Let's Hope It's A Good One

 

2024

 "When affairs get into a real tangle, it is best to sit still and let them straighten themselves out. Or, if one does not do that, simply to think no more about them. This is Philosophy." 

- P. G. Wodehouse

It's review of the year time. I didn't do one last year because the illness that has plagued me on and off in 2024 started with unlooked for precision on 29th December 2023. That's bad news for posterity, because I had a lot to write about and would no doubt have done so most entertainingly. This year has seen a much reduced programme of activities. Apart from funerals; I don't think I've ever been to so many in such a short space of time.  I won't write about those.

Opera: I've only seen sixteen operas this year. The clear best among them was the Hallé's 1857 'Simon Boccanegra', with a nod to 'Aleko'. Of those I've not bothered to mention here before my favourites would include 'The Sign of Four', apparently the first opera ever written about Sherlock Holmes, Albert Herring, and Peter Brook's take on Carmen at the Buxton Opera Festival.

Theatre: Only twelve plays, so another drop year on year. Best was 'My Fair Lady' of all things. Even more surprising was my enjoyment of  'A Midsummer Night's Dream' at York Theatre Royal, with a genuine circus clown as Bottom. This blog normally has a strict 'clowns are not funny' policy. Perhaps as another sign of change I went to two comedy gigs for the first time in decades. 

Music: I saw eighteen gigs, so maybe that's why I couldn't find time to go to the theatre. Best were the mighty Southern River Band, but also excellent were Mississippi Macdonald, Brave Rival, the Milkmen, Errol Linton, the Zombies and others too numerous to mention; except that I am contractually obliged to mention both Martin Simpson and Fairport Convention.

Film: I only saw five films, must try harder in 2025. I think Conclave was the pick.

Talks: I attended nineteen talks this year, the shortfall being in part because I fell out with one of the groups whose talks I used to attend. I should probably do an annual award for which organisation I have had the biggest row with that year. The best talk was on the subject of J. B. Priestley, which is obviously a good thing, with a special mention for one on the somewhat more obscure subject of Washington Phillips.

Exhibitions: I've seen a few, too few to mention. I would strongly recommend both the Silk Road at the British Museum and the Van Gogh at the National Gallery.

Your bloggist buckles his swash

Books: Obviously, if one can't go out then one stays in and reads, consequently I have read 128 books this year. Too many. My favourite fiction was probably 'Scaramouche' by Rafael Sabatini; I do like a swashbuckler. The best that wasn't a century old was 'Gabriel's Moon', a spy thriller from the ever-dependable William Boyd. From the non-fiction, Bruce Springsteen's autobiography was very good. I'm not sure why I was surprised that he can write. I read lots of perfectly adequate military history, but nothing so outstanding that I'm going to highlight it here.

Boardgames: 168 plays of 91 different games. My current favourite is definitely Dune Imperium, which is one that I would have thought might to appeal to most wargamers.

Wargames: Which, after all, is what it's all about. The most memorable was Wellington vs Sault during our Peninsular campaign, for all sorts of reasons.

So, UK election result aside, it wasn't a very good year really. I think we all know that globally it is going to be even worse next year. I suggest we approach it stoically.

“The chief task in life is simply this: to identify and separate matters so that I can say clearly to myself which are externals not under my control, and which have to do with the choices I actually control. Where then do I look for good and evil? Not to uncontrollable externals, but within myself to the choices that are my own…” - Epictetus

Very Flat, Dordrecht

 No sooner had I posted yesterday's boardgames review, in which I stated categorically that Let's Go! To Japan was essentially an abstract game, than it appeared on someone's internet list of top ten most heavily themed games of the year. You pays your money and you takes your choice. 

Less contentious I think was my assertion that the Netherlands is quite flat. I offer the above painting by Cuyp as proof. In any case a moment's reflection would tell us that even if there were valleys that's not where one would put the windmills.

In the sadly misnamed game Windmill Valley, the tulip with the highest value is the dark purple, so dark it's almost black. I am therefore reading 'The Black Tulip' by Alexandre Dumas to see if I can pick up any tips. The only lesson learned from the first few chapters is don't cross the future King William III or it won't end well.

Boardgaming August - December 2024

 As usual these are new-to-me games unless they're not:

5 Towers: A push-your-luck filler card game. I'd play it again.

Coal Baron - The Great Card Game: It was OK, rather than great. I've never played the original board game.

Colt Super Express: Funnily enough, this wasn't super either. In this case I have played the original and it's much better.

Dice Hospital: A worker placement game in which dice - which arrive in little model ambulances - represent patients whom you either cure by raising their value above six or, well, don't cure if their value drops to zero. I enjoyed it.

Draftosaurus: A nice little filler with way more luck than skill, although that doesn't stop one feeling good when one drafts the best set of dinosaurs.

Dune Imperium: Currently my favourite game and one I'd definitely recommend to the wargamers amongst you because while conflict isn't central to the game you won't win unless you choose the appropriate time to join the fight. I played it in this period both with and without the Rise of Ix expansion, and think it better with. We also played once with some of the cards from Dune Imperium Uprising and that seemed to work OK.

Dwellings of Eldervale: A thematically preposterous game, in which one puts a roof on to a worker's head and calls it a house. I liked it though, and think the variation in set up will make it highly replayable. Conflict is not central to this either, and my advice is to avoid initiating it if you possibly can. 

Let's Go! To Japan: The theme, planning a holiday in Tokyo and Kyoto, is pretty thin on top of what is basically a not bad abstract game.

O Zoo le Mio: Passable short tile laying game.

Penguin Party: I rather liked this short, hand-management card game.

Planet Unknown: Not a new-to-me game but worth mentioning because I managed to fill the entire board. It was, of course, luck rather than skill.

Power Grid - Japan: It's a very tight map, and the special rules for it offer a compensation mechanism. I wondered what would happen if one didn't use it. What happened was that I lost badly.

Sail to India: This hasn't hit the table at all for five years, and then suddenly it's one of my most played games of the year. There's a lot of game in that small box.

Taboo: A team word game; there are much better ones out there.

Undaunted Battle of Britain: This is the first of the Undaunted games that I have played, a good fifteen months after I bought it at Britcon. I have to say that I was impressed, and would like to try the others. Very simplified - no altitude - but surprisingly thinky nonetheless.

War of the Three Sanchos 1065-1067: Quite probably the most obscure game I played all year, this is an asymmetric wargame set in medieval Spain, at a time when everyone was called Sancho. Except, obviously for the Cid, who puts in the odd appearance. I enjoyed it, as I suspect would many wargamers.

Workshop of the World: A sort of sub-Brass, or possibly a precursor. I thought it was OK.

Windmill Valley: Not just windmills, but dykes and tulips too. But surely there aren't any valleys in the Netherlands; it's flat? The gimmick is that each player has a rotating wheel thing, all of which contain the same action spaces in a different order, which sort of pushes one towards varying starting strategies. I liked it, but wasn't very good at it. One of our group absolutely loathed it, so I'm not sure we'll ever see it again.

I've Eaten Too Much

 It was all good though. Please accept a belated nadolig llawen pawb; hope yours was as much fun. While I wait for my digestion to stabilise, here's some Conny:

Bingley

 

In Which Not Spending Money Doesn't Last Long

 AKA Cruel Seas the unboxing. I've had a look through the contents of the Cruel Seas starter box which I have inherited. It's all there (*), indeed there are a couple of extras: a metal casting of a U-boat conning tower breaking the waves and a couple of US PT boat sprues. I suspect the latter were free giveaways with a copy of Wargame Illustrated back when the game was launched. I shall not be using the PT boats however, I shall stick to the Royal Navy and Kriegsmarine options, from which I shall be selecting the mid-to-late war options, for no better reason than they have bigger guns.

The rules don't seem especially innovative, but the gimmick which catches the eye (as it probably did when I saw the game demonstrated at Vapnartak 2019, although I can remember nothing whatever about it) is that torpedoes are not mediated solely through the rolling of dice, but instead actually set off across the table represented by their own little model and either hit their target or don't. I use the term 'gimmick' advisedly, because on the one hand it's the aspect which makes me really want to play the game, while on the other hand my instinct is that I shall tire of it fairly quickly.

If one is to fire torpedoes then one has to fire them at something. The starter box lives up to its name in that it contains everything one needs to play Scenario 1 in the rulebook, but sadly torpedoes don't make an appearance until Scenario 2, and that requires some sort of small coastal freighter or tanker to act as a target; said vessel is not in the box. Those from the official range - now interestingly available from Skytrex rather than Warlord Games - clock in at around £30 or so, but perfectly acceptable 3D printed alternatives are available on eBay for a fiver, and so I bought one. Notwithstanding the Christmas post, it arrived within a couple of days and there it is above. A halfway decent bloggist would have put one of the MTBs in for scale, but that's not how we roll around here.

(*) I have of course had to download a very unimpressive ten pages of Errata to the rule book.

In Which I Don't Spend Any Money, But It's Still A Substitute For Doing Something

 By far the biggest cause of my loss of wargaming mojo has been the death earlier in the year of Peter, a long-time member of our small group. He is, of course, remembered whenever we meet up, especially when repeated bad dice rolls occur; that being one of his superpowers, along with getting really, really annoyed about making  repeated bad dice rolls. This was certainly the case this week when we refought Salamanca. It was expected to be a game that would last two or, quite possibly, three evenings. Instead, it was all wrapped up well inside two hours. Wellington, that was me, rolled consistently high whilst Mark, as the French, channelled Peter to an uncanny extent; except thankfully for the throwing dice at the wall in anger, restricting himself to swapping his dice repeatedly. I won't pretend it was a very good game, but it was certainly funny.

When Peter died we were asked to help dispose of the very large stockpile he had amassed over fifty years in the hobby. And when I say 'very large' I mean it literally. I think a kind interpretation of his approach would be to assume that he was storing up projects for retirement when he would have more time to actually get any use out the stuff he had bought. Anyway, this process is underway, although in the interests of accuracy I need to point out that James and Mark have done everything and my role has merely been one of supportive encouragement. Boardgames, model kits etc are steadily being put on eBay, figures are being sold through a well-known trader in pre-loved collections, and the books will follow in a similar fashion in due course. However, we have, with permission, put aside a couple of small things for us to play with, which after all is what they are meant for, and think of him as we do so. For example, our recent games of Nimitz have been with Peter's ships. I have now taken a starter set of 'Cruel Seas', which Peter bought at Vapnartak in 2018 or 2019 and which was never seen again, with the intention of painting the boats up and putting on a memorial game.

So, from famine to feast, two new projects for 2025. Watch this space, although given that it's Christmas, feel free to start the watching in a couple of weeks from now.

In Which I Spend Money As A Substitute For Doing Something

 "I have had unformed ideas of striving afresh, beginning anew, shaking off sloth and sensuality, and fighting out the abandoned fight." - Charles Dickens

It's been difficult to get the wargaming mojo fired up this year, real life events having taken the edge off things. As a group we have resumed playing games, but there has been a long hiatus in my own painting and modelling. I have decided that the best way to overcome inertia is to willingly walk straight into what is normally a wargamer's biggest mistake; I shall start a new period. 

I have had a long-standing urge to get some figures for the Mexican Revolution, and already own many sets of rules and not a few cacti. I was tempted some years ago by Peter Pig's comprehensive range, but everything else I own is in 20mm. However, I have recently picked up some 20mm figures (a mixture of EWM and Shellhole Scenics) on eBay, not ridiculously cheap but reasonable value. 

The bag bottom left isn't part of the purchase, it's a sample pack from Jacklex. In for a penny, in for a pound. There may be prompt updates showing progress in all this, or just as likely, there may not. 

L'étoile

 I promised some wargaming news last weekend and it didn't happen; nor, thanks to an unholy alliance between Royal Mail and TransPennine Express has it happened yet. So let's over-promise again and say that not only will there be wargaming news later this week, but there will even be a second tranche later next week as well.

A Chap With a Beard

In the meantime, let me give you one of my all too infrequent opera reviews. I have been to see L'étoile, the only opera by Chabrier to still be performed, albeit not particularly often. I, for one, had never seen it before. Chabrier was a late 19th century Parisian of the Bohemian variety, friends with amongst others Manet and Verlaine. 

Indeed he was the original owner of Un bar aux Folies Bergère, which sat above his piano. It was sold along with the rest of his extensive art collection following his death in a lunatic asylum from advanced syphilis. As St Paul - another repeated over-promiser and under-deliverer - observed "τὰ γὰρ ὀψώνια τῆς ἁμαρτίας θάνατος".

Coming back to L'étoile, it is an opera bouffe, coming chronologically after Offenbach and before Gilbert & Sullivan. Although not a credited librettist, it would seem that Verlaine contributed to certain sections, especially that relating to the Chair of Torture. But fear not, it's all light-hearted, even if King Ouf - that's him with the crown above - does promise the populace that he'll have two people executed on his next birthday to make up for the lack of spectacle this year. And yes, that woman to the left of the monarch does have a giant lipstick on her head. Anyway, I enjoyed it, good music, well sung, imaginatively staged and with some fine jokes. Remind me to tell you the one about the fish sometime.

P.S. In an attempt to shoehorn something vaguely military history related into this, can I draw your attention to the bottles of Bass Pale Ale rather incongruously sitting on the bar top in the Folies Bergère, apparently a reflection of anti-German sentiment following the Franco-Prussian War.

Is There Anyone Home?

 My resolution to post more often on my shiny new computer didn't work out that well. I am intimidated by the size of the screen. In any event there is still no wargames activity, although without wishing to tempt fate I expect to have something to write about by the weekend. 

What I have done since last here is attend a same-sex Hindu wedding - the food was excellent -  and also the first gig since before my illness. It was the rather fine Elles Bailey, who I had last seen some years ago at a local blues club. She has obviously gone up in the world in the meantime because she can now afford to hire the rightful, albeit reluctant, King of Gondor on drums.

Here she is in action:

Mellow Is The Man Who Knows What He's Been Missing

 My absence has been so pronounced that I feel I must have lost the right to be known as a bloggist. It's time to win it back.

There have been a number of reasons for my absence. Firstly, the illness and death that seem to be always around as one gets older (*). Secondly, and not unrelated, there hasn't been any wargaming. Thirdly, and completely unrelated, my computer broke, doing so slowly rather than in one big bang, but effectively rendering the thing unusable for the last few weeks. Happily, a new one has eventually arrived, featuring a screen so big that I have to sit on the landing outside the study door in order to be able to use it.

Also happily, wargaming has started again with a small game of Nimitz.

You can see Mark measuring the arc of fire using the tried and tested 'waving one's hand about' technique. We got the rules wrong; it was great fun; normal service has been resumed. 

* For the avoidance of doubt, I have only suffered the first of those personally.

Bradley Hardacre R.I.P.

 No wargaming at all going on here for various reasons, and I'm off to the Smoke for a few days tomorrow. In the meantime let's pay tribute to (Bradford born) Timothy West.

Do yourself a favour and watch not just the whole episode, but the rest of the two seasons they made as well.

Put A Woman In Charge

 

Your Mum Does The Washing

 

Silk

 “Well, God give them wisdom that have it; and those that are fools, let them use their talents.” -  Shakespeare

Jonathan over at Palouse Wargaming Journal has been celebrating twelve years of blogging, which made me realise that I had also recently passed that mark. As opposed to that blog, which has gone from strength to strength and features more game reports than any other blog on my reading list, this blog has dwindled and diminished over time, both in quantity and quality. The only positive is that it still costs the same to produce, i.e. nothing. 

Evidence of all this is that I do have a couple of games to report on and can think of nothing more to say than that I enjoyed them both. First up was the Combat at Reichenberg, and the photos on James's blog if you follow that link are much better than the one above. As I say it was a fun way to spend a couple of evenings and resulted in a marginal victory for the Prussians. For those who like to keep track of our rule changes, we started playing Field of Battle 2 - sort of - and ended playing Field of Battle 3 -sort of - with our morale rules not having much to do with either. I know our approach bemuses people, but it is in part because James's table is so much bigger than that assumed in most rules; if we didn't change things up then games would last for months rather than weeks.

One set of rules which I never tinker with is Command & Colours. The above are the starting positions for Dennewitz, which I played recently with Chris, my plumber. It's such a good system for newcomers to pick up, and yet has plenty of decision points to keep more seasoned gamers interested, plus it doesn't last too long. It's not a simulation, but it is fun. To slightly misquote the designer of a different game (and one which I hope to report back on in my next post): "Throughout development, historical accuracy has been just one value among several". A fine approach.

PotCXXVpouri

 After a short gap, wargaming returned to the legendary blah blah with a Seven Years War game. Unusually we didn't use James and Peter's period specific rules (whose name I forget but it has something to do with lemons) in favour of playing Field of Battle virtually as published - at least to start with. We hadn't played them for a rather long time, but gradually remembered what it was we didn't like and so changed it as we went along. James has written up the first evening here, at the end of which we gave the Russians a shed load more morale so we'd get another evening out of it. That ploy worked a treat and the second evening ebbed and flowed quite a bit more than the first, but the better quality of the Prussian commanders proved too much for the Russians in the end.

And speaking of wargaming, it may return to the annexe next week for the first time in months. Having just cracked the problem of how to delineate dead ground in front of bastions, the logical thing would have been to play a siege game. However, instead I have cleared all that and set-up some Napoleonic Command and Colours. The motive for this was a request from my plumber who, having seen games in progress on previous visits, asked on this occasion (new U-bend on the bathroom washbasin) if he could have a game himself sometime. It is, of course, always worth keeping in with a good plumber (*).

In other news, the pigeon (see here for to which pigeon I refer) has gone. We finally did what should have been done a long time ago; i.e. captured her and took her off to International Pigeon Rescue. I didn't participate in that last element myself, but my henchwoman who did reported back that the organisation was impressively resourced, with staff who were well meaning, knowledgeable and every bit as bonkers as you would expect.

* Or indeed any other tradesman.

The Onion

The onion, now that’s something else.

Its innards don’t exist.
Nothing but pure onionhood
fills this devout onionist.
Oniony on the inside,
onionesque it appears.
It follows its own daimonion
without our human tears.

Our skin is just a coverup
for the land where none dare go,
an internal inferno,
the anathema of anatomy.
In an onion there’s only onion
from its top to its toe,
onionymous monomania,
unanimous omninudity.

At peace, of a peace,
internally at rest.
Inside it, there’s a smaller one
of undiminished worth.
The second holds a third one
the third contains a fourth.
A centripetal fugue.
Polyphony compressed.

Nature’s rotundest tummy
its greatest success story,
the onion drapes itself in its
own aureoles of glory.
We hold veins, nerves, and fat,
secretions’ secret sections.
Not for us such idiotic
onionoid perfections.

        -   Wisława Szymborska

Mrs Thurston Kicks the Dog

 “Above all, do not lose your desire to walk: every day I walk myself into a state of well being and walk away from every illness. I have walked myself into my best thoughts, and I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it.” -  Søren Kierkegaard

I have been away walking. The photo is of me climbing up the Long Mynd, or to be precise of me taking one of quite a few breaks as I climbed up the Long Mynd. I should perhaps have done some practice climbs up Otley Chevin before I went.

Sine my return I've only had time to catch up with the absolutely essential stuff: listening to the cricket, going to the opera, reading Private Eye etc. In the Rotten Boroughs section of the last one I was interested to see a reference to Magister Militum. The specific target of their criticism (you'll have to buy a copy if you want to find out the details) is the Tory leader of Wiltshire council, who it transpires is the owner of what the magazine describe as the toy soldier supplier. I'm normally very happy to use the term 'toy soldiers' in these pages and elsewhere, but I wouldn't give 15mm figures to real children, as opposed to overgrown children.

Blind Spot

 The other day I made an assertion here about the recent ratio of wargaming posts to those on other subjects which was so inaccurate that perhaps even the Mango Mussolini himself would have hesitated before saying it. In an effort to nudge reality nearer to speciousness this post is about wargaming.

Nothing much of note has happened in the annexe for quite a while, but in the background I have trying to work through a small issue with the Vauban siege rules. When we first played them a couple of years ago I dropped a couple of elements that I couldn't work out how to deal with while we wrestled with the big picture of how they hung together overall. One was the 'blind spot' at the point of bastion into which the guns of that bastion cannot fire. The guns of adjacent bastions or other elements of the fortress can, of course, target anyone entering that space - that being the raison d'être of the star design - but they will do so at longer range.

There were three elements to the issue: what the rules say, what my bastions actually look like and how to make some sort of measuring device that reflects where we end up after considering the first two. To help playability the rules treat a lot of the aspects of siege warfare in an abstract manner. When it comes to bastions this means that each bastion is deemed to be a unit of fortress guns, that can fire to either side, but not to both sides at once, with the number and position of models being simply for aesthetic purposes. That in turn means that arc of fire and dead ground need to be defined without looking at the toys. There is a large colour diagram in the rules which aims to do this, but whilst I can see what the author has done, I'm a bit unsure as to why he has done it.

Putting that to one side for the moment let's turn to the bastions which I designed using a CAD system, made with a laser cutter and which feature in my games. They're the wrong shape; or to be more precise they are a bit squished up. Had I made them to both reflect 18th century reality and also to fit in the necessary models (necessary for aesthetic purposes only - see above) then the fortress would have stretched most of the way across the table and there would be any room for the siege lines. So they are somewhat foreshortened with very different angles to both commercially produced bastions that others may have and indeed to the diagram in the rules. It's time for the application of wargamers common sense. The dead ground at the point of my bastions will be laid out in a way that looks all right to me; my table my rules.

But how to measure it out? You would not believe the lengthy discussions that have taken place around this essentially trivial topic.  Ideas have ranged from drilling holes in the bastions themselves and fitting lengths of piano wire, to marking the table edges, to amending the original CAD drawings and thereby 3D printing an angle wangler. In the end, and based largely on a conversation with a non-wargaming boardgaming friend of mine, I have gone seriously cheapskate and cut some shapes from foamboard and painted them green. The main advantage being that if the area of dead ground doesn't seem right after all when playtested then I can just cut some more and try again.

Now all I have to do is work out how to represent ricochet fire.

Burning, but not jumping

"... for it had unquestionably been one of the most successful ‘shows’ ever undertaken by the squadron." 

- Captain W.E. Johns

It is a sad reflection of the current state of this blog that this will be the fifth post out of the last six to deal with wargaming. However, the game in question, 'Jump or Burn', is a firm favourite of mine. These used to be commercially available, but they were published in 2003 and I'm not sure whether they've ever been either reprinted or made available digitally. Unusually for one of James's games - especially given their age - the version we play is quite close to the as printed version, with just a couple of changes made to speed up play. The photo below shows the end of the game with various cards, measuring sticks etc laid out as well. The thing in the very top left corner is for measuring the turns of banking aircraft.

As befits a game I'm so fond of, the evening was a triumph for your bloggist. That's my DH4 front and centre, having just crossed the British trenches diving for home after a successful bombing mission. Admittedly the co-pilot is dead and, although it's a bit hard to see, the plane is both on fire and has suffered serious damage to its struts. However the chasing German fighter failed to draw any machine gun cards in the current hand and therefore I shall soon be off the board and therefore live to fly another day.

Lard Workshop the Third

 And so to The Old Chemistry Theatre at Nottingham Trent University for the third August in a row. Had readers given it any thought I suspect that they might have imagined a lecture theatre, or possibly a laboratory of some sort. However it looks like this:

It reminds me of an orangery. You can see why it got so hot in the sweltering summer of 2022. It was bearable this year, although all those hard surfaces still made it difficult to hear anything. The keen-eyed among you may notice that amongst the expected crowd of fat, old blokes there are a couple of lady gamers. There were three altogether, out of a total of fifty-two participants, and I am pleased to say that I got to share a game with one of them; literally the first time I have ever wargamed with a female in more that fifty years in the hobby; a red letter day.

I had two excellent games of Sharp Practice, which I'd never played before. It's obviously similar enough to many of the other Two Fat Lardies games, but I think I preferred it. I can understand why I have heard those more committed to the cult of Lard say that it's their favourite. Being card driven the flow of action is by design somewhat arbitrary, but the flag cards do allow players to seize back an element of control, although at the risk of potentially forgoing better opportunities further down the line. That mix of randomness and choice hits the spot for me.

First up was a French and Indian War set game in which I found myself playing Pontiac, who is pretty much bang in the middle of the photo above although you'll need to zoom in quite a bit to see him. Sadly I didn't take any photos of his later successes, when he got tired of standing off and skirmishing and led two successive charges, routing enemy units each time. It goes without saying that they were units of irregulars, even I'm not foolhardy enough to charge British regulars in line. The game ended in an honourable draw, which is of course a euphemism for saying that we all fannied about for so long that we ran out of time. Excellent fun though, and many thanks to Ken Welsh for putting it on.

The afternoon game was set in the Sudan; I put my name down for this one because that period may be James's current project, but (lack of) progress to date has been such that I though I'd look elsewhere for a taste of the desert in case I don't last enough to play with his toys. I must remember to take more photos of these things because the one above shows the position before the hordes of natives arrive and therefore lacks a certain something. The background is that two of the Governor's staff - a Mrs Slocum and a Miss Brahms - have been captured and are being held hostage in the building at the back. I was on the British team and we had force marched to recue them and had to get them back off the opposite edge of the table. First though we get to get into the building, and we decided to shoot first; after all that's our advantage, modern firearms. Sadly our technology was having a bad day; if the Gatling gun jammed once it jammed half a dozen times and the rifles seemed better at obscuring everything with smoke than with hitting the target. The Mahdists, amped up with suitable religious fervour, swept down upon us in sufficient numbers that some were bound to get through. In the end we launched an assault on the house and captured it, but achieved no more than ensuring that the ladies didn't die alone. It was a fairly abject defeat, but really enjoyable while it lasted. Thanks to Chris Smith for putting it on.

I have not got much else to say about Britcon - of which the Lard Workshop is a subset - except that it was good value and the lunch was rather nice. I eschewed the opportunity to go and gawp at the Perry twins, and my only purchase was 'The War of the Three Sanchos', and that was on a whim. I can tell you nothing about it yet as it remains unopened.

Cerignola after all these years

 Our last visit to the Italian Wars for a while saw us revisit Cerignola. The first time we played it was over ten years ago, presumably shortly after James had painted sufficient of his (then) latest project to make it work. I have a vague memory that James and Peter put it on as their game for Triples in 2013, but I could be making that up. 

I've no doubt that version looked very different to the above, and it goes without saying that the rules have changed substantially. My main memory of the previous games is that the French really struggled to get over the ditch, but this time - presumably at least in part because I was commanding the defenders - they didn't have much problem.

The photo above shows the French gendarmes having just routed one tercio and prior to flanking a second as well as destroying a big chunk of the Spanish heavy cavalry. Whatever else one thinks of the current state of the rules, they ensure a tight game that, usefully, always seem to finish in one night.

Romans Chapter 13 Verse 13

 “The conservatives are fools: They whine about the decay of traditional values, yet they enthusiastically support technological progress and economic growth. Apparently it never occurs to them that you can't make rapid, drastic changes in the technology and the economy of a society without causing rapid changes in all other aspects of the society as well, and that such rapid changes inevitably break down traditional values.” - Theodore J. Kaczynski

Boardgaming April-July 2024

 The usual new and otherwise mentionable games:

Amun-Re: Excellent game, and another to add to the list of such which are set in Ancient Egypt. The two halves rather reminded me of one aspect that I didn't like about Brass (although if you follow that link you'll see that it's ranked the number one game of all time, so what do I know). Like all auction games it seems to me that no-one ever bids enough. 

Apiary: Bees in space, colonising other planets, but still making honey and wax. It makes no sense, but an enjoyable worker placement game nonetheless.

Castles of Mad King Ludwig: I knew it had been a long time since I had played this, and when I looked it up found it had been October 2015. Far too long for such a good game.

Century: Spice Road: This game has been around for a few years and won awards when it first came out, but for some reason I had never played it. And as soon as I did I bought a copy because I knew it would appeal to one of my occasional companions. The game we play the most together, because she likes it the most is Splendor. I have nothing against Splendor, but one needs a change every now and then, and Century: Spice Road hits the same spot and does it well.

Cradle to Grave: Didn't like this at all; don't bother.

Discoveries: The Journals of Lewis and Clark: Another good game which I hadn't played for ages. I found a cheap second hand copy and enjoyed revisiting it.

Faraway: A very good, but very frustrating small game in which one plays cards from left to right, but scores them from right to left. The first time I played it I smashed it and wondered why everyone else was complaining. On every subsequent occasion my score has decreased from the previous game played. Hubris.

K2: Lhotse: This was the first time I'd played this map, which I didn't think was as good as the base map (not tight enough probably), although still fun.

Poison: Pleasant, light, push-your-luck game about mixing potions in which the largest physical components are completely unnecessary.

Skymines: Not a bad game. It's a retheme of Mombasa without all the unpleasant colonialism and slavery.

Strike: To quote another reviewer: "A mindless dice game, but fun".

Trio: Another good but annoying small game. You are trying to collect sets, you soon learn what cards others have, and they're not only not allowed to rearrange their hands, but also have to play cards only from either end. And yet somehow it's still really hard to find the cards one wants.

Kemet: Blood and Sand: We has a couple of goes at playing this in teams two vs two. It's fun, but, to me at least, led to the game outstaying its welcome.

Ticket to Ride Legacy: Legends of the West: We managed two more scenarios, taking us to the halfway point. I'd still strongly recommend the game, but we are having serious problems getting all five of us back in the same room at the same time.

Total Domination: This should have been right up my - and your - street. It's basically a different designer's riff on the theme and, in part, mechanisms of Quartermaster General which, importantly, only needs four players. But it went on and on and on and on, before we abandoned it about 80% of the way through. I think it's fair to say that there are nuances which we failed to master.

Troyes: Good game, as befits a bit of a classic.

Wandering Towers: I liked this. Thinky with tactile 3D components.

Wonder Bowling: Indirectly knock tenpins overs with a little hammer; that's all you need to know.

French vs Venetians Again

 So, we had another go: slightly different forces, slightly different unit ratings, slightly different rules. Pretty much the same result though, with both forces being essentially out of morale at the end of the evening. The way we are playing it - and James seems to be happy with the historical accuracy, so who am I to argue - the only formations that matter are the pike blocks and the role of everything else is to get on the flanks of the pike melee or, in most cases, not actually bother to do anything except add to the visual spectacle. 

Let's zoom in on the back of the pike block in the centre and examine all the detritus behind it:

The two stands of arquebusiers signify that the pike block has an intrinsic skirmish shot capability and have been moved to the back to allow the opposing pike blocks to get to close quarters. The cotton wool ball indicates that the skirmishers have fired and need to be reloaded when the correct card is turned. The little white bead with a number on tells us which command the unit belongs to. The two dice also in the tray are, in total, the strength of the pike block. The white one gets reduced first, but while it is still there it is easier for the unit to maintain its morale. The exact mechanism by which it does so remains somewhat of a mystery to me and I suspect also to James, but will eventually resolve itself into a coherent written form. The tuft shows that the unit is 'Disordered' for having fought a melee and not yet having rallied. There could possibly have been a 'Shaken' marker as well (it may be 'Vexed' rather than 'Shaken'; the two terms seem somewhat interchangeable), but there isn't one due to the white dice inspired voodoo referred to above. The coloured beads on the pin to the left may appear to tell us that it is Pride week in the Po valley, but in fact each has a meaning. Starting from the top blue means that the unit is above average for combat. Then green tells us that it is average for defence; I don't think there is such a thing as above average for defence, but there are certainly some units that are below average. The yellow bead means that the unit is 'Swift', so it occasionally gets to move around the battlefield a bit more quickly. The black bead means they are 'Fearsome', so they win melees when they would otherwise have drawn. The pink bead means they are 'Vengeful', so they don't lose as badly as they otherwise might if facing their mortal foes. The pike block's on the other side are indeed their mortal foes, but as they too are 'Fearsome' and 'Vengeful' it all ends up a bit 'as you were' and melees last for ever. Still, it looks good and is a fun way to pass an evening.

French vs Venetians

 Understandably we have struggled to build any gaming momentum since losing Peter from our small group, but we did meet this week. The period played was Italian Wars, for the first time since early 2022. In my blog post on that occasion I speculated that the rules were due for a rewrite, and sure enough James had updated them in light of our experiences with the Peninsular Wars rules, most notably unit movement.

My main observation on the new set is that they are somewhat bloody, with the game ending within one night with one side having no morale and the other hardly any. We shall see if they stay that way when we try again next Wednesday.

Stan Qualen

 I've been away, but I'm back. While I get myself sorted out here's some music from a band I saw a couple of weeks ago:

I'm thinking of wearing my hair like that.

Much As Expected

 Well, I at least am a happy bunny. It could have been better, but it could have been worse. Anyone getting their news only from the mainstream media may have been surprised by the success of the pro-Palestinian independents, but you wouldn't be if you lived where I do; Starmer has been wrong about Gaza since the beginning. As for the rise of the Reform Party Company Ltd, I stand by the views I expressed in this post from eight years ago.

Let me leave you with a charitable appeal:

Today's the Day

 "When the mood of the music changes, the walls of the city shake" - Plato 

PotCXXIVpouri

 I've been busy electioneering of course. I'm quietly confident in Leeds North West, not least because no other party seems to be doing any campaigning at all. As for the overall result, who knows? I would, however, like to point readers towards this little 'prediction' I made on the 23rd April 2020, during the first lockdown when the Tories were well ahead in the opinion polls. As I said then: we shall see.

I have found time away from politics to do a few things. Firstly, walking. This is an entry in the very infrequent series of bridges of the Yorkshire Dales. In the Worth Valley, it's not far from the house that the Railway Children lived in.

We also finished the To The Strongest! game, with a win for the Crusaders, but not by much. I then took myself off to see Mississippi McDonald, who was excellent despite clearly not coming from Mississippi. This one's called 'If You Want A Good Cup Of Coffee'. If you do, then take my advice and don't go to McDonalds, whether in Mississippi or anywhere else.

Revelation Chapter 21 Verse 4

 We met last night for a game. James had chosen the Crusades using To the Strongest! for our return to the legendary wargames room.

It was fun - TtR! always is - but I'm not going to write much about it. I shall however share a couple of photos of James's extremely impressive Middle Eastern town, which hit the table in its full glory for the first time.

As you can tell it is modular, with the sections mapping directly onto the squares of the gridded tabletop. James had come up with rules for assaulting the town and then for fighting between sections that seem to be working well so far.

I hope that James is going to include some better photos on his blog, but this is the situation as we left it. It's not immediately obvious, but the Crusaders have broken into the section directly in front of the siege tower as well as the edge of the town on the left of the picture. However, I as the Crusaders may just possibly have overextended myself in an attempt to reach the palace at the back and thereby meet the victory conditions. The Muslim army has pulled itself together and moved to seek to drive the infidels back out. Plus, their forces outside the walls must surely get going sooner or later. To be continued.

Sad News

It is with a heavy heart that I pass on news of the death of Peter, my friend and wargaming colleague of twenty years or more. With cruel irony he was the youngest and, until his illness, the fittest and most active of our small group. My thoughts are very much with Heather and his family.

Readers of this blog are ideally placed to understand how unimportant wargaming is in the scheme of things. And yet, Peter had been wargaming, painting and collecting for fifty years; it was part of who he was (although quite a bit lower in his hobby priorities than horses if truth be told). With that in mind I take some comfort from the last game he played having been the best that any of us had been involved in for a long time, a backwards and forwards tussle with matters undecided until late on the fourth evening. His condition deteriorated shortly after that and neither he nor the rest of us have played since. 

The other interest shared by Peter and me was music. This remained hidden for many years after we first met, until one night I found myself quoting Tom Russell lyrics at the wargames table, as one does. He picked up on that and, our common taste having been established, he introduced me to the fine covers of Russell's songs recorded by Gretchen Peters. We ended up attending gigs together when both artists next visited the UK and I know that I shan't be able to listen to either of them in future without thinking of my friend. As a suitably elegiac way to commemorate that musical bond here is Russell's 'Guadalupe' beautifully sung by Peters:

Tell It To Me Slowly

 I write this in response to the blog having supposedly received 4,000 views in the last twenty four hours, a figure which is beyond implausible. Inasmuch as there are ever any views it's due to neither the frequency of posting nor the quality; it's simply that I've been going a long time so there plenty of opportunities for stray internet searches to hit a past post. I'm going to revisit two of those past posts myself, following a bank holiday weekend of gig going.

Firstly the Paperboys, ten years after having last seen them, and very good they were too. My companion on that occasion, the estimable Coral Laroc, didn't care overmuch for the trombone and the first thing said during the interval by the lady accompanying me this time was "What's with the trombone?". Plus ça change. Speaking of Coral, she was last heard of at the beginning of the month swimming in the sea off Redcar, following which she complained that something in the water had made her ill. Does she not read the newspapers?

I've also seen the Zombies, this time after a gap of eleven years. Back then I hinted at some surprise that Colin Blunstone's voice was in such good shape. It now occurs to me that at the time he was the same age that I am now - i.e. in his prime - and that therefore there was nothing remarkable in the fact that he could still cut it. I am delighted to report that all remains well vocally. And indeed musically, because it was an outstanding gig, with 'Time of the Season', 'Hold Your Head Up' and 'She's Not There' being the unsurprising stand-outs; excellent stuff and if I never see them again - which seems probable - it was a very good way to leave it. 

Stupid Boy

 No wargaming recently due to stuff. We are hoping to resume this Wednesday, technology willing.

In the meantime, there's going to be an election. I'm not sure I can do better than quote this week's Economist: "Whether this decision is an act of political genius or lunacy - and The Economist's money is on lunacy - Britons should welcome it". Bring it on, I say. So far it looks as if the Labour Party's plan to plant a mole to run the Tory's campaign for them is paying off, as they unveil one barking mad idea after another.

Opera in musica

 "Pretentiousness is the mask of worthlessness and weakness." - Rafael Sabitini

It occurs to me that the thing you will all have missed most due to my my erratic posting schedule is my self-appointed role as the leading opera reviewer among wargaming bloggers. I've seen nine so far in 2024, six of them new to me, and so I'm afraid I can't be terribly comprehensive in my catch-up. Instead I'll briefly cover a couple of highlights.

The best of those I've been to, I would say, was the Hallé's concert performance of the original 1857 version of Simon Boccanegra at the Bridgewater Hall in Manchester, which was sensational and got both a standing ovation and rave reviews. I can't tell you how it compares to the revised 1881 version because I've never seen that, although Opera North are doing it in April 2025 and so readers can confidently expect me to post about that this time next year (*). I shall be particularly interested to know if the plot is any more understandable because this one was impenetrable. The most confusing moment came at the end of the first half when, the lady known as Amelia Grimaldi - who, spoiler alert, turns out to be someone else completely - comes on and tells us that she has, offstage of course, been kidnapped and then managed to get away. At this all the other characters, including those whom we know perfectly well both planned and carried out the deed, start singing "Death to Lorenzo". So far so operatic, except that to that point there had been no mention at all of any Lorenzo; nor, yet another spoiler alert, did he turn up in the second half. As opera critic Robert Thicknesse observed, it is "one of those libretti that heroically rises above explaining anything at all".

It was also at the end of the first half that the most memorable thing in Stravinsky's Rake's Progress occurred. It wasn't that I didn't enjoy the music, singing and acting or, to a lesser extent, the direction and design. It was just that the sight of the bearded lady sitting on a large horse with a cardboard box on her head - you can perhaps see why I had my reservations about what was going on in front of me - wondering why there was neither applause nor someone coming to help her down, was very funny. The reason was that the curtain had malfunctioned, the audience therefore had no clue that the act had finished (**) and it took some minutes before those behind the scenes came up with a plan to put us all out of our collective difficulty.

Other highlights included the first performance I had ever heard sung in Russian: Rachmaninov's Aleko set in a hippy commune and also featuring surprise appearances from some characters who had earlier that evening appeared in Mascagni's cavalleria rusticana, only visible to some on stage. Think Banquo's ghost. It was odd, but it worked. Also worth mentioning was Rossini's scala di seta where the silken ladder was represented by a more solid ladder let down into the pit. It was no shock to see the tenor climbing up it, more so to see the conductor do the same when joining the principals to take his bow.

* If the Lord spares me, and if I can be arsed.

** Beyond the fact that the orchestra had stopped playing; it's a good job they weren't on the Titanic.

Wellington Triumphs Somewhere Or Other

 The Peninsular campaign hasn't been getting a lot of love in the blog recently, or indeed from your bloggist if truth be told. However, we have been plugging away by playing a game that's lasted a full four weeks, the longest that I can remember happening in the legendary wargames room of James 'Olicanalad' Roach, and I've probably been playing there for close to twenty years(*). In the interests of complete disclosure I have to say that week two of the game was dreadful, at least from the point of view of my colleague Mr Jackson and myself, because we never got to do anything. But, in the finest traditions of the band on the Titanic we played on and, if I may mix my metaphors for a moment, we rose from the dead like one of those gay vampires that Ulysses S. Grant's great-great-grandson writes about. The final two evenings were highly enjoyable, with plenty of to and fro plus the good guys won in the end. What more could one want?

Well, fewer casualties probably. I still don't understand how the campaign loss system (ⓒ J.Roach) works, but the fact that the tray is overflowing is unlikely to be a good sign.

* Refights of Sidi Rezegh always felt like they had lasted for a month, but that's not the same thing.

Gold Tops A-Rattling

 “The cow is of the bovine ilk; one end is moo, the other milk.” - Ogden Nash

The election is nearly on us, the campaign will soon be over. Rest assured that my part in it does not involve any personal interaction with voters. The video in the last post rivalled that of Daniel O'Donnell for being the worst ever put up on these pages. This is better: