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: