Luck Be A Lady Tonight

And so to the theatre. I have been to see 'Guys and Dolls'. It turned out to be one of those shows/films that I would have sworn blind that I had seen before, but the watching of which made clear that I hadn't. It is, as you probably already knew, based on Damon Runyon's short stories of the inter-war New York demi-monde, and as such I was rather surprised by the uncanny resemblance to certain wargamers of my acquaintance.

It wasn't so much the unlikely names of the characters: such as Nicely-Nicely Johnson, the Seldom Seen Kid or Harry the Horse, although one of my first wargaming opponents was, and is, always known as Len the Ink (*). It was more to do with the rolling of dice. The programme contained an explanation of the rules of craps which left me none the wiser except to appreciate that it is clearly more possible to roll the wrong number than it is the right one; if that's not a pithy description of wargaming then I don't know what is. But in particular there was the solution to that problem employed by Big Jule, the Chicago mobster: he has the spots removed from a set of dice, but before it is done he memorises which side was which number so when they are rolled he can tell the other players what the blank faces currently uppermost would have been displaying. Tell me that you don't know a wargamer like that.

Anyway, here's Marlon Brando annoying Frank Sinatra both in and out of character:

* Also several decades ago I shared a house with the Teddy Bear Kid, but that's a digression for another day.

Only Jokanaan, squire

And so to the opera. I have been to see Opera North's concert staging of Salomé, which I found curiously unengaging for all the technical merits of the performances. Last year I saw the original play and didn’t enjoy that much either so I suspect that my issue is with Wilde rather than Strauss. It’s full of the bad (Herod, Herodias), the deranged (Narraboth, John the Baptist) and those who are both (our title character), which all gets rather wearing after a while, even in operatic form.

The narrative arc – spoilt rich girl insists on getting her own way but then gets her comeuppance as well – is familiar enough. Offsetting it with the Baptist’s moral monomania and misogyny ought to provide more drama than it does. Herod seems to be hedging his bets between appeasing his wife’s anger and not doing anything too extreme in case John’s revelations from God are real; modern audiences will probably just be wondering whereabouts on the autistic scale the soi disant prophet sits.

In this production the dance of the seven veils takes place off stage. Just as it became apparent that was how they were going to do it a chap across the aisle got up and left. Sadly, rather than being a dirty old man storming out because he felt short changed by the lack of nudity, he turned out to only have gone to the toilet and shortly returned.  As Opera North – who have no aversion to their sopranos getting their kit off  – shied away from it, let’s have Ken Russell’s version. For the avoidance of doubt, this is not Strauss’s music and nor is it suitable for viewing at work:

The name of the dance isn’t of course mentioned in the bible and originates with Wilde’s 1891 play. I have recently re-read Umberto Eco’s ‘Name of the Rose’, set in the fourteenth century. William of Baskerville refers while in conversation with Adso of Melk to ‘the dance of the seven veils’ performed by Salomé. Given the author’s vast erudition and sense of irony one must assume that this is a deliberate in-joke rather than a mistake.

“Books are not made to be believed, but to be subjected to inquiry. When we consider a book, we mustn't ask ourselves what it says but what it means..." - Umberto Eco

Credit where it's due

"I am so changeable, being everything by turns and nothing long" - Byron

My intention to revisit the Great War didn't last, and I have been playing about with the Roman version of Pony Wars. I first outlined what I was intending to do in this post from over a year ago, so I've got round to it pretty promptly for me. Unsurprisingly however it's not as straightforward as it seemed at the time. I like the arrival of Celts being caused by Roman movement (a direct steal from The Men Who Would Be Kings) and have been working on the assumption that one could then just get rid of the cards completely. However, I have been unable to come up with a satisfactory alternative mechanism for either  the activities of the various Roman civilians on the table or for attacks on them to be triggered. Any suggestions would be welcomed.

The post from last January referenced above would appear to contain something that isn't strictly true - gasps of incredulity from the readership - and which I would like to correct. The person to first suggest the idea of programmable computers wasn't Babbage at all, but rather it was Ada Lovelace. I studied the history of mathematics as part of my first degree and should have been more precise. I am very sorry indeed for having misled you. After all, as her father also wrote, you "should envy no one the certainty of his self-approved wisdom". Perhaps Daniel Mersey's AI opponent in the rules should be known as Countess Lovelace instead of Mr Babbage - it still sounds suitably Victorian.

Proverbs Chapter 22 Verse 1

"A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches"

This bunch are called 'Young Amphibians' which, while it is better than 'The Standard Lamps', still leaves a lot to be desired as the name of a band if you ask me (*). As it happens the younger Miss Epictetus - newly returned from the Australian outback (**) - is currently walking out with the chap singing and I am therefore pretty much the last person on Earth whose advice will be sought. The song is catchy enough though.

* Before anyone bothers to remind me, I fully acknowledge having been in a band called 'Or Is It?' and if you follow the link above you will see that I have previously suggested that it is precisely that fact which makes me such an expert on crap band names.

** Where she learned useful lessons in how to cope without sanitation which have subsequently proved invaluable when passed on to her aged parent.

Cleanth is next to Godth

"It's not a very fragrant world, but it is the world you live in" - Raymond Chandler

I am pleased to say that the most appropriate time for that quote has been and gone, as I have somewhat dillied and dallied when I should have been writing blog posts. I once again have a functioning shower, the world - at least that part near me - has regained its sweetness, and no longer can the recent presence of Epictetus be detected by his unwelcome sillage.

The living room ceiling is also back in place, the table in the annexe has been cleared of extraneous items and there is even the possibility of a game being set up sometime soon. I have just been to see a production of Journey's End so the Blue Guitar rules might be due for a revisit. Who can say?

All Things Must Pass

Recent disruption of domestic infrastructure and routine has been at a level which rather reminds me of a few years ago when I didn't have anywhere to live at all, so nothing much constructive has been achieved. In fact the only vaguely hobby related thing that I can find to write about is that having had my shower entirely removed in an effort to track down the leak I am in danger of smelling like one of those wargames show attendees that we all know and don't love.

I did manage to get to the cinema - sitting well away from other patrons - to see the re-released 'Concert for George', which event I assume is related to the fact that he would have been seventy five this year. I'd never seen it before, thoroughly enjoyed it, and was rather taken aback to see Eric Clapton come across as warm and human for once. It was also poignant to see those themselves no longer with us such as Tom Petty, Billy Preston and Ravi Shankar, although I could probably have coped with less Monty Python.

Here's Uncle Ringo, as George's son endearingly described him:

What is it good for?

I doubt that anyone is interested, but nevertheless I should like to publicly record my opposition to UK involvement in military attacks Syria. I stand with those who point out that killing more Syrians is a perverse way of protesting about the deaths of their compatriots. All logic says that the only way to get rid of Assad is for the Russians to do it, and one would hope that not even Trump thinks that best way to persuade Putin is to go to war with him; as I say, one hopes.

Heavy, heavy, heavy, heavy

I have been to see some prog rock. Heavy, guitar based prog rock rather than synthesisers, mellotrons and silvery capes, but prog rock nonetheless: long, strangely structured songs whose pompous lyrics were intoned not particularly melodically against a background of unnecessarily complex time signatures. I loved it; it was just like the old days.

The specific culprit was Martin Barre, long time guitarist in Jethro Tull, which band's catalogue was drawn on extensively. In addition they played a number of songs from Barre's solo recordings; plus a Beatles double in, perhaps surprisingly, 'Eleanor Rigby' and Abbey Road's indisputably prog track 'I Want You (She's So Heavy)'; and also the least bluesy cover of Robert Johnson's Crossroads that I think I've ever heard. They were, as my companion for the evening observed, a remarkably tight band and did what they did extremely well, which probably wasn't unrelated to the fact that they seemed to be having a blast.

Highlight of the evening was the final encore, Aqualung. Here's the Tull doing it complete with Barre's famous guitar solo:

And here's some poetry from Lennon and McCartney:

I want you

I want you so bad

I want you

I want you so bad

It's driving me mad

It's driving me mad

I want you

I want you so bad, babe

I want you

I want you so bad

It's driving me mad

It's driving me mad

[continue for ever]

Nearly...

James has put a review of the finale of the latest game here. As it says I nearly won - at the beginning of the evening we had a run of very short turns ended by double double dominoes being drawn; a repeat of the same at the end would have indeed seen the Russians triumphant - but I have to say that, while it made for a fun last half hour or so, it would have felt like a slightly cheesy victory. What it did do was once again highlight the things I like about Piquet. We tend to write up the outliers in terms of initiative swings and card runs; in truth most of the time the rules give a game much like other sets. But there always exists the possibility that things will work out just right for something out of the ordinary to occur, and that was the case here.

An attack which in all honesty was undertaken just for something to do in a losing situation (I was rapidly running out of morale chips and my troops were in danger of quitting the field) developed a life of its own. Experience had taught me that the only use for Cossacks was to screen formed units from being fired on and that was what I intended to do with them. The infantry to be screened hadn't got there yet and so reacting opportunistically to the cards the Cossacks moved up behind a unit of Prussian infantry, had a very lucky shot, issued a morale challenge and thereby demoralised them. I was unaware that the infantry could now be charged until James told me they could. He in turn was unaware, until we double checked the rules, that this required a difficulty check on the dice, but despite them being a poor unit they not only managed it but also won the ensuing melee. At that point the prospect of actually capturing and holding the village and winning the game suddenly became feasible. As I say, this sort of thing doesn't happen very often, but I really enjoy the fact that one can never rule it out. 

Pot76pouri

So, wargaming then. There isn't likely to be any at the Casa Epictetus until the shower is sorted out because the table in the annexe is covered with the stuff moved out of the living room due to the ceiling falling down situation. I can't validly blame that for the lack of any painting at all in the first quarter so I have tried to remojotivate myself (1) in a way that has worked before: namely making some markers - the letters and numbers that you see in photos of the games  - as a sort of way back in. All that seems to be happening this time is that I am very slowly making markers that I don't particularly need.

So let's talk boardgaming instead. This is what I played in March:

Cockroach Poker: An amusing bluffing game. The best strategy is to keep a low profile and let the others get on with it.

Deep Sea Adventure: A push your luck game which I'd like to try again. When playing with lots of players no one is going terribly deep on their adventure, or if they do then they ain't coming back.

The Grizzled: I do like this. As always, our group of poilus failed to survive until the armistice.

Istanbul: I also like this one a lot; might have to buy it.

Kingdomino: A good - and quick - game for which I lack the requisite pattern recognition skills.

Oceanos: Another subsea exploration game, although one's divers are less likely to get the bends in this one. It's OK. I was made rather cocky by a good set of cards in the first round; it didn't last.

Perudo: Or Peruvian Liar's Dice; in other words the classic bluffing game.

Plague Inc.: In which one plays a bacterium (or virus) and attempts to wipe out humanity. Great fun; loved it.

Power Grid China: A rather tough map. I got a bit carried away and overbid for a power plant too early during the last round. I might have won otherwise.

San Juan: I'm not that bothered about this; happy enough to play it, but I wouldn't suggest it.

Stockpile: In contrast to how I played Power Grid, no one is ever aggressive enough in the auction phase of this to make it work as it obviously should.

Survive: Another cracking game.

Telestrations: Bored with this.

Wasabi!: Absolutely no idea why that has an exclamation mark in the name. It's OK, but I suspect it's another game that would be better if people played it a lot and better understood the tactics.

I'm going to finish the whole jumpsuit thing before it gets out of hand. This is surely the definitive way to wear one on stage:

Let's end with a story to warm the hearts of accountants everywhere.



(1) Did you know that the constitution of Wisconsin forbids the Governor from inventing new words?

Overdo the do

Let it not be said of Epictetus that he knew when to stop:

Yes we can the can

This blog has on occasion been known to feature - for no particular reason - videos of seventies rock bands fronted by women in jumpsuits. Today is a day for self-indulgence so here is another - somewhat more lightweight, but nevertheless entertaining - in that irregular and infrequent series:

March to the sound of the hammers

Any general readers straying here by mistake should look away now, because as ever I am sticking rigorously to the subject of wargaming. (As an aside, Prufrock has once again veered off topic with a paean to test cricket, in response to which one can only say "Hear, hear".) On his own blog James has posted about the latest game in the legendary wargames room and I should like to elaborate on a few points arising therefrom:

• James inexplicably failed to mention that he has devised a shiny new rule for what constitutes a flank, an issue which has dogged all - and I mean all - of the wargaming that I have ever done with the Ilkley Lads and associated splinter groups. In a stroke of genius he has banished all argument about the definition of a flank for ever simply by rewriting the rules so that the word does not appear in the first place. Respect.
• I played the Russians this week, but one thing that didn't change was that their commander once again rolled up as abysmal. This resulted in two Command Indecision cards being added to their deck ensuring they would not be able to utilise all initiative won by the draw of the dominoes. In fact there were two occasions when this card was turned with seventeen impetus points left. Even ignoring the rest of the pips lost in ones and twos that adds up to more than a complete turn of every card in the deck; a severe handicap.
• The scenario was the same but different, with changes made by James based on our previous experience of playing it. I hadn't seen the dispositions before arriving and made a snap decision as to what to do. That in itself isn't such a bad idea; my carefully thought-through plans rarely work anyway. However, having subsequently been saddled with an abysmal commander I probably should have thought better of an approach which relied upon moving elements from several separate commands more quickly than the Prussians could cycle their deck and build the bridge.
• What I would certainly advise others to do if trying the same assault on the bridgehead is to first bring all the Cossacks back across the river to screen the build up.  This could actually have been done very quickly (acting on Native Mobility as well as Cavalry Move cards) - even more so as they would have had to be in column to cross the bridges - and I think any slight delay in launching the attack would be outweighed by reduced losses among the infantry.
• And finally, Piquet allows units to be transferred from one command to another on the payment of a morale chip and a successful dice roll. Doing this to meld the units from the three different commands which I brought together into one would have made it easier to coordinate movement and to rally back losses. It was a no-brainer and, having no brain, I didn't do it.

Four farting bedposts

"I love traditional instruments, though of course they are anachronisms. Satellites run around our planet, but we still play bassoons. It's ridiculous!"

- Witold Lutoslawski

One of the drawbacks of cultural pretension is that on occasion one's bluff is called. A new acquaintance of mine suggested that I was just the sort of chap to enjoy the lunchtime concerts at the Leeds College of Music. I could hardly refuse without giving the game away, especially when it was explained that entry was free, and by the time she mentioned a bassoon quartet - which would apparently be 'fun' - it was too late to back out. Admittedly at that point I naively assumed that description meant something along the lines of three stringed instruments plus a bassoon. But no, what it meant was four of the bastards all in one place at one time. Why? Who on earth thought that was a good idea? One plausible explanation is that they have to play together because no one else will play with them; and now that I've written that down I realise it sounds very much like every group of wargamers from H.G. Wells onwards.

Speaking of which, I have not yet posted how the Seven Years War pontoon bridge game ended. Well, we won, but without honour. It wasn't a terribly good game overall, but had some interesting moments. My own favourite - which I'm sure other rule sets could achieve as well, but is the sort of thing at which Piquet excels - involved a unit of Prussian infantry marching into contact with a Russian battery. The guns obviously fired, but achieved nothing; the infantry shot at point blank range, but caused no hits; the guns reloaded and shot again; the Prussians fired several times with no result. We - James and I role playing as incompetent Prussian generals - missed a chance to melee because we were focused on a nearby cavalry fight that was going badly, and in the end the Russians calmly limbered up and rode off unscathed. It rather summed up the game.

Anyway, back to the flatulent woodwind. The Genovia Quartet, for it was they, turned out to be not only younger, better looking and more female than any wargamers that I have ever met, but also very talented. I'm not saying that it didn't occasionally sound like halls of residence the morning after eight pints and a vindaloo, but they kept that element to a minimum as they puffed their way through a programme ranging from Mozart via tango and thirties jazz to a specially composed piece that - assuming I understood the charming Spanish lady's accent correctly - was about a hypothetical duck. I both enjoyed it and wondered what it would have sounded like with a different mix of instruments; well, with any mix of instruments at all really.

"The wind
Tempestuous clarion, with heavy cry
Came bluntly thundering, more terrible
Than the revenge of music on bassoons"

                                - Wallace Stevens

Sadly I have no photos of either game or concert, so here is one of my ceiling:

And here is a pre-season warm up of asparagus, buckwheat pancakes and poached eggs:

Time is a jet plane

It's been a while since we had any Dylan:

Arghhhless fun

And so to the opera. I have been to see 'The Pirates' by Stephen Storace, an opera for which the term 'rarely produced' seems rather inadequate; this was apparently the first time it had been seen for two hundred years. I liked it a lot, although that may have been because in reducing the running time by fifty percent for the benefit of cast, musicians and audience alike the artistic director of the company presumably kept all the best bits and lost the filler. He did however also seem to lose the pirates themselves because despite paying very close attention I couldn't work out where they were. True, a customs officer arrived at the end and arrested the wicked uncle, but beyond the common operatic crime of standing in the way of young love it wasn't clear what for; and surely the customs catch smugglers not pirates as a rule.

What was left was a tale of young woman unsuitably betrothed by her guardian, with her maid and her true love's valet conspiring to bring them back together and finding each other along the way. If it all sounds vaguely like the story of, for example, 'The Barber of Seville', that's because it is. Perhaps the missing bits pushed back the narrative boundaries of eighteenth century comic opera, perhaps they didn't. Anyway, not only did Storace (the pronunciation of whose name seems a matter of dispute; he was born in London, but I'm going with an Italian flourish to last two syllables) meet Mozart, but his sister Nancy Storace was the soprano for whom the role of Susanna in 'The Marriage of Figaro' was created, so there is an element of family entitlement to that sort of plot.

Highly recommended, but the run has finished, so you'll need to come back in the early twenty third century.

Pot75pouri

I have been to see The Mikado and, despite reminding myself more than once that I don't like Gilbert and Sullivan, rather enjoyed it. The action was transferred to a school facing an Ofsted inspection with a number of clever devices to explain why they were singing about Japan. The whole thing was preposterous of course, but having the Lord High Executioner represented by the P.E. teacher was somewhat more relevant to my life than a chap in a kimono. I was also struck by the similarities between Nanki Poo's attitude to his impending beheading and that displayed by Meursault in similar circumstances half a century later. W.S. Gilbert was clearly fond of pointing out the absurd, but was he also an existentialist? Discuss.

I was going to start this next bit by reminding readers of a brief post about a very interesting talk I attended last November on the subject of the Italian Futurists, but I discover that I neglected to write it at the time. If it's not too late I shall briefly summarise by saying that they were very bad people, who led directly on to people who were not only worse, but probably as evil as it's possible to be. Not that it's any mitigation, but their aesthetic sense (the Futurists') did influence the Vorticisists and others, for example, C.R.W. Nevinson, often praised in this blog. Anyway, regardless of never having mentioned any of this before, I'm still going to point out that an article about the effect they have had (still the Futurists - keep up) on arseholes such as Trump, Putin, Farage etc can be found here.

Let's end on some good news: the fourth volume of Robert Merle's 'Fortunes of France' series will be released in English in a couple of months time; betting has been suspended on this blog's book of the year award for 2018.

Screwy

                     "I always want to know the things one shouldn't do."

                     "So as to do them?" asked her aunt.

                     "So as to choose." said Isabel.

                                 Henry James, Portrait of a Lady

Henry James' novella 'The Turn of the Screw' is a most ambiguous piece of work, beloved of the English Literature establishment perhaps precisely because it can be interpreted in so many different ways. Britten's operatic version, which I saw most recently last year in an excellent chamber production, leans one way by giving singing roles to both Quint and Miss Jessel, and the result is a supernatural masterpiece which leave open the possibilities that ghosts are real or alternatively that either the governess or the children are delusional. Ambiguity is retained.

I have been to see a stage adaptation which has moved quite firmly in the other direction. Here it is quite clear that the governess is suffering from a temporary, adolescent hysteria brought on by the abrupt change from sheltered family life in a parsonage to being alone in the presence of the children's uncle. The children's behaviour is no more than, well, childish behaviour (although very well acted by the adults playing them). The whole class issue of the futility of Quint, and indeed the governess, imagining that they can rise above their station, is reduced to jealousy and backbiting among servants, and, perhaps recognising that modern audiences are more broad-minded than Victorian ones, the nature of the relationship between the valet and the previous governess is portrayed explicitly and then never mentioned again. The denouement rather reminded me of Joseph Heller's 'Something Happened'.

As you can tell, I wasn't terribly enthused. I suspect many of the decisions related to a desire to limit the size of the cast - one never saw the non-speaking Quint or the non-speaking cloaked and veiled figure of Jessel on stage at the same time - and this idea of things being done to a cost leads on nicely to another possible interpretation of the piece for the world in which we currently live. This is - very aptly post-Carillion, post-Grenfel, post-Virgin East Coast, post-lots of other things - a parable about the unworkability of outsourcing. Whatever performance criteria (don't write, don't visit, don't leave the children) are defined by the client (the uncle) cannot anticipate every circumstance (ghosts, madness) and will inevitably lead to failure (I won't spoil the ending for you, but as it was turned into an opera you know what to expect).

Playing that synecdoche just like ringing a bell

This blog has always prided itself on sticking closely to its wargaming remit, but I am supportive when my fellow bloggists diversify into other areas. So I was pleased to see Prufrock wander off topic a week or so ago and reminisce about reminiscing, using music as the model for his musings. Back in the 1970s, after I had exchanged wargaming for beer, women and revolutionary socialism, one of my pleasures in life could be summed up as sitting in the back room of a pub, glass in hand, listening to a local band (any local band) play Johnny B. Goode. ["I cannot", says the Rhetorical Pedant "forgo the chance to comment on my specialist subject, namely rhetoric. Epictetus is employing the device of synecdoche, whereby a part of something - in this case Chuck Berry's best known song - refers to the whole - in this case the style of music which, back in your bloggist's youth, was referred to as Rhythm & Blues."]

And the band had to actually play Johnny B. Goode for my happiness to be complete; however good the band, however inspired the choice of the rest of their material ["That one is anaphora"] only that song would do. Indeed one of this blog's readers may possibly recall the occasion - in Jersey of all places - where the sheer joie de vivre resulting from hearing that introductory guitar riff, coupled with several pints of Mary Jane, caused me to join the band on stage as a surprise guest vocalist and sing the first and third verses. (Even to this day I'm not entirely sure that I know all the words to the second verse).

I was reminded of all this the other day by watching a group of ridiculously youthful chaps, Red Delta by name, perform in one of the local pubs. Apart from being able to play their instruments and for the fact that the vocalist could sing in key they were very similar to the band I played in all those years ago. I acknowledge that their version of "Brown Sugar" was better than ours, although as long as you ignored the lead guitar bits our cover of "Sunshine of Your Love" was there or thereabouts; maybe. Anyway, it was all good stuff: a bit of Hendrix, some Muddy Waters, some Robert Johnson, even some Rory Gallagher; but something was missing. And then they played it.

In his second childhood your bloggist may have once again taken up playing with toy soldiers, may have been forced to give up one of the alternatives he embraced instead back then (not to mention realising that one of the others was a fantasy and a dead end), but at least one thing still connects him to his adolescence.

"Go, Johnny Go!"

Happy Days

Readers may have wondered why there has been no mention of chimneys in the blog recently. It turns out that events at the Casa Epictetus have been a fine example of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. A bit of damp on the spare bedroom wall has become irrelevant in the light of somewhat more damp abruptly appearing elsewhere. All things considered I was slightly surprised to find that my shower has only made one previous appearance in this blog. It has, however, leaked intermittently ever since I moved in. As a consequence part of my living room ceiling will have to be taken down; to be more precise, the part of my living room ceiling that didn't fall down over the weekend will have to come down as well.

Will it ever get used again?

"Don't ever take a shower with a woman, because you'll probably end up proposing to her." 

- Scott Baio

Met you not with my true love?

‘As you came from the holy land
Of Walsingham,
Met you not with my true love
By the way as you came?’

‘How shall I know your true love,
That have met many a one,
As I went to the holy land,
That have come, that have gone?’

‘She is neither white nor brown,
But as the heavens fair;
There is none hath a form so divine
In the earth or the air.’

‘Such an one did I meet, good sir,
Such an angelic face,
Who like a queen, like a nymph, did appear
By her gait, by her grace.’

‘She hath left me here alone,
All alone, as unknown,
Who sometime did me lead with herself,
And me loved as her own.’

‘What’s the cause that she leaves you alone,
And a new way doth take,
Who loved you once as her own,
And her joy did you make?’

‘I have loved her all my youth,
But now old, as you see,
Love likes not the falling fruit
From the withered tree.

‘Know that Love is a careless child,
And forgets promise past,
He is blind, he is deaf when he list,
And in faith never fast.

‘His desire is a dureless content
And a trustless joy;
He is won with a world of despair
And is lost with a toy.’

‘Of womenkind such indeed is the love
Or the word love abused,
Under which many childish desires
And conceits are excused.

‘But love is a durable fire,
In the mind ever burning;
Never sick, never old, never dead,
From itself never turning.’

                     - Sir Walter Raleigh

Thorbjørn Risager & The Black Tornado

I have been to see the award-winning Thorbjørn Risager & The Black Tornado. A seven piece on the night I saw them (neither the alto sax player nor, sadly, the Tornadettes having made it to the wilds of West Yorkshire), they mostly play original material plus covers of artists such as Muddy Waters, Big Joe Williams and, less obviously, Nat King Cole. I thought they were excellent; judge for yourself:

Who exactly put those men in column?

Somewhat to my surprise the recent post with the fewest views is last week’s report on the current Seven Years War game at James’. Apart from anything else the mention of Russians usually attracts spambots in their droves. Anyway, things have moved on, mostly to the benefit of the Prussians. In the centre the bridge was completed and units moved across it, with mixed success it must be said. On the right the Prussian heavy artillery was able to wreak havoc on some rather badly placed infantry columns – the player responsible perhaps wisely choosing not to reappear this week – and to take out the Russian artillery facing them. It would seem that this is one of those games that James isn’t going to feature on his blog, so I’m afraid that’s probably the best description that you’ll get of the action.

Some readers (Hello Don) have said that the apparent constant rule changes in our games would drive them mad, but I think this game demonstrates why they are sometimes not such a bad idea. This is the only period in which the rules played are recognisably classic Piquet (although I will make a prediction here that that’s what James ends up using for the Peninsular War collection currently being painted) and the differences from the base set come from, perhaps, four directions.

Firstly, the chrome which reflects how we (i.e. James) understand warfare of the time to have been conducted. This is, of course, precisely, how Piquet was intended to be played and there are published supplements covering periods from ancients through to the 20th century. The original set is Horse and Musket, but perhaps mainly Napoleonic focused and the desire to have something more mid eighteenth century and specifically central European led to the ‘Lemon’ rules being written. Pretty much everything I know about the period comes from playing these rules, so I can shed no light at all on how successful they may or may not be in achieving this.

Secondly, there are things that just seem as if they could be improved. Changes made of this type would include playing Major Morale on the opponent rather than oneself when the card is turned and a morale challenge only costing a morale chip when it fails, both of which, in my opinion, substantially improve things.

Thirdly, there is the influence of other rulesets. Classic Piquet was written for much smaller, shorter lasting games than those we tend to play in the legendary wargames room. Morale is lost per stand lost, and when you’re dead, you’re dead. The publishers of Piquet subsequently issued a derivative set of rules – collectively known as FoB – which among other things reduce the potential for the swings of fortune that put a lot of people off and also make multiplayer games more practical. Further changes related to loss of morale, now by unit not stand, and the introduction of the ability to rally back losses that had been taken. Both of these changes suited the longer games we played and so were adopted. We then experimented with Black Powder for a different period - the Italian wars. Black Powder allows rallying back - although it makes it bloody difficult to do in practice – but the first hit can never be recovered i.e. units can never be recovered back to full strength. We rather liked that, and so it too was adopted.

Regular readers may also recall that the definition of a flank has proved problematic. It cropped up during the very first game that I played with the Ilkley Lads – an ACW game which must have been getting on for fifteen years ago now – and it has done so pretty much ever since. I think (hope?) that we have settled on one (if the centre of your unit is behind the extended front edge of the target unit then it’s a flank), but having done so I think we are just about to transcend flanks completely. Black Powder talks in terms of ‘enfilade’ instead of ‘flank’ and because there’s a compelling logic to that it has started to make an appearance in our games using other rules.

Which neatly brings me on to the fourth reason for changing the rules: new elements to the game. In this case it’s obviously the pontoon bridge. Standing looking down at the table, it doesn’t make much sense that a unit crossing the bridge in column should take more casualties when fired at from the side than from the front, which gives a push to the switch from ‘flank’ to ‘enfilade’. But that wasn’t the only issue that just didn’t seem right. As I referred to in the previous post we had need of some mechanics for building the bridge and so used those in the original Piquet rules. On the table the rather slow progress in construction enabled Peter to send up some Cossacks to harry the sappers. A quick look at the rules shows that the effect of this is, er, nothing at all; the bridge builders just carry on regardless. The same turns out to be true for being under fire from artillery. None of that seemed to make sense and so some tweaks were applied. In addition there are artillery rules for shooting at structures (cue much discussion as to whether a pontoon bridge was more like a wooden fence or a wooden house) or for shooting at troops, but none for targeting both at the same time if the latter are passing across the former; so some more adjustments were deemed to be required. What we ended up with still didn’t quite feel right - it is of course very important that it still all fits in with the general style of Piquet, card driven, opposed single dice rolls etc. - and I have no doubt that it will have evolved further by next week. I personally can’t see any alternative to this suck it and see development process, and prefer it to playing on regardless with something that is clearly incorrect. Sometimes it’s the journey rather than the destination.

For Chriss

O thou, my lovely boy, who in thy power
Dost hold Time’s fickle glass, his sickle, hour;
Who hast by waning grown, and therein show’st
Thy lovers withering, as thy sweet self grow’st.
If Nature, sovereign mistress over wrack,
As thou goest onwards, still will pluck thee back,
She keeps thee to this purpose, that her skill
May time disgrace and wretched minutes kill.
Yet fear her, O thou minion of her pleasure!
She may detain, but not still keep, her treasure:
   Her audit (though delayed) answered must be,
   And her quietus is to render thee.

-          William Shakespeare, Sonnet 126

Alceste moi

“My hate is general, I detest all men;
Some because they are wicked and do evil,
Others because they tolerate the wicked,
Refusing them the active vigorous scorn
Which vice should stimulate in virtuous minds.”

- Molière

And so to the theatre. I have been to see an all-female production of Molière’s ‘The Misanthrope’, or more properly of Tony Harrison’s early 1970s updated translation. This version further changed things so that the circle in which hypocrisy was being practised was that of modern celebrity television chefs. Not being at all familiar with those being run down behind their backs - I was straining my ears in vain for mention of Fanny Craddock or the Galloping Gourmet - I was a bit lost at times.

You can't beat a bit of Fanny

However the energy of the verse speaking swept it all along most pleasurably. There were also some well-choreographed physical interludes among the rhyming, plus yet another prop inadvertency. Less intrusive than last week’s curtain problems the Michelin inspector’s peeling false moustache nevertheless caused just as much amusement. Of the three ladies I went with one loved the play and the other two weren’t so keen; they did like the shoes though.

T'ain't Such a Much

This House

“This house is a circus, berserk as fuck 
We tend to see that as a perk, though”

-          Arctic Monkeys

And so to the theatre. I have been to see James Graham’s rather fine political play ‘This House’. Funny, thought provoking and well-acted I would urge anyone in the UK to catch it while it’s on tour. Anyone outside the UK won’t understand anything, which brings me to the main point: it casts a really embarrassing light on our particular form of democracy. Whether a government stands or falls shouldn't really depend on wheeling terminally ill people into Westminster on trolleys. The story regarding Frank 'abstain in person' Maguire being plied with drink and locked in a cupboard was certainly current at the time, whether true or not. There has to be a more rational, dare I say modern, way of doing it. In one small move in the right direction it has just been agreed that MPs on parental leave can make use of proxy votes. Welcome, sort of, to the twenty first century.

In fairness some of the events – which I am old enough to have lived through – were so bizarre that any system of governance would have struggled to deal with them.  Considering that the scenery mainly consists of the whips offices plus a few benches to represent the House of Commons they manage to very effectively portray the whole John Stonehouse affair including re-enacting his pretend drowning on a beach in Florida. And whilst I have no idea whether Audrey Wise was as terrifying as made out to be here, the script does allow her to demonstrate that sometimes principles matter; there was a spontaneous round of applause when she did so. From where I stood then, and indeed stand now, getting arrested on the Grunwick picket line was a source of pride rather than shame. In fact I’m pretty sure that Shirley Williams – on a very different wing of the party – also picketed; as did I.

As did he

I’m not old enough to have actually met any of the players in the action, although one of them’s son-in-law was the chap responsible for sending me to post-invasion Grenada a few years later. The actor playing him didn’t look old enough, but then we were all so young in those days. Speaking of the cast, there are nineteen of them (plus musicians whose changing hair styles between acts reflect the fact that the 1970s weren’t exactly homogeneous), which inevitably increases the likelihood of sitting there asking oneself where one has previously seen some of them. The answer – again for UK readers – is the Oak Furniture Land adverts; apparently there's a sale on if you get down there quick.

"We all know what parliament is, and we are all ashamed of it." - Robert Louis Stevenson

There were moments

The dog's spillocks

Wargamers of a certain age will no doubt recall with the same nostalgia as me Chapter 26 of Donald Featherstone's 'Advanced Wargames', the one on Engineering that contained rules on arcane subjects such as 'throttling down earthen banks' and 'spillocking'. I'm pretty sure that, at least in my middle aged wargaming renaissance, I had never actually put any of this into use; bridges have been blown up, they have never been constructed. But now, the time has come, because James' pontoon bridge has reached the table, cards have been turned, dice have been rolled, and it has been erected across the raging river. Or, as it turned out in this case, not erected across the raging river.

In the inevitable way of new toys, the unit of Prussian pioneers entrusted with building it rolled up as poor, followed by a battery of Russian howitzers knocking down the bits they did complete. Still, there's always next week. James and I, as the Prussians, put in a pretty average performance all round. We nearly lost within the first half hour because I completely misunderstood which road exit the Russians needed to capture to win and didn't bother to protect it. We also did a most peculiar little dance with half of our cavalry which achieve nothing except to waste a lot of initiative and present a flank to the same howitzers, thereby incurring heavy losses. Still, as someone immensely wise once said, there's always next week.

I must mention that the Russian guns that did all the damage were commanded by Mark Dudley, making a welcome return to the legendary wargames room, and showing a remarkable facility with a set of rules that been changed quite significantly since he last played them.

Advice

Folks, I'm telling you,
Birthing is hard
And dying is mean
So get yourself
Some loving in between.

            - Langston Hughes

S.O.S.

Should anyone be wondering why the font size on this blog keeps varying between posts - well so am I.

Be that as may, here's some Agnetha; I mean here's some ABBA:

Ahi, sul funereo letto

"Non sai tu che se l’anima mia
Il rimorso dilacera e rode,
Quel suo grido non cura, non ode,
Sin che l’empie di fremiti amor?
Non sai tu che di te resteria,
Se cessasse di battere il cor!
Quante notti ho vegliato anelante!
Come a lungo infelice lottai!"

- Gustavo, Un ballo in maschera

And so to the opera. It was a half full auditorium, although personally I had no problems at all with the journey. Those who stayed at home missed an excellent production - for some reason the company's first ever - of 'Un ballo de maschera'. Indeed the chap sitting next to me turned out to have seen it already and been so impressed that he had driven a hundred miles to see it again and was setting off for the return journey when the final curtain call had been taken. I did say that the weather didn't really seem as bad as the media were saying.

The performance was set in a vague mid twentieth century milieu, with some very sharp suits and long overcoats among the singers giving the impression that liquor was being bootlegged somewhere offstage. Were I designing it I might have been tempted to extend that image with Ulrica the soothsayer practising her trade in a speakeasy. Instead she appeared to be dressed as a member of the French resistance, perhaps signifying that if you asked to tell your fortune then you had better listen carefully because she would say it only once. 

Dunque ascoltate:

It was Ulrica's lair that caused a descent into unintentional comedy on the night. While she communed with Lucifer red curtains were drawn up on three sides of the stage to both provide some atmosphere and to give Gustavo a place from which to eavesdrop; sadly a large part of it promptly fell back down again (my new acquaintance confirmed that this hadn't happened when he had seen it previously). Rather than making use of this large gap, members of the cast chose to enter and exit through what was left, having of course to avoid where the King was hiding behind the arras. The resulting chaos brought back happy memories of the Morecambe and Wise show, only with better incidental music.

"I'm singing all the right notes..."

I've written about this opera before. It's one of those sad stories in which the wife goes back to her husband rather than stay with the man she really loves: Casablanca springs to mind, you may be able to think of others.

"Mi schianto il cor – ti lascio"

Plastic fantastic

"I love plastic. I want to be plastic." - Andy Warhol

If asked to define what sort of wargamer I am I would always answer "20mm plastic"; the slight irony being that by far the majority of the gaming that I actually do is 28mm metal in the legendary wargames room of James 'Olicanalad' Roach. However the collecting, painting and so on is essentially 20mm plastic with a bit of 20mm metal to make up the numbers. One thing that really differentiates us from other types of wargamer is the acquisition process. The boxes contain what they contain; some of the figures are of limited use and the proportions of different type of figures (e.g. officers, flagbearers etc) are never what one would wish for. When I started out all those years ago we would simply have unit sizes that reflected box contents and everything got used; nowadays I have a pile of stuff that will only ever be used for conversions. In addition, boxes are only in production for limited runs - the moulds are expensive relative to those for metal figures - and when they're gone they are (probably) gone. It took me a lot of time and a certain amount of expense to track down the last remaining sets of Hat WWI German Heavy Weapons in Europe when I belatedly decided that I needed ( OK, wanted) some. What we tend to do therefore is buy anything new that comes out and looks as if it might be vaguely useful. In my case the latest such purchase is some very nice figures of Medieval Gunpowder Castle Artillery. My 15th century forces already have so many bombards and the like that they can never all fit on the table at the same time anyway, but...

Some of the bombards

Their arrival inevitably led to some thought about upgrading my existing walls. The two issues that bug me are that I don't have enough and that I didn't make them modular, in the sense that all pieces are the same length. I might just have to treat myself to some laser cut MDF, probably the 28mm scaled ones; well it is my birthday soon. I mentioned this to James on our jaunt to Vapnartak and he tried to pass on some spare MDF sheet he had so that I could scratchbuild some. I think we all know that isn't going to happen. More usefully he has lent me a set of WRG 6th rules so that I can have a look at the siege rules. So, a relatively small amount of money spent on a set of figures that I don't really need will probably escalate into a much larger sum for something else that I don't really need. Such is life, as we used to say in the 1970s, such is life.

"You're alive!"

Which were the exact words addressed to me when I returned to boardgaming after a couple of months break to recharge the meeple mojo. These youngsters think that anyone over forty is on their last legs; well let me tell them there is nothing old about me. Anyway, I was going to do this list quarterly, but having realised that I couldn't for the life of me remember one of the games at all despite the name being written down in front of me, I thought it would be better to crack on and do it now before senility really kicks in.


7 Wonders: I have always liked some aspects of this game, and now like it a lot because for the first time ever I won.

Age of Steam: This was the best new (new to me that is) game played so far this year. It's a cracker. I always pick a strategy at random when faced with a new game and in this case went for: 'build railways on the bit of the board nearest me'. I came a respectable third out of five, but perhaps more up-front analysis might be helpful next time; and I hope that there is a next time.

Altiplano: This is recognisably by the same designer as Orléans (see below), but introduces an asymmetric element that didn't really do it for me. The start player marker is also a most irritating and large cardboard llama, or alpaca, or some other South American camelid. By the way, did you now that the Linnaean name for the Llama is Lama glama?

Dinosaur Island: Essentially Jurassic Park the board game. I took it a bit literally and did nothing but create dinosaurs in the laboratory. Little wooden visitors turned up in their droves, discovered there was nothing else to do and nowhere to eat and so buggered off again. I came last. I'm not so bothered about playing this again.

Flash Point: Fire Rescue: It's a co-operative game, but I rather liked it. It has a neat mechanism for spreading the fire that might have wargaming applications; can't think of any off the top of my head, but it might have. As with The Grizzled I don't know anyone who has ever won at this game.

Imperial Settlers: The French have an expression "l'esprit d l'escalier" which just about sums up ho I played this game. After every turn I would slap my head and tell myself what I should have done instead.

Junk Art: An amusing game of piling up odd shaped pieces of plastic until they all fall over. I do like a 3D game.

Nusfjord:  My random strategy in my first play of this game about building boats and going fishing was to focus on forestry. I came last.

Orléans: This was my favourite new game of last year and is strongly recommended. A nice set of balanced mechanics and scoring paths, with just enough player interaction to mean you need to watch what the others are doing.

Photosynthesis: Another excellent 3D game - hooray! - featuring trees and the sun. I am well known as being an expert on how the Earth goes round the sun and can confirm that it doesn't work as depicted here. We played the rules wrong - and if only I had a quid for every time I'd said that - but I'll take the win anyway. It's a spatial awareness game and we all know how poor I usually am at those. 

Sub Terra: It's another co-operative game, but this one is dull, dull, dull. There are dungeons, there are monsters, there is little tension. I was some sort of bodyguard with a power that allowed me to take hits on behalf of the others in the team, who supposedly had skills which would enable us to escape. When it became apparent that this wasn't going to happen I deserted them and made a run for the entrance; I didn't make it, but I died looking after number one, and that must count for something.

Telestrations: Amusing ten minute pictorial Chinese whispers.

Thunderstone Quest: This is a better deck builder than they usually are, because there is an end purpose in mind to use the deck for. Sadly this purpose is going into a dungeon - yawn - to fight monsters - yawn.

Zendo: This is a bit like the old Mastermind game, but better because it's multi-player. I'm not sure why you would pay for the plastic bits and pieces when you can clearly just play pretty much the same game with a couple of packs of cards.