Pike & Shotte

"Fashion wears out more apparel than the man" - William Shakespeare

And so it is with wargames rules; new ones displacing old more perhaps because they are new than because they are better. One set that has definitely been fashionable for a while is Black Powder, but I personally hadn't played any of the family of rules before this week. We actually used the period specific Pike & Shotte supplement that James had picked up at Derby, with his Italian wars figures as pictured here.

As a first game we obviously got things wrong, especially the best tactics to use, but I enjoyed the game and was left with a positive impression. They contain a number of elements familiar from other newish rulesets that we have tried such as To the Strongest! and Lion Rampant. We shall have another crack next week and hopefully will have a better grip on things thereafter. In the meantime:

Good points:

• They are a toolbox. They will stand up to the inevitable tinkering which we (for which read James) will inflict on them.
• They were definitely quick play; we finished a sizeable enough game with a completely new set of rules in less than three hours.
• The movement rules definitely appealed to me. There isn't much measurement and manoeuvering is treated - in most circumstances - in a very broad brush fashion.
• I quite like the fact that you can't ever rally stuff back to full strength.

Bad points:

• The rulebook is not well written or proofread. The reference sheet and the rulebook are not always in agreement with each other.
• The rules for the restricted movement of units in close proximity to each other are difficult to understand; or at least they were difficult for me to understand. 

Sort-of-in-the-middle-there points:

• There doesn't seem to be scope for the sort of fire, cause morale downgrade and then charge type of tactic to which I am used. It's probably that I just haven't worked out the correct combination of actions.
• There are a variety of special rules (skirmish, elite etc etc) and we didn't really get to grips with these. One must assume that they add to the game.
• One of James' criteria for judging rules is whether they allow - or indeed demand - that one 'wangle the angle'. These don't when opposing units are far apart, but seem nothing but angle wangling when they are close together. Once again, it may just be that I haven't got my head round it yet.

I won the game, as the Imperialists. I had a plan based on the rules for breaking command groups, and which didn't work at all. In the end my victory came because of rather good luck both in a cavalry melee where I got charged both in the back and the front and still came off best and in the final clash of pike blocks. I prefer games which are unpredictable, but hope that the way this game turned on a few dice rolls isn't what always happens. I should also mention that I lost a Gendarme vs Stradiot melee by rolling five dice and getting five ones, a less than 7,500 to 1 chance; I'm prepared to write that one off as a fluke.

I have dined with kings...

 "Having these colossal accolades and titles, they get in the way." - Bob Dylan

A Nobel prize for Dylan! Well, that has got to be worth a rare second posting of the day.

You have elected the way of pain!

"The thing I have always tried to do is surprise people; to present them with something they didn't expect." - Christopher Lee

As far as I'm aware - and please correct me if you know better - Lee wasn't one of the many wargaming actors, unlike his colleague Peter Cushing. Nevertheless the surprise I have in mind is that I'm going to write about wargaming in what purports to be a wargaming blog. My convalescence has moved on from doing nothing except watch the television (a large number of documentaries about the second World War, just over half of the 1973 BBC series 'The Pallisers', and a reminder of how good Jeremy Brett was as Sherlock Holmes) to being able to do some painting. I have virtually finished the Roman legionaries that were mysteriously clogging up the desk and so had to decide what to do next. I believe that I mentioned that I bought a couple of German machine guns and crews (one firing and one being carried) at Derby. In my mind they were MG08/15 light machine guns, but on closer inspection they are the original MG08 medium guns and as such not much use for the scenario that I have in mind for the first try out of Through the Mud and the Blood. I therefore feel obliged to do what any wargamer would do in the circumstances, rush the shiny and new to the front of the painting queue ahead of any stuff that would actually fit in with my plans to play games. It's the only way.

Not the review of 2016

I inadvertently published a post yesterday entitled 'Review of 2016' prompting one keen reader - that would be you Mr Freitag - to tell me that I had left out the real highlight of my year. Maybe I did, or maybe I am optimistic that the best day of the year is yet to come. Currently I'm forecasting Friday October 21st to be very good; who knows, there could be others. In any event that post - an aide memoire for when I do post my eagerly anticipated review of the full year - has been reverted to draft.

As such it has been added to with yet more stuff. I have been to the cinema a couple of times, both films having a Latin American tinge. Firstly I went to see 'Que Horas Ela Volta?', a Brazilian film from last year, which was both funny and a microcosm of class conflict as described by Marx and Engels in The Communist Manifesto. Secondly I went to see 'Havana Moon', the film of the Rolling Stones concert in Cuba earlier this year. There wasn't much socialist theory going on there, despite Jagger referring to Richards as his compadre. There was, however, a huge amount of energy on display from four people who are even older than your bloggist, and have lived - how can I put this? - full lives. Anyway, if you like the Rolling Stones (and I do) then this contains some very impressive performances of songs such as 'Midnight Rambler', 'Paint It Black' and all the well known stuff. Jagger has to look ridiculous at some point in proceedings, presumably it's contractual, and here it is on 'Sympathy for the Devil' where he dons an ill-advised coat that reminded me less of the devil than of Giant Haystacks, the wrestler.

Il Dittico

And so to the opera. I have mentioned before my love of verismo and so I painfully rose from my sickbed (aka the rather swish reclining chair in my living room) to go and see a double bill of one act Puccini operas: Il tabarro and Suor Angelica.

I'd seen the former about a decade or so ago when, and I acknowledge that this is of no interest to anyone else, I sat directly behind Germaine Greer in the audience. Verismo is perhaps easier to recognise than to define, but this is definitely the stuff. The plot should serve as a warning to anyone contemplating dabbling in anything extra-marital. Things really do not end well for the man sleeping with the married woman; although as some small compensation he gets some top tunes to sing while he's still with us. In fact life seems pretty miserable for everyone involved, but that's opera for you.

The latter work I had never seen, and it frankly wasn't any more cheerful. It isn't the bleakest opera about nuns; should you really want to be depressed then check out Poulenc's Dialogues des Carmélites. Forzano's libretto doesn't seem very sympathetic to the Roman Catholic church; the Christianity portrayed here is all about guilt and punishment; forgiveness of sins and redemption don't get much of a look in. However, musically it was excellent. The standout was Anne Sophie Duprels in the title role, a lovely voice and a more than passable backside. If that sounds unnecessary then you need to believe me that it wasn't anything like as gratuitous as the directorial decision to tell her to get her kit off in the first place. Many operas - Il tabarro for example - are rather erotically charged, and yet in all the dozens of Opera North productions that I've seen over the years everyone has always kept their clothes on. Quite why they decided that a piece set in a convent, with an all female cast and concerning a mother's grief at losing a child would benefit from nudity is not entirely clear. Rupert Christiansen, in his Telegraph review, describes that bit as 'rather naff' and he's not wrong.

Time in Eternity

When you were as an angel in my arms,
Had laid your bare head just below my chin,
Your length pressed up to mine, entrusting charms
My whole youth's starward longing could not win;
With still the murmur of your love in me,
Miracle-tones of all my lifelong hope,
I wished that there might start eternity
And seal forever that sweet envelope;
And as it did, my thoughts are now for you
As every star is blotted by the sun,
And so the sun itself
Has perished too,
And with it, every dream of mine
But one.

             - Tom Merrill

Pot61pouri

"I am not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world." - Socrates 

Needless to say, I fully concur with him. Nathanial Hawthorne once wrote that "Human nature will not flourish, any more than a potato, if it be planted and replanted, for too long a series of generations, in the same worn-out soil. My children have had other birthplaces, and, so far as their fortunes may be within my control, shall strike their roots into unaccustomed earth." Nothing demonstrates that lack of flourishing more than the stunted moral compass of Theresa May and her Little Englander acolytes.

My health continues to improve, although I still get tired very easily. Nevertheless I have managed to get out to a number of things, albeit far fewer than those that I had tickets for and didn't get to. I saw the National Theatre's broadcast of 'The Threepenny Opera', which was excellent. At the risk of repeating myself, these broadcasts really are a great resource for those of us who live in the provinces. I have also seen a touring production of 'A Tale of Two Cities', entertaining enough, but Sidney Carton's actions never get any more plausible. I find the alternative put forward by Keith Laidler in 'The Carton Chronicles' to be much more convincing. Last, but not least, I have been to see Peggy Seeger. Despite being in her eighties she is still in fine voice and is a more than effective multi-instrumentalist. She was strongest on the more personal songs, those written for her by her late brothers or by Ewan MacColl. And the young chap accompanying her did what I thought was impossible; he played a banjo - a fretless banjo in this case - in a way that I actually enjoyed.

And, for the record, I voted for Jeremy Corbyn again.

I will speak with the King or I will die

"In war there is no prize for runner-up" - Seneca

Or is there? I have been to the Derby Worlds wargame show to help James with his display game and he followed up last year's 'Best Display Game' with winning joint 'Best Display Game' this year. The concept of two games receiving exactly the same number of votes in a secret ballot of the hundreds of punters attending the show seems somewhat unlikely, so I suspect a stitch up somewhere along the line. Quite who got shafted and why must remain a mystery, but I doubt it was us; the co-winners were monumentally pissed (1) all day so perhaps there was a moral dimension to whatever happened.

My usual role at these affairs is to carry things from the car to the table and then back again, but my illness made this impossible so I switched to ensuring that history was reversed and the Prussians lost the Battle of Lobositz. The scenario opens with a futile cavalry charge, but somehow the attack actually did rather well, dislodging two of the infantry units in the sunken road. Sadly I got carried away with it all, pressed the attack too much and then the wheels came off. Frederick did a runner - I still have no idea how he came to be Frederick the Great - and things slowly disintegrated. I must spare a mention for the Prussian Garde du Corps. Normally guard units on the tabletop perform appallingly, it's one of the most well known laws of wargaming, but on this occasion they swept all before them and at the end remained the only Prussian unit not to have suffered a fall in morale.

I also had a quick go at the participation game of the Battle of Northampton put on by the author of the Wargaming for Grown-Ups blog, and thoroughly enjoyed it. It was quick, based on what happened historically, but also allowing for the 'military possibilities' beloved of Messrs Featherstone and Roach. For the record I won a major victory as the Yorkists, capturing and executing all of the leaders on the Lancastrian side, but sadly failing to seize Henry VI.

There was a small amount of shopping. I bought some Hexon slopes. I really struggle with the three dimensional thinking required when laying it all out, but I believe (hope!) that I have bought the bits necessary to put out some straight edge raised ground. I also bought some trees from the, er, tree man and a couple of German machine guns - one being fired, one being transported - from Early War Miniatures. Hopefully this will give a bit of impetus to the still sadly languishing Great War project.

So, a thoroughly enjoyable weekend. It left me tired, but I'm glad that I went. It's a good venue - the breakfast is astonishing value - and the organisers are helpful and efficient. I look forward to returning.

(1) for the benefit of Americans and others who don't have English as their first language that is pissed as in inebriated.

Longueurs

Benvolio: What sadness lengthens Romeo's hours?
Romeo: Not having that, which, having, makes them short.

За Родину, честь и свободу!

My illness - from which I have largely recovered, but the after effects of which linger on; I currently have costochondritis - has made this a thin month for boardgaming. However I see no reason not to bore you with a list of games played anyway.

Boom: Runaway: An amusing filler card game about bombs trying to escape from the arsenal. This has possibly the largest ratio of difficulty of explanation and scoring to playing time of any game that I know.

Codenames: Pictures: Pleasant enough, but for me not as good as the original word version.

Dead Last: Pointless and random tontine based game, whose only virtue is that it can incorporate an awful lot of players.

Eminent Domain: A simple enough drafting and deck building game. Its weakness is that the military and research strategies aren't worth pursuing. Stick to colonising and trading and you'll win more often than not.

Five Tribes: I really like the mancala mechanism in this, but am less keen on some of the others, especially the purchase of djinns. Some of the iconography is pretty impenetrable and, of course, there are not five tribes at all. Good game though.

The Grizzled: At Your Orders!: I've always enjoyed The Grizzled and this expansion radically changes and improves the game. So it's a thumbs up from me. I've still never managed to get my character to survive the Great War though.

Oceanos: Inoffensive drafting game loosely themed around Jacques Cousteau type exploration. There is a push your luck element, but like many return on investment type games many possible strategies aren't worth a candle. There's also too large a random element somewhat similar to the flaw in Thebes.

Quartermaster General: Air Marshal: I love this game, but unbelievably it's the first time that I've played it this calendar year. I was the Soviet Union and, rather historically, resisted the blitzkrieg and then swept back and captured Germany. The allies won on the twentieth turn.

Shakespeare: A eurogame with a pasted on Shakespeare theme, but entertaining for all that. 

Skull: Never fails.

Time misspent in youth...

"The wine of youth does not always clear with advancing years; sometimes it grows turbid." 

- Carl Jung

“Some old men, continually praise the time of their youth. In fact, you would almost think that there were no fools in their days, but unluckily they themselves are left as an example.” 

- Alexander Pope

Raw With Love

I will remember the kisses
our lips raw with love
and how you gave me
everything you had
and how I
offered you what was left of
me,
and I will remember your small room
the feel of you
the light in the window
your records
your books
our morning coffee
our noons our nights
our bodies spilled together
sleeping
the tiny flowing currents
immediate and forever
your leg my leg
your arm my arm
your smile and the warmth
of you
who made me laugh
again.

     -  Charles Bukowski

Isaiah Chapter 38 Verses 10-16

Firstly, many thanks to those who have wished me well. I am slowly recovering and very much hope to be at the Derby Worlds show next weekend. We apparently have the same table as last year, just inside the door; handy for the full English, but less so for the bogs. Feel free to stop by and say hello, preferably to James or Peter.

At any event I hope to be able to resume my métier as boulevadier and flâneur without too much further delay. It's been a drag.

“Illness reduces man to his basic state: a cloaca in which the chemical processes continue. The meaningless hegemony of the involuntary.” - Paul Bowles

Medical update

I've had a bit of a relapse and have been back in A&E, although hopefully I'm back on the mend again. I'm certain that the nature of the problem has now been identified, which at least makes it easier to treat. In the meantime I am enjoying some bed rest.

And everywhere there was song and celebration

It is the Otley Folk Festival this weekend. I became aware that it had started when, having retired not particularly early, I was awoken by someone singing 'Dirty Old Town' very loudly outside my house. I didn't mind that so much, but was somewhat less pleased when upon stepping out of my front door this morning I walked straight into three morris dancers. I was accompanied by the big bouncy woman who, to my astonishment, professed a liking for men prancing around with bells on their trousers and pigs bladders on sticks. Still as Jean-Paul Sartre said "We do not judge the people we love".

On the subject of quotations, it was Winston Churchill who first said "Never let a good crisis go to waste". I'm now feeling slightly better and so I have suspended my no nursing rule; the big bouncy woman was with me because she had been on first shift today.  Always careful of her reputation she is keen that I should point out to readers that the level of any perking up that may have taken place was specially tailored to my invalid status.

After lunch, when I'd also been visited by la seconda infermiera, I felt well enough to step outside to give the folk festival's street entertainment the once over. It was all very pleasant: the sun shone, the streets were busy, there was food and drink (not for Epictetus, who hasn't eaten anything but porridge for some days now), and the Ukulele Orchestra of Otley were just packing up as I arrived. In my brief visit I saw passable covers of songs from artists such as John Martyn and Joni Mitchell plus a Chuck Berry song that I'd never heard before. It wasn't one of his best, but any Chuck Berry song has got to be good right? Except for 'My Dingaling' obviously.

All I need is my baby

Well, I'm still around. I've now eaten and slept for the first time in a few days, although not much of either. Together with the painkillers and the overuse of a bronchodilator this has resulted in a certain detachment from the real world. What better way to write a blog posting?

Epictetus has not been without offers of nursing care, but this obviously poses a bit of a scheduling nightmare; I am not in the mental state necessary to guarantee avoiding unfortunate meetings on the doorstep and thus I've declined most such suggestions so far. I did have a brief visit from the younger Miss Epictetus (who, by the way, is building up to running her first marathon on Sunday) and have otherwise managed by myself. Obviously not eating means no need to shop, so that's one problem solved. I could probably do with hanging out the washing that's been in the machine since Tuesday though.

For those who know Leeds, I was in Jimmys. I won't bore you with the details except to say that the CT scan was extremely peculiar. Not unpleasant - as for example MRI scans are - but most odd. Anyway, I've posted several versions of St James Infirmary Blues in the past so here's Humble Pie and "I Don't Need No Doctor":

Honey it's real

Readers may possibly have noticed - Peter definitely has - that I took a lighthearted, indeed jocular, view of losing my voice. I rather misjudged the situation. Not only did I subsequently get rushed to hospital in a blue-light ambulance, but it happened twice; all within the space of six hours. Finding myself lying on a bed in A&E with an oxygen mask over my face and an armful of tubes was another clue that I may have been a touch blasé. On the plus side, on my discharge I managed to blag a sizable quantity of codeine from the hospital pharmacy.

Hush

Still no vocal action for Epictetus, so any noise needs to come from elsewhere:

Love is a colloid hydrogel:

Or maybe it's a shear thinning non-Newtonian fluid:

Lamentations Chapter 3 Verse 28

“All I have is a voice.” - W.H. Auden

Sadly, what was true for Wystan is not so for Epictetus, who has lost his voice. Still, as Publilius Syrus said in his sententiae, "I often regret that I have spoken; never that I have been silent".

The good times outweigh the bad

My heart has made its mind up
And I'm afraid it's you.
Whatever you've got lined up,
My heart has made its mind up
And if you can't be signed up
This year, next year will do.
My heart has made its mind up
And I'm afraid it's you.

     -  Wendy Cope

In a short time, this will be... a long time ago

The cinema hasn't featured in my life much recently, but suddenly I've been twice in fourteen hours. Firstly I saw 'Slow West', a western from last year that will appeal to anyone who liked Tarantino's 'Hateful Eight'. It's leisurely and amusing, interspersed with bloody violence. Look out for some literal visual interpretation of proverbs; I spotted 'salt in the wounds' and 'giving an arm and a leg'. Then, by way of a change, I went to see Woody Allen's latest 'Café Society'. It's set partly among 1930's New York organised crime gangs and so there is violence here as well. In what I thought was the one thing wrong with what is otherwise a fine, if typical, Allen film, the violence is made a source of amusement and somehow our hero is allowed to drift through untainted by it. There's nothing revolutionary about this film - the other setting is golden age Hollywood as already seen this year in 'Hail Ceasar' and the main theme of the film isn't that dissimilar to that in Ayckbourn's 'Relatively Speaking' which I saw at the theatre the other week - but it's highly enjoyable. The elder Miss Epictetus with whom I saw it - she leaves for pastures new on Wednesday - assures me that Kristen Stewart is a lot better here than in the Twilight films, and Jesse Eisenberg gives a pitch perfect impersonation of Woody Allen.

And staying on the gangster theme, here's an in memoriam tribute to the great Prince Buster

The little country in which you do not live

 "The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting." - Sun Tzu

I thought I'd put together a few thoughts about the campaign that we recently didn't really finish. Not in a move by move, chess analysis type way, but overall impressions.  In fact to get the detailed stuff right out of the way first: I didn't win the campaign simply because I lost the Battle of Sobotka.

The first general point is the obvious one that there is a dichotomy between one aim of a campaign being to create tabletop battles and another aim being to win the thing. The latter rather militates against the former because no one wants to fight unless they think they'll be successful; and lopsided battles don't provide much of an evening's entertainment.

I think in our particular case this was exacerbated by the version of Piquet being used (James' patent mid 18th century version) rather favouring the Prussians. I'm not saying this is wrong and it's by no means unique. For example Beneath the Lily Banners for the Great Northern War makes the Swedes fairly unbeatable in my experience. I'd be interested in whether the tabletop ruleset for which the campaign was designed were as one sided. On the other hand if the Austrians take the obvious route and don't fight it's very difficult for the Prussians to win, because the Austrians have all the victory points to start with and because of where and when their reinforcements arrive.

The campaign rules also reward splitting up into small - ridiculously small - forces and using them to delay strategic moves in what didn't seem to be terribly realistic ways. I wasn't sure whether the alternate move sequence favoured the Prussians, who moved first, or the Austrians, who moved second. The out of supply rules caused a certain amount of debate as did various other bits such as retreating after battle. James has - with input from Peter and I - rewritten everything. Hopefully this new version addresses all the previous issues and doesn't introduce any new ambiguities.

 "Laws should be constructed so as to leave as little as possible to the decision of those who judge" - Aristotle

Une piece bien faite

And so to the theatre. I have been to see Alan Ayckbourn's 'Relatively Speaking'. Whilst there is an overlap with the themes of 'Deep Blue Sea' and both are 'well-made' plays - Rattigan's because that's what he did and Ayckbourn's because Stephen Joseph told him to write one - this piece isn't trying to make any particular point; the author fully abides by the limits that farce places on character depth and development. He's just trying to make people laugh and, as usual with this playwright, he succeeds. It's a very funny play, despite essentially being one joke stretched over two hours. And as it happened the largest laugh came in response to the suggestion that a husband's shame at finding out that his wife is having an affair would apparently be all the greater if it was discovered that the man in question was very much older than her, albeit coupled with admiration for the fact that the lover was still up to it at his age.

The stars were Robert Powell and Liza Goddard. I don't wish to diminish Goddard's career, but surely the most interesting thing about her is that she has been married to both Doctor Who and Alvin Stardust; she should be a pub quiz question. Powell on the other hand will always be, at least for someone of my vintage, the Son of God in Zeffirelli's 'Jesus of Nazereth'.

Possibly the least followed of all Christ's teachings, although there are many contenders

Powell had no problems delivering Ayckbourn's lines though; after all he had long ago demonstrated his comedic chops in 'The Detectives' with Jasper Carrot. If you've never seen it then you're in for a treat; it can be found on YouTube.

Possibly the funniest of the episodes of 'The Detectives'; although there are many contenders

I can't remember whether I mentioned it, but the Carmen I saw in Verona was also directed by Zeffirelli. He is, and like Alan Bennett he is still thankfully with us, a man of huge influence and range of achievements. My own personal favourite is that he was reputedly the inspiration for Uncle Monty in 'Withnail and I' as played by the late, great Richard Griffiths: "There is a certain je ne sais quoi - oh, so very special - about a firm, young carrot...Excuse me..."

Dinosaurs, dodos, miners

And so to the theatre. I have been to see Brassed Off, a stage adaptation of Mark Herman's 1996 film. Some people - Crumb to be precise - feel that the film stereotypes northerners. I'm not from the north myself - although Herman is - but I am working class - absolutely no idea on Herman's class background - and I think that it's actually working class people who are stereotyped: solidarity, hearts of gold, like a pint etc etc.  The Rough Guide to Film  is quoted in Wikipedia as describing Herman's style as "partly gritty, party feel-good socialist realist", which seems fair enough. However despite the clichés and the plot full of holes I found the the film entertaining enough, and it contains a very fine performance from Pete Postlethwaite as the band leader; even Stephen Tomkinson isn't too bad as his son. I saw the latter play Charley's Aunt on stage once; I've no idea what happened to Ewan McGregor who is also in it.

The theatrical version sticks closely to the film script. The snooker and Mr Chuckles at the children's party scenes happen off stage, but in the move away from realism the chance is taken to have a permanent stage presence of a picket from 'Women Against Pit Closures', an effective continual reminder of the context against which the comedy is being played out. The music, provided by the City of Bradford Brass band is also beautifully and smoothly integrated and the performances - with the possible exception of the baby, which cried so much that it had to be taken off stage - are very good. All of which results in a production which, despite the clichés and the plot full of holes, is entertaining enough.

But as well as entertaining, it also asks the audience a question that remains as valid today as it was at the time of the film and the events that it portrayed: which side are you on, boys? Which side are you on?

Remorse, the fatal egg by pleasure laid

And so to the theatre. I have been to see Terence Rattigan's 'Deep Blue Sea' in another of the National Theatre's outside broadcasts. Now I am not particularly familiar with Rattigan's oeuvre. I'm hoping to see 'French Without Tears' shortly and know that to be a comedy and so I set off in cheerful mood. My companion for the evening took what I thought was an uncalled for delight as she told me that in fact we were in for a rather more downbeat time.

People who use internet dating sites quickly adopt a heuristic approach to choosing a potential partner. Women are apparently pretty quick to reject those men pictured with very large fish, doubly so if they - the men - are shirtless. Men, or so I am told, are prone to avoid women whose photos include horses, comedy spectacles, inflatable sumo wrestling outfits...well you get the idea. However, the women to be avoided at all costs by any chap wishing for a quiet life are surely those who describe themselves as a 'hopeless romantic'.

The relevance of this is that Freddy Page (ably played by Tom Burke, recently seen as Dolokhov in the very same BBC production of War and Peace mentioned here only yesterday) would have done well to heed that advice. The central hook on which the play hangs is that he can no more give Hester Collyer (Helen McCrory, last seen on these pages appearing in Medea) what she longs for than could the husband whom she left to be with him. Freddy, I think it's fair to say, has no hidden depths. During the war, when he served with distinction in the RAF and as a test pilot, this presumably helped him to cope. When Hester indicated her availability it would have been his focus on the immediate moment rather than thinking through the implications (socially devastating at that time) that made him respond as he did. There is a moral here for women looking for a bit of extramarital excitement; but what would I know about that?

The play has dated. The central role still has validity which is helpful because, as the director has said, there aren't many strong female roles around. That in itself is ironic because the genesis of the play is in the end of one of Rattigan's gay relationships, which was transmuted to a heterosexual one because it could not otherwise have been staged. And that's one of the problems: in the 21st century not only does the whole divorce/unmarried cohabiting stigma not resonate, but nor would the real repressed passion behind it all. In addition all the other characters are no longer recognisable in society. The dashing war hero who has lost his raison d'être means nothing to my children's generation, although presumably heartfelt at the time (Ratiigan himself saw active service in Bomber Command); Miller, the Page's neighbour, has clearly been interned as an enemy alien at some point, but the reference to this goes over the head of the audience in the National Theatre auditorium who laugh instead at what they believe to be a derogatory reference to the denizens of the Isle of Man; Sir William Collyer and his like are still running the country, but are considerably more socially liberal these days and are unlikely to make turgid speeches about wifely duty, or indeed take their summer holidays at Sunningdale; and as for the (token) white working class character being a repository of tolerance - do me a favour.

After the first act the women in the audience were all but shouting "He's not worth it" - spoiler alert; he's not - while I was comparing it to 'Anna Karenina' and 'A Doll's House'. To be honest it's more like those blended with 'The Curious Case of Benjamin Button' or Martin Amis' short novel 'Time's Arrow'. So, well acted and staged, but not much more.

A fried egg sandwich features as the action comes to an end. I have a vaguely amusing, and true, story about one of those and an LSD trip, but sadly I have neither the space nor time to include it here.

Lo! Cintra’s glorious Eden intervenes

"& above all of Cintra, the most blessed spot in the habitable globe" - Robert Southey

It has been pointed out to me that going to Sintra via Estoril is a strange route to take unless one's starting position is somewhere out in the Atlantic Ocean. That is obviously true and I stand corrected. I suspect that what I was really doing while sneering through the train window at Estoril's lack of scale was taking a day trip from Lisbon to Cascais. I'd rather go to Sintra anyway, it's a much nicer place. Byron must have liked it - although it was one of the many words that he couldn't spell properly - and he started writing 'Childe Harold's Pilgrimage' while he was there.

“Everything in Sintra is divine. There is no corner that is not a poem.” -Eça de Queirós

That, by the way, is a quote from Os Maias, my favourite of his novels, and one that cries out for a BBC Andrew Davies adaptation. Eça de Queirós should rank alongside Dickens and Tolstoy and this book's main theme, explicitly stated, is one that the latter only alludes to in War and Peace; although Davies of course wasn't as reticent.

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.