The wayward genius of Phil Eklund

I've just been playing Pax Renaissance, the latest masterwork from Phil Eklund at Sierra Madre games, playing it through solo to get the hang of the rules, and what an experience it has been! Deeply immersive, intriguing, satisfying, full of historical interest. Best of all, like all Phil's games, it is a game of ideas, the polar opposite to the idea-free mechanism-driven designs that dominate Euro-gaming, or indeed the high-fantasy miniature-bloated big boxes that Kickstarter regularly produces.

As you can see, I'm a bit of a fan of Phil Eklund games. And this isn't even my whole collection. I've just said that a big part of their appeal for me is that his games are games of ideas. They give you something to think about. That doesn't mean that his ideas are necessarily very palatable. For example, Phil seems to be some sort of American libertarian. I'm all in favour of personal liberty, but the Ayn Rand style libertarianism that Phil seems to champion is more about liberty for corporations. The entrepreneurial spirit of capitalism operating in free markets is the great driver of human progress. At least that is what the rule booklet for Pax Renaissance tells me. My response to that is – tell that to the people in Bhopal. Pax Porfiriana, Phil's epic game of the Mexican revolution, teaches us that the world is divided into makers and takers, in other words taxation is simply extracting money with menaces. I prefer to think of taxation as a (very imperfect) common purse, to which we all contribute for the common good. Bios Megafauna, Phil's simply magnificent game about the last 250 million years of evolution, has a throwaway line in the rules about mankind's heroic efforts to avoid the next "snowball earth" by digging up and burning as much fossil fuel as possible. So much for the scientific consensus on climate change.

But I don't really mind all that. The great thing is that Phil Eklund reads widely and deeply, and builds his often heterodox conclusions into the structure of his truly excellent games. Giving me not only something great to play, but some truly interesting ideas to chew over and disagree with. Give me that over the latest idea-free Euro-deckbuilder any day.

A couple more thoughts on X-Wing fatigue

My gaming background is in board wargames, I was a teenager back in the heyday of Avalon Hill and SPI, and more recently I've played a lot of GMT or Columbia ar MMP wargames. In a typical board wargame you will get, as well as the main event, a handful of usually smaller scenarios. These specify starting positions and order of battle – a list of exactly which units each side gets to play with – and victory conditons, special rules etc. In a good quality game each scenario will have been carefully playtested to make sure it is more or less balanced, so that given players of equal ability victory will go to either side roughly the same number of times. So for example Up Front, one of the the finest wargames I have ever come across, has a dozen or so scenarios printed on the back page of the rule book. Each one is a little gem of compression, specifying the exact composition of your squad and their weapons, the setup conditions, the kind of terrain you are likely to encounter, and the victory conditions. Each one (remember this was back in the golden age of Avalon Hill when they had big print runs and plenty of resources) was thoroughly polished and playtested, so you could be sure you were getting into a fair fight with your opponent.

Star Wars: X-Wing in contrast went for a points-based build-your-own-squad approach. I can understand why, after all many people thoroughly enjoy the meta-game of squad building, the obsessive poring over lists which can fill the fan's leisure hours (and some of his working hours too!) But the price of this is a certain rock-paper-scissors flavour to one's encounters down at the local club. Your obsessed-over squad is quite likely to meet an opposing squad which simply steamrollers yours, with no possibility of playing skill or luck rescuing what is from the start a hopeless situation.

Interestingly, even Up Front, which I am holding up as a shining example of balanced scenario design, gives every personnel and weapon card a points value, so points-based DIY scenarios are very much possible, and were a lot of fun whenever I tried it, back in the nineties when I was playing a lot of Up Front.

Stll, it would be nice to see FFG produce some proper balanced and playtested scenarios. I think it's unlikely, the current structure of the game with numerous upgrade packs marketed as single (or sometimes pairs of) ships, would make it difficult.  The missions are a step in that direction, but you are still choosing your forces on points value, so the meta-game intrudes even here.

X-Wing Fatigue

I think I need a break from Star Wars: X-Wing.

I've been playing for about 15 months now, benefitting from the regular group that meets every Wednesday at Thirsty Meeples in Oxford. Great group of friendly guys ( and yes it is 95% guys), I've really enjoyed learning the game, building up my collection of rebel space ships (including 2 yes 2 Millenium Falcons!), reading the blogs, watching the matches on YouTube, listening to the podcasts, and even going to a few tournaments.

But... the last 3 weeks, taking a beating in every single game, from squads with such complicated shenanigans that I have no idea why you get to reroll that attack a third time! OK so I need to fly better and perhaps I'm not putting the hours into understanding this game and the multitude of upgrades and pilots available, but I dunno... I think I just need a break. Maybe only a short break, I'll probably be back with my tail wagging in a week or two. But for now, I think I want to think about something else. Maybe StarFarers of Catan.

So I finally got to play "High Frontier" on Saturday. I persuaded Nick Simon and Iain to come over to Wood Green for a Big Games Day, and spent weeks preparing for the big day by studying the rules over and over.

It was a partial success I would say. It took an awful long time - 6.5 to 7 hours I would guess altogether. I was the only one who had read the rules, so the first few hours I had to answer a LOT of rules questions for every turn. I felt like I was planning everyone's missions at one point! It's not that it's a complicated game - every one of us has mastered more complicated games - but it's unfamiliar, so not much in the way of conceptual landmarks.

Having said that - I loved it! Such a fascinating game, the time just flew by for me. I did very poorly, possibly because I was so busy answering rules questions that I didn't have time to think very clearly about what I was doing. Towards the end I did make some good progress claiming asteroids with a 4.1/3 thruster and a raygun, but too late to get back into the running.

Simon and Nick both seemed to enjoy it too, both expressing a willingness to play again. But Iain, having enjoyed the first few hours, seemed to lose the will to live a few times when he was trying to figure out how to organise his next mission. He won by a good margin (lots of glory points), but his final verdict on the game was "overwrought", "a prog-rock game"! So I don't anticipate persuading Iain to play it again any time soon.

So, this is a fantastic game, but not for everyone. And I'm sure it can be played a lot quicker than we managed by even slightly experienced players. A serious contender for my top 10 list.

Christmas Civ

I'm spending Christmas with Sue's family in a luxury barn conversion buried in the snowy Herefordshire countryside. Even better, I've been playing Civilization with Sue's 12-year-old nephew Tom. We're using my old Gibson's edition, where the playing area for 2 players (Greece and Asia Minor) is helpfully colour-coded. The 2-player game is surprisingly challenging. Space is in short supply so Tom and I have been clashing for room regularly. We had an easy ride to start with, but then the calamities started coming thick and fast, and we are just emerging from a chaotic dark age of civil war, eruptions, epidemics and revolts. Love this game, still my number one.

Peaceniks at war

Another game of Struggle of Empires last night with the Mennonite boys. Just the three of us, and we were a little worried about the odd-man-out possibilities, but it seemed to work fine, and no-one felt their chances were closed down early in the game. Still, it doesn't matter how many times I play this game, I don't seem to be able to get the hang of how to win. One of my favourite tricks was much in evidence last night - buying a nice tile (such as Reserves) and then forgetting to use it at the critical moemnt. That re-roll could have spared me a lot of pain!

Darren was so inspired by the game that he resolved to buy it immediately, regardless of the OTT prices being achieved on eBay these days.

We finished with a round of Race for the Galaxy, where I managed to scrape a last-turn win against Sam's Spartan war-machine. Very satisfying.

Caucasus Campaign

I've been going quite slow on the game acquisition front - still money left in the 2010 budget - but I recently bought Caucasus Campaign (Mark Simonovitch, GMT) after reading very positive comments from Chris Farrell. Maybe I give too much weight to Chris's opinions sometimes, but I'm very pleased I followed his recommendation on this one.

I'm becoming a bit of a sucker for East Front panzer-pushers, accumulating a small stack of them on the shelf (Roads to Leningrad, Stalingrad Pocket, Von Manstein's Backhand Blow), but this one looks at first sight a little bit special. A beautiful map with large hexes, a small number of large attractive counters, 16 pages of clearly laid out rules printed in colour, and colourful and clear player-aids, all combine to make a very appealing first impression.

It's all laid out on the table awaiting my first solo play-through. Looking forward to it.

The month of gaming

I am having the most amazing month of gaming! And it's all a bit of a misunderstanding. Months ago Sue booked up for a mediation course, which meant she would be away from home all weekend every weekend in September. So like any boardgaming partner would, I got my diary out and started booking the gaming sessions. Huzzah! Then her course was cancelled. But Sue is lovely, and so the gaming sessions still stand. And I'm getting convention-scale amounts of gaming done.

Sunday part 2

It was probably a mistake to follow Maria with another "big beast" like After the Flood. It didn't help that I did not do a great job of explaining the rules, and everyone's brains were a little fried by this stage, I suspect. And to be honest, After the Flood did not benefit from the comparison. After Maria it seemed - well - unpolished. A little bit fiddly, and lacking in drama perhaps.

I still rate this as a very good game indeed, probably an 8, but a game of this complexity and length needs to be the main event. Definitely not a wind-down game. (Chicago Express or Nexus Ops might have been a better choice.)

There's something about Maria

I finally got the chance to play Maria on Sunday. I've been excited about this game for a while, bought a copy a couple of months ago, and have been itching to play ever since. Iain "the acceptable face of gaming", and his friend John agreed to try it out last weekend. I loved it. As Prussia/Pragmatic I played very poorly. Not really thinking about the implications of what I was doing, I hammered into Austria with the Prussians and into Northern France with the Pragmatics. Won lots of battles, but handed the game to the French. But this game is a beautiful beautiful thing. I love the subtleties of hand management interacting with the suits on the board. I love the positional play and the simple way that the flavour of 18th century siege warfare is captured. I love the look of the board and the pieces. Maria is currently well on the way to joining my exclusive 10-rated list, alongside timeless works of art like Civilization, 1830, and Tigris & Euphrates. When can we play again?

In which we plays Blackbeard, me lads.

Something else we played at Nick's last weekend was Blackbeard (GMT's new edition). Danni easily beat Nick and me, storming ahead in notoriety and booty after sacking Portobello. This is a fun game, though poor Nick spent most of the game scanning the rules for us. He was effectively a full-time GM so it's hardly surprising he came in last.

I have the 1st edition and used to play it solo quite a bit (back in my lonely bachelor days). A couple of things that struck me about the 2nd edition - first, dumping the hexes is no great loss. It always felt a bit anomalous cruising around the hex-grid with no regard for wind direction. Second, the cards are considerably simplified (and prettied up). However there's a cost - a lot of complexity is offloaded onto the huge player reference card.

Let's face it, Blackbeard is all about the chrome. In fact there's hardly a game there at all - it's all chrome. So not a satisfying collection of graceful interlocking mechanisms. More a chaotic pile of historical accidents. Like a roleplaying game, it's all about imaginative immersion.

A happy time with the Unhappy King

I had an epic game of Unhappy King Charles with Nick last weekend. I was the godly faction, and things were looking pretty bad for my foppish long-haired opponent by the end of 1643, after a series of disastrous attempts to take Bristol. But he hung on to the end, and I scraped home with 13 points. Excellent fun! 7 hours of really first-class wargaming.

This is the second time I've played UKC. The first time I felt pretty lost, and a bit grumpy too with some of the complexities of the game. This time round I pwas better prepared, and I'm beginning to see that this game is a real classic, with serious intellectual muscle under the surface. Whatever you might think of Charles Vasey's online persona, you can't deny that he has put a lot of thought into this design. I can't wait for another chance to play.

Our Island Story

Well I'm off to Cardiff today to meet Nick for a weekend of unbridled wargaming. As we are both Englishmen and wargamers, it seems highly appropriate that we plan to spend the weekend playing games about Englishmen killing each other, namely Unhappy King Charles and Richard III.

Wish me luck.

Homeopathy at OK Corral

We visited Phil & Laura in their new den in Whitechapel last night. Highlight of the evening was Phil's amazing savoury pastry slices, but I also got to try out Red Dead Redemption. (Aside: why has my son got a PS3 and a huge telly when I have neither of these good things??) It must have been difficult for Phil watching my incompetent attempts to walk into a saloon without getting shot. But I have to say I was disappointed by the importance of herb-gathering in the game.

Herb-gathering??!

I don't believe I ever saw John Wayne gathering herbs. Did you?

45...then you're dead!

Wow! I just won an online game of Shadow of the Emperor. I thought I was swimming with sharks. Turned out they were all sticklebacks like me.

It's a nice game online. Takes a while, but it's thoughtful, interesting. I've never actually got my copy onto a table - there's always something else more compelling. Shame. Underrated I reckon - possibly because of its small box!

Time enough for Ra

The other evening I persuaded my lovely wife to play Ra: the Dice Game. She's a Roll Through the Ages girl really, but she agreed to give it a try. I wasn't sure she was enjoying herself so I was mortified to realize, half-way through, that we were starting Ra from the 4-player spot, thus tripling the play time!

Anyway, in the end she won 69 to 64. And agreed to play again - provided that is that we stick to the long "version" (i.e. rules mistake). Turns out she doesn't like too much time pressure in this sort of game - she likes to have enough time to finish building her little cube projects.

Hmmm....maybe I should try her with Civilization? Plenty of time there.....

Our pledge to you

No sooner was Phil yesterday taken off the road by the theft his beloved bike, than I picked up the baton and cycled through the morning sunshine and traffic into town. Our pledge to you - every day, somewhere, there will always be a Haslehurst on his bike.

I was impelled by the (as it turned out mistaken) belief that the tube would not be running. It was quite a nice experience - only 3 people made a serious attempt to kill me (one of whom was a cyclist - they are always the worst). London was looking its best, and there was lots to see along the way (like the "daring" despoilation of Arundel Square currently nearing its grotesque conclusion).

This morning, out on my bike again - this time the tube really is closed in earnest. Streets a lot busier, crowds of cyclists - some of them quite bad-tempered. And worst of all - day 2 bum, that painful sensation of getting back in the saddle the next morning after a long ride. Still, it was fun to be peddling through Clerkenwell, admiring the quaint streets and dodging iPod-absorbed pedestrians.

What a lovely surprise - World War 2!

I have the loveliest wife imaginable. She has no interest in military history - in fact I suspect she is rather appalled by the idea - but yesterday she presented me with Anthony Beevor's "D-Day". What a great gift! I have to admit I have put my current read ("Last Night in Twisted River") on hold for the time being - I had a quick look at my new book last night before bed, and before I knew it I was at the end of the first chapter. He has a great way of getting on with the story and drawing you in from the first page. The opposite of stuffy.

Must get Breakout Normandy on the table again!

Well I just beat Keldon Jones' Race for the Galaxy AI. OK it went to the tie-breaker, with 33 points each, but I beat the **** thing at last. I think this is worth blogging about.

Key to my victory - thinking hard.

Always confirm the venue

I arranged to meet Sam yesterday at 9:30am for a game of 1825. At 9:50 I was starting to worry - has he forgotten? has he been knocked off his bike? At 9:50 Sam was also sitting at home wondering where I had got to. It turns out we had both assumed we were going to meet at our own place.

Anyway one fast bike ride later and Sam is sitting down at my dining table for a game of Chicago Express (no time for 1825 now) at which I managed to beat him soundly. I do like Chicago Express (he says in the warm afterglow of victory). Such a lot of economic and railway building interest in a short game. Then Sam got his revenge at Race for the Galaxy - I love this game but seem to be totally incapable of winning even one hand.

The power of information

Well, you put up with something for literally years (an annoying green moon-like blob in the centre of the screen when I'm watching films on my Hitachi PJ-TX100 projector) and it's really annoying sometimes, especially in dark films (like Moon for example) but you try to grit your teeth and not make a fuss like your parents taught you, and then one day you wake up and think "Why am I putting up with this? This is the age of the internet!" And after about 10 minutes of research you find the answer (here). You spend £20 on a compressed air thingy (quite a lot, but a lot cheaper than a new projector) carefully squirt it into the correct opening and bingo! It doesn't work. But you try again and again and finally get a torch so you can see what you're doing and - aaaah - it works. Bliss. You've no idea how nice it feels to watch a film without the green blob.

Isn't the internet great?

Barbarossa to Berlin: the "to Berlin" bit

Phil came back today to "finish the job" on Barbarossa to Berlin. I was fully expecting to lose before lunch, but actually managed to drag it out until 4:30 and the penultimate turn. I failed to get "Totaler Krieg" played, but a 2-year siege of Kiev, no less than two failed invasions of France, and a mistimed play of "Casablanca" all kept the tension high right to the very end - Phil's final victory in Spring 45.

What a great wargame! I think Ted Raicer's decision to cut out the phony war and start with the invasion of Russia was inspired. It makes for a tight, compact game (we finished inside 12 hours, whereas I have played Europe Engulfed for 3 exhausting days in a row and still not finished) that feels like World War 2 - fewer opportunities for the weird "what-if" branches from history that a game starting in 1939 has to navigate.

Do I prefer it to Paths of Glory? Not sure, but I'm leaning towards BtB. PoG has the big strategic decisions (East or West) that are kind of settled before BtB begins. But there's still a lot of strategic thinking that has to be done about balancing risks, covering your back (guess where the next invasion comes) and managing your manpower resources (RPs vs the latest crisis). And I definitely prefer it to Europe Engulfed - it's more compact both in time and space.

A weekend of the hard stuff

Yes, a weekend of complicated deep games.

Wonderful.

1825 Unit 2 on Friday evening with Sam the Connecticut Yankee, a smart young Mennonite who is in London for 3 years volunteering. I tentatively suggested an 18xx game but warned him they are a bit complicated. "I like complicated games" was his response, and sure enough, he cottoned on really quickly. I got off to a good start but by the end game his Midland was a real powerhouse, churning out £380 a round. He did a great job using the GCR (which was owned 50/50 but run by Sam) as a source of cheap locomotives for his other companies. In the end he nearly caught me, but not quite.

Then on Sunday son Phil came over for Barbarossa to Berlin. As the Germans I kicked off with the Barbarossa card and managed to make a real hash of things. I got nowhere near Moscow or Leningrad, and by the time winter and the Siberians arrived I was having a terrible time - a real fight for survival. But then in 42 Phil eased off the pressure and allowed me to rebuild - but at the expense of losing more ground in Russia. We didn't finish - hoping to do that on Sunday. My biggest worry is I won't get the Totaler Krieg played - I'm already down to 9 VPs. It's a great game - enjoying it a lot in spite of my tribulations. I must update my BGG entry - I was feeling a bit grumpy about errata at the time. Most of my experiences of BtB have been with a certain opponent (yes Dave I mean you) who likes to play the Germans, has his two years of fun, doesn't do as well as he hoped, and concedes - denying me the fun of planning invasions and driving into Germany etc. An antisocial habit, and one I will eschew - I 've promised Phil I will go down fighting....

Game Shop Notes #2: Playin' Games

I was planning this post and decided to walk over to Museum Street one lunchtime and check my facts (like any good reporter). What a shock to find the shop stripped bare and locked up. Gone! And no note on the door with a new address. So who knows if Playin' Games has a future or if they are gone forever.

This is a sad loss of a prime showcase for the hobby. It was a handsome blue shopfront with an appealing window display and lots of the more accessible games on the ground floor. Downstairs there was a really good selection of Eurogames and wargames, with a big RPG section as well. The staff were always friendly and helpful to me, but I gather they could be less helpful to women and other people outside the hobby - an unfortunate attribute given their position in the heart of tourist London (opposite the British Museum).

I spent quite a bit of money in there over the years, but I guess they were being squeezed by online discounters like Infinity Games. I fear for our local game shops.

Game Shop Notes #1: The Orc's Nest

This little shop on Earlham Street in Covent Garden has a big street presence, thanks to the distinctive yellow and white hazard striping around the shop front. This pattern always reminds me of Games Workshop Warhammer 40K artwork, so it was perhaps forgivable of me to walk in a few years ago and ask if they had any genestealer figurines in stock. That question got a very chilly reception I can tell you. This shop is most definitely not a Games Workshop stockist, but they do stock a lot of figures and suchlike from GW competitors. In fact the whole of the (tiny) ground floor is devoted to miniatures, magazines and CCG booster packs. But it's upstairs where the real treasures (for someone like me) are to be found. Up the clattery Red Dwarf style stairs to the little mezzanine floor where they keep a surprisingly good selection of wargames and Eurogames. Everything from ASL Action Packs to Runebound expansion decks, taking in all stations from the latest Simmons to Ticket to Ride on the way. Sure, the staff here are famously surly, but that's kind of part of the place's character, and when you do get a wry smile or an audible response, you feel like you've really arrived. Quirky, unique, irreplaceable- and very convenient for the lab. I'd really miss it.

Banks and Braes etc

Where to start?

I'm just back from nearly three weeks in Scotland with Sue, walking the West Highland Way followed by the Great Glen Way. In other words, we walked from Glasgow to Inverness, taking in a couple of Munros along the way.

My legs are tired.

I fell in love with Scotland all over again. What amazing scenery! Glencoe in particular is stunning. Mind you, the country isn't perfect. For example, they have way too relaxed an attitude to pooing in the open up there. Along the banks of Loch Lomond or anywhere along the WHW, every potential lunch stop has its quota of used loo paper lying on the ground, flies buzzing around. For goodness sake folks - clean your act up!

Anyway, back home now, and enjoying the sound of sirens and the shouts of angry commuters. I'm seriously game deprived, and raring for some action baby, you know what I mean? I'd play just about anything right now, maybe even Viktory II. I'm hoping for a Barbarossa to Berlin session with son Phil in the near future, I'll try and persuade Sue to try Ra the Dice Game again, there's the London ASL club in July, there's all sorts of online gaming possibilities (strangely, I'm itching to try In the Shadow of the Emperor again), there's the chance I'll visit Nick in September for Unhappy King Charles, Richard 3 etc, and hopefully a Dune rematch can be fitted in before the autumn.

Phew.

On second thoughts, I'll skip Viktory II.

Dune brings out the best in people.

I'm off to Scotland tomorrow, to walk the West Highland Way followed by the Great Glen Way. Yes that's 170 miles of rugged country from Glasgow to Inverness. And in case I don't come back, in case we freeze to death on Rannock Moor or fall off Ben Nevis or get eaten to death by midges, I want you to remember me for this: I won Dune as the Bene Gesserit. Possibly my finest gaming moment ever. I put my son Phil down for a Harkonnen win on turn 5, manipulated him into an alliance (yes manipulated my own son, callously playing him like I was some Cold War spy handler) and stole our joint win for myself.

The look on Phil's face. Betrayal. Confusion. Sorrow.

Priceless.

More blatant consumerism

Talking of consumerism, it really is time I stopped buying new games. I'm supposed to be a student on a tight budget after all. In the last few months, I can think of at least 5 new titles that I have picked up:

Chicago Express
Race for the Galaxy: Rebel vs Imperium

I just collected these today. Very excited, especially about Chicago Express, which might be a possibility for Christmas Eve with the boys.

Beyond Valor

The big one. The purchase that says "I'm serious about this ASL thing". But am I? I certainly haven't punched the counters yet.

Peloponnesian War

Kind of pre-ordered this by accident from GMT. Got stung on import duty/admin fees.

Stalingrad Pocket
Modern Art

OK these are Maths Trade acquisitions. But I also acquired an (unwanted) Drive on Stalingrad as part of the deal.

Res Publica

Vic bequeathed this to me before he left for Canada.

Roll Through the Ages

My Mum got me this for my birthday, bless her. Last time she got me a game I was about 8. I like it a lot too, especially as Sue enjoys playing it.

Napoleon's Triumph
After the Flood
Unhappy King Charles

These are purchases from slightly earlier this year, so maybe don't count. Excellent (but expensive) all three of them.

Oh. That's more than 5 isn't it.

In the same time period I have sold exactly one game (BattleLore) and traded another two (Flandern 1302 and Conquistador) , so it's clear which direction of flow predominates.

January may have to see a little clearout, I think.

More Apple dilemmas

My iPod (2006 30Gb Classic) has packed up - or at least the right channel of the jack socket has. The nice people at the Apple temple store said they could fix it for £108. Where "fix" actually means replacing it with a brand new one. Seems like a pretty good deal to me.

My iPod feels like an old friend. It goes everywhere with me. There's something very appealing about the idea of carrying at least 60% of my CD collection around in my pocket.

But do I really need one? When it comes down to it, 90% of my listening is podcasts: Guardian Film Weekly or 2 Half Squads (note the wargaming reference there). I could probably live without that. Time on my commute is better spent reading neuroscience papers really.

And I've just shelled out (after much agonizing) on a MacBook Pro. Maybe it's time to cut back on the blatant consumerism for a while?

Failing to clear Colleville actually

I had fun at London ASL yesterday, in spite of us getting a late start because the door into Starbucks had a broken lock. So we stood around outside for an hour chatting about ASL while we waited for the locksmith to turn up. I played starter kit scenario S5 "Clearing Colleville" with newbie Iain, so I was actually teaching this scarily complex game to someone. Great scenario, very tense finish, with time very short for my American attackers, and Iain put up an effective defence.

I feel a bit torn about ASL - it's a terrific fun game, and it's great to have a little ASL community on the doorstep. But there are so many other great wargames out there that I also want to explore. But having opponents available makes a huge difference. It's nowhere near so much fun wargaming solo or online.

Dammit! I missed Jorge Cham of PhD comics fame giving a lecture at UCL yesterday. I knew it was happening soon, but I suppose I kept procrastinating about finding the details.....

Good times

It's been a fun weekend. Sue and I went up to visit her parents in Lancaster. At 12:30 on Wednesday we boarded the train in grimy Euston. By 4:15 we were up on the fells in glorious late afternoon sunshine. Another two great days tramping the Howgills followed.

And as a bonus the Cardiff branch of Sue's family arrived on Saturday, including my step-nephew Tom who is 11 years old and mad keen to boardgame. So we played Eco-Fluxx and Pillars of the Earth until late on Saturday evening, then got up early to continue with Settlers before I disappeared back to London after lunch. I lost everything, but who cares? And Sue even prompted me to download the 2-player rules for Settlers as she'd like to play again soon!

Another bonus - I'm heading off tonight to play Chicago Express with some Mennonite friends.

Conundrum

Well, I collected my first installment from the recent BGG maths trade - Stalingrad Pocket (1st ed, The Gamers), and an unwanted sweetener - Drive on Stalingrad (Decision Games). The latter is a simple, rather ugly, rather old-fashioned two-mapper. I'm wondering whether to pass it on to my 11-year-old step-nephew, a keen boardgamer, in a cynical attempt to snag him into the world of hex-and-counter wargames. Crack in the playground sort of idea. But to be honest it doesn't look like a top-flight game, and I don't want to turn him off wargaming before he starts, so maybe I should shelve the idea (and push DoS out on eBay or the next maths trade) until I can get him something really high quality.

Like Stalingrad Pocket for example.

Blatant attempt to drum up business.

I'm selling Battlelore. 9 hours to go and only £14.50.

Summer challenge

Anyone for a readers' game of Amun-Re? I'm feeling lucky - prove me wrong!
Game is called "King Scorpion" (look here), password "nimrods".

You're one of Us now

My younger son Phil is 25 years old now. He has been initiated into many kinds of wargame: Axis & Allies, Up Front, Paths of Glory, Space Hulk......

But only last Sunday did he experience a classic hex-and-counter operational wargame of the Grand Tradition for the first time, with zones of control, terrain effect chart, combat resolution table, and all.

Clash of Giants II. 1st Ypres scenario.

Classic indeed. We had a great time. This is a beautiful game, full of tension, decision-angst, and historical interest. Didn't finish, but I recorded the positions and we plan to finish the encounter ASAP.

They've redesigned the wargame!

I played Iain at Napoleon's Triumph last Sunday. Poor Iain wasn't really in the mood for the huge mental gear-shift involved in learning this game. Previous wargaming experience isn't much help, indeed may even be a hindrance.

In fact I destroyed him (his words not mine) after just four turns. As the Allies I managed to succeed with the plan that they failed with historically, smashing the French right wing before they reinforced it.

This is a stunning game, both visually and intellectually. Not yet sure if I *like* it, but I already have a huge respect for it.

"I don't believe it!"

Don't you just hate it when you see an appealing, brand-new shrinkwrapped game that has just arrived in your local game shop, and you pick it up, have a look at it, then decide to go home and sleep on it. You arrive back a few days later, having decided that, yes, this is an essential purchase, and yes, the budget can stand it - only to find that in the meantime some half-wit customer has dropped the game, and it is now far from pristine, barely shrinkwrapped, and with a big ugly dink on one corner of its box.

This happened to me last week - the game: Yanks (ASL module 2); the shop: the Orc's Nest in London.

I think if I were ever to run a games shop I would rapidly become one of those grumpy games shop managers that hates having customers in his shop.

Come to think of it, is there any other kind?

He looks happy, doesn't he

My best friend Simon got married to Fiona yesterday. I've known Simon for 25 years now, and our life experiences have paralleled each other in many ways. Can you guess what I bought them for a wedding present? Yes, that's right - a game! (Carcassonne: Hunters & Gatherers.)

What does it mean to be a scientist?

So I went over to the Finnerty lab yesterday afternoon, and spent the whole afternoon toiling away - fixing, fetching ice, resectioning, making up solutions, calculating different dilutions of antibody, incubating in blocking solution, pipetting out the antibody solutions.

At 9pm, tired but contented, I carried my precious culture tray down the corridor to the storeroom where sits the big fridge, in which my slices were to spend the next two days rocking back and forth in their little plastic wells. The storeroom door has a heavy spring. My mind was relaxed and thinking about going home. The door sprang back heavily and knocked the tray out of my hands.....

.....which somersaulted through the air in slow motion and crashed to the ground.

Upside down.

I took it back to the lab to salvage but everything was completely trashed - so my whole day was wasted.

I guess this is what it means to be a scientist.

Le Havre, Le Shmhavre

I played Le Havre last Saturday with my friends Vic and Sharon over at the London Mennonite Center. This was my second time with Le Havre, and I'm still not convinced. It doesn't help that I lost again - though by a much smaller margin than last time.

I suppose the root of my difficulty is that I'm not convinced by the theme. If I am going to play a big, long, complicated beast of a gamer's game, then I want it to have some relationship with reality. And to me, Le Havre seems totally divorced from any kind of real economic system that I have ever come across. What is this strange world where goods are picked up for free from the dockside, where you stockpile coal in case you want to build a ship, and where a business's biggest problem is feeding its workers? (Surely you just outsource the staff canteen?) At least there is no money/VP dichotomy. But basically this is "Advanced Puerto Rico", and I think I would rather play a few games of Race for the Galaxy instead, and still have time for something else.

It's like Beyond Valor all over again.

I've been thinking longingly about Napoleon's Triumph for a couple of years now, ever since I saw it on a table at MidCon, laid out in all its spectacular miniaturesy glory. But every time I see it in the games shop I pick it up and think "Ouch, £45. And after all, do I really need any more games?"

So recently I've been reading the reviews and listening to the podcasts and getting to the "must have" stage, so today I look on the Leisure Games website and - oh bother! - it's out of print.

I've waited too long, AGAIN!

(Like what's-his-name the elf who lingered too long in Middle Earth.)

But wait, The Orc's Nest still have one. I'll be down there tomorrow......

It's NOT Warhammer

I played Space Hulk today with Phil - twice through the first scenario "Suicide Mission" switching sides, but with the same result both times: the Marines got creamed in short order.

It's been a while since I played Space Hulk, but I found that this old classic still retains its charms: fast, good-looking, tense, action-packed, scary. And my recently painted "Blue Moon" squad got their first combat outing. Great fun.

Playing with the big boys

Last Saturday I went along to the London ASL club. I've been pushing counters around the ASL Starter Kits for a couple of years now, playing the occasional game with Phil or Nick, but now I decided to up the stakes a bit, take advantage of my current residence in the capital, and make contact with the serious ASL hobby.

I felt nervous as I approached Fleet Street Starbucks on Saturday morning: would I get the customary cold shoulder usually meted out to new arrivals at a games club? Would there be loud arguments about the relative merits of the SdKfz 6/2 versus the SdKfz 7/1? Would the play be very competitive? Would I be looked down on for my shaky knowledge of even the Starter Kit rules? I needn't have worried - I received a warm welcome, got introduced to lots of friendly and more or less normal people, the venue was pleasant, and I had a very enjoyable day playing scenario S12 "Over Open Sights" with Scott, who was coming back to ASL after a long break.

This deceptively simple scenario actually poses a tricky tactical puzzle to both players. My Germans had 7 turns to knockout or capture 3 American artillery pieces. Scott used his scant infantry resources to deploy a light screen in front of his precious guns, which were further back, with plenty of open space around them. It took me a long time to get through this screen, and I lost at least 50% of my fighting strength in the process. But I finally wore them down, and my luck started to change too, and Scott made the mistake of throwing in his reinforcements piecemeal, and I just about managed to capture all 3 guns by the deadline. Great fun, very exciting, and a real nail-biting finish. Big lesson learned: those artillery guns are terrifyingly devastating when they get a hit against infantry - so DON'T STACK in their LOS, even if you're in cover.

LASL meet once a month - I can't wait for the next one!

This and that

I'm still looking for PhD studentships or research jobs. In the meantime I'm putting together a design for an experiment I'm hoping to do in Gez Finnerty's lab on a part-time volunteer basis. It's an immunohistochemistry project looking at molecular mechanisms of plasticity in the barrel cortex.

But before that gets going, Sue and I are setting out on the Offa's Dyke long-distance path, starting from Prestatyn on Monday morning, and finishing at Chepstow two and a half weeks later.

But first there's a reunion dinner at my old school (Manchester Grammar) on Saturday. Quite looking forward to it - I just hope there's not too much boasting about careers/cars/houses at the table (as I have none of these things at the moment!)

I've just finished a cracking PBEM game of Amun Re against Tim and Don - I think it's my first win ever at this game!

Meanwhile my idiot son Gavin is having his wrist rebuilt this morning after a cycling accident yesterday. At least he didn't land on his head I suppose, and his bike is a write-off too, so I'm hoping he might use the bus in future.

The card-driven century

There is a scale of enjoyable wargaming experiences, with playing a poor game against an opponent with personality problems at the very bottom, and playing a great game against a genial and well-matched opponent at the very top. So playing Paths of Glory against my 25-year-old son Phil last weekend must be pretty much as good as it gets.

So here he is on Saturday afternoon, looking pretty confident as his British and Russian armies easily halt my 1914 offensives in the West and East.

But here's an altogether more frantic Phil on Sunday morning, as 1917 sees the collapse of Romania, Germans pushing through Italy into Southern France, and a breakthrough by massed German armies into northern France.

Anyway, the idea is we will play out the whole 20th century in card-driven wargames. So next up is Barbarossa to Berlin, and after that we tackle the Cold war with Twilight Struggle. It should be an excellent summer!

I've just finished reading Harry Pearson's hilarious memoir of a life in wargaming Achtung Shweinehund!. (Thanks Iain for the recommendation!) I particularly enjoyed the chapters about his childhood - Airfix kits, Waddingtons games, spud guns, Commando comics, war films, Airfix OO/HO figures - my own childhood obsessions are all there. The chapter about Action Man had me gasping for air - I can't remember when I last laughed so much.

C.S. Lewis wrote "We read to know we are not alone." This book is a funny and touching reflection on what it means to live with our compelling, fascinating, but socially rather embarrassing hobby.

A New Hope

Well I tried Ubuntu but was a bit baffled by the hoops I needed to go through to get my wireless card to work. Perhaps I'll give it another try one day....

So I went back to plan B which was to reinstall Windows XP from the partition up. It's taken me longer than I thought of course - all day yesterday and still tying up loose ends this morning, but the only insurmountable problem so far has been with Adobe Photoshop Album - I lost the catalog (it was under C:\Program Files which I did not backup - silly boy!) so about 5 years of careful tagging and organizing has been lost. I've still got my photos though - that's the main thing.

The old machine (a Shuttle box with an AMD processor) certainly seems to be running a lot quicker without 5 years of accumulated spyware so I think it was worth the effort......

A Feast

Last weekend turned out to be a bit of a feast of wargaming - thanks in part to a Saturday visit from Phil, who was keen to try plugging his PS3 into my home cinema projector in order to watch "There Will Be Blood" in glorious Blu-Ray surround vision. This plan sadly ran into technical problems of the why-is-this-plug-the-wrong-shape-for-that-socket variety. So we watched "Gone With The Wind" on old-fashioned DVD instead - at least, the first 10 minutes of it until Phil fell asleep. Anyway, well before this debacle unfolded we had spent an exciting couple of hours that afternoon with Up Front and the City Fight scenario. After a slow first deck I was feeling smug, with most of my GI's safely billetted in two building at range chit 2. Undeterred, Phil infiltrated the first building with scary Sgt Hauptmann who killed 2 of my boys with his SMG, then chucked his demo charge into the second building with decisive - and squad-breaking - consequences.

So, thrashed again at Up Front by my own son. But he made up for it by cooking a delicious ribeye steak for me immediately afterwards.

On Sunday afternoon it was over to Chiswick for a game of Unhappy King Charles! with Iain. At last I can knock this one off my list of shame! I didn't do very well as the Royalists (perhaps my heart wasn't in it). I lost Oxford early in the game, and inattention to the isolation rules cost me the South. Rupert did have his Macclesfield moment when he rubbed out Brereton (I love playing a game that features Macclesfield!) but that was hardly enough to stop the rot. We played for 5 hours and had to stop with 2 turns to go, but the outome was depressingly clear at that point.

I love this game. Yes. the rules are repetitive and wilfully obtuse in places, but it is a very well thought-out game on a fascinating subject. The history feels right - the way that big "panzer commander" armies are penalized at every turn is a good example of fine historical discernment being prioritized over the power-play urges of some grognards (which is earning the game detractors in some quarters) and I love it for that. Iain - we have to book a rematch, and soon!

If I forget thee Psion

Well there was a panicky moment after I had received back my Psion 5mx from Paul at Psionflexi, after I had excitedly loaded it with batteries and switched it on for the first time in how many years, after I had started feeling my way around the half-remembered interface and found that my hands still know how to use this thing (it's all in the cerebellum), after I had spent my tube journey writing a blog posting about DaveCon and feeling smug about the guy opposite me cradling an enormous IBM laptop, after I had rushed home on Friday evening excited to transfer my purple prose to my PC and thence to Blogger........after all this, I found I could not find my Psion PC link cable. Frustration, sorting through drawers of techno-junk, remorse, several visits to the loft, finally despair - was this whole "fix my old Psion 5mx and use it as a cheap and also ultraportable and also retro-chique laptop" idea a deluded waste of time and money?

Sunday evening - another trip to the loft and a scrabble around a previously unexamined "PS2 stuff" box yielded the prodigal cable! Hurrah! Now I can write stuff (especially blog postings?) on the tube - a somewhat moot point, now I come to think of it, seeing that my Research Assistant contract comes to an end the week after next, so the opportunities for blogging on the tube won't be there any more. Still, perhaps I will blog on my Psion while I'm sitting out in the garden in my string vest, with a bottle of whisky and a cheap cigarette, waiting for my next giro to come.......

DaveCon 2009

I spent last weekend in Salisbury enjoying Dave's hospitality, and catching up with my gaming group of yesteryear, including Nick, John and Steve. We played Powergrid. Imperium and Circus Maximus from GMT's Rome, and Odin's Ravens, but the highlight of the weekend (for me anyway) was a 6- hour Arkham Horror session on Saturday. What an immersive experience! And such a lavish production from Fantasy Flight! All sorts of clever touches. for example the way that different characters are more or less flexible about changing their stats. It was all a bit overwhelming at first. but once I had figured out that losing all your health/sanity brings nothing worse than a short spell of bedrest, I started to relax a bit. Even being lost in time and space - surely a fate worse than death - proved to be a handy bus service from one end of the board to the other.

Of course the game was too long - our 6 hours only brought us within distant sight of the end game. We seemed to be coping well enough to stave off disaster. but nowhere near well enough to win a sudden death victory. So there was a slight feeling of being suck in limbo. And the lack of serious consequences - like insanity or death - didn't feel quite right. I wanted to feel more frightened than I did. But it was an immersive experience game, and I'd happily try it again. Thanks to Nick for lugging it all the way from Cardiff and for patiently talking us through the rules. and thanks also to Dave for hosting a great weekend.

The list of shame

I have a shameful secret, hidden away inside the boxes of my games collection. Many of these games are brand new, unpunched, and have never been played (not even solo). It's my list of shame.

Empire of the Sun: fascinating subject, the nearest thing in history to a war fought in outer space. And the idea of a card-driven hex wargame sounds cool. It's just that I can't get through that rulebook.

The Burning Blue: again a very sexy subject, and a charismatic designer who actually interviewed Battle of Britain veterans for his research. But it's another massive, impenetrable rulebook - I just can't seem to muster the energy to read it.

Unhappy King Charles: another great subject, and beautiful graphic design. My excuse here is that it's a recent acquisition and I just haven't got around to it yet.

Successors: at least I've read the rules to this one. It looks very cool indeed, and I'm planning to punch the counters and get it on the table (hopefully with friends, not just solo) in March some time.

ASL Starter Kit #3: I've punched and played and hugely enjoyed the first two starter kits, but number 3 is sitting untouched in its box. Perhaps the tank rules frighten me.

In the Shadow of the Emperor: OK I have played this online, but have never got the bits out of the box and set it up in anger. This one is hard to sell to fellow gamers.

Reef Encounter: Again, I've played online but never on a table. Also hard to persuade people to try this one.

Verrater: Another gamer's game where the buzz faded years ago. Suggestions to play are met by blank looks.

Turning Point Stalingrad: This one really is shameful. A classic game, closely related to one of my favourites, Breakout Normandy, it's been on my shelf for years, and I've never even read the rules.

This Accursed Civil War: Another hefty rulebook, moreover a rulebook that has changed (and expanded) significantly since it was publised. I don't like moving targets - I get discouraged.

A House Divided: the counters punched themselves, the rules almost read themselves too, but I've never played it yet. My sure-fire ACW opponent Dave actually refused to play it!

Commands and Colors Ancients expansions 2 and 3: The first expansion is enough to keep me perfectly happy for years yet, let alone the extra scenarios that arrive with every issue of C3i.

Various Memoir 44 expansion packs: I think I've mastered the urge to buy any more of these until I actually play some of them.

Ambush: a kind gift from Marty, but alas, no time to sit down and really get to grips with it. And I kind of prefer soloing games that aren't solo games if you see what I mean - I like to feel I am preparing for a real flesh-and-blood opponent.

Attack Sub: I heard (on the Noise Before Defeat podcast) it's like Up Front. Another casualty of my wargame opponent drought.

So perhaps you can understand my New Year's resolution - play games, don't buy games. OK I'm unlikely to stick to that, but it's a good aspiration.

Fantastic news - Frankenstein is back!

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.......

The red box

LesCon - which is actually 5 gaming buddies crammed into a log cabin in the Forest of Dean for a weekend - is fast approaching. I'm getting very excited now, and starting to think about what to pack in my red box. As a necessary discipline I plan to restrict myself to one medium size plastic crate of games, especially as 3 of us are car-sharing so space is at a premium.

I'm thinking of a small number of really good multiplayer games that will take 5, and making sure I know the rules well and am ready to teach them. Current candidates:

Dune (an Avalon Hill scifi classic - very highly thought of in some quarters. I could bring the DVD as well!)
Empires of the Ancient World (a Martin Wallace golden-oldie)
1825 (gentler and shorter than 1830)
Die Macher (the ultimate heavy euro - always wanted to try this)
My amazing poker chips

And perhaps a couple of quick 2-player wargames that don't take up too much space:

ASL Starter Kit 2
Up Front!
Crusader Rex (like Hammer of the Scots with sunshine)
Rise of the Luftwaffe (Up Front in the air! you can do the big bombing missions with more than 2)

And something special from Canada:

Crokinole

Oh dear, even this lot won't fit, so some will have to be left behind.....

Some interesting discussion around my recent post about whether to get into ASL or not. Voting was split, with 3 broadly for and 3 against me taking the ASL plunge. Iain Cheyne and Firestone both preferred the idea of EastFront. Intriguingly Chris Farrell said he would probably still be focussing on ASL if he still had opponents - but what would the gaming hobby have looked like without one of its most insightful commentators?! Marty was against the idea, which is highly significant seeing as he is my only regular wargames opponent at the moment. Andy made the interesting suggestion that I buy only the rulebook (I actually already have a tatty 1st edition), use VASL, and dispense with "the cardboard". Hmmm - surely wargaming would die pretty quickly if we all stopped buying the cardboard?

So where does that leave me? Still confused I suppose.......

Online challenge

Another readers' game anyone? How about Amun Re at SpielByWeb, name "Cingulate gyrus", password "nimrod"?

Crokinole love

My lovely wife Sue just returned from a two and a half week trip to Ontario, Canada for a conference of Mennonite pastors. When I collected her from Gatwick she had a mysterious package with her which turned out to be a truly wonderful gift for me - a Crokinole board! As you already know, Crokinole originated among the Mennonites of Ontario, so Sue was right in the heart of Crokinole country, and she bought my board direct from the workshop of Willard Martin where it was made.

We've had a lot of fun playing this already, although Sue beats me every time, having been intensively coached (I allege) by Canadian Mennonites while she was away. It's great - it's like having a pool table in the house, without having to build an extension to put it in.

Whether 'tis better

The big question is: to ASL or not to ASL. I have over £100 accumulated in my games budget, and I'm wondering whether to splurge it on the ASL Rulebook and Beyond Valor. They are actually getting rather scarce in the UK - most of the online retailers are out of stock - but on Saturday, on the way to Iain's, I got off the tube at Leicester Square and had a peep in The Orc's Nest, and there they were, pristine in their shrink wrap. I reverently turned them over in my hands for a few minutes, while the following thoughts went through my head:

1. That's a lot of money.
2. It's so complicated, will I ever actually play this?
3. 14 counter sheets, for all love! How long will that take me to punch and clip?
4. And how will I store all those counters anyway?
5. This is only the start - I would also need For King and Country, Yanks etc etc.
6. These are both out of print at the moment, this may be my last chance to buy them for a year or two.
7. There are some other cool games I could get with my £100. What about EastFront for example?
8. I have plenty of other wargames on my shelf I haven't even played yet.
9. If I get into ASL I'll never have time for any other games, anyway.
10. That's a lot of money.

So I balked. Put them back on the shelf and walked out of the shop. Did I do the right thing dear reader? Maybe I'll drop by the Orc's Nest again next time I'm in town......

MayDay Feast

The bank holiday weekend was a feast of gaming for me. On Saturday I went over to Iain's lovely home on the bank of the Thames at Chiswick. While we waited for James to arrive, Chris introduced Iain and me to Race for the Galaxy. I could tell this is an amazing deep game, but on my first time through it was all I could do to get the hang of the mechanics. Strategy will have to come later. (Fortunately I have a nice new copy of my own to study.) Then on to the main event - 1825 Unit 2. This was new to the other 3, so I was kept busy explaining the rules, shepherding everyone through the first few turns, answering rules queries, doing mental arithmetic for folks, and running the bank. Anyway, that's my explanation for my poor showing, as I came in last. James, who was new to any kind of 18xx game, did extremely well and got 2nd. The general verdict on 1825 was very favourable, so hopefully we'll do it again soon.

Next day Phil and Gav (my 20-something children) came over, cooked me an amazing lunch, and then demanded to play a game. I thought I would risk trying Puerto Rico on them, and was pleasantly surprised by how much they enjoyed it. The scores were very close - I just scraped a win with a quarry strategy, and the boys asked me if we could play again online, which we are now doing, at the clunky but effective www.pr-game.com.

Life without revision

Finished my last exam yesterday. Gosh it's been a long haul. I feel a bit bewildered and at a loose end - not sure how to get through a day without revising any more. Maybe I'll just do an hour or two today, just in case......

I've got the day off today - lab project starts tomorrow. So today is a pottering day. I think I'll be spending at least part of it soloing through an ASL Starter Kit scenario. Maybe I should get out in the sunshine at some point as well (sunshine? I vaguely remember that.)

Irresponsibly, I spent some potential revision time on Sunday creating my first ever geeklist. I'm so proud - 16 thumbs!

Getting my mind off brains....

A man can't be always revising for his neuroscience exams, so this week I have managed to fit in soloing an entire game of Clash of Giants II in between all the anxiety, depression, psychosis and amnesia. I played the Ypres scenario and had a fantastic time. The Germans managed to take Ypres but at the cost of seeing their left wing collapse and the French swarm back into Lille. This game was such fun solo I can't imagine how great it must be face-to-face! With a simple rule-set it very precisely captures the feel of WW1 mobile warfare - the constant worries about keeping in contact with friendly units on your left and right, the difficulties of co-ordinating large-scale movements, the slight superiority of defence over attack and the tendency for things to bog down. I like the combat system and the way that troop quality is separated out from raw manpower. And the chit-pull mechanic generates friction and anxiety aplenty.

In my opinion this is an absolutely classic operational-level wargame. I enjoy strategic wargames (like Paths of Glory or Europe Engulfed), and I've had mixed experiences with tactical wargames (ASLSK cool, GBOH not so cool). But for me this sort of thing is the apex of cardboard and paper wargaming: the traditional hex-and-counter operational wargame.

Euphrat & Tigris: always something new

I've been playing it for a decade but this game still holds surprises. I challenged Phil to a quick two-player match after lunch today in his trendy Shoreditch flat. Never seen a game go like this before. Every monument was on the board well before the end, and we made a serious dent in the cube supply. Final score 30:13 to me. I've never scored anything remotely this high in E&T before. How can such simple rules produce so much variety?

Two done, two to go

This morning's exam must have degraded all the structural proteins (like GFAP, actin, tubulin etc) in my brain. It feels like there's just mush in there this afternoon.

Spreading the word

Sue's family have been visiting this week (with strict instructions to keep out of my way during the day when I am revising). We played Through the Desert on Monday evening and Ticket to Ride Marklin last night. Leaving out the passenger rules speeded up setup and made a nice playable game that the less enthusiastic gamers (sister-in-law Maggie and niece-in-law Sarah who always wants to know "is it like Risk?") still enjoyed. Everyone was playing very nicely until nephew-in-law Tom suddenly figured out how to be nasty, and spent the rest of the game gleefully blocking his mother's routes. Sarah, who had spent most of the game stressing about completing her long route, won by a nice margin.

So Ticket to Ride lived up to its reputation as an ideal gateway game (ie a great game for people who don't like games).

Judgement Day

I've been revising since mid-January. That's two and a half months. I think that's the longest I've ever revised for anything, including my finals at Oxford. At last, it's nearly over. I had a relaxing day with Sue yesterday, pottering around Highgate, reading the papers and cooking a nice meal back home. Today it's one last look through my mindmaps for module 1 (yes, I have made a mindmap for *every* lecture in the course)then an early night and the first exam tomorrow.....

That was easy.....

Shiny new template only took about 20 minutes to get up and running. And the new customization features are a whole lot easier than fiddling with the template code. However, I see my little avatar on the right has confused things. And I would really like to be able to pull over my bloglines list and my google bookmarks without having to use code. One day soon perhaps.....

Hooked on victory?

I got a big jolt of dopamine - and whatever other euphoric chemicals my brain rewards me with - when I won the readers' game of Euphrat & Tigris the other week. And when I lost the next one by a similarly impressive margin I received an equivalent dose of dysphoria. (See how I'm thinking neuroscience these days? That's what 2 months of solid revision has done to me.) I can't deny that the big win (13/5/4/4!) was an especially memorable and pleasurable gaming experience, whereas the loss left me slightly grumpy and less motivated to play again. So I was wondering how important winning is to my enjoyment of the hobby. If I never win another game, will I continue gaming? I like to think that I'm a fair-minded opponent who gets most of his enjoyment from the playing not the winning - but how long would I last without an occasional dose of victory to keep me interested? We've all met people who take this too far - gamers for whom winning seems to be their only motivation for playing, and who are prepared to be very unpleasant opponents in order to get what they crave - but I'm not sure that I'm high-minded enough to do without the occasional win myself.

I won! I'm starting to like this game.....

I'm starting to come to terms with Combat Commander:Europe. It helps that I've finally - third try - managed to beat Marty. It was quite a satisfying win as well - it didn't feel too random or gamey. My main line of attack was held up by wire for several turns. By the time I finally cleared it (OK that bit was random) I had saved up a pretty deadly hand of fire combos, and caught his defenders in a deadly storm of FT and HMG attacks. They crumbled and fled.

So I'm starting to figure out which levers to press to make things go my way. Never give up the initiative card - if you do you'll never get that crushing attack result you're after. Never forget it's a card game - the state of your hand is just as important as the position of your troops on the map.

Nevertheless, it still feels lacking in authenticity compared with Up Front! or ASLSK. I don't think it will ever draw me into the same visceral experience that its towering forbears can do.

Anyone for another readers' game?

Anyone for Euphrat & Tigris on the BGG server? It's called Insula with password "nimrods".