard to find, this is a valuable resource for fans of GMT wargames.

Greg Costikyan brings news that Settlers is soon to become an online game on the Sony PS2. What times we live in!

At Piecepack the winner of the "Changing Landscapes" game design contest is "Alien City" by Michael Schoessow. This game uses pieces from two generic game kits - Icehouse and Piecepack! The rules of the competition specified that the game must have a mutable board.

A scary view of the future. "Practice to Deceive" by Joshua Micah Marshall: Ending Saddam Hussein's regime and replacing it with something stable and democratic was always going to be a difficult task, even with the most able leadership and the broadest coalition. But doing it as the Bush administration now intends is something like going outside and giving a few good whacks to a hornets' nest because you want to get them out in the open and have it out with them once and for all. Ridding the world of Islamic terrorism by rooting out its ultimate sources--Muslim fundamentalism and the Arab world's endemic despotism, corruption, and poverty--might work. But the costs will be immense. Whether the danger is sufficient and the costs worth incurring would make for an interesting public debate. The problem is that once it's just us and the hornets, we really won't have any choice. (via Nick Denton)

Chrononauts: Mysteries of the Timeline explores some of the questions prompted by this clever time-travel game, such as "Why Would a Zeppelin Factory Stop the Korean War?" and "Why Would the Titanic Cause the Stock Market Crash?"

Don't miss David Warren's latest essay roundly criticizing much of the media coverage of the war so far: On the large scale, we have the persistent display of doubts about tactics and strategy from journalists without any qualifications to judge them: who know no military history, indeed hardly any history at all; nor are they in possession of many current facts.

A long and fascinating Interview with Reiner Knizia on Funagain Games:

SG: How did it feel the first time you held a boxed game with your name on it?

RK: Absolutely marvelous. Overwhelming. That's what you're aiming for. You see all these games in the shops and you hear about these great publishers and suddenly you're part of that world -- it really fascinates me. There's always a celebration when I publish a game or a book, but now that I have 150 boxes it fades away a little bit. I still look forward to every new game because they are all my children and I put a lot of my heart into these games. I'm always anxious about the final product -- What does it look like? Will it all be nice? Is there anything which I don't like? And so on....

I had a pretty tiring but very stimulating and interesting weekend at Workshop in Clapham. A really good sequence of lectures, as well as an Open Book Reflection - which was basically writing an essay under exam conditions. I was getting nasty flashbacks to A-levels. As Phil said: "Why are you paying money to take exams Dad?"

Nevertheless it was a good weekend, and especially good to get away from the newsfeeds and forget the war for a few hours.

Excellent! - GMT have finally posted a new version of the Living Rules for Barbarossa to Berlin.

You have to feel sorry for someone who ended up at nimrods after typing "stupid celebrity antiwar protesters" into Google. Hopefully I match none of those 4 keywords....

Take a deep breath - Steven den Beste recommends a philosophical approach to breaking news:

For any of the following reports, allow at least six hours before you even begin to take them seriously:

Any report of a Scud
The first three reports of mass casualties by anyone

For these, wait 12 hours:

Any report of an attack against a city outside of Iraq
Any report of use of chemical weapons
The first two reports of mass surrenders
The first two reports of use by the US of "wizard weapons"

For these, wait 24 hours if not even more:

Any report that a "name" in Iraq has been killed, captured or has defected
Any claim by the government of Iraq which looks good for them or bad for us
Any report of atrocities
Any report of Iraqi "scorched earth" destruction, especially oil well fires
Any report of mass Iraqi civilian casualties

For all of these, the proper response is to go take a nap. I know it's tough, but that's the best thing you can do.

Via Chris Brooks' review of Laser Squad Nemesis - the Grenadier's Bible: Crank's brilliant masterpiece of strategy and tactics. In depth advice for Marines and Grenadiers in particular, but spilling over into all areas of the game. Warning: This is not a beginner’s guide! It is a technical resource for players who are already familiar with the game and who are interested in improving their level of play.

I'm not alone! BoardGameWiki - Blogs About Games

In today's Guardian Bill Clinton: Trust Tony's judgment:

In the post-cold war world, America and Britain have been in tough positions before: in 1998, when others wanted to lift sanctions on Iraq and we said no; in 1999 when we went into Kosovo to stop ethnic cleansing. In each case, there were voices of dissent. But the British-American partnership and the progress of the world were preserved. Now in another difficult spot, Blair will have to do what he believes to be right. I trust him to do that and hope the British people will too. (via Andrew Sullivan)

Dave brought over his new copy of Victory: Blocks of War last night. It was great fun - especially as I won every battle - and ideally suited for a weekday evening, being rules-light and fun. It brought back long-dormant childhood memories of Blitzkrieg - possibly the first Avalon Hill game I ever played - which is similarly a WW2-style battle fought over an imaginary landscape. Victory, with all it's expansion sets, seems to generate a lot of fannish enthusiasm. Here are a few websites I dug up this morning:

Lutz Pietschker

Jim's VICTORY website which includes a Settlers crossover!

ConsimWorld links

Matt Geisler?

Ix

And Columbia Games of course.

Against my better judgement I have been making more use of my Playstation 2. I recently acquired Final Fantasy X and have been gently sucked in by the amazing beauty of the imaginary gameworld, as well as the interesting turn-based combat. But it is very Japanese, even though the characters have vaguely Western looking faces and American voices. And the scriptwriting is weird.

A Typical FF dialogue

Guy: Huh?

(Long pause)

Girl: I'm really sorry. I shouldn't have said tha.....

(Long pause)

Guy: Huh?

I visited my lovely parents at the weekend. My Dad has been making lots of architectural models downloaded from PaperToys.com, including a model of the twin towers in New York that Dad assembled a few years ago.

Starships Unlimited is a shareware game of the "Masters of Orion" kind. Developed by one man - not a multi-million dollar development team - apparently it's a cult classic.

Caring for Your Introvert: The worst of it is that extroverts have no idea of the torment they put us through. Sometimes, as we gasp for air amid the fog of their 98-percent-content-free talk, we wonder if extroverts even bother to listen to themselves. Still, we endure stoically, because the etiquette books—written, no doubt, by extroverts—regard declining to banter as rude and gaps in conversation as awkward. We can only dream that someday, when our condition is more widely understood, when perhaps an Introverts' Rights movement has blossomed and borne fruit, it will not be impolite to say "I'm an introvert. You are a wonderful person and I like you. But now please shush." (via Wunderland)

I'm researching geek culture for a piece of coursework I am doing for Workshop. Here are some links I have come up with:

Websters dictionary definition Old German for "fool" comes to us via the fairground.
What is a Geek? An alternative definition.
Female Geeks Article about an endangered species.
Lord of the Geeks Tracing the roots of geek culture in Tolkien, of all places.
The Code of the Geeks How to encode your own particular flavour of geekiness.
Triumph of the Nerds (DVD) Memorable TV series about the PC revolution.
New Hacker's Dictionary The mother-lode. This exhaustively documents every aspect of computer geek culture.

William has provided this list of typical excuses for stabbing an opponent in a multiplayer game:

Dave 'No it is a good thing, it is in your back to fix an itch you thought you had'
John 'I added it up and it was the only way I could win, sorry'
Wayne 'Hey, it was you or me pal'
Peter 'Sorry, but I thought it might help us both out, am I still losing?'
Steve 'Sorry, what am I meant to be doing with this knife'
Nick: evil grin, failed attempt at innocent look.
William 'I know I stabbed you but John's still the bigger threat'

I always still look at Nimrods and was concerned when you stopped posting for a while. Your quotes from the WWW and your observations give me something to look forward to at the end of the day, said James in an email yesterday. You have to feel sorry for him, if nimrods is all he's got to look forward to....

Dismal thoughts today from Andrew Sullivan: I'm left with the conclusion that we will only get such a consensus in favor of pre-emption after the destruction of a major Western city, or a chemical or biological catastrophe. In this sense, Blair and Bush may simply be ahead of their time. And what they see as the potential threat is so depressing and terrifying that it's perhaps only understandable that the world for a while will wish to look the other way.

Chris Farrell's Ranking of Strategy Card-based Wargames - lots of interesting comment. He pans Thirty Years War and The Napoleonic Wars.

A powerful piece from Greg Costikyan about the malaise in the computer games industry: The mood at the Game Designers Conference this year was, fundamentally, one of despair. To even the blindest apologist for the silly, if monstrous, construct the game industry has become, the handwriting on the wall was clear.

What's on the Stove? at Looney Labs, including news of a popular Icehouse game Zendo packaged up and sold as a stand-alone package.

Britannia In Scale using 15mm figures: I figure 4.6 km (2.8 mi.) by 8.1 km (4.9 mi.) is about enough for a properly sized map. This is just 37 sq. km (12.8 sq. mi.) or about 8,800 acres. A map of this scale would give you a good feel for what it takes to march an ancient an army to battle. I figure the plains near Fargo, North Dakota or Winnipeg, Canada would be an ideal site for the board. Depending on the lay of the land, we could use Jeeps or quadra-track cycles to find and move our pieces around the board. We would also need some room around the edges for our chairs and snacks.

The Ten Commandments of Board Gaming For example the 6th commandment decrees: Thou shalt be mindful of game owner's concerns and consume thy libations accordingly.

I've just booked accomodation in Hay-on-Wye for the first ever Nimrods Books, Beer and Boardgames weekend. We are staying at a big old place called Celtic Lodge, near the centre of the town, from Friday 9th - Monday 12th May. So far Nick and Ann, Dave, Simon, John and myself have committed, while Steve, William and Robin are thinking about it. I have not had any luck contacting James - if you still read this drivel James, and you fancy coming along, get in touch.

It should be fun - mooching around the second-hand bookshops, checking out the local pubs, walking in the Black Mountains, and of course, playing lots of games. Lets hope we get through the weekend without murdering each other.......

Humph.

I got beaten at Hammer of the Scots again by Dave last night. Last time we played it I was the Scots, and got beaten. Thought maybe the game was unbalanced. So this time I took the English. Made no difference - I still lost. This game is all luck.

Only kidding - it's a fantastic game actually. Great fun, fast, easy to learn, loads of historical flavour, lots of strategic options to puzzle over. A classic.