Epictetus - Discourses on Wargaming
It's election time; I'm busy.
To tide us over here is some Barry Blue. There are a couple of mysteries about this video. Is the music we're hearing the same as that to which he is lip-synching and 'dancing'? And why have the audience been drugged?
Fun fact: his real name is Barry Green.
Unexpected fact: as a songwriter his work was recorded by, amongst others, Diana Ross and Vera Lynn.
We live in interesting times. It's reassuring therefore that readers have felt able to spare the time to write to me. For the record none of them have asked how the Peninsular campaign is going. Nevertheless I feel obliged to tell you. Mark very nearly won a couple of weeks ago, but the Spanish forces collectively made a burst towards Madrid, recapturing sufficient territory from the French to ensure that it will go on a bit longer. Bastards.
What did seem to be worrying you all was why my list of the most famous Barrys hadn't included Barry from Eastenders. A fine question, but in my defence I must point out that he is fictional, plus of course he was pushed off a cliff twenty years ago. Having said that, he did recently appear at a gig venue local to me presenting his, apparently famous, barrioke; shame I missed it.
Much more relevant to the state of the world is Barry Maguire, who recorded a song in 1965 which I would re-release sharpish were I his record label:
"War, at first, is the hope that one will be better off; next, the expectation that the other fellow will be worse off; then, the satisfaction that he isn't any better off; and, finally, the surprise at everyone's being worse off." - Karl Kraus
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| From this week's Private Eye |
I have set the siege up again to have a little play. It's been getting on for three years since it was last out on the table. I refer to 'the siege' because the initial layout is always going to be pretty much the same. These photos may therefore look familiar.
One change that we decided was necessary was to start the game with some of the second parallel already built, and that's what you see above. I want to test whether that means that any adjustment needs to be made to the force sizes or to the opening values of food, powder, morale etc. I hope not, and that's the way I'm going to try it first. Having re-read the rules I'm not sure we gave sufficient weight to blind spots around the bastions during previous games, although as it was so long ago I may just have forgotten. One aspect of addressing that which requires some thought - and possibly the manufacture of player aid or two - is that my bastions don't have as acute an angle as would have done in real life or as the rules assume. The main reason for that is simply to make the table footprint more manageable, although it also makes it easier to put the cannon and figures in them. As I say I need to have a think about how to match the rules to the terrain.
Speaking of terrain, the only real change since last time is that I have modelled and cast up some proper positions for guns and mortars to replace the rather bodged way in which I did it before. Hopefully you can get the idea from the photo above.
The Peninsular Campaign, which we have been playing on and off now for some months, is in one sense just an extended playtest. James wrote the rules drawing on his vast experience, his status as a wargaming demi-god plus, of course, the ever elusive wargamer's common sense. However, and despite that pedigree, until they were played no-one could know how they would work out in practice. We have made the expected running amendments as we went along, but I understand that James now feels that he knows enough to start thinking about some more fundamental changes and a version 2.0. One aspect that seems certain to feature is some achievable victory conditions.
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The problem with the current system is that it seems to be as easy to lose victory points as it is to gain them. The French are currently ahead, but only by as much as the allies were recently, and a swing back is all too imaginable.
One way out would be a climactic, winner-takes-all battle and we rather thought it had arisen a few weeks ago. One French command under Sault attacked a numerically superior, but otherwise inferior Spanish army. A second French force was due to arrive part way through, but - thanks to a campaign card produced from nowhere by Peter - so was Wellington with a large and very strong Anglo-Portuguese army. This was the big one. Except it wasn't. The luck of the dice and cards resulted in Wellington not bothering on this occasion and the Spanish received the inevitable kicking. I wouldn't be happy if I was them.
I have been asked why my round-up of famous Barrys in showbiz omitted Chuckle. Good question. At the risk of confirming AI in its belief that this is a YouTube channel, let's have some music from another one. And is it just a coincidence that the Leeds born Ryan brothers (real name Sapherson) shared first names with the Chuckle brothers (real name Elliot) (*)?
* Yes, it is.
Haven't done this for a while. New-to-me and otherwise notable games only.
Age of War: OK, but no better. It's samurai themed, but fairly abstract.
Amerigo: Perfectly fine exploration and tile laying game.
Arkadia: Polyomino tile-laying game with some clever variable scoring rules. Good.
Clever Cubed: The third in the Ganz Schon Clever! series. The second remains my favourite so far.
Dead Man's Draw: Nice pirate themed filler.
Dogfight! Rule the Skies in Twenty Minutes!: Played this some more, this time including missions such as bombing and reconnaissance. It's not very good.
Dune Imperium - Uprising: According to those whose judgement I rate, this has replaced the original. I didn't see it as being that much better myself. What I did see was a scam, whereby people are lured into paying full whack again for a game that has a 90% overlap with one they already have.
Evacuation: I really did not enjoy this, indeed I failed to see the point. Other people claimed to like it, so what do I know?
Exit - The Disappearance of Sherlock Holmes: I'd never played an escape room game before, and this was much harder than I was anticipating. Fortunately the players included two of the sons of one of my regular companions, both of whom turned out be much smarter than either their mother or me, and so we managed to solve the puzzle. I'd certainly do others in the series, but only when surrounded by younger and more flexible minds than mine.
Faiyum: We gave this a go with four players and it was proved to be a very good game at that number.
Heat: Pedal to the Metal: A fine, fine game; highly recommended. There's loads of stuff in the base box which I still haven't played with, but enjoyed the circuit from the expansion which we tried.
The Hunt: A very enjoyable asymmetric two-player game about the Graf Spee raiding merchant ships in the South Atlantic at the outbreak of WWII and the Royal Navy's search for it.
Imperial: This is Diplomacy with added cash. We only played it because there were six of us, but it turned out to be well over the heads of most of those taking part. I'd like to give it a go with stronger players.
K2: Climb the world's most dangerous mountain and, if you're lucky, come back down again. I've always enjoyed this and snapped up a second-hand copy of the big box version containing the base game and all the expansions.
Kemet: Blood and Sand: This is an updated version of the original Kemet, which I had played and thought was OK. I was more enthusiastic this time, although whether that's changes in the game or changes in me I wouldn't like to say.
Lancaster: Haven't played this for years, and ended up teaching it, which wasn't ideal. It's a good game, sort of about the Hundred Years War, but not really.
Magic Rabbit: Likeable, and short, cooperative game where rabbits have to be sorted into numerical order without any communication.
Mesopotamia: Did they carry stones on their heads in Mespotamia? Did they always execute messengers? Reasonably theme free, but nonetheless interesting, pick-up-and-deliver optimization game.
Modern Art: There are four types of auction in this, which was at least three types too many for my brain. I did very badly.
Nusfjord: Will it be wood or will it be fish? Either way money is scarce and the turns you will have throughout the game are even tighter. Difficult to do well against anyone who has played it before.
Obsession: Downton Abbey the board game. I enjoyed it a lot more than the first time I played it. Worker placement with differentiated workers.
The Quacks of Quedlinburg: A popular game that I had never played before and enjoyed when I finally did. Involves push-your-luck and bag-building, both mechanisms which I enjoy.
Ticket to Ride Legacy: Legends of the West: Don't worry, no spoilers here. I'd never played a legacy game before, but am enjoying this one. We have played four of the twelve sessions that will make up the whole thing and so far it has exceeded our expectations.
Vegetable Stock: Fun filler.
Wallenstein: Thirty Year War themed, but certainly not a wargame. The main gimmick is a tower into which your armies are poured to resolve combat, but my advice is not to fight if you can avoid it.
World Wonders: Yet another polyomino tile laying game, but with a neat money track concept. It also has nice wooden wonders of the world which get placed alongside your tiles.
I went to Airecon, the large local boardgaming convention, for the first time this year. It was very good, I caught up with a lot more people than I ever do at wargames shows. The highlight was the bring-and-buy, which is also something that never happens at wargaming shows.
“Barry, you're over thirty years old. You owe it to your mum and dad not to sing in a group called Sonic Death Monkey.” - Nick Hornby, High Fidelity
I rather enjoyed 'High Fidelity' the novel, not least because it was located in a time and place of which I had direct personal experience (*). I didn't care for the film version because, in a classic case of cultural appropriation, the producers relocated it somewhere else so that they could make more money. Perhaps enough time has passed for it to be worth re-reading and/or re-watching. From memory alone therefore, the Barry character (**) wants to be in a band, but in the end only gets to be in one because those who invite him have decided that all the members have to be called Barry (***).
The chap singing the music in yesterday's video was Barry Booth. He had quite a career and worked with some very well known names, many of whom are listed on his website, the biography section of which is quite amusing (****). Whilst he sadly never seems to have worked with Gibb, White or Manilow, he has collaborated with a couple of aptly named non-musicians, Barry Cryer (appearing not for the first time here) and Barry Fantoni, which whom he wrote a musical.
A week or so ago I went to see Barry Rutter, another figure to have featured in this blog before, speaking about "Shakespeare's Royals". In between giving the full-throttle, chewing the scenery, performances for which he is known and loved, he told several anecdotes. I was personally very interested in the background to a production I saw some years ago, but perhaps the most amusing concerned a backstage encounter he had in New York once with both Dizzy Gillespie and Rudolf Nureyev. Many years after that, Gillespie and Nureyev both died on the same day. Rutter quoted to us the 'In Memoriam' poem composed for the occasion by E.J Thribb, aged 17 and a half.
Barry is already at the shop by the time I arrive. "How was your weekend?" he asks. I think about telling him about Laura but then I think we don't really have that kind of relationship so I reply: "I made a list of all the anagrams you could make out of 'Solomon Burke is God'."
"Cool," says Barry. "Did you include 'I'm a sad twat'?"
* For example the 'Harry Lauder' pub they spend a lot of time in is clearly based on the 'Sir George Robey', which will be well known to anyone who ever visited the Rainbow.
** All three of the shop staff are, I would have thought, just meant to represent different aspects of the author's own personality.
*** Should this, as is quite likely, be wrong, please keep it to yourself because it rather undermines the remainder of the post.
**** Be warned though, many of the photos show him with a convicted paedophile. Booth is no longer with us and the website itself is clearly rather old.
“The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim.” - Edsger W. Dijkstra
Jonathan over at Palouse Wargaming has asked a chatbot to explain his blog. On the basis that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery I have asked the same AI the same question but about this blog. Part of its response says that I am involved in "discussing various historical battles and wargaming topics from an informed, expert perspective". So, clearly nonsense then.
To get a different opinion, I tried Gemini from Google, who after all actually host this blog. Gemini says that it isn't a blog at all, but rather a YouTube channel, citing as evidence the post entitled "YOUTUBE has a wargaming problem". There is no such post on here nor, as far as I can find, on YouTube either.
While I'm sulking about the possibly libellous suggestion that this blog has featured so many videos that it might as well be a YouTube channel, why don't I play some music which celebrates the modelling side of our hobby:
The appearance of a photo of Michael Palin as a shopkeeper early on in the rather overly literal visual interpretation of the song is not by coincidence; he wrote the lyrics.
Mark and I had a little break from endless French versus Spanish in the Peninsula and tried out the 'Altar of Freedom' rules for the American Civil War, whose title comes from a letter which President Lincoln may or may not have written to a woman who may or may not have lost five sons in the conflict.
In turn, the rules may or may not be any good. The one thing I can say with certainty is that they have a bit of a learning curve and one game is not sufficient to come to a conclusion. The main gimmick is a hidden bidding system for command activation priority, but I didn't really get to explore strategies for that. There is also an extensive list of possible traits for each commander and mine ended up with strict restrictions on what he could do in the bidding phase, which was not ideal for a first game.
I enjoyed it all nonetheless, and would be happy to play again. My main reservation would be that it seemed to be one of those games where units can start directly facing an enemy unit and manoeuvre on to a flank of said enemy in one move. That's a feature which I really don't like, but it's always possible that we weren't playing it properly.
Seven years ago I posted a picture (*) of the statue of a comedian on the seafront of a run-down resort on the Northwest coast of England. Here's another one:
Come back in 2031 for a third in the series.
* If anyone follows that link, I did indeed go down with Salmonella poisoning in 2017.
It's possible that you are asking yourselves whether this Peninsular campaign hasn't been going on for rather a long while. It has, gentle readers, it has.
We fought through the conclusion of the latest battle between Spanish and French - Blake vs Marmont, but I still don't know where - over the last two Wednesday evenings. The first of those gave an excellent night's entertainment; the second didn't. Piquet, despite definitely being my rules of choice for Horse and Musket games, is a bit like Longfellow's little girl. Occasionally it is horrid.
Anyway, the Spanish duly lost, but did a reasonable amount of damage to Marmont's army. Elsewhere, Wellington has been trying to get to Sault, believing that he had inferior numbers. He did, but then a campaign card gave him the Old Guard, and then timely reinforcements to existing formations bolstered him even more. He was still too scared to take on the Iron Duke though and has attacked a nearby Spanish army instead. Will Wellington arrive in time to join the battle? I have no idea, because I clearly don't understand the campaign rules.
“This lasted longer than I could describe even if I wrote pages and pages about it.” - C.S. Lewis
Someone has very kindly asked after my health. I am much recovered, possibly up to more or less what passes for 100% with me. The one thing that I still can't do is spend much time at a computer screen so, to everyone's relief, blog posts will continue to be infrequent. In other areas of my life I have thankfully managed to return to full man-about-town mode, including catching the current touring production of 'Oh! What A Lovely War', which I very much enjoyed and highly recommend should it come near you.
A talented group of actor-musicians absolutely nail the production's mix of broad comedy, satire and tragedy. If you've seen the film you'll know that the attribution of blame is not especially nuanced, but sadly what the piece has to say about the futility of war is as relevant today as it was then.
Or possibly not. It would seem that Valencia was relieved after all because the French marched their entire force of to battle rather than leaving any to man the siegeworks. I can't tell you what that means for the campaign; presumably all will become clear in due course. Anyway, in another part of Spain the French and Spanish are having at it again; we have already had more battles than there were in the whole of the Peninsular war. This time the Spanish force is that of Blake, who has done nothing so far except receive reinforcements. He outnumbers the French on the table at the start and has therefore attacked. As usual I don't know the location at which the battle is taking place. In my defence I seem to mainly view the map upside down and from a distance.
We've only played the first turn of the game so far, so by way of a change here is a picture of the participants. I apologise for the lack of ties; your bloggist was of course wearing one behind the camera.
Well, was it? I don't think so, but not for the first time the finer details of the campaign seem to be eluding me. More on this later.
I confidently predicted that the Spanish had advanced as far as they could and would be pushed back on the second evening of the game. Inevitably therefore, they kept moving forwards, and it was the French whose units started to rout off the table. However, the French had so much morale left and the Spanish forces were so bad - being largely raw troops who don't fire very often or very effectively (*) - that we collectively called it as draw. As no one won, the situation, I think, remains as it was and Valencia is still besieged.
The campaign rules we are using were written by James, and most enjoyable they are too. Of course, playing through them has led to the odd tweak to improve playability, but nothing especially major. One thing has become apparent though, it has proven rather difficult for either side to land much of a damaging blow on the other. So, we have decided to make the permanent losses incurred by the losing side of a battle greater. The unintended consequence of this could well be fewer battles and more manoeuvre, but I'm not sure that's necessarily a bad thing; see previous reports for evidence that I at least have been a bit gung ho in offering battle. The other change we have made is to increase the size of the hand of campaign cards each player is allowed to hold. This may seem a bit of a technicality, but we think it may lead to forces having their supply lines threatened more frequently.
Anyway, more map moves next week.
* Basically the French rolled very well and the Spanish very badly in the set up, and the reverse happened during the game itself.
The current action in the Peninsular campaign is yet another set-to between O'Donnell and Macdonald, who are having a feisty, but probably irrelevant, private war on Spain's Eastern coast. One of them is besieging Valencia, and the other is trying to relieve the siege; at the time of writing I can't offhand remember which way round it is.
The Spanish army is, even by their low standards, pretty rubbish. That's them above; there's a reasonable number of them, but they're mostly very poor quality. Given that they must attack I - and probably everyone else - thought it would be a straightforward French victory. However, the first night of the game proved both highly enjoyable and surprising in what it delivered. Despite that, I would imagine that the photo below shows the highwater mark of the Spanish advance. Note the French flanking attack at the bottom, which subsequently drove the defending infantry out of the woods back across the stream.
The latest iteration of the skirmish rules continue to work well; no doubt we'll find the flaws in due course.
“People have forgotten this truth, but you mustn’t forget it. You become responsible forever for what you’ve tamed.”
- The Little Prince
It's been a while since I mentioned the pigeon. "Wait a minute," I hear you say "you've never mentioned a pigeon." Well, actually I have, you just weren't paying attention. A couple of years ago a pigeon with an injured wing landed in my garden and hasn't been able to leave. International Pigeon Rescue let us down by failing to send their operatives and I don't have it in me to wring its neck, so I've been feeding her ever since. My garden is surrounded by high stone walls and is never visited by cats and so she's still here. Last year she attracted a mate and reared a chick. I'm pretty sure I had never seen a young pigeon before. However, tragedy has struck. Her beau - and they mate for life - is no more, seemingly having flown into one of the same walls that has been protecting them. The original bird has gone full Greyfriars Bobby and has been sitting in the spot where he fell (I've obviously removed the remains) ever since. I shall have to put up a memorial to her. As none of the people to whom it is variously attributed once said "Sometimes you're the pigeon and sometimes you're the statue".
I'm still struggling to spend much time working at a computer screen so posts will continue to be sparse; rest assured that quality will not rise as a result. As it happens I didn't miss any wargaming whilst AWOL, as there wasn't any. But we're back baby, we're back.
When we left it in December the main British force had decided to accept battle from the combined French forces despite the likelihood of being greatly outnumbered. I may be playing the role of Wellington, but I'm not role-playing the great man. There is no way he would have stood his ground, he would have retreated back to Portugal pronto. Indeed as we eventually got to the table I rather regretted my impetuosity. However I was lucky in that one of the three forces seeking to move against me didn't turn up at all. I was lucky again when the second force seemed likely to arrive quite late in the day. At the start of the battle therefore I had superior numbers. Having found my inner Iron Duke at last I didn't attack, rather I simply skulked behind a handy ridge.
The French moved against a village I was holding, with some initial success before being thrown back out of it. The Light Division saw most of the action and in skirmish formation saw off a formed unit with such ease that it has caused us to make a small amendment to the rules to make sure it can't happen again.
That's the 95th in the wood and that's a routing French unit at the top of the table. Subsequently the bulk of the French forces did arrive and the position looked very different.
But, I won the initiative when it mattered, rolling a timely double six (*) and turning eighteen straight cards of the twenty seven in my deck before the French could say "Zut alors!". The battle was drawn with remarkably few casualties on either side. Both sides stay in place and all depends on the turn of the next campaign cards.
* Dice have replaced dominoes, but different dice to the ones that were replaced by dominoes in the first place; so far I prefer it.
“Illness is the night side of life, a more onerous citizenship. Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick. Although we all prefer to use the good passport, sooner or later each of us is obliged, at least for a spell, to identify ourselves as citizens of that other place.” - Susan Sontag
What better way to return than with some Rory Gallagher:
At least I think that's how you spell it. Whilst here has been no wargaming content on the blog for a while, there has been plenty going on in the background. Over the last three weeks we have been playing out the Battle of Cacares, or possibly the battle of a place which has a name that looks a bit like that. I trust that James will write it up fully in a blog post heavily laden with photographs, but here's a few of my thoughts with only one picture, and that one a tad arcane.
Wellington, having captured Madrid, immediately abandoned it and pressed on to confront Soult, taking advantage of a chunk of the latter's forces being holed up in Badajoz with a Spanish army camped outside. My strategy, for it is I, is based on an assumption that the underlying purpose of the campaign is to provide us with opportunities to play with toy soldiers, and I therefore seek to bring the enemy to battle if the opportunity arises. Reading between the lines, I suspect that my fellow players feel the same way.
The first evening mostly involved manoeuvre by the Anglo-Portuguese while the French just sat there. I had been thinking for some time that the skirmisher rules were too advantageous to the British Light Division and had in a previous game adopted a particular approach aimed at exploiting what I thought was a loophole, thereby encountering much derision from the others, who didn't agree at all. I stuck with it however and committed much of the initiative which I gained from the draw of dominos to an elaborately choreographed advance by the Lights on my centre right which caused no French casualties and got us absolutely nowhere. Somewhat more was achieved by the cavalry. Most of the French cavalry was on their left, and not wanting this on the flank of my advancing infantry I sent my cavalry to see them off, which they did, ending the night poised to force the French infantry into square. On my left the only action was the playing of an event card by Mark allowing him to carry out a prebattle artillery bombardment. This made such a mess of the 3rd division that they played no further part in the game.
I had thought that the French, who started with more units on the table than the British, would attack on their right and my plan was to bring my reserves on to my extreme left and get behind them. No such attack having been forthcoming I brought the reserves on anyway at the beginning of the second evening and moved forwards. This second evening was marked by a British inability to cause any casualties in combat or indeed to throw anything worthwhile in defence either. This was despite no longer being encumbered with the by now abandoned Epictetus grand theory of how to use Napoleonic light infantry. Far from forcing the French infantry into square my cavalry was blown away by musket fire and the entire division became 'spent'. In fact the French switched their remaining cavalry unit to their left flank, with the clear - if ambitious - idea of seizing the village on the Allies baseline and gaining a cheesy victory that way. The evening ended with the British infantry with charge distance across the whole of the French defensive line.
On the third evening British luck with the dice changed and weight of numbers and, probably more importantly, the quality of their troops broke the French line close to the end of the fourth turn of the allowed five. Thankfully for the credibility of the morale system the French do-or-die cavalry raid, er, died. Permanent losses for campaign purposes were quite high, more so for the losers. The following photo makes clear the method of establishing those casualties.
OK, I admit that it doesn't make anything clear, especially to me. Still, James knows what he's doing, and he says I'm currently leading the campaign scoring track, so all is well.
And so to the opera. The last few days have seen the inaugural Bradford Opera Festival, the centrepiece of which was a semi-staged performance of the Barber of Seville, transported to twentieth century Bradford (the sixties perhaps) and with the libretto translated into 'proper Yorkshire'. Naturally, your bloggist was there. Dealing with the last point first, I couldn't help thinking that were I, Heaven forfend, a Yorkshireman then I would have felt rather patronised. However, the packed audience at St Georges Hall, the majority of whom were presumably from God's own county, rather lapped it up.
I very much enjoyed it: fine singing combined with highly energetic performances combined to easily compensate for the lack of the sort of production values one is more used to. I must, in particular, praise Oscar Castellino who shone in the title role. He has sung with major companies, although I don't think I've ever seen him before. I think I would have remembered an artist whose biography in the programme starts "He was born in a car on a street in Mumbai".
The creators are planning to move on next year to the 'sequel' i.e. Mozart's 'Marriage of Figaro'. My main advice to them would be to get some side title displays in so we can get the full benefit of the dialect and the swearing. Oh, and lose the fourth act.
An intermittently recurring feature on the blog has been bands I wish I'd seen forty or fifty years ago, didn't, but now have. Latest to join this illustrious list is Wreckless Eric, a name he spent decades trying to avoid, but has now reclaimed. It was worth the wait:
He was supporting Dr Feelgood, who I probably would have gone to see anyway. The issue of whether I'd ever seen the original line up has now been resolved (although I can still remember absolutely nothing of the event) and this latest gig turned out to be 48 years all but one day since that previous occasion. That, I think is the longest period between my successive attendance at gigs of the same band, always assuming that you count them as being the same band. This lot are a bit of an odd mixture between being a proper band (they released an album of new material last year) and a tribute act (they play all the old favourites), but however you classify them they are bloody good and well worth seeing. Not, though as good as Wilko Johnson, Lee Brilleaux, John B. Sparkes and The Big Figure, so here they are:
Someone else who I've seen live this week is Tom Robinson, who I last saw in either late 1977 or early 1978, so not quite as big a gap. He was also excellent and extremely engaging; his anecdotes being almost as good as his music. I particularly liked the one about the time the Sunday People described him as 'Britain's no. 1 gay' when they 'outed' him for being in a relationship with a woman. Wreckless Eric's best anecdote was about Kevin Coyne, but he was perhaps topped by Maddie Prior of Steeleye Span - also seen by your bloggist with the last seven days; I am ceaseless in my search for material with which to entertain you - whose story concerned both Peter Sellers and his ukulele.
"Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better. First the body. No. First the place. No. First both. Now either. Now the other. Sick of the either try the other. Sick of it back sick of the either. So on. Somehow on. Till sick of both. Throw up and go. Where neither. Till sick of there. Throw up and back. The body again. Where none. The place again. Where none. Try again. Fail again. Better again. Or better worse. Fail worse again. Still worse again. Till sick for good. Throw up for good. Go for good. Where neither for good. Good and all."
- Samuel Beckett
And so to the opera. I have been in Birmingham for a couple of days, primarily to take in the Welsh National Opera production of Golijov's 'Ainadamar'. This is an unusual piece, indeed the programme describes it as 'waith unigryw'; I'm not sure about that, although I might go as far as 'gwahanredol'.
The work deals with the assassination of the poet and playwright Federico García Lorca at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War and, rather than being told in a linear narrative, unfolds in flashbacks from the deathbed (*) of Lorca's muse, the actress Margarita Xirgu. The music added flamenco, Arabic and Jewish influences and Cuban rhythms to a classical core and was wonderful, greatly enhanced by the dancing which interspersed the singing.
At university in Madrid in the 1920s Lorca was a friend of Salvador Dalí (**) and, as luck would have it, I have been to see 'Daaaaaali!' at the Leeds International Film Festival. This is directed by Quentin Dupieux, whose 'Incroyable mais vrai' I saw and enjoyed last year at LIFF, but don't seem to have bothered to mention here before. In a similar fashion to 'Ainadamar' the film eschewed a single narrative arc in favour of a sort of recursive, Russian doll like series of dreams and films with films; all entirely in keeping with the great (and egocentric) surrealist at its heart. It was very funny, and I highly recommend seeing it should it make it to your local multiplex. The scene near the beginning in the hotel corridor is worth the effort on its own.
* That's how it seemed to me; no doubt other opinions are available.
** And Luis Buñuel.
The game reached its inevitable conclusion, although it took a little bit longer than I thought it would. The French had played an event card (*) the previous week which meant that their best division could carry on after its morale was all spent, and carry on they did. Together with one of their cavalry units they caused a couple of British units on the left flank to rout. The focal point was however on the British right flank and there the Light Division advanced steadily and the day was won.
Things I would have done differently include arranging the units of the Light Division differently and possibly continuing the cavalry's move from flank to flank instead of pausing it for a while. I shall have a chance to test the first of those next week, because following another couple of turns of map moves (I think we're now half way through turn 8, but please don't rely on that) Wellington's army will now face off against Soult's.
I know everyone is interested in whatever rule changes occur. This week's related to morale losses following losing a melee. There was a certain amount of robust discussion around this as it seemed to appear from nowhere. James' justification didn't really consist of much more than saying that it was what he had written down and therefore it must be right. Fair enough, that will do me. And it is, of course, the same for both sides.
* These cards are part of the campaign structure. Personally, I'd include them in the base tabletop rules as well. I didn't like much about Soldiers of Napoleon, but I liked the event cards.
I can still see you: an Echo,
to be touched with Feeler-
"I think there is only one quality worse than hardness of heart, and that is softness of head."
-Theodore Roosevelt
An unlooked for effect of my visit to Fiasco is that I have got the paints out again. One reason I didn't buy anything much was a nagging awareness that my last big(*) purchase hadn't progressed very far. But I'm pleased to report that the first unit of kern has now rolled off what I amuse myself by referring to as the production line.
Figures are a mixture of Red Box and Tumbling Dice
* Size of purchase is all relative obviously; this wasn't a particularly big purchase by anyone else's standards.
"I love thee as I love Madrid that we have defended and as I love all my comrades that have died. And many have died. Many. Many. Thou canst not think how many." - Ernest Hemingway
James will no doubt post a comprehensive post, but the evening ended with the French on the verge of losing all their army morale despite much of the British force, including their strongest infantry division and their cavalry, not having done anything at all. I give it half an hour at most next week.
* When both sides draw the same domino all used cards are shuffled back into the deck, but it doesn't count as an end of turn.
I have been to Fiasco for the first time since before lockdown. James had a deal going down and needed some muscle to back him up. Sadly for him he couldn't find anyone, so as a fairly feeble alternative I offered to meet him there while he rendezvoused with The Man . A large wad was passed surreptitiously across, 20Kg of high quality gear was handed over in return and we slipped away quietly. Or perhaps we should have, instead of taking a stroll round, because I'm sorry to say that the show wasn't very good. Obviously we weren't putting on a game, it's not really an option at the moment, and everyone else had clearly decided as a mark of respect that our pre-pandemic mantle of best looking table should be left uncontested.
An exception was the above Venice-based Pulp game, although even there my first reaction was "How impractical is that terrain?".
Shopping was very limited. When I saw that the Last Valley hadn't sold out already I bought some trees even though I'm not sure I really need any, and that was it. Still, it got me out of the house.
Illness having, to some extent at least, abated the group reconvened for some more map moves. I have no idea what turn it is. James has promised a post on his blog covering both the last game and the current campaign phase, so hopefully he'll tell us; always assuming he knows either.
The map moves follow a sort of Too Fat Lardies template, with all commanders having a couple of cards in the deck and being able to move when they are turned, plus various other cards which do specific things including ending the turn. Wellington's lack of activity so far in the campaign has largely been due to his cards never arriving. But all that changed this week, with both Wellington and the Spanish commander Blake activating twice each early on. They used the opportunity to advance on Madrid in a pincer movement from North and South. Wellesley rolled better and it is his forces who will engage Joseph Bonaparte (never, I note, referred to as King Joseph). The French are heavily outnumbered and, probably even more significantly, comprehensively outclassed. They attempted to withdraw prior to battle, but I played a Surprise Attack card and prevented them from doing so. If the gods of the dominos are willing then they will be completely crushed next week.
The forces have been deployed - see below - with Wellington keeping his plan of attack pretty close to his chest.
Coming back to Joseph, I realised that I knew very little about him and so started to read the article about him on a well-known and highly respected internet resource. I confess that my attention was being rather distracted by the frequent fall of English wickets against Sri Lanka, but I was suddenly interested again when I read that Napoleon's elder brother had married Julian Clary. Obviously this transpired not actually to be the case - even Wikipedia isn't that inaccurate - but it's a thought to conjure with.
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I have had Covid again. That's the second time this year, which seems a little self-indulgent for a man my age. I seem to have picked it up at a university reunion, along with more than half of those attending, demonstrating once again the truth of the adage that one should never go back. Prior to testing positive I went to a Fairport Convention gig in Settle; I can only hope that I didn't act as a super-spreader among the, let's face it, rather elderly audience. Now I think about it, that was also the second time I'd seen Fairport this year. Coincidence? Or something more sinister?
Actually, there's been a bit of illness about, causing a pause in the Peninsular campaign. Prior to that occurring I found myself as stand-in commander of - checks notes - O'Donnell's force defending Tarragona against French assault. It was a highly entertaining game, with the final outcome only decided on the very last roll of the very last action on the very last card turned. However, in my opinion although not necessarily that of others, this was entirely down to luck being very much skewed in favour of the Spanish rather than being a positive reflection on the way the campaign rules handle such scenarios. Some changes have been mooted and we shall have to wait to see what effect they have.
Returning to Fairport, they, playing as four-piece because their drummer Gerry Conway has retired (*), were as excellent as one would expect. Also excellent was Lauren Housley and the Northern Cowboys who I had seen a couple of days earlier whilst I was still bursting with health. Ms Housley mainly performs her own material, but included a couple of covers: Little Feat's "Willin'" and John Prine's "Angel From Montgomery". However, I'm going to include this Fairport Convention song, which they also included in their own set:
* His retirement is of a kind which will not, I expect, prevent him from appearing onstage at a gig which, viruses willing, I intend seeing in a week or so.
It has been drawn to my attention that I confused MacDonald with O'Donnell in my last post. Very embarrassing, given how one the two names is so clearly French and the other is so clearly Spanish. In addition one of them had a farm while the other has sold 10 million records; so there's no excuse really. There is certainly no excuse for this:
Is that a bandoneon?
At least that's where I think we are. If I was you I'd rely on whatever James writes in his blog. He has written up the the second evening of the Badajoz game and like me he struggles to make it sound exciting; nice photos though. The following picture isn't terribly interesting either, but it does illustrate a couple of things.
Towards the bottom right corner you can see that Beresford has now retreated back to where he started after his failed attack near Badajoz. The British actually inflicted more casualties on the French than they suffered, which didn't seem very likely when the forces were first set out on the table. Having also seen some men return from being hospitalised with disease Beresford is in a better state than he deserves to be.
At the top is the site of the next battle, Tarragona. Macdonald received some timely fresh drafts of troops as reinforcements - the Spanish get more such opportunities than everyone else - and tried unsuccessfully to concentrate his forces and attack the French. Instead he finds himself besieged in the fortress by a somewhat larger force. The terrain is set out, the units deployed and the game will commence next week.
This is the usual mix of new-to-me and, well, some not new-to-me at all games:
7 Wonders Duel: I hadn't played this in quite a while. It's a really good two player version of the original, which achieves the difficult feat of replacing the card drafting with something just as good.
Canal Mania: Sort of, but not exactly, Ticket to Ride with canals. There's an added element of pick-up and deliver, which was the bit I failed to get to grips with and so ended up way behind. I'd like to play again, just to prove I'm not completely useless; or possibly just to prove that I am.
Clank! Sunken Treasures: I'd never played this version before, but it was fun, with an 'inability to breathe' twist. I also played Clank! Catacombs, and that's still the one I'd recommend.
Dogfight!: Rule the Skies in 20 Minutes!: Yet another lot of exclamation marks! I'm undecided about this, mainly I think because we made the mistake of playing the introductory scenario too many times without moving on to one of the more advanced missions. It's also fairly abstract.
Earth: Meh. I could see this possibly being popular in a world where Terraforming Mars didn't exist.
Expeditions: I have gone on record as saying how much I disliked Scythe, so I was surprised to rather enjoy this 'sequel'. Of course it's no such thing, simply a different game with similar setting and artwork. I never take any notice of theming for Eurogames so that was fine by me. There's very little player interaction so it can be a bit dull when it's not your turn.
Faiyum: A game of draining swampland as advisors to Amenemhet III. We played it two-player and I'm keen to see how it might differ at higher player counts.
Flashpoint: Fire Rescue: I don't generally like cooperative games, but this one's not bad. The roof fell in and killed us all, as it generally does in my experience.
Heat: Pedal to the Metal: I'm going to keep including this one in these lists, just to reinforce how good it is.
Hey, That's My Fish!: What is it with the exclamation marks? I'd never played this filler before, but it's quick and it's fun.
Joan of Arc: A draw and write version of Orléans. After we'd finished we all looked at each other and said "I'd rather play Orléans". Not helped by very small and cramped iconography.
On the Underground: A pleasant game about building tube lines in London, where my local knowledge sadly failed to give me any advantage.
Planet Unknown: Great game, highly recommended. It's basically a multi-player solitaire polyomino tile laying game, except that tile selection is via a lazy Susan meaning that most of the time you have to make do with what you're given. There are more things to concentrate on than you can possibly achieve, so full of choices and decisions.
Red7: This light filler hadn't come out for ages, and to my surprise the group to whom I introduced it treated it really, really seriously and it took forever to play.
Shoot for the Stars: An overproduced little game which exposed just how useless most people seem to be when asked to think about well known things in numerical and quantitative terms. How can anyone not be able to estimate approximately the longest age that a tortoise has been known to live to (*)? I won by a mile.
The End of the Triumvirate: A three player game in which you play Caesar, Pompey or the other one. I really enjoyed its combination of military conflict, trying to raise money and the need to retain political support.
The King is Dead: A very good game which also requires precisely three people and therefore doesn't come out too often. Appeals to players who like to sit there and think "If I do this he will do that, but then she might do this, and then....".
Ticket to Ride: Nordic Countries: Another three player game; you may be able to guess that the regular group has been a couple of members down for much of the summer. The map was new to me and I liked its tightness.
Truffle Shuffle: The truffles in question are chocolate, but despite that I didn't really care for it.
* As a hint, it is possible, though disputed, that the same individual tortoise was owned by both Charles Darwin and Steve Irwin.
The latest game in the Peninsular campaign was a battle near Badajoz, brought about mainly by your bloggist neither understanding the rules nor having bothered to take any account of publicly available information about the size of the various French forces. James wrote about the first evening here, and the second evening saw it reach a conclusion.
I, in my capacity as Beresford on this occasion, attacked from the outset, not so much because I thought it was a good idea, but because in the context of the campaign I thought I should. One has to assume that all sorts of things are abstracted in the campaign mechanics, and in this case it was the reason why the British would be the aggressor against an equal force with large reinforcements arriving any moment soon. One must just assume that there was a good reason why they did.
Anyway, much to my surprise it all ended in a draw with both sides being very low on morale and not being in a position to do much; indeed the last hour or so of playing was rather dull. Whilst the arrival of the French reinforcements was imminent (*), the British were withdrawing steadily and it was by no means clear that the new troops would be able to cause much damage before nightfall. In the end permanent casualties were fairly light on both sides, although the hospitals will be pretty full with those recovering. I left James (no Mark or Peter this week) to do the paperwork, but overall I think I came out of the affair far better than I was expecting. The main reason for that was, it seemed to me, the resilience against morale challenges which the British in particular benefit from in the rules we use.
Lots of photos were taken and James will no doubt write it up in detail in due course. When I was originally rolling up my army lists one small crumb of comfort was the inclusion of some extremely feisty heavy cavalry. They repaid this faith by destroying two units of French light cavalry and causing the Polish Lancers to think better of it and withdraw. Let's hope we see more of them during the campaign.
* Fortunately for the British and Portuguese the order in which the cards were turned up in the third turn effectively delayed their arrival for a further turn after that.
Over the last couple of weeks we have fought out the second battle in the Pyrenees, at Manresa. James has posted a report on the first night with plenty of photos. That evening's play was as good a game as I can remember, with what ought probably have been a walkover for the French swinging both ways, including a rather feisty counter-attack by the only two average Spanish units (all the others being poor) and featuring a cameo from the militia who, now I think about it, are even worse than poor. The second evening saw the inevitable happen though, with the French finally sweeping all before them. The battered Spanish withdrew down the coast, the winners marched into Barcelona, and James and Mark awarded themselves vast numbers of victory points including some - I kid you not - for refraining from stitching each other up.
We then moved on to the next campaign moves, which saw the end of the turn before anything much had happened. Eventually the British got a chance to move, but sadly your bloggist managed to both misunderstand the rules and misread the likely intentions of Soult. Next week will therefore see Beresford's Portuguese attacking a French force of approximately equal size with an even larger force under Soult himself poised to arrive, although thankfully quite late in the day. Part of my misunderstanding of the rules has been deemed understandable after all and an appropriate adjustment incorporated therein. Unfortunately my misjudgement of the likely size of the French force remains and next week could be quite hard going.
