Dive, dive, dive!

It's that time again, and this month I have played a range of boardgames including a rather splendid new one that I would have thought would appeal to wargamers in general:

Betrayal at the House on the Hill: A newcomer to the Leeds gaming group brought this and was keen to play and so a few of us happily agreed. I was slightly taken aback when after we had set up someone compared the game to the execrable Dead of Winter, but fortunately there didn't seem to be much similarity as far as I could see. In fact I quite enjoyed the first phase where one's character explores and collects things. I picked up a magic axe and the amulet of power and, when the second, inferior phase began I immediately proved my strength by killing the character of the chap whose game it was. That'll teach him.

Bohnanza: A classic game of trading and planting beans which never fails to provide an enjoyable thirty to forty five minutes. The twist is that one can't change the order of the cards in one's hand.

Captain Sonar: And this is it. OK, it's a deduction game masquerading as a wargame - indeed it's basically a team version of Battleships - and not all the team roles are as interesting as others, but never the less it's fun, suspenseful, makes hidden movement work without an umpire and doesn't last too long. The main downside is that it really works best with exactly eight people - the same problem that bedevils Quartermaster General. I've only played in turn-by-turn mode; the real-time version would be very different (especially louder) and may, for example, bring the chief mate and engineer more into things. Anyway, I strongly recommend giving it a go if you have the requisite seven friends; and you're wargamers so why wouldn't you have lots of friends?.
 
City of Spies: The city in question is, of all places, Estoril. I've been through it on a train en route to Sintra and am somewhat sceptical as to whether it's a city at all. Why not just use Lisbon? Who knows? What I do know is that, as you will have guessed from the digressions, is that it's not a terribly good game. It contains a number of mechanisms which I couldn't work out how one would ever put into practice.

Condottiere: I have rhapsodised about this enough. If you can track down a copy then try it.

Dark Moon: It's OK for a hidden role game.

Dead Last: Players are members of a tontine aiming in each round to eliminate the others and gain the capital and there is a bit of prisoner's dilemma stuff when you get down to two players. The mechanics are simple enough, but also pretty uninteresting; as is the game.

Deception: Murder in Hong Kong: I've lost the taste for this after a dozen or so plays.

Dixit: I'm not fond of this game and hadn't played it for a long time. It wasn't as bad as I remember, but my own preference is for something more, how shall we say, analytical.

Escape from the Aliens in Outer Space: Another, not as good, hidden movement deduction game.

Exoplanets: A mixed theme, partly about planetary exploration and development and partly about evolution, but obviously not very accurate when it comes to either. The best thing that could be said for it is that one can, if one wishes, do down the other players from time to time.

FUSE: Another example of that rarity: a cooperative game that I like. This one is a fast paced, real time dice rolling game one of whose main benefits is that it lasts ten minutes exactly. For the record we lost, but only just.

Mykerinos: This is a few years old, but is on the seemingly fashionable theme of archaeology. I didn't enjoy it much, but that may be because I chose what turned out to be a rubbish strategy of digging things up whereas the winners were those who gained control of the museum galleries.

The Networks: I enjoyed this somewhat more than the first time I had played it, although with no more success. At heart a card drafting, economic management and strategy game, it has an interesting theme which is amusingly executed.

No Thanks!: A fine push-your-luck filler.

Red7: a fine filler which I have played more than any other game.

Sail to India: A surprisingly meaty game in a small box for a low price, which always appeals to the accountant in me. The various mechanisms are well integrated and there are many potential winning strategies (cf Mykerinos above).

Skull: Always amusing.

Stockpile: The first time I played this I came away thinking that we had all failed to bid high enough in the auction phase each turn. I changed my strategy this time round and won handsomely. The insider dealing mechanisms in this game are well thought through and, sadly, are a pretty realistic reflection of the way the stock exchange really does work.

Sushi Go Party!: This is a bit like Sushi Go! except that...well actually it's exactly like the original. There is no party.

Via Nebula: I was advised that we had played this wrongly the first time, but I'm buggered if I could spot a difference this time around. It's a pleasant enough resource management game with a neat element of unavoidable cooperation, but I'm equally buggered if I know why others rate it so highly.

Nu couché

I haven't blogged about art for a while, and I'm not really going to do so today. It's just that sometimes one is in the mood for a bit of this:

Samosa, samosae, samosam

"If anything has happened to one who ever yearned and wished but never hoped, that is a rare pleasure of the soul." - Catullus

I hope that you're all having as good an August Bank Holiday weekend as Epictetus is. Although there were some less happy elements - I was approached about a job which turned out to be in the Falkland Islands and the farmers market ran out of samosas before I got there - most of it was pretty good. There was walking in the dales, the big bouncy woman stopped by to nibble on my biscuits and I even painted some figures. Yes, having had to make some more markers (specifically those reading '3') at short notice the mojo settled on my shoulder and on my soldiers (1) and was inspired to make some progress on the Great War project. So it was with some shock that when retrieving the painting tray from the special drying cupboard under the boiler I discovered that I was in the middle of some Roman legionaries. I forget quite why, but no matter - Romans it is.

As it happens the walk took us in part along the Roman road between Olicana and Virosidum as it rises up out of Langstrothdale. This is precisely where my Romans in Britain rip off of Pony Wars is set so perhaps there is some synchronicity at work. I've been thinking of redoing the rules to make them hex based and perhaps amending the combat rules to steal those in Lion Rampant. Perhaps I'm being sent a signal. Funnily enough I've just been reading Mary Stewart's rather fine trilogy about Merlin and the fort at Olicana plays a role in the development of the plot. Stewart identifies Olicana directly with Ilkley; there is some debate, but I think it would be all too much of a coincidence if they weren't the same place.

(1) I've been listening to Traffic's 'Hole in my Shoe' which uses that very rhyme, presumably because it was written under the influence of drugs

C&C Napoleonics enflé

Wargaming returned to the annexe last night with a game of Command & Colours Napoleonics enlarged somewhat beyond its normal parameters. That it all worked reasonably well is a testament to the robustness of the original design rather than anything I did. Anyone who's been to business school will be familiar with Mintzberg's concepts of emergent as opposed to deliberate strategy. In wargaming terms I lean to the former, to what Lindblom described as a fragmented process of serial and incremental decisions and what Mintzberg himself defined as the allocation of resources before the explicit espousal of the objective.

And thus has been the journey from small units simply designed as a painting exercise through the acquisition of rules and terrain; it's been a series of opportunistic and ad hoc undertakings. The current such small step is to play C&C Napoleonics on my full table, in terms of hexes that's about four times the size of the playing area for which the rules are intended. We had previously played on wider setups, but this was the first time we would play on one that was deeper as well. I took one of the scenarios from the latest expansion and made most terrain features four times bigger While that felt OK for woods and hills it didn't for towns and so those were fudged somewhat to retain shape and position without each being too large. I doubled the forces, partly with the intention of making more space for manoeuvre, and partly because I started to run out at that point. I left the number of officers the same, on an intuition that doubling them would be too many. The issue which seemed likely to cause most problems was that of movement distances, with units potentially taking too long to come into action and into contact. Here, after much thought, I did nothing at all; often the best option when one doesn't know what's best.

And, as I say, it all worked reasonably well and I came out of it with a number of learning points:

• It's probably time to say goodbye to the official scenarios. They are not balanced and nor are they meant to be. The intention is that they are played twice with sides swapped, which is clearly not what we're looking for.
• The ratio of officers to units needs to be higher than the 1:8 or so that we played last night - maybe 1:6. And rather than specific officers for specific commands - which is how we play Piquet for example - I prefer to see the officer figure as being analogous to another Piquet concept. In that game firing (as in rolling the dice and calculating casualties) represents the peak of an activity that is in reality occurring all the time. In C&C (or in my mental model of it at least) the presence of a model of a divisional commander represents a peak level of officering, as compared to the normal level which is going on in the background all the time. It therefore makes sense that the player can switch the models about between different groups of units.
• The Tactician cards in the new(ish) fifth expansion add to the gameplay, and - given that it is a game - that's a good thing. In particular they give a potential outlet when one's Command cards aren't helping, and there's always the tantalising prospect of being able to string a series of cards together to dramatically change the way things are going.
• A point that applies to all games under every set of rules: don't start the forces too far apart. One knock-on implication for jumbo C&C is how to define the 'baseline' hex whenever these are referred to on cards. We played two rows last night, but I think that needs to be increased to three.
• The movement rules possibly don't need adjusting at all. Firstly various new Command cards plus a number of the Tactician cards add quite a bit of movement capability. And then there's the question of style of play. I think that even more than in the original game, one must churn cards that one doesn't need and build a hand for the current specific phase of one's overall plan.

We got perhaps half way through the scenario - the morning of Liebertwolwitz 14th October 1813 - in the evening and the Allies appear to have decided on defence, having come off worse in the early cavalry exchanges and been on the wrong end of what appeared to me to be an optimistic French infantry attack on their left. I'm not sure if we'll finish it; I suspect too much time may pass before we get back together and then we'll need to get James' game for Derby ready. In any event I think my ultimate aim - my deliberate strategy if you will - would be to set these larger C&C Napoleonic games up so they can be completed in an evening.

Beardy Branson is a twat

 "Sob, heavy world
  Sob as you spin
   Mantled in mist, remote from the happy:"

                  - W.H. Auden

The spin that Auden referred to was - at least I assume it was - the actual rotation of the earth. ["I hope," says the Rhetorical Pedant, returning after being far too long absent from this blog "I really hope, that you're going to go off on one about the length of days at the equator again."] But my gripe is with spin in the other sense of Public Relations, or lying as it used to be called when I was at school.

I'm speaking specifically of course of all this guff about Jeremy Corbyn and the train. Now, obviously I have no idea what actually happened and have spent many hours strenuously trying to avoid finding out. As Marcus Aurelius put it "Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth". Harry Pearson, wargamer and author of Achtung Schweinehund!, puts it thus: "Claims there were vacant seats on a Virgin train a typical Trotskyite slur on great British entrepreneur and his sales force."

However, of one thing I am, from personal experience, absolutely certain, Virgin East Coast provide a terrible service and it is substantially worse than it was when it was run by the state-owned East Coast Mainline. People do, genuinely and often, have to sit on the floor. The power sockets regularly don't work. The train that I came up from London a couple of weeks ago had one carriage out of action because the doors had jammed and one where the heating was stuck on full blast - on a day when the temperature outside was 28˚C; the main point being that no one was in the slightest surprised. They've just put the fares up for the second time this year. Therefore, whatever the rights and wrongs of that particular train, Virgin Trains have rightly been called out for being useless at what they are supposed to do in return for our money.

And yet their slick PR machine, taking full advantage of the media's existing antipathy to Corbyn, have switched the narrative from one where they are held to account for their performance to one where they are the victims. As Mark Twain never said “A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes”. And all the while the long-suffering passenger longs to see Branson humbling himself in the style of Japanese management as atonement, preferably followed by then ritually disembowelling himself Japanses style as well.

 Before anyone points it out, I know that the line is managed and 90% owned by Stagecoach, but if Branson wants to be the face of the firm then he must take the consequences. Unsurprisingly I would be perfectly happy for Gloag and especially the homophobic Souter to join him. And it's the Stagecoach link I think that explains the attempts to smear Corbyn. A Corbyn government (I shall return soon to discuss whether such a thing is even remotely possible) would not just renationalise the railways, but would regulate bus companies. They're just getting their retaliation in first.

Optima petamus

Build barns

Real life has got in the way of blogging for a few days. Can I just say congratulations to the elder Miss Epictetus, who has worked hard, achieved her ambition and will shortly be leaving for a different city. I shall miss her.

"Success is sweet and sweeter if long delayed and gotten through many struggles and defeats" - Amos Bronson Alcott

In other news, the great estivation is almost over. I have been happy to make the most of what has by no means been a bad summer's weather, but entertainment options can be somewhat limited in August. Things will start picking up from next week, and I already have tickets for a range of things. You have been warned.

However, there will also be more wargaming. I have even ventured into the annexe for the first time in a while. Notwithstanding the recent heat, it is a tad damp, so a dehumidifier has been set up and hopefully all will soon be well. How long can it be before I'm painting figures again? How long can it be before rhetorical questions start to annoy my readers?

Where's the rum?

 Anyway, damp or not, I have completed the set-up of the C&C Napoleonic game that I almost finished getting ready about three months ago. My declared ambition to double the sizes of the forces in the original C&C scenario to take account of the larger table size hit some snags: I still don't have enough cavalry size sabot bases; one of the Russian infantry units is at paper strength because I didn't have enough 3 markers; and I ran out of both cossacks and Prussian cuirassiers. Still, I think it looks OK.

You do something to me

In this particular unattended moment I am a Kinks 'B' side from more than fifty years ago.

Pot60pouri

The 1757 Bohemian Blitzkrieg campaign seems to have run out of steam around turn 11 - the penultimate - because there doesn't appear to be much that anyone could do on turn 12 to force a win. I will post a retrospective in due course as hopefully will James. I think that useful lessons were learned, some rule tweaks were already applied and no doubt further ones will be in due course. James has megalomaniacal plans for an even more complicated affair which will use all his Seven Years War figures.

I ought to say some more about Verona. In fact if I was any sort of proper wargaming blogger I would be posting an illustrated report on all the military and naval related things I'd seen. However, what I actually did was go to an exhibition at the opera museum about Maria Callas. This was curated by someone who had a far from healthy obsession with la divina and it both bordered on the creepy and contained too many frocks for my taste. The displays gave an insight into her charisma and her vulnerability - Aristotle Onassis came in for a bit of a kicking from whoever wrote the words - but rightfully it was mostly about the voice.

I also naturally went to see Juliet's balcony. I came to mock, discovered that this was actually the house that the Capulets lived in in ye olden days and so ceased mocking, and then discovered that the balcony was only added in the 1940s and so went back to mocking again. There is a bronze statue of the young lady, the cupping of the right breast of which is supposed to bring luck. The only member of our travelling party who did so was a retired Anglican bishop; make of that what you will.

I have made another of my occasional futile day trips, this time to Wilmslow. I normally say at this point that the highlight was a Greggs sausage roll, but in a place as posh as that I went instead for a chicken kebab wrap from an chi-chi independent restaurant, which was indeed the best thing about the journey. But for the record Wilmslow does, somewhat to my surprise, have a branch of Greggs.

Normal service is resumed

 I heard a cry in the night,

A thousand miles it came,

Sharp as a flash of light,

My name, my name!

It was your voice I heard,

You waked and loved me so--

I send you back this word,

I know, I know!

             - Sara Teasdale

Where we lay our scene

And so to the opera. I have been to Verona and seen both Aida and Carmen in the Arena there, something that I've intended to do for a few years now.

Verdi's opera was the first to be performed in what is apparently the third largest Roman Ampitheatre still in existence, marking the centenary of his birth in 1813, and they still do it every year. One can see why because it's a work that lends itself to the very large numbers of extras needed to fill the enormous stage. This production was suitably spectacular with hordes of Egyptian soldiers marching to and fro with various spears, shields, lighted torches and so on; there were priests; there were Nubian slaves being led to captivity; and there were dancing girls . There were even horses, anachronistically being ridden rather than pulling chariots; a mistake that any wargamer could have pointed out. Musically it was very good. One's hearing takes a few minutes to adjust to the acoustics, but they are superb; those Romans certainly knew what they were at. The performance lasts for hours and hours until well after midnight - not helped by a couple of breaks for rain - and the metal chairs are not at all comfortable. It stops people falling asleep I suppose.

Carmen was also very fine, although less well suited to the environment. On the one hand it's easy to fill the big stage  by throwing in extra soldiers (dragoons I believe), gypsies (many of whom actually look like pirates for some reason); factory girls (rather bizarrely dressed for tennis in 1920s suburban England) and toreros (interesting fact: Bizet and/or his librettists invented the word toreador because the extra syllable was needed to fit the music); yet more dancing girls (for the avoidance of doubt I rather enjoyed the dancing girls); and sundry gratuitous horses and donkeys (one of the horses got spooked and for a brief moment I thought that we were in for a rerun of the animatronic pig ramming the scenery episode from a few weeks ago). On the other hand the dozens of extras and animals have the effect of making it less clear who is actually singing. The dialogue in particular - Carmen is in the form of an opéra comique - gets swamped. However, it would take a harder heart than mine not to be moved by the final, climactic scene and the large crowd was silent as - spoiler alert - yet another operatic heroine didn't make it to the final curtain. Of course they don't actually have a curtain, instead they have yet more extras walking on from the side with a sort of multi-section screen thing. The other noteworthy difference to a normal theatre is that the conductor can't walk through the orchestra to his podium so he has to enter from one side. They actually sprinted on at the start of every act and this puzzled me somewhat until one of my travelling companions - himself the widower of an opera singer - explained that they were doing it because there was such a large space to be traversed that they were worried that the applause might have stopped before they had reached the middle. The ego of the artist is a fragile thing.

Цыгана дикого рассказ

А я... одно мое желанье
С тобой делить любовь, досуг

Ciao bambini

A modal realistic Battle of Lobositz

When my biographer comes to write the chapter related to wargaming in 2016 he may get somewhat confused. We have already refought the 1756 Battle of Lobositz once and, if I have been paying attention, will be doing it again at Derby, complete with extinct volcano and mad cavalry charges. Now, in the campaign set one year later we find ourselves once again fighting a battle with the same name. However this time not only is there no Lobosch, but the Prussians under Prince Henry were trying to pass north through the Mittel-Gebirge not south.

You are probably expecting this blog post to be along the lines of ' I rather like Piquet despite the Austrians having been hammered again' and you would only partly be wrong. The Austrians won, as they were always going to given their superiority in numbers, but it wasn't the crushing victory that it might have been. The reason for that wasn't - for once - incompetence on my part, but was rather because that mechanisms in Piquet allow for unusual narratives to develop; and that's certainly what happened. My own plan was to attack on my left with infantry while moving my cavalry, supported by artillery, around the village on the right to take out the Prussian cavalry that I expected to be there for no better reason than there was nowhere else for Peter to put them. I concentrated my infantry on the left, but the extent to which I could do this was limited by the quantity of units and the space in which I could deploy them. The strategic campaign situation made it a fair possibility that the Prussians would attack despite being outnumbered and would hope for the best. In such circumstances my plan, after much detailed pre-battle analysis and consideration, was to busk it.

James has already posted about the game so I shall simply highlight a few points which I think pertinent:

•  The main reason that things developed the way they did was that for the second game running the Prussians got absolutely all the initiative; they had had more than twenty before I'd turned a card. In a more traditional 'you go, I go' game I would have had many chances to fire at the smaller force as it approached. In Piquet it doesn't work like that. I think it's that element above all others that puts off some people. I won't deny that it can be frustrating, but the fact that things can, and do, develop in a different way every time one plays is what I really like about the game. It is worth noting that the only pause in the flow of initiative to the Prussians was, as so often in Piquet, just at the point where forces had closed and it would have been most useful.
• Initiative isn't the only variable in Piquet where luck can upset one's plans. I had six commanders: two were average, one - Archduke Charles himself - was poor (resulting in an added Command Indecision card), and three - three! - were abysmal. In the event none of this mattered, but had my ability to rally units been called on, then I would have been stuffed.
• That was where the luck ran out for the Prussians. Piquet involves a draw at the beginning for morale and other factors. I drew well:
• I had plenty of morale; not a huge amount, but sufficient.
• I drew a Brilliant Leader card; effectively a wild card. It only came up once during the game, but served as a very timely musket reload.
• I drew a Infantry Morale Up 1 card, meaning that my units were more likely to pass morale challenges; given my superiority in morale chips this was very useful.
• I drew two stratagem cards. I've been playing Piquet for years and do not recall ever even having drawn one before. One stratagem - heavy rain - was no use to me so I returned it (for which I received a Melee card which was never turned in the game), but the second was a belter.
• This second was Heroic Command; all units in one of my commands could ignore the first stand loss for all purposes. I designated my largest command, that on the left under Arenberg, with which I was to make my main attack. As luck would have it that was where the Prussian attack came in. Without this card things would have been much worse.
• My final area of luck was one that could have happened in any wargame. I kept hitting things every time I fired. I had been on the receiving end of something similar during the Battle of Sobotka. Sometimes that's just what happens.
• I thought the latest withdrawal rules had a lot of merit. The fact that I didn't achieve anything during pursuit fire was irritating, but simply proved for a non-Piquet mechanism (this is real bucket of dice stuff; I could only just fit my twenty seven dice in my hands, or find space on the table to roll them) it provides a wide range of possible results similar to the game onto which it has been bolted. It's also entirely consistent with Charles being poor and in command of a bunch of abysmal generals.
• The decision to end the game was driven in large part by timing and logistics, but I was happy with it. I was about to finish off the Prussian cavalry with artillery and the infantry in the centre by sheer weight of numbers, but looked likely to take further losses on my left. I was also somewhat worried about Arenberg, who appeared to be aiming to fight the Prussians single handed, and whose loss would have had negative consequences in the campaign.

Mrs Browne's boy

The 1757 campaign is back on track, with the continuing multiple misunderstandings of the rules being put behind us. Readers will be aware that my tabletop performance has been dire, but on the map things haven't been so bad. The conclusion that I came to early on was that the Austrian player has to be opportunistic. The commanders' low initiative means they often don't move so when they do it's best to make it count. So, when - to my complete surprise because I didn't understand the rules - it turned out that Browne was temporarily in charge instead of the Archduke Charles, then the best thing to do was to seize the moment by sending him off on his own so he could at least act more frequently. Charles always has to have the largest force and Konigsbeck is wandering round Bohemia with quite a large army (albeit smaller than it used to be following the disaster at Sobotka) so Browne couldn't have a large force. This in turn suggested that it had to raid rather than fight and, I think to everyone's surprise, his small band of troops managed to cut the supply of both the Prussian armies manouevring on the road to Prague.

Somewhat against my expectations Prince Henry didn't use the breakthrough rule to brush past the entirely ahistorical von Krappa, who would - in my interpretation of things - only have had his personal two dice to use in the resulting double pursuit fire. The Prussians have therefore been surrounded and brought to battle by Charles of Lorraine, due in no small part to another rule that I'd overlooked; so much time has now passed since the invasion that the Austrians' initiative has improved somewhat. The battle starts tomorrow. Will it go better on the table this time? History suggests otherwise, but we live in hope.

Girlfriends Day

August 1st is, apparently, Girlfriends Day. Twenty four hours seems a bit short for that to me, but at least it takes the focus away from Yorkshire Day, which is also today. Normally I try to be out of the county, but I have failed this year. Whoever decided that the locals require a formally designated day on which they are encouraged to tell everyone how great they are, needs their head examining. So I shall hide inside (it's just about to piss it down anyway) and produce the ever-popular monthly list of boardgames played. Before I do that, I just have time for Yorkshire's motto: "You can always tell a Yorkshireman, but you can't tell him much".

6 nimmt!: A pretty random card game, but it passes the time.

7 Wonders: I actually had a bit of a strategy this time, but was undermined by the selfishness of my neighbours in not building the resources that I needed to use. I got my own back though by going heavy on military in the third age and stuffing their chances of winning.

Abluxxen: An interesting card game that packs a lot of strategy and choices into a short game.

Broom Service: I enjoyed this more than the previous time - which wasn't hard - but despite it winning awards it's not for me. It revolves around pre-programming one's moves in advance, but there is, for me, too little chance of them actually happening.

Cosmic Encounter: I like this, but the development of each game rather depends on the mix of races in play. I also don't really understand players who settle for a joint win. Where's the kudos?

Five Tribes: I think this game, like many others, is actually rather spoiled by the ability to purchase special powers during play. I do however like the mancala mechanism. At the risk of repeating myself there are not five tribes involved.

The Grizzled: As always we failed to get our soldiers to survive the Great War. I do recommend the game though.

Kryptos: Hanabi meets Game of Trains, but not cooperative. It was OK.

Mission Red Planet: To successfully exploit (NB not explore) Mars one needs to anticipate the moves of other players, which often proves a step too far for me.

Mysterium: I like to leave enough time between plays of this to forget why I don't like it. On the plus side the English version is better than the original Polish version.

No Thanks!: This is still a nice quick push-your-luck game and I still push my luck too far every time.

Notre Dame: Enjoyable, thinly themed (it's the 14th century and it's Paris, but there appear to be Hansom cabs rolling about) drafting game with a bit of area control.

Peleponnes: A peculiar spelling, but nothing like as odd as the way my fellow players were pronouncing it. This is a fine, if brutal, game where one's carefully built (and paid for) buildings and people are laid waste periodically by plague, famine, earthquake and so on. I rather like the twin track scoring with one's position being determined by the lower.

Perfect Alibi: I normally like deduction games, but I couldn't get my head round this one. The special roles (which basically don't only allow one to lie, but actually mandate it under certain circumstances) meant that I had no idea what on earth was happening.

Red 7: Nothing much more to be said about this excellent little game.

Robo Rally: This is not dissimilar in mechanics to Colt Express, but doesn't have that game's sense of fun. It also goes on too long.

Sail to India: This is a clever little game and excellent value for money. There are a lot of possible different winning strategies.

Stockpile: This is a stock market game with some clever mechanics and one which I'd like to play again. I think all of us consistently underbid during the auction phase.

Via Nebula: I'm going to reserve judgement on this one as it subsequently transpired that we weren't playing it properly. Who'd have thought it?

I need also to point out that perhaps for the first time ever I chose to sit out and play nothing, because all that was on offer was the truly dreadful A Fake Artist Goes to New York.

Move it!

There's not enough Cliff Richard on this blog:

Pot59pouri

"Our lives are full of empty space" - Umberto Eco

The big bouncy woman is in vacanza and in her absence I am somewhat bereft. Any others - and I am neither confirming nor denying that there are others - are just not, in the words of T.S. Eliot, as "bavard, baveux, à la croupe arrondie".

But enough of that, and back to politics. I wanted to pass on a link to a blog post regarding the Labour Party leadership that I found interesting. There is some thoughtful debate going on regarding the issue, it's just that it doesn't get reported in the newspapers or on television.

Wargaming news is a tad slow; we appear to have got the rules wrong yet again in the Bohemian Blitzkrieg campaign so there is a short delay. But I have picked up a paintbrush for the first time a yonk. Admittedly it wasn't to paint any figures, but it was a start. The younger Miss Epictetus got it into her head to go to a pottery painting café and, in the absence of any interest whatsoever elsewhere, was forced to call on the aged parent. It was very relaxing, therapeutic almost, and I thoroughly enjoyed myself applying a Caribbean beach scene to a mug from which, when it's been fired and I get it back, I fully intend to drink coffee laced with rum. That should make the Great War project go with a swing.

It is, as one can't help but know, fifty years to the day since England won the world cup. I haven't watched, listened to or read any of the stuff being churned out to commemorate it, but in my head I have been transported back to watching a black and white tv in the living room of a house in Bethnal Green which was within the year knocked down as part of the slum clearance programme. The memories naturally relate mostly to those with whom I watched it and who are no longer with us; basically everyone except my younger sister. My grandfather - who now I think about it was almost certainly sitting there with a cup of tea laced with a dash of whisky; let no-one tell you nature isn't as strong as nurture - was also gone within the year. I still have a number of volumes of a history of the Great War that were the only books I ever saw in his house. 

I have always prided myself on never having been in the slightest bit patriotic. Someone - Julian Barnes perhaps - wrote that real patriotism was pointing out to one's country when it got things wrong. But reflecting on 1966 makes me wonder. I suspect that as a ten year old boy growing up in post-war Britain I was as patriotic as everyone else. Perhaps it was that day that did it. We'd won and that was it. Anything further would be mere repetition and so it didn't hold any further interest for me.

"If you live long enough, you'll see that every victory turns into a defeat" - Simone de Beauvoir

Politics I'm afraid

Firstly, a comment on our government:

"Stupidity has a knack of getting its way" - Albert Camus

And secondly, a comment on our opposition:

I shall be voting for Jeremy Corbyn again. I acknowledge that he is the wrong man for the job, but Owen Smith - who I freely confess that I had never heard of until a couple of weeks ago - has done one thing that means I can't vote for him. He has announced the policies he would introduce were he elected. I do not want a leader who decides on policy; I want a leader who will champion and implement the policies decided on by the Labour Party. So do the majority of party members, and that, above all else, is why Corbyn will be re-elected.

Dear, oh dear

So the Battle of Sobotka ended as badly as expected. There was some minor Austrian success in that the Prussian right flank was entirely destroyed, but that didn't come close to making up for the fact that so was the Austrian centre. James claims to have pretty much finished a write up of the while battle and he certainly took lots of photographs so I will simply refer you to his blog.

I made a number of tactical mistakes and Peter undoubtedly got the best of the luck with dominoes, dice and cards. However, I don't propose to dwell on those; instead some quick opinions on the rules as they stand.

• Sadly the new withdrawal rules didn't really work. On the plus side, I liked the free move when passing the test to withdraw and the extra move on Officer Check cards thereafter; it gives a real prospect of actually getting away. On the down side, it's still very dull to play out that part of the battle. 
• Not that long ago James changed the rules so that infantry can only fire straight ahead. Notwithstanding the historical rights and wrongs of this - about which I know nothing - in terms of playability the result is frankly a real dog's breakfast, with inconsistencies popping up all over the place. It turns the game into the sort of 'wangle the angle' affair often previously derided in the legendary wargames room and, given the Prussian infantry's huge advantage in manoeuverability, leaves things rather unbalanced.
• I used to find it a source of great amusement that the definition of a flank was heatedly debated each and every week; now it's just embarrassing. To me the beaten zone and flank rules need to be defined together along the lines of:
• The determining factor for whether a unit gains flank advantage is the position of the centre of that unit's front relative to the front edge of the target unit.
• If a unit is engaged in ranged fire, then if its centre is behind the target unit's front and the target otherwise meets the normal criteria for being fired at then it counts as flank fire.
• If a unit moves into contact with another, then if the centre of that unit's front started movement behind the contacted unit's front edge and if no part of the contacting unit is in the arc of fire at the point of contact then the contacted unit is flanked.
• For the avoidance of doubt no unit can obtain a flank advantage over a unit which could (assuming it were loaded) opportunity fire at it.

In other wargaming news, I have spent some money, which may possibly signal a return to activity. I bought a batch of buildings from a charity shop, which I think means that I now have more than enough. These are hollow cast rather than the solid and more detailed Lilliput Lane stuff, but they will suffice. I also picked up another Hexon trench piece on ebay.

Take care of your homework

I have been to see bluesman Earl Thomas with his full US band play a hot and steamy set in a working men's club in Bradford. Musically it was excellent - he can certainly sing - and the effect was obviously heightened for those for whom sexy, black men shaking their thing is a turn on; which it certainly was for a large number of raucous women of a certain age in the audience. He was taking his life in his hands when he came down to the merchandising stall afterwards. I'm not sure the suave supper clubs of California fully prepare one for Yorkshire women after they've had a few drinks on a Friday night.

Among the songs that he played was Johnny Taylor's classic, "Take Care of Your Homework", containing the line "the downfall of too many men is the upkeep of too many women". Ain't that the truth brother!

Love-Song

How shall I hold my soul so it does not
touch on yours. How shall I lift it
over you to other things?
Ah, willingly I’d store it away
with some lost thing in the dark,
in some strange still place, that
does not tremble when your depths tremble.
But all that touches us, you and me,
takes us, together, like the stroke of a bow,
that draws one chord out of the two strings.
On what instrument are we strung?
And what artist has us in their hand?
O sweet song.

     - Rainer Maria Rilke

And summer's lease...

... hath all too short a date. But while it lasted, a period of what can best be described as 'scorchio plus' sapped the energy out of all of us. I personally sought refuge in the Junction Inn, which I have only just realised has air conditioning; presumably because it's the first time they've had to actually turn it on in all the years that I've lived round here. Anyway, while I was there I saw the always excellent Dr Bob & the Bluesmakers. Maria, their lead vocalist, just seems to get better and better, although it would appear that she was also unaware of how cold it was going to be in the pub and rather wished that she had worn more clothes.

This brief hot spell also saw week two of the Battle of Sobotka, and thankfully the temperature in the legendary wargames room wasn't too bad at all by the time we got there. I haven't yet had a chance to reflect in any detail how things developed - although the big, bouncy woman did thoroughly debrief me almost as soon as the game was over - so let's just say that it was once again bad for the Austrians, but not as bad as the week before. Hopefully James will get some photos up soon because the table does look good. Notwithstanding the fact that I was once again on the wrong end of the initiative split (although in fairness I also luckily won a couple of cavalry melees that I shouldn't have done) I can only reiterate that I just love the swings and uncertainties of Piquet.

Sort of related to having seen some blues - with more to come tomorrow - this, especially for Crumb, is Captain Beefheart doing a J.J. Cale song that many of us will best know from the Lynyrd Skynyrd version:

Fracking implausible

And so to the theatre. I have been to see Square Peg's latest production, 'Roseacre'. This is claimed to be in the style of those Scandinavian noir television series that have been very popular over recent years, but as I've never seen any I can't confirm that. What I can say is that it was rather gripping and completely nonsensical; still one can't have everything. Performed in a studio theatre it contained lots of the physicality and character doubling up necessary to compensate for limited props and a small cast, and which I rather like. There was, for example, a very fine and funny method of representing a game of darts in a pub. The plot - something to do with fracking and police infiltration of protest groups - was however absolute tosh. Quite why a Detective Chief Inspector came to be in charge of the riot squad was never explained and the inference that one could change one's DNA along with one's identity was downright bizarre. As for someone's ability to go about their daily life without anyone noticing that their scalp had been sewn back on overnight by a Russian prostitute with the aid of vodka as an antiseptic, let's just say that I have my doubts. Anyway, said escort's description of her relationship with her clients as "I stand on their balls and they call me mother" made my companion for the evening laugh knowingly to herself and me wince. There's a whole world out there of which I am thankfully ignorant.

On a different subject, readers may have wondered why there had been no mention so far this summer of my magic hat; be reassured that I have retrieved it from the cupboard and it is on charge.

That went well

“Misfortune nobly born is good fortune.” - Marcus Aurelius

I recently forecast that the Austrians luck was about to change in the Bohemian Blitzkrieg campaign. I also made the assertion that I was indifferent to both victory and defeat. The first has come true and the second is about to be tested, for it's fair to say that the opening evening of the Battle of Sobotka didn't go entirely to plan. It started very well - I had a cracking draw and my units didn't roll up too badly - but I didn't get much initiative and in particular couldn't rally anything. None of this was helped by some less than optimal starting positions, mainly caused by me trying to leave too many options open. Still, what goes around comes around.

 "Remember that all we have is 'on loan' from Fortune, which can reclaim it without our permission - indeed, without even advance notice." - Seneca

Camaraderie

"Socialism involves a process of striving to advance the goals that define it." - Ralph Miliband

So, Epictetus old chap, what do you think about all this Jeremy Corbyn stuff then? Well, as it happens, I have been giving this some thought. Obviously I have no greater qualifications for having an opinion than having first joined the Labour party on the day after Thatcher became prime minister in 1979, but nevertheless I do have them. Opinions.

Firstly, I have long adhered to the view that the parliamentary Labour party should be representing the views of the wider Labour party and its members rather than dictating policy itself. Should MPs wish to belong to a party where decisions are taken at the top and adhered to with iron discipline all the way down to the foot soldiers (a term I use deliberately) then I suggest they join Sinn Fein.

On the other hand, Corbyn really isn't cutting the mustard. He is, or at least it seems to me, treating the job as some sort of inconsequential adjunct to his normal activities of supporting and publicising various worthy progressive causes. Despite the fact that I agree with most of what he says, that isn't what I want him to do. What is required is someone to organise and deploy an effective opposition to the apalling people currently making an appalling mess of running the country.

And then, and by no means least, what about the workers? The one generally accepted point about the situation in Britain today is that at an ever increasing pace the benefits of society are accruing to a small group of people and everyone else is feeling the pain. Our right wing government promises more of the same disguised behind a facade of disingenuous scaremongering, scapegoating, authoritarianism and indifference. What the country needs is a cogent left-of-centre alternative. All the PLP appear to offer the country is to not be the Tories, while at the same time asserting that the only way to get elected is to be very much like the Tories anyway. For all his faults - which are many - Corbyn at least offers such an alternative vision. In response the only thing that the PLP can say is that their not-Tory offering would be more likely to be accepted if put forward by not-Corbyn.

If, somewhere in the PLP, someone exists who can bring together under one banner the MPs (in their current guise of the political wing of the Economist magazine; socially liberal and economically conservative), the Labour party in the country (socially liberal and righteously socialist economically), and the traditional Labour voting white working class (socially conservative and subconsciously dirigiste economically if one is kind; bigotted and ignorant if one is realistic) then let he or she declare themselves. We all stand ready to be inspired and led on to the new Jerusalem. Sadly, I do not believe such a person exists.

So, there you have it; many opinions, but no solutions.

Summer (a love poem)

I wanted to be sure this was our island

so we could walk between the long stars by the sea

though your hips are slight and caught in the air

like a moth at the end of a river around my arms

I am unable to understand the sun your dizzy spells

when you form a hand around me on the sand

I offer you my terrible sanity

the eternal voice that keeps me from reaching you

though we are close to each other every autumn

I feel the desperation of a giant freezing in cement

when I touch the door you're pressed against

the color of your letter that reminds me of flamingos

isn't that what you mean?

the pleasure of hands and

lips wetter than the ocean

or the brilliant pain of

breathless teeth in a

turbulent dream on a roof

while I thought of nothing

else except you against

the sky as I unfolded you

like my very life a liquid

signal of enormous love we

invented like a comet that

splits the air between us!

the earth looks shiny wrapped in steam and ermine

tired of us perspiring at every chance on the floor

below I bring you an ash tray out of love for the

ice palace because it is the end of summer the end

of the sun because you are in season like a blue

rug you are my favorite violin when you sit and 

peel my eyes with your great surfaces seem intimate

when we merely touch the thread of life and kiss

              - Frank Lima

Coitus Interruptus

“Aucune règle n'existe, les exemples ne viennent qu'au secours des règles en peine d'exister.” 

- André Breton

I have mentioned the Seven Years War campaign that's been going on for a few weeks and if you have any sense you've been reading about it in more detail on James' blog. You may therefore have picked up that there have been some debates about the appropriate method of withdrawal. For my own benefit as much as anything else I wanted to list out my views; not so much about the topic, but about the context in which it is being discussed. So, in no particular order:

• The rules are James' and he is the ultimate arbiter and editor. 
• I personally don't know much about the War of the Austrian Succession or the Seven Years War; indeed I cannot recall ever having read a single book specifically on the subjects. Like a lot of wargamers I have a preference for Horse and Musket games in general, but that's as far as it goes. 
• I have never played the period anywhere other than in the legendary wargames room nor with any other ruleset than Piquet, although I believe James is intending an outing for 'Honours of War' at some point.
• I think I've referred before to my interpretation of the Two Fat Lardies' injunction to play the period and not the rules. In my view it means that people like me should play the rules and if that results in actions that the writers (i.e. those who know about the period) consider wrong then they should change the rules so that we either can't do it or get punished for so doing.
• I play wargames - and indeed boardgames - to win, because they don't make a great deal of sense otherwise, but am neither upset if I don't win or that excited if I do. I've never embraced competitiveness for it's own sake - a philosophical approach that my ex-wife could not understand at all - and in any event when I win a battle it's usually because Peter has rolled a lot of ones on the dice; this is obviously a source of great amusement, but not really a cause for celebration.
• Ever since I've known the various wargamers of Ilkley - which is quite a long time now - they have been prone to changing the rules. James takes it to the next level, with games often not finishing using the rules that they started with, but this has never bothered me particularly. The process is clearly teleological and reflects my observation above about getting the rules to drive period realism.
• The morale chip structure within classic Piquet appears to be there mainly for the purpose of getting relatively small games to finish in a relatively short time frame. Playing larger games and taking longer about it does two things: it highlights illogicalities in the system because these have more chance of becoming apparent; and it introduces new ones as the system has now to do things that it was never intended to.
• The Ilkley Lads (was there ever a bigger case of collective self-delusion than the use of the word 'lads' in this soubriquet?) have made certain incremental adjustments over time, such as a chip loss per unit rather than stand, no chip for a successful challenge, Major Morale card affects the other player, two Major Morale cards, and no doubt others. As far as I am aware there has been no zero-based review; perhaps it's time.

Hold My Hand And I'll Take You There

"When love comes so strong,
There is no right or wrong,
Your love is your life."

And so to the theatre. I decided to go large on the story of tragic love across the boundaries between feuding factions and so, only a day after watching Romeo and Juliet with the eldest Miss Epictetus, her younger sister and I went to see West Side Story. Interestingly this is set in exactly the same period, the 1950s, as that to which Branagh updated Shakespeare - I understand that the performance license for West Side Story doesn't allow any changes at all to the original - although the main conclusion from see the two juxtaposed is the unoriginal one that Italians are ineffably more stylish than Americans.

In the original one sees things mostly from the part of the Montagues, but Arthur Laurents' updating of the story fleshes out Bernardo's character way beyond that of Tybalt, to such an extent that the audience's sympathies switch much more to the heroine's family. And of course the Sharks are way cooler and have the better music. Indeed it was 'America' (the stage version which is rather different to the film version) that stood out as the highlight of this production: vibrant, colourful and beautifully sung. Maria and, especially, Anita were excellent; the acting of Tony, as the younger Miss Epictetus was quick to point out, seem to consist mainly of pointing an outstretched index finger at the other actors. He had a nice voice though.

Such sweet sorrow

And so to the theatre, and also to the cinema as I've been to another live transmission. The elder Miss Epictetus and I have been to see Kenneth Branagh's Romeo and Juliet. I was a latecomer to these, but,as I think I've mentioned before, I'm very impressed. Far from diminishing the theatrical experience the cinematic aspect is done so well that those watching remotely actually get a better deal. Branagh sets his production in 1950's Italy and augments this theme by relaying it in black and white. For those of us whose mental image of that period of Italian history is based on 'La Dolce Vita' this is absolutely on the button; I'm not entirely sure what the large number of.15 and 16 year old GCSE students in the audience made of it.

The production was excellent, with Lily James outstanding as Juliet.The 'fit bloke from Game of Thrones' looked good, got his lines right and didn't fall over as Romeo, and a mention should be made of Meera Syal as the nurse. However, the star of the show was Sir Derek Jacobi as Mercutio. Branagh, in a pre-show exposition, explained his decision to cast the 77 year old by means of a long anecdote involving Oscar Wilde via D.H. Lawrence, although it might just have been simpler to point out that the text doesn't refer to the character's age. Whatever the justification, Mercutio as flâneur works very well. Indeed I am off to buy a cane (although probably not a swordstick) at the earliest opportunity; I have found a personal style for my retirement years.

The luck of the Irish

I posted recently that I thought that the Austrians' luck in the Bohemian Blitzkrieg campaign was about to run out. I haven't changed that opinion, but can report that it hasn't happened yet. Yesterday, in the Battle of Niemes, Maquire (Macquire? McGuire?), exiled son of County Kerry, lost, but not that badly. Given that he had spent much of the time so far not doing anything (apart from the uncharacteristically effective raid on Frederick's supply lines), this was somewhat unexpected.

A quick look at the campaign map will show that this was only ever meant to be a holding action while the much larger Battle of Sobotka takes place. The battlefield was probably as good as it could be for the Austrians and the pre-battle roll up gave the Austrians a defensive position including earthworks, but the Prussians had a much larger, mostly better army. When their commander rolled 'purple' (that's the colour of the bead used to mark his quality;there is a proper term for it, but I can't remember what it is), gaining them a Brilliant Leader card, and Maquire rolled up as poor (a red bead), gaining them a Command Indecision Card, things looked even worse. However, and somewhat paradoxically, it was when I drew appalling morale chips - the absolute bare minimum and then only after drawing for a second time - that there was an improvement in my prospects. In such circumstances I really had no choice except to get rid of my morale as quickly as possible and then withdraw; the rules requiring zero morale before this could take place.

The odd looking Austrian deployment was at least in line with Maquire's low rating, although post battle discussion did reveal that I had more flexibility in setting up my earthworks than I had assumed. My plan was to use my artillery to knock off stands from the advancing Prussians, morale challenging whenever possible, and also use morale chips to attempt to rally in all circumstances where I had lost stands myself. The asymmetrical Prussian deployment left my grenzers (the one element of Austrian advantage in troop quality) with an empty flank in front of them and so, opportunistically, I advanced them and decided to try to use these as well as the artillery to cause casualties. These units shot up the Prussian artillery (good) and then routed when faced with cavalry thereby using up morale chips (also good). I was able to withdraw without any of my other infantry or my cavalry having entered the battle at all. Both sides caused 1 SP of damage during the battle and although I had mentally budgeted for another 1 SP of post-battle pursuit damage I rolled well and that didn't happen either. All in all it could have been a lot worse.

Lessons learned:

• The morale chip rules have always been a slight quirk in Piquet. I think our amendments  make them better, but it would be hard to claim total intellectual coherence.
• I should have moved my badly positioned artillery sooner. The rules allow them to move reasonably quickly, this should be taken advantage of.
• If the battle is scheduled to take eight moves, the attacker shouldn't be afraid to use them all.
• I think Peter fell into the same trap that I did the previous week. The campaign objective of destroying stands means that if one gets the chance to knock off some stands from an enemy that will shortly withdraw then one should take it, even if under other circumstances one would use one's initiative elsewhere.

I think sexual intercourse is in order, Gilbert.

And so to the theatre. Readers may recall the film 'A Private Function' from thirty odd years ago, featuring a pig-napping of the sort which often appear in P.G. Wodehouse's Blandings novels. The film has particular resonance with this blog because the screenplay was written by one of our heroes, the thankfully still very much alive Alan Bennett; because much of it was filmed in Ilkley, the epicentre of wargaming in lower Wharfedale; and because the most sympathetic character, played by another of our heroes, the sadly no longer with us Richard Griffiths, is an accountant. I have now been to see the stage musical version, 'Betty Blue Eyes'.

I'm not really, despite what the lady in the kitchen shop may think, much of a fan of musical theatre, but I have to say that I enjoyed it enormously. In translation from the big screen to the stage and from comedy to musical some things have been added and some lost. It's a while since I have seen the film, but I don't recall dancing girls (and I mean full-on Moulin Rouge style dancing girls) appearing in anyone's front room, nor indeed cameo appearances from Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip.  And, spoiler alert, the fate of the pig has been, how shall we say, made more suitable for family audiences. But it all hurtles along nicely, there are still references to Lady Macbeth for the the intellectually inclined and fart jokes for everyone else, and the cast gave it their all.

Star of the show is the animatronic pig - how could it be otherwise - which is better behaved than one assumes a real one would be. Indeed there are stories of Dame Maggie Smith being chased round a kitchen by one of those used in the film. The pretend pig followed the script perfectly until right at the end when, after taking its bow, it suddenly careered into the scenery and knocked one of its ears off. They should have stuck to that old showbiz rule: never work with children or radio-controlled animals.

Pot58pouri

There's still no painting action chez Epictetus. The new movement trays etc got finished and put away and then so did all the modelling stuff. Perhaps my interest will pick up again when the weather isn't so good. That's a little joke for the benefit of our British readers, although it does give me an excuse to include this clip as a little tribute:

Anyway, hobby stuff has basically been the Seven Years War campaign and a bit of boardgaming. In the former, I am concerned that the Austrians may already have peaked with their rather lucky victory in the Battle of Aussig being followed by all commanders moving when asked. It has to be all downhill from here. Boardgaming for the last two weeks has taken place against a background of constant and unprecedented discussion about politics. Our Monday night group is attended on and off by Americans from the nearby 'secret' military base and it is interesting, if disheartening, to hear their views on it all. I'm not sure which is worse, their lack of understanding of the world outside the US, or their lack of awareness of the way the rest of the world regards the US. And these are people who have not only travelled abroad, but spend all day every day listening to our phone calls. Frightening.

In other news a low level of cultural intake continues. I went to see Bob Fox, folk singer and original Songman in the National Theatre production of War Horse, an evening which also featured short sets from Yan Tan Tether and Jon Palmer, the latter of whom I also saw with his band in the Junction Inn, a pub referenced in his song 'Another Friday Night in a Northern Town'.

In the cinema I saw last season's version of the 'Merchant of Venice' from the Globe plus 'Love & Friendship', the not very widely released film based on Jane Austen's epistolary novella 'Lady Susan'. They were both very funny in parts, with Tom Bennett (now there's a proper Jane Austen name) stealing the second as the clueless Sir James Martin.

In which my eyes are opened by a cosmic encounter

It's boardgame round up time. Hooray!
Champions of Midgard:  A bit like Lords of Waterdeep, but with a more intrusive fantasy theme, which, perhaps inevitably, made no sense at all. I lucked into a win, but I'm not sure how.

Codenames:  The only problem with this otherwise excellent game remains the potential for a lack of shared frame of reference between the two parts of one's team. The young people of today appear to have no knowledge of the names of fielding positions in cricket. Extraordinary.

Cosmic Encounter: The group of people I played with on this occasion, newcomers to the Leeds gaming group, obviously played the game regularly and now I understand how it should be played properly. I'd always enjoyed it previously, but this was much better. Eye-opening.

Escape from the Aliens in Outer Space: I really want to like this more, but it's a great mechanic - albeit that it's just Battleships tweaked a bit - in search of a balanced game. In fact it's almost, but not quite, a hidden identity game worth playing.

Knit Wit: I did not like this at all. Creativity under pressure is really not my thing. For the record it has nothing whatever to do with knitting, a subject with which thanks to the big, bouncy woman I am increasingly familiar.

Marrakech: I love this game. Who would think a game about rug selling could give so many opportunities to stiff one's opponents?

The Networks: I'm not entirely sure about this game about running a TV network. There wasn't a great deal of player interaction and the silly names of the shows and stars were more fun than the gameplay.

No Thanks!: A fun push-your-luck filler, simple to grasp and difficult to win. Recommended.

One Night Revolution: A mixture of One Night Werewolf and Resistance results in rubbish squared.

Puerto Rico: Morally ambiguous worker placement game (who exactly are these workers that I'm recruiting to my plantation and why are they represented by brown pieces?), but a good game nevertheless. It's a close relative of San Juan which I also enjoyed and which is quicker.

The Pursuit of Happiness: A fun game about living a full life, but much of the amusement comes from playing the theme and not the rules. The way to win is surely to become an ascetic and eschew not only relationships, but also a job. Strangely enough hobbies are a quite sensible route to success.

Skull: There is nothing more to be said. A great game which makes you see people in a very different light.

Thebes: A game of competitive archaeology, a theme which seems to have inspired quite a few games. This one is spoiled by one seemingly minor mechanic, the drawing of unearthed treasures from a bag. This brings so much luck into things that the only strategic advice I could give is to make sure that you draw good tiles.

The road to Marston Moor

The whole country would have been as affected by the English Civil War as by the Great War; fighting was widespread and the death toll was proportionately higher than in either world war. Otley's part was somewhat minor. Parliamentarian troops marched through en route to Marston Moor and it is reliably documented that Cromwell held a conference with his commanders in an orchard in the nearby village of Menston. More apocryphally, these passing troops are supposed to have drunk the Black Bull - oldest of Otley's many pubs - dry. This may not be true, but it's firmly rooted in the local popular consciousness, mostly because there's a large plaque on the side of the pub facing the market square which makes the claim to everyone who walks by.

To mark the anniversary of the  battle - July 2nd - the English Civil War Society visited the town to commemorate all aspects of the events of 1644. I only witnessed their attempt at the drinking task through the window as I walked up to the Yew Tree to see the Max Band (excellent, with the highlight being a cracking run through 'Born To Be Wild'), but there they were, in period costume and giving it their best shot.

I did, however, go to see their drill demonstration and display of the sort of skirmish that may have taken place in the run up to the battle. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves, but for lovers of loud bangs and the smell of gunpowder it was a cracking afternoon out.

 We already know that this blog's readership contains those with a taste for women dressed in male military attire - shame on you - and there was much that would have held your interest; a significant proportion of the combat troops involved were women. Look closely at the photos and you'll see what I mean.

Over the Top

And so to the theatre. The centenary of the Great War and of the Somme in particular has been marked by two plays on the stages of Leeds. First up was 'Leeds Pals' which looked at the local volunteers who volunteered together in the first weeks and months of the war and served together in July 1916. This piece was put together specifically for the anniversary and was generally well received with reviews marking it out as a tear jerker. However, I must say that I felt it had a large number of flaws which prevented any real emotional engagement. Firstly they focussed in on two individuals (spoiler alert - one survives, one doesn't), thereby ignoring the real story which was the heavy levels of casualties concentrated on small communities because of the flawed concept of 'Pals Battalions'. Secondly they framed it with story of one Tommy's great grandson's service in Afghanistan which simply diluted the whole thing further. The power of the collective memory of the First World War comes about largely because anyone whose family lived in the UK one hundred years ago has a close connection with those events and probably knows about it and, at least in outline, the part which their relatives played. Afghanistan, and I have no intention of minimising the personal tragedies of those who suffered physically and/or psychologically there, does not have the same resonance. I don't know or know of anyone who served there; since seeing the play I have asked around and haven't found anyone with any personal connection at all to that conflict. Joining the army in the autumn of 1914 was a response to a mixture of existential threat, peer pressure, emotional blackmail and god knows what else. Joining the army in the twenty first century is a career choice. It didn't work dramatically to conflate the two.

Far better was 'Barnbow Canaries' at the West Yorkshire Playhouse, which told the story of an explosion at a munitions factory in Leeds which killed 35 people and was hushed up at the time. The canaries tag was a reference both to the TNT poisoning which slowly turned the women yellow, and to their expendability both during the war, and afterwards when the men returned and took back their jobs. It's probably impossible to write about the First World War without using at least some cliches; the skill of the playwright is best shown in which ones they select and the context in which they place them. Because this is a play about women we get the girl giving herself to the boyfriend leaving for the front, we get resigned spinsterhood given the shortage of men and we get stiff upper lips as the telegrams arrive, all of which succeed where, for example, the pompous posh boy officer from a mine-owning family in command of the 'Leeds Pals' fails. 'Barnbow Canaries' is on for a while longer yet; see if it you can, but beware, this one will bring a tear to your eye.