Pot90pouri

Firstly, commiserations to Jonathan Freitag over at Palouse Wargaming Journal, who, in case you hadn't heard, has broken his leg. Get well soon old chap, and I trust you will find a productive way to use the time.

Last night was day 2 of Sidi Rezegh Day 2. You may have formed the impression that I didn't like either the scenario or the the rules, and you would be correct in doing so. I'm not going to say any more about the set up of the game, except to remind you that it involves the Germans charging onto the table, the British moving towards them and then eventually someone winning. I am however going to be rude about the rules. Now, clearly James really likes them, and he is a person of high standing within the wargaming fraternity, whereas I am just some chap who dabbles in toy soldiers in such intervals as a heavy schedule of cultural activities and wanton women allows. Nevertheless, I don't like Blitzkreig Commander.

In no particular order:

• I don't like the way the benefits of being in cover increase in an exponential manner while the benefits of better quality or greater quantity are linear.
• I don't like the lack of a target priority rule, which inevitably results in ganging up on the opposition's strongest unit.
• I don't like the key role played by command radius, a spurious concept at the best of times and one that seems out of place in the period. In practice it is a significantly greater handicap to attackers than it is to defenders and makes it difficult to co-ordinate close assaults with artillery support. There is a small tweak in the rules to somewhat ameliorate this issue, but James has taken it back out of his house rules; wrongly, in my opinion.
• I don't like the activation mechanism. It is crude and offers the player no real choices; one simply keeps rolling until one fails. I would compare it unfavourably with, for example, the process used in To the Strongest!, which achieves a similar objective, but relies on the player making some real decisions. 

So, to recap, I don't like it.

Laser cutting continues, and I am pleased to say that I think I am beginning to get the hang of the various programmes and machinery involved. Which makes it all the more surprising that my first attempt at a corner for the wall didn't fit together and had to be thrown away. In happier news I have produced another attempt at a warband base, which is shown above squaring off against a couple of Roman units. 

This is it compared to the base I have previously been using; much better I think.

Peace Studies

A number of people seem to have assumed that I was being metaphorical yesterday when I described my film going companion as having a degree in Peace Studies. But no, not so, she was awarded a B.A. Peace Studies by the University of Bradford. It used to be a unique course, in the UK at least, although I don't know if that still obtains. There is a department of War Studies at Kings College, London; the two used to hold an annual football match, maybe they still do. It was a widely held view amongst students reading other subjects at the university in the 1970s that Peace Studies wasn't what one might think of as a 'proper course'. Indeed it was universally accepted that the only timetabled activity that they had each week was a requirement to spend an hour or so one afternoon in the department, lounging on bean bags and drinking herbal tea. My acquaintance, who I only met a few weeks ago, demurred when I put this to her, but she studied in the 1980s, so maybe things had changed a bit by then. I do know a number of excellent stories about one Peace Studies student contemporary of mine - I shall call him Raif - and will perhaps return to them in another post. One of my favourite memories is of him putting theory into practice by attempting to convince two sets of angry football supporters (of Bolton Wanderers and Tottenham Hotspur as it happens) that they should refrain from aggression towards each other because they had more in common than they had differences. Fortunately we managed to rescue him in time.

My new friend is plugged in to the circle of Bradford graduates who remained in the city after graduation and we have discovered that among them are some that I knew back in the day. Very sadly one of those died between Christmas and New Year, before I got a chance to renew our acquaintance. It's a salutary reminder that life is short and getting shorter.

Going back to Peace Studies, as far as I am aware the course hasn't produced any notable politicians. There are however two alumni of the wider university in reasonably prominent positions in the UK at the moment. The first, Clive Lewis, is standing for the leadership of the Labour Party. His flagship policy seems to be the abolition of the monarchy. Whilst I'm all for that, I'm also well aware that it isn't a vote winner; indeed it isn't going to win my vote as a party member for him. The second has appeared in this blog before. At one point the two main parties seemed to be competing as to which had the worst MP named Williamson, and the Tory entry was Gavin, also an ex-student in the Wool City. In the topsy-turvey, Alice in Wonderland world of British politics he, despite being both useless and a self-serving toad, was actually fired as Defence Secretary for being on the right side of an argument. Still, you can't keep a bad man down and he is currently Secretary of State for Education.

1917 and all that

I have been to see '1917', as I'm sure many readers will have. ["I cannot refrain" interjects the long absent Rhetorical Pedant "from pointing out that you don't have many readers."] Fair point, no offence taken. I have been to see '1917', as I'm sure a high proportion of my readers will have.

"What I am about to order you to do makes no sense at all. Do I make myself clear?"

I went to see it on an IMAX screen, which I think was a good decision because the film is all about the spectacle. The set-up, and therefore the plot, is frankly ridiculous. The first comment by my companion for the afternoon, a woman with so little interest in military history that she actually has a degree in Peace Studies, as we left the screen was "Why didn't they drop the message from an aeroplane?". Why not indeed? Still, I - and she - thoroughly enjoyed it and so would you. It is a feast for the eyes, full of tension and with emotional moments that ring true rather than being overplayed. I do wonder who milked the cow though.

As I am writing about films can I say that I have also seen 'Little Women' and 'Knives Out', both of which were also excellent. Both adopted a non-chronological approach to the narrative and in both cases it worked to great effect despite one being a classic, the fate of whose characters is well known to most viewers before it starts, and the other being a whodunnit, with the need for key details to be kept back until the end. They featured a number of British and Irish actors doing American accents and the only one that didn't wobble at all across the two films was Daniel Craig. I am inclined to believe that's because he wasn't so much attempting a real southern US accent as performing some strange concoction of his own; highly entertaining whatever it was.

Still, it was good to watch Christopher Plummer without constantly expecting him to whip out a guitar and start singing 'Edelweiss', something that always spoils 'Waterloo' for me.

One half mass times velocity squared

I'm partial to both military history and physics and so was delighted when they were combined in the latest Royal Armouries talk, which was on the development of very large guns since the Crimean War, with (some) reference to the science behind them. Subjects covered ranged from Mallet's Mortar to the Iraqi Supergun, via the Paris gun, Gustav and Dora and the V3.

Mallet's achievement was perhaps the most impressive, given that he started more or less from scratch in his application of the scientific method to the problem which he faced; namely how to destroy the fortress at Sebastopol, the task which was to eventually be completed by Schwerer Gustav nearly a century later. He successfully reverse engineered the required shell size (anticipating Barnes Wallis in his calculations), overcame the problem of circumferential stress in the barrel, and used a modular design for ease of transport. All he didn't manage was to complete the task before the war ended; the gun was never fired in anger.

The weapon that really caught your bloggist's attention was the Pariser Kanone, not least because its range was so great that when aiming they had to take account of the rotation of the earth, a subject which of course has often featured here before. According to the speaker, Paris moved four miles between the gun being fired and the shell landing; it was not a precision weapon.

One interesting analogy used was that the kinetic energy of a projectile leaving the barrel of a WWI 7.5cm field gun (i.e. those included in my Square Bashing games) was equivalent to that of an articulated lorry travelling at 100 mph.

Laser-less focus

Despite Bruce Lee's advice of the other day I couldn't really call myself a wargamer if I didn't wander off topic occasionally. I am still making progress on the modular wall thingie, but I have allowed myself to consider what the laser cutter could do for another of my in-hand projects. As I'm sure I have mentioned before I have decided to beef up my Romans and Ancient Britons. Having made To the Strongest! the rules of choice, and the size of the table therefore determining the size of the squares, I find that the units I have now look a little on the small side. It is easy enough to upgrade most things - just paint some more - but the warbands are more difficult. They are already based in the largest available movement tray that Warbases make, and sticking two together doesn't look good at all. So, what could I knock up myself?

For reasons I have since forgotten, most figures are based on pennies, while those bearing standards, totems and musical instruments are based on 2p pieces as are the chieftain type figures that I use to represent heroes, and casualty markers are on 30mm circular bases; hence the different sized holes in the above.

Add a base layer and one has a movement tray. My idea is that, instead of standing behind the tray and getting forgotten when they move, heroes and casualty markers will be on the same base, at the back. Incidentally, the stuff in the background is what I think will be the production version of the wall tower.

This is the painted up version.

And this is it standing next to the existing movement tray. I think the concept is good, but the design still needs work. One problem is ironically that in trying to represent a 'deep' unit in  TtS! terms, I have made the base too deep. I shall have another go, flattening out the oval a bit  and squeezing the figures together.

Wot, no cake!

So, we're having another bash at Sidi Rezegh. James claims that it's been four years since we last did it, but I think he means that it seems as if it takes four years every time that we do. If you read his blog you will see that he is very complimentary about Blitzkrieg Commander 4 (*); I shall go as far as to say that it is better than Blitzkrieg Commander 3. Part of my reluctance to say more is because, as I have admitted before, I don't know very much about the period (**). I would genuinely like to learn more, for example why, in the whole of the six weeks of Operation Crusader, there appears to have only been one battle.

I won't tell you in detail what happened - and nor will James because he didn't take any photos - but all you need to do is look back at previous reports of refights: the Germans made a futile infantry attack on the escarpment while waiting for their tanks to turn up. The Panzers will arrive next week and the accompanying 88mm gun will destroy all the British armour and that will be that. You read it here first, or perhaps you read it the last time we did it, or the time before that, or the time before.....

What was noteworthy was that I managed to activate one command five times in one turn which, for those who don't know the rules, is virtually impossible. On the other hand my opening artillery barrage achieved absolutely nothing and the untouched defenders suppressed everything they fired at, so luck was reasonably even.


*   Apart that is from all the bits with which he disagrees and has changed already.
** I mean in a wargaming sense obviously.

功夫

"When God said "Let there be light" he must surely have meant perfectly coherent light." 

- Charles Hard Townes

It's time for a laser cutting update. Perhaps unsurprisingly, when one has got past the sci-fi and super villain connotations, using the laser cutter is intrinsically a little dull. Indeed, far from simply pushing a switch and pushing off for a coffee, it requires a lot of concentration. The parts cut out have a habit of partially dislodging with the potential that a raised section may impede and perhaps damage the laser head. One's hand has to be constantly poised over the pause button. Still, on the plus side, it's nice to do something where the term laser focus actually means something rather than being a meaningless faux-inspirational cliche.

The real skills involved are in using CAD software to translate a creative 3D vision into 2D plans and in arranging the required parts, rotating and flipping as required, so as to make the most effective use of the material being cut. Your bloggist is only too well aware that he does not possess the requisite attributes in any great amount. So, I have gone down the route of prototyping, making a first pass and then amending that rather than aiming for the ideal design before producing anything. As Bruce Lee also said “If you spend too much time thinking about a thing, you’ll never get it done. Make at least one definite move daily toward your goal.”

I am now happy with the short wall section and made a couple more of those yesterday when I went in to produce my second version of a wall tower. I still don't really like the latter and am going to change it again. Longer walls, corner pieces, gatehouses etc. will all follow as will a higher keep/citadel. It may take a while.

Disappointingly I have been unable to source the paint from my local hardware shop because their wholesaler doesn't stock the shade that I want. It is of course readily available online. No wonder that the high street is dying. 

New Year, new lurgy

Or possibly the same old lurgy. There is a bug going round and I've had it. Otherwise of course I would have joined the younger Miss Epictetus for the New Year's Day swim in the Wharfe.

As well as precluding that experience, my being a bit under the weather has also meant no wargaming activity. Although, having said that, at the height of the fever I did have a nightmarish hallucination that we were playing Sidi Rezegh again.

The poet begs his beloved to write to him

My gut-wrenching love, my death-in-life,
in vain I wait for you to write me a letter,
like a withered flower I think rather than to live
without being me, to lose you would be better.

The air is everlasting; the lifeless stone
neither knows the shade nor shuns the gloom.
The innermost heart doesn’t need the frozen
honey that comes pouring from the moon.

But I suffered for you; ripped my veins,
a tiger and dove wrapped your waist
in a tussle of bites and lilies.

So now fill with words my madness
or let me live in the tranquil
night of my soul, forever in darkness.

                  - Lorca

2019

I don't often get predictions right (you will recall that a couple of months before the election I forecast that Jezza was about to resign), but I was bang on the money this time last year when I said that 2019 would be even worse than 2018; by and large indeed it was. Perhaps that's why this year I have been unusually reticent in inflicting on you my opinions of all the plays etc wot I have seen, but let's have a quick retrospective summary now; be warned, for some reason this is all a lot more quantitative than it is qualitative.

Opera: I saw twenty six operas this year, plus two ballets and a sprinkling of classical concerts. The operas ranged in obscurity from Pfitzner's 'The Christmas Elf', of which I saw the first ever UK performance, to La boheme, which is - I think - the most frequently performed opera that there is globally. My favourite was Vaughan William's 'Pilgrim's Progress' with a nod to Janáček's 'Cunning Little Vixen' and Martinů's 'The Greek Passion'.

Theatre: I saw fifty two plays and musicals of which my favourite was 'Wise Children' from the wonderful company of the same name. A very honourable mention must go to 'Tuesdays with Morrie'. My favourite Shakespeare (out of the thirteen that I saw) was a toss up between 'The Merry Wives of Windsor' at the Globe and Northern Broadsides' 'Much Ado About Nothing'. This section seems an appropriate place for the following photo, which I have been looking for a chance to use for some months and which if nothing else illustrates that Chekhov can actually be made interesting:

Music: I only went to twenty three gigs, which is pretty pathetic really. My favourite were The Stumble whom I saw twice. Their live performances do not translate into their recordings, which is often the case and another reason why I should go to more live shows.

By the way, the lady on your bloggist's left in that photo is a regular, and somewhat wild, audience member at blues gigs around here, indeed she is the instrument fingerer mentioned in this previous post; I could tell you some stories about her, but frankly she terrifies me so I won't.

Film: I've seen sixteen films and am going to choose 'Stan and Ollie' as my favourite; what can I say, I'm a big softie. I made a special trip to the Imax in Bradford to see 'Apollo 11' on a big, big screen and am glad that I did. Still today, after fifty years, it's just an astonishing achievement and spectacularly documented in the film.

Talks: The quantity of gigs may have declined, but for some reason the number of talks attended has increased markedly. The best two were both on painting, one on Klimt, the other on Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven. A prize for making a little go a long way goes to Ian Bottomley, Curator Emeritus of Oriental Collections at the Royal Armouries who managed to speak very entertainingly for an hour on the subject of the current whereabouts of those small number of suits of armour which were given as diplomatic gifts to various European royal courts by Japanese trade missions in the sixteenth century. The most irrelevant and off subject question from an audience member - a category that is very keenly contested every year - was the chap who, at a talk about Nietzsche, asked why god had created gay animals in species other than humans. My own unassuming interventions - the incident with the light cavalry sabre notwithstanding - were, of course, always entirely intended to add to the collective enlightenment rather than allow me to show off my own erudition and knowledge.

Books: For those concerned about my apparent compulsion to count things, I don't really; I work it out retrospectively from my diary. The exception is books, where I kept a specific record this year because I thought it would be interesting. Obviously it wasn't in the slightest bit interesting, neither to me nor anyone else, but despite that I now know that I read one hundred and thirteen books, the pick of which was 'Winged Victory' by V.M. Yeates, which of course has a wargamer friendly theme. Another book I very much enjoyed which falls into that category is 'The March' by E.L. Doctorow; the march in question being that of Sherman.

Boardgames: I played fifty eight different games seventy eight times (figures courtesy of boardgamegeek). Top marks for a game I hadn't played previously go to Quartermaster General: Cold War, which I have no qualms in recommending to wargamers, and the same is true of my top solo game recommendation, Maquis. I hope to step up my boardgaming a bit next year, although the Monday night Yew Tree group has become very dull and cliquey so I may have to look elsewhere.

Wargames: I played or umpired in, I think, twenty three games, many of which were played over two or three weeks. They focussed mainly on James new Peninsular war collection plus, it shouldn't be forgotten, his new bridges. In the annexe it was mainly Great War, but there was a smattering of other stuff as well. My favourite game, apart from my one-sided triumph at Fiasco, was the relatively recent Battle of San Winnoc.

Event of the Year: Newspapers and magazines inevitably have to choose their picks of the year early in order to meet deadlines. Your bloggist has the luxury of posting this on the afternoon of December 31st and can therefore make sure that nothing will overtake what he writes. Or so you would think. Last year I was awakened at 23:45 or so - being teetotal I avoid going out on New Year's Eve and therefore retire early - by the younger Miss Epictetus who wished to inform me that she had got engaged, an event which clearly would have merited inclusion right at the top of my round up of 2018 had she told me a tad earlier. So, this year's choice is caveated by pointing out that it is subject to nothing better happening in the next few hours. However, I think it unlikely that anything will beat this:

Finally, let's hope next year is better than we're all expecting, especially for you and yours.

Peace and love to all.

..and the tortoise crawls

I have been to see the exhibition Troy: Myth and Reality at the British Museum. I won't write too much about it in detail - there are many reviews online which do that - but I do recommend seeing it if you get the chance.

It's broken into three sections. Firstly, Homer's poetry as represented on various artefacts from almost contemporaneously with him through to the end of the classical era. This section is mainly focussed on a few episodes spanning the whole story from the judgement of Paris via the dispute over Briseis and its consequences in the deaths of Patroclus, Hector etc, the ruse of the horse, and right through to Odysseus' return to the waiting Penelope.

The second section features the excavations of the the real Troy and contains many objects found by Schliemann and the third consists of post-classical representations of the myth.

As I say, I thought it was excellent. I especially liked the very stylised outline representation of the Trojan Horse through which one had to pass between the first two parts of the exhibition. Disappointingly I felt no urge for some early Bronze Age wargaming, but perhaps the idea will grow on me.

Mechanics, Dynamics, Aesthetics

"Oh the places you'll go! 

 There is fun to be done! 

 There are points to be scored. 

 There are games to be won."

   - Dr Seuss

If I was going to sum up the aim of our recent run of Peninsular Napoleonic games it would be to design a set of rules that meet a certain standard of historicity (as we see it) and are fun to play. The second of those concepts is even more nebulous than the first, but I have come across an academic paper (which can be found here) that attempts to provide a structured taxonomy of what that word might mean in the context of games. The paper is well worth reading, and in case you are worried is not very long. Anyone who has played wargames or boardgames (and probably computer games; I have absolutely no experience of these and so can't comment) will recognise the classifications that the authors put forward even if you don't agree fully with all of them.

Not least among the paper's virtues is that, as an illustration, it puts forwards some suggestions as to how one might make Monopoly worth playing, and almost has one believing they could work. Almost.

Gut Yontiff

“There are some upon this earth of yours who lay claim to know us, and who do their deeds of passion, pride, ill-will, hatred, envy, bigotry, and selfishness in our name; who are as strange to us and all our kith and kin, as if they had never lived. Remember that, and charge their doings on themselves, not us.”

                 - Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

In which Epictetus gets trollied

One drawback of being at the Stoic end of the philosophical spectrum is that one tends to put up with things; it sort of goes with the territory. And so it has proved with the impact of the leaking boiler on figure painting, which has rather dragged on throughout November and December and looks as if it's set to roll on into January as well. So, I have eventually decided that enough is enough and have invested in a hobby trolley in which to store work in progress.

In the background you can see the currently unavailable cupboard. And yes, that dining chair is as uncomfortable as it looks. Anyway, stuff has been relocated back indoors making it more accessible, with the added benefit of freeing up the gaming table.

Note the terracotta undercoat which your bloggist favours, mainly because it is very forgiving if you miss a bit later on in the process. I'm rather pleased with this new acquisition, although obviously not to the extent of actually doing any painting yet; that would be too much to expect.

Adiós, Mi España Querida

The conclusion of the last wargame of the year saw a British win and the poor old French didn't even get the satisfaction of capturing the village they had been attacking for the whole game. They - I - did take the crossroads at the other end of the table, but it proved a short lived triumph because immediately four infantry units all decided they had had enough and left the table at the same time; in a notably more coordinated fashion than anything that had been managed up until that point. The evening also saw a consensus develop in favour of giving the whole skirmisher thing - indeed the whole Peninsular thing - a rest for the time being. There have been one or two false dawns, but we really haven't got anywhere. We shall let our collective subconscious mull it over for a while. In the meantime:New Year, new period.

2020 will also hopefully see some volume laser cutting as both the technology and the bureaucracy seem now to be aligned. The only current hitch is my inability to source my chosen shade of stone effect paint. There is less good news regarding the resumption of figure painting, which is in part dependent on fixing the leak in the boiler. The bit that is positive is that it has been established that the boiler is not in fact leaking. The bad news is that it would appear that there is a leak in the mains supply to the boiler which, and I think you're probably ahead of me, can't be sorted out until the New year.

Kenny Lynch

I am very sorry to read of the death of Kenny Lynch, who was born in the same place as me; which unfortunately was Stepney rather than Barbados.

Back in the 1980s the Labour Party was supported by Red Wedge, a loose collection of hip and happening musicians. The constituency in which I was a member wasn't a high enough target to be graced by them, but we were offered a visit from Kenny Lynch. Sadly I couldn't persuade the agent to accept. As well as singing and acting, Lynch wrote and co-wrote a number of songs for others.

He was, as you will no doubt read in the obituaries, the first artist to record a cover of a Lennon-McCartney song and the connection continued when he appeared on the sleeve photograph for 'Band on the Run'.

The photograph - which also contains a disgraced former Liberal MP - was shot in Osterley Park, another place in London in which I have lived; although, when I think about it, the list of places that I have lived is almost as long as the list of disgraced former Liberal MPs.

I shall say this only once...for now

"Life is a shipwreck, but we must not forget to sing in the lifeboats." - Voltaire 

I feel obliged to mention the election result, albeit only briefly and in passing. Firstly, our Labour and Co-operative MP here in Leeds North West doubled his majority; just saying.

That's Otley in the background

Secondly, people may have wondered why I have spent the last twenty five years telling anyone who would listen that Caroline Flint is a brain-dead poisonous witch (for example here); well, it's because she is.

Voltigeurs, chasseurs ou tirailleurs?

We continue to seek the Goldilocks formula for skirmishers to use with James' not very quickly growing Peninsular War forces, and tried a different version this week. For those interested, the game is going to end in a British victory, but as French commander I hope for one or two tactical successes along the way to make me feel better. Going back to the rules, these aren't minor tweaks, but rather all the things we have tried are radically different in their mechanics, and perhaps unsurprisingly they all seem to have good bits and bad bits. The current version have at least one great virtue - simplicity - and it becoming increasingly obvious why most rules abstract skirmishers out; maybe, just maybe, bears don't really eat porridge.

There has been no further painting due to the ongoing boiler leak, which I hope to have sorted out by next week. I may have said that before. News reaches me that the Two Fat Lardies are currently play testing a set of skirmish rules for Romans and their opponents in the 1st century AD, which I shall have to take a look at when they are released. My source on the inside claims that he is bringing some competition gamer rigour to the drafting of the rules, which would be welcomed I think.

In other news, I have acquired yet more Hexon pulverised ground from eBay and now can't conceive that I shall ever need any more, or indeed as much as I have already got. Access to the laser cutter is not possible at the moment due to a bureaucratic twist which has left me somewhat bemused, but as it happens I am actually happier leaving it all until after Christmas anyway.

Then shriek'd the timid, and stood still the brave

"It’s something like going on an ocean voyage. What can I do? Pick the captain, the boat, the date, and the best time to sail. But then a storm hits… What are my options? I do the only thing I am in a position to do, drown - but fearlessly, without bawling or crying out to God, because I know that what is born must also die."

- Epictetus

The nose has it

I was going to mention the election, but I find that Buddy - who belongs to the younger Miss Epictetus - has said all that needs saying.

There were big queues at the polling station this morning, but that may just be because today's the day when it gets dark earliest; not to be confused with the day in just over a week's time when it gets light latest, and which is also the shortest day. It's been far too long since we had a post about the interplay between the Earth's orbit around the sun, its rotation on its own axis and the angle between that axis and the plane of orbit.

San Winnoc

The battle of San Winnoc reached a conclusion last night. It really was a most enjoyable game, tightly fought over three weeks and with the result in the balance right until the end. Naturally therefore, we are going to change the skirmisher rules again. I will leave it to James to explain the changes and the reasons for them, but I am broadly in agreement. I do however have observations on two other areas of the rules.

Under the traditional way of allocating morale chips each side got a fairly random mix of morale and additional cards for the deck, each of which allowed extra actions such as firing, moving etc over the course of each turn. The revised method seeks to balance these so that one either has more morale but fewer bonus cards, or visa versa. Clearly getting the balance between the two things is problematic, but I think we are all reasonably happy with the first attempts at doing so. In this game the French had the extra cards and the British the extra morale. The French prevailed, but even so I think, given the choice (which one isn't) I'd pick the higher morale every time. The extra cards are only useful if one gets the initiative to use them, whereas the morale is always of value.

More worryingly it seems as if for the last ten years and more I have been playing a completely different rule for automatic melee (i.e. against disorder or shaken units, flanks, skirmishers, or artillery) to that being played by everyone else. I have no reason to claim that my version is better than what appears to be the actual rule, and it would seem that I have been limiting my options somewhat for all that time. I have re-read both the Piquet master rules and James and Peter's Seven Years War set (Lemons Are Not The Only Fruit) and there is absolutely nothing in them on which to base what I was thinking, so there you go; I feel foolish.

Pot89pouri

The central heating saga drifts on, or perhaps I should say 'drips on' as there turns out to be a leak. The whole system is being drained tomorrow, which is something to look forward to. The relevance of this to a wargaming blog is that my painting tray and figures currently being worked on normally live (*) in the cupboard under the boiler and have had to be relocated out into the annexe, so no progress to report there.

However, the laser cutter has been declare operational again - the problem was apparently an incorrectly set bed size - and I have had another go. The reworked town wall section looks fine and is now ready to go into mass production, or at least it will be when I have increased the height of each of the end pieces by one millimetre; a very odd mistake to have made in the first place. I also produced a test of a wall tower, looking at which made me realise what it ought to look like. Actually it ought to look round rather than square, but pragmatism means that square it is. My new idea is somewhat complex, but in theory at least the laser cut pieces will be accurate and will fit together snugly.

The above picture is dual purpose, showing both the one millimetre gap which proves that the theory of snug fitting pieces is subject always to the competence of the chap doing the design, and out of focus off to the right is the cloth soaking up the leak from the radiator.

I had hoped to have welcomed the blog's Luxembourg correspondent to the Casa Epictetus for a visit at some point in the next couple of weeks, but this has been put on hold by what he describes variously as "etwas äußerst Ärgerliches" and "verdammte Scheiße". I suspect that he just doesn't want to run the risk of not being allowed back into mainland Europe after Election Day proves once and for all that the country has gone completely mad and the rest of them decide to quarantine us.


* I do know that they aren't really alive.

Hey Lord, don't ask me questions

After forty years and two false starts I have finally seen Graham Parker play live. As David said here Parker has aged along with the rest of us. In fact I'd go so far as to say that he now looks like Alf Garnett. Given his origins he also unsurprisingly sounds like the man as well; or at least he would if Johnny Speight had made his character an enthusiast for recreational drugs instead of West Ham. Still, despite his tour-strained voice the wait was well worthwhile:

Another act from the distant past that I'd never seen before was Wishbone Ash, who I have caught on their current 50th anniversary tour. Coincidentally, or perhaps not, their original bassist and vocalist Martin Turner is also touring and playing only the band's songs, so I went to see him as well. Both shows were excellent, although I would just give the edge to Turner's, oddly enough for music that is all about the guitars that's because his singing was better. The audience for both - and I don't imagine I was the only overlap - was essentially grizzled old men, and it was rather amusing when they all - including me - leapt into a bopping frenzy at the appropriate point in this song; it certainly takes me back:

Cornucopia

This piece, by sculptor Edward Allington, is entitled 'One Unforgiving Moment', which perhaps indicates that the smaller vases result from the breakage of the larger, but for some reason exist as miniaturised replicas; fractals rather than fragments.

Elsewhere in his work Allington differentiates between factory based mass production and large scale craft workshops in which those involved have the opportunity to display pride in their work. Viewing it as a modeller and wargamer it may not be surprising that it made me think of an historical original being reproduced both in miniature and in great number.

Anyway, mention of fractals reminds me of my favourite mathematical joke:

Q: What does the B in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for?
A: Benoit B. Mandelbrot

Mr and Mrs Miller

"Windmill or no windmill, he said, life would go on as it had always gone on - that is, badly." 

- George Orwell

James' new windmill put in an appearance for this week's game, but despite what Orwell wrote in 'Animal Farm' things definitely got better. Orwell's mill represented the industrialisation of the Soviet Union, whereas James' represents Up 1 sometimes and Down 1 on other occasions, which perhaps explains the difference. Or more likely it was the tweaks made to the skirmish rules regarding how far in front of the formed body they could be. In either event it was a very enjoyable first half (or possibly third) of the game. I've got much more morale and significantly outnumber the French in the centre, but am probably going to quite quickly lose the town of San Honore. The rules are getting close to being finished I think. I am a bit confused about how skirmishers get pushed back, but perhaps that's just me.

Elsewhere, heat has returned to the Casa Epictetus after nine days. This may come as a disappointment to some of the ladies of West and North Yorkshire, but frankly I need a rest. A bit of warmth is just the right environment for some painting  so I was glad to receive my recent order from Newline Designs. If you recall I had originally bought two chariots and two packs of crew only to discover that each pack of crew contained sufficient for two chariots. Naturally I therefore bought two more chariots. To my surprise each of the new arrivals has a crew in the pack already, leaving me, as before, with two extra crews. This one could run and run.

The laser cutter is still hors de combat.

Barbecue Bob and Laughing Charley

I have been to see Catfish Keith, a man who I know I have often mentioned here before. Suffice it to say that he was as good as ever. Let's hear him playing some Blind Willie Johnson:

Both Catfish Keith and Dave Speight, the support act, referenced Barbecue Bob Hicks and his brother Laughing Charley Lincoln, two somewhat more obscure contemporaries of Johnson (and, before anyone asks, I have no idea why they have different surnames). Barbecue Bob wrote 'Motherless Child', covered by Eric Clapton amongst others and not to be confused with 'Motherless Children' written by Johnson and of course also covered by Clapton. Here's the first:

Dave Speight, an accomplished country blues performer himself, was the support for The Stumble last weekend as well (pretty much identical songs and patter in fact). Preston's finest blues band are excellent live and definitely worth seeing should you get the chance:

The Stumble, like many blues bands (the Rolling Stones, Canned Heat, Dr Feelgood, Double Trouble etc. etc. etc.) take their name from someone else's song, in this case a Freddie King instrumental. Here's Peter Green playing with John Mayall's Bluesbreakers:

Thank you London

The laser cutter isn't working properly and my boiler isn't working at all. The former is possibly because of floating in the the y-axis belt tensioners, or perhaps because the head acceleration is set too high for vector cutting. The latter may be because the pressure sensor has failed or alternatively because there is a leak. It increasingly seems as if Nietzsche was correct and there are no absolute truths.

So, instead let's talk pub rock again. I've only just heard that Larry Wallis died in September. Although he was at one point a member of Motorhead, I always think of him in the context of the Live Stiffs tour. He was Wreckless Eric's producer, Dr. Feelgood recorded at least one of his songs, and on the original studio version of the following number he was backed by the rhythm section of Eddie and the Hot Rods. Here's 'Police Car' from the album of the Stiffs tour:

And let's have another obscure but brilliant track from a live album of the time 'Live at the Hope and Anchor'. This is Phil Rambow with 'Underground Romance':

Fun fact: Rambow co-wrote 'There's a Guy Works Down the Chip Shop Swears He's Elvis' with Kirsty MacColl. Here's a different take on that song from the Tex Pistols featuring Rambow:

That track also features Martin Belmont on guitar. Belmont is, of course, a pub rock stalwart and was in the original Rumour. I am hoping to see Graham Parker (sadly without the Rumour) next week. I've twice had tickets to see Parker in recent years and failed for various reasons to get to the gigs. Let's keep our fingers crossed.

Walls Wonderman

I am once again going to write about wargaming in order to avoid dwelling on the fact that my boiler has chosen mid-November as the appropriate time to break down.We finished the battle of Campo Veja last night, and it ended in a victory for not me. Things swung backwards and forwards - always the sign of a fun game - and there were several occasions when I was literally just on the verge of winning, and yet I didn't. Peter managed to save a number of match points and then served out for the win. If James writes it up then you'll get more detail; if not then you won't. We are getting to understand the tactics to employ with the rules as they stand and will presumably either break them at some point or decide that they'll do as they are.

I took my piece of laser cut wall to show the chaps and despite managing to snap a bit of it off en route the resultant conversations were most helpful. Having thought it over I am going to make a couple of changes to facilitate assembly. First I shall increase the depth of the side pieces and line up construction from the back edge rather than the front. Secondly I shall make the crenellations symmetrical along sections (at least on those of length 10 cm and multiples) to avoid the risk of unwanted chirality occurring if I don't pay proper attention when gluing the things together. I have also clarified the scope a bit in my mind following some discussion about the appropriate height of the wall sections. I think I have always intended, but not necessarily articulated, that these are town walls. What I need to do is also make walls for a citadel/castle, which would obviously be somewhat taller.

Just for completeness I will mention that there has been a fair amount of figure painting. As well as a somewhat random unit of Prussian Napoleonic infantry I have finished a number of early imperial Romans (24 eastern archers, 6 Spanish slingers) and two Celtic chariots. Next up are some auxiliary infantry. With the exception of the Roman light infantry these are more aimed at having bigger units to fill the squares when playing To the Strongest! than they are at fielding more units. The problem, which you have no doubt already thought of, is that is that bigger Roman units will inevitably require larger Celtic warbands. It's a treadmill.

Stimulated emissions

"You know, I have one simple request! And that is to have sharks with frickin' laser beams attached to their heads." - Dr. Evil

When Ian Fleming wrote 'Goldfinger' he had the villain try to kill Bond with a circular saw, because that was the highest level of technology they had back then in the dark ages. In 1964 the makers of the film wanted to appear more modern and so replaced the saw with an industrial metal-cutting laser beam; it seemed as much of a fantasy at the time as the Aston Martin with the ejector seat and the machine guns behind the headlights. That is of course because it really was fantasy; such things did not actually exist. Even someone as imaginative as my eight year old self would not have dreamed that I would one day be able to twist a knob and turn the power of a laser beam up to 11, but lo, it has come to pass. Slightly disappointingly, it's done by entering a number on to a screen rather than yanking a lever, and to be precise I didn't so much increase the energy as slow down the speed at which the beam travelled over the surface. Still, and as you would expect, I did wear a dinner jacket and bow tie.

It's been about three weeks since I first mentioned the laser cutter, so why the delay? And what have I actually done with it? Well, at first there was obviously the impact of my operatic tour to North Wales, and since then I have been concentrating on the design phase. That is a euphemism for 'I have been struggling with the software'. As regular readers will appreciate, I am of a frugal nature and so have been using a free CAD programme which I found online, with all the concomitant problems. In addition the control software for the machine itself is both old and clunky which hasn't helped. However, and after a couple of false starts, I have now produced the following:

As a proof of concept I am very happy with it. I just need to finalise the dimensions, design all the complicated bits like corners and towers, and buy some better glue, following which the walls of Constantinople - and everywhere else because I am only going to make one set - will be ready for the games table.

But I'll say it anyway

"This November there seems nothing to say" - Anne Sexton

Our playtesting of Napoleonic rules - specifically Peninsular Napoleonic rules - continues. They are providing entertaining games that are fun to play, which is probably the most important thing. Whether they reflect what actually happened is impossible to tell, but things are turning out noticeably different from the way they do with the Seven Years War rules, which I am going to take as a good sign. In the current game the British have one command which is late to arrive. As French commander I have thrown everything forward (to be more precise I was fortunate enough to draw the morale cards which enabled me to start further forwards) with the hope of winning before the reinforcements turn up. I would offer odds of about 2 to 1 against me at the moment. Coming back to the rules, certain elements have proved sufficiently popular that they may well be retrofitted to previous rules developed in the legendary wargames room. Cue lots more playtesting.

I have got round to opening my recent order from Newline Designs to find that I have bought twice as many chariot crews as are needed for the number of chariots that I purchased. There is only one solution: I shall buy even more chariots. 

Finally, I haven't been mentioning boardgames very much recently because I haven't been playing them very much. I have however managed a second game of Age of Steam, a mere eighteen months on from the first and can confirm my original opinion that it's a good 'un.

Dr Feelgood

Hearing Be Bop Deluxe the other day set me thinking about pub rock. A post on the subject from a few weeks ago currently has the honour of having the fewest viewers of any post in all the years I've been doing this, so it's clearly a subject of no interest to anyone other than me. What better reason to write some more about it? Or indeed what better reason to ask a rhetorical question?

So, let's have something from the unrivalled masters of the genre, Dr Feelgood:

I have always regretted never having seen this classic line up: Wilko Johnson, Lee Brilleaux, John B. Sparks and The Big Figure. I was therefore somewhat surprised when, at a university reunion last year, someone claimed that not only had we seen them (at Huddersfield Poly apparently), but that I had written a review of the gig for the student newspaper. Funny thing, memory.

Bracing

I have been to Llandudno, which turned out to be a very pleasant place, although it would have been even better if the temperature had been ten degrees higher. I had never been before and had no idea that it was a purpose built resort in the manner of Cancun or Pattaya, albeit on a more human scale than the former and less sleazy than the latter. The promenade is particularly impressive, kept free of tack and with all the low rise Victorian hotels painted in pastel colours. I saw a spectacular fireworks display from the promenade one evening. The reason it was held a few days earlier than in the rest of the country was that they set it up on the beach and the date is therefore determined by the times of the tide.

It was colder and gloomier than this when I was there

In an attempt to shoehorn in something vaguely wargaming related can I point out that the Great Orme, seen rising behind the town in the photo, is home to the flock of goats from the Royal Welch Fusiliers select their regimental mascot. More directly connected to military history is the magnificent Conwy castle:

The town of Conwy, which has virtually all its medieval walls intact, is very nice as well, with plenty of coffee shops to duck into when visitors lose feeling in their extremities. It also boasts Great Britain's smallest house:

As I was in full tourist mode I paid my quid and went in. I can confirm that it is indeed very small. I wanted to know whether the claim that it is GB's smallest house meant that there is a smaller one in Northern Ireland, but the otherwise charming Welsh lady in the picture affected to have no interest in one of the most contentious current constitutional issues and said that she didn't know.

I may in due course explain exactly what took me to North Wales, but for now let me relate one thing that happened last week which touches on this previous post about people dying in theatres.  I was in the Venue Cymru and as curtain up approached I was eyeing the vacant seat next to me with a view to putting my coat over it if no one arrived to claim it. The lady sitting on the other side of it leaned over to me and said "It's OK, she's not coming. I've just been to her funeral."

Henry Liddell, father of Alice, had a holiday home on the West Shore at Llandudno and was possibly, depending on whom you believe, visited there by Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. In any event the town is littered with statues of characters from his books. In one of those coincidences that I like even if no one else does, on the day of my return I went to see June Tabor and the Oysterband at Leeds Town Hall and for their first encore they did a cover of Jefferson  Airplane's 'White Rabbit'. Astonishingly Grace Slick was 80 last Wednesday, so here's the original as performed at Woodstock: