Your Mum Does The Washing

 

Silk

 “Well, God give them wisdom that have it; and those that are fools, let them use their talents.” -  Shakespeare

Jonathan over at Palouse Wargaming Journal has been celebrating twelve years of blogging, which made me realise that I had also recently passed that mark. As opposed to that blog, which has gone from strength to strength and features more game reports than any other blog on my reading list, this blog has dwindled and diminished over time, both in quantity and quality. The only positive is that it still costs the same to produce, i.e. nothing. 

Evidence of all this is that I do have a couple of games to report on and can think of nothing more to say than that I enjoyed them both. First up was the Combat at Reichenberg, and the photos on James's blog if you follow that link are much better than the one above. As I say it was a fun way to spend a couple of evenings and resulted in a marginal victory for the Prussians. For those who like to keep track of our rule changes, we started playing Field of Battle 2 - sort of - and ended playing Field of Battle 3 -sort of - with our morale rules not having much to do with either. I know our approach bemuses people, but it is in part because James's table is so much bigger than that assumed in most rules; if we didn't change things up then games would last for months rather than weeks.

One set of rules which I never tinker with is Command & Colours. The above are the starting positions for Dennewitz, which I played recently with Chris, my plumber. It's such a good system for newcomers to pick up, and yet has plenty of decision points to keep more seasoned gamers interested, plus it doesn't last too long. It's not a simulation, but it is fun. To slightly misquote the designer of a different game (and one which I hope to report back on in my next post): "Throughout development, historical accuracy has been just one value among several". A fine approach.

PotCXXVpouri

 After a short gap, wargaming returned to the legendary blah blah with a Seven Years War game. Unusually we didn't use James and Peter's period specific rules (whose name I forget but it has something to do with lemons) in favour of playing Field of Battle virtually as published - at least to start with. We hadn't played them for a rather long time, but gradually remembered what it was we didn't like and so changed it as we went along. James has written up the first evening here, at the end of which we gave the Russians a shed load more morale so we'd get another evening out of it. That ploy worked a treat and the second evening ebbed and flowed quite a bit more than the first, but the better quality of the Prussian commanders proved too much for the Russians in the end.

And speaking of wargaming, it may return to the annexe next week for the first time in months. Having just cracked the problem of how to delineate dead ground in front of bastions, the logical thing would have been to play a siege game. However, instead I have cleared all that and set-up some Napoleonic Command and Colours. The motive for this was a request from my plumber who, having seen games in progress on previous visits, asked on this occasion (new U-bend on the bathroom washbasin) if he could have a game himself sometime. It is, of course, always worth keeping in with a good plumber (*).

In other news, the pigeon (see here for to which pigeon I refer) has gone. We finally did what should have been done a long time ago; i.e. captured her and took her off to International Pigeon Rescue. I didn't participate in that last element myself, but my henchwoman who did reported back that the organisation was impressively resourced, with staff who were well meaning, knowledgeable and every bit as bonkers as you would expect.

* Or indeed any other tradesman.

The Onion

The onion, now that’s something else.

Its innards don’t exist.
Nothing but pure onionhood
fills this devout onionist.
Oniony on the inside,
onionesque it appears.
It follows its own daimonion
without our human tears.

Our skin is just a coverup
for the land where none dare go,
an internal inferno,
the anathema of anatomy.
In an onion there’s only onion
from its top to its toe,
onionymous monomania,
unanimous omninudity.

At peace, of a peace,
internally at rest.
Inside it, there’s a smaller one
of undiminished worth.
The second holds a third one
the third contains a fourth.
A centripetal fugue.
Polyphony compressed.

Nature’s rotundest tummy
its greatest success story,
the onion drapes itself in its
own aureoles of glory.
We hold veins, nerves, and fat,
secretions’ secret sections.
Not for us such idiotic
onionoid perfections.

        -   Wisława Szymborska

Mrs Thurston Kicks the Dog

 “Above all, do not lose your desire to walk: every day I walk myself into a state of well being and walk away from every illness. I have walked myself into my best thoughts, and I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it.” -  Søren Kierkegaard

I have been away walking. The photo is of me climbing up the Long Mynd, or to be precise of me taking one of quite a few breaks as I climbed up the Long Mynd. I should perhaps have done some practice climbs up Otley Chevin before I went.

Sine my return I've only had time to catch up with the absolutely essential stuff: listening to the cricket, going to the opera, reading Private Eye etc. In the Rotten Boroughs section of the last one I was interested to see a reference to Magister Militum. The specific target of their criticism (you'll have to buy a copy if you want to find out the details) is the Tory leader of Wiltshire council, who it transpires is the owner what the magazine describe as the toy soldier supplier. I'm normally very happy to use the term 'toy soldiers' in these pages and elsewhere, but I wouldn't give 15mm figures to real children, as opposed to overgrown children.

Blind Spot

 The other day I made an assertion here about the recent ratio of wargaming posts to those on other subjects which was so inaccurate that perhaps even the Mango Mussolini himself would have hesitated before saying it. In an effort to nudge reality nearer to speciousness this post is about wargaming.

Nothing much of note has happened in the annexe for quite a while, but in the background I have trying to work through a small issue with the Vauban siege rules. When we first played them a couple of years ago I dropped a couple of elements that I couldn't work out how to deal with while we wrestled with the big picture of how they hung together overall. One was the 'blind spot' at the point of bastion into which the guns of that bastion cannot fire. The guns of adjacent bastions or other elements of the fortress can, of course, target anyone entering that space - that being the raison d'être of the star design - but they will do so at longer range.

There were three elements to the issue: what the rules say, what my bastions actually look like and how to make some sort of measuring device that reflects where we end up after considering the first two. To help playability the rules treat a lot of the aspects of siege warfare in an abstract manner. When it comes to bastions this means that each bastion is deemed to be a unit of fortress guns, that can fire to either side, but not to both sides at once, with the number and position of models being simply for aesthetic purposes. That in turn means that arc of fire and dead ground need to be defined without looking at the toys. There is a large colour diagram in the rules which aims to do this, but whilst I can see what the author has done, I'm a bit unsure as to why he has done it.

Putting that to one side for the moment let's turn to the bastions which I designed using a CAD system, made with a laser cutter and which feature in my games. They're the wrong shape; or to be more precise they are a bit squished up. Had I made them to both reflect 18th century reality and also to fit in the necessary models (necessary for aesthetic purposes only - see above) then the fortress would have stretched most of the way across the table and there would be any room for the siege lines. So they are somewhat foreshortened with very different angles to both commercially produced bastions that others may have and indeed to the diagram in the rules. It's time for the application of wargamers common sense. The dead ground at the point of my bastions will be laid out in a way that looks all right to me; my table my rules.

But how to measure it out? You would not believe the lengthy discussions that have taken place around this essentially trivial topic.  Ideas have ranged from drilling holes in the bastions themselves and fitting lengths of piano wire, to marking the table edges, to amending the original CAD drawings and thereby 3D printing an angle wangler. In the end, and based largely on a conversation with a non-wargaming boardgaming friend of mine, I have gone seriously cheapskate and cut some shapes from foamboard and painted them green. The main advantage being that if the area of dead ground doesn't seem right after all when playtested then I can just cut some more and try again.

Now all I have to do is work out how to represent ricochet fire.

Burning, but not jumping

"... for it had unquestionably been one of the most successful ‘shows’ ever undertaken by the squadron." 

- Captain W.E. Johns

It is a sad reflection of the current state of this blog that this will be the fifth post out of the last six to deal with wargaming. However, the game in question, 'Jump or Burn', is a firm favourite of mine. These used to be commercially available, but they were published in 2003 and I'm not sure whether they've ever been either reprinted or made available digitally. Unusually for one of James's games - especially given their age - the version we play is quite close to the as printed version, with just a couple of changes made to speed up play. The photo below shows the end of the game with various cards, measuring sticks etc laid out as well. The thing in the very top left corner is for measuring the turns of banking aircraft.

As befits a game I'm so fond of, the evening was a triumph for your bloggist. That's my DH4 front and centre, having just crossed the British trenches diving for home after a successful bombing mission. Admittedly the co-pilot is dead and, although it's a bit hard to see, the plane is both on fire and has suffered serious damage to its struts. However the chasing German fighter failed to draw any machine gun cards in the current hand and therefore I shall soon be off the board and therefore live to fly another day.

Lard Workshop the Third

 And so to The Old Chemistry Theatre at Nottingham Trent University for the third August in a row. Had readers given it any thought I suspect that they might have imagined a lecture theatre, or possibly a laboratory of some sort. However it looks like this:

It reminds me of an orangery. You can see why it got so hot in the sweltering summer of 2022. It was bearable this year, although all those hard surfaces still made it difficult to hear anything. The keen-eyed among you may notice that amongst the expected crowd of fat, old blokes there are a couple of lady gamers. There were three altogether, out of a total of fifty-two participants, and I am pleased to say that I got to share a game with one of them; literally the first time I have ever wargamed with a female in more that fifty years in the hobby; a red letter day.

I had two excellent games of Sharp Practice, which I'd never played before. It's obviously similar enough to many of the other Two Fat Lardies games, but I think I preferred it. I can understand why I have heard those more committed to the cult of Lard say that it's their favourite. Being card driven the flow of action is by design somewhat arbitrary, but the flag cards do allow players to seize back an element of control, although at the risk of potentially forgoing better opportunities further down the line. That mix of randomness and choice hits the spot for me.

First up was a French and Indian War set game in which I found myself playing Pontiac, who is pretty much bang in the middle of the photo above although you'll need to zoom in quite a bit to see him. Sadly I didn't take any photos of his later successes, when he got tired of standing off and skirmishing and led two successive charges, routing enemy units each time. It goes without saying that they were units of irregulars, even I'm not foolhardy enough to charge British regulars in line. The game ended in an honourable draw, which is of course a euphemism for saying that we all fannied about for so long that we ran out of time. Excellent fun though, and many thanks to Ken Welsh for putting it on.

The afternoon game was set in the Sudan; I put my name down for this one because that period may be James's current project, but (lack of) progress to date has been such that I though I'd look elsewhere for a taste of the desert in case I don't last enough to play with his toys. I must remember to take more photos of these things because the one above shows the position before the hordes of natives arrive and therefore lacks a certain something. The background is that two of the Governor's staff - a Mrs Slocum and a Miss Brahms - have been captured and are being held hostage in the building at the back. I was on the British team and we had force marched to recue them and had to get them back off the opposite edge of the table. First though we get to get into the building, and we decided to shoot first; after all that's our advantage, modern firearms. Sadly our technology was having a bad day; if the Gatling gun jammed once it jammed half a dozen times and the rifles seemed better at obscuring everything with smoke than with hitting the target. The Mahdists, amped up with suitable religious fervour, swept down upon us in sufficient numbers that some were bound to get through. In the end we launched an assault on the house and captured it, but achieved no more than ensuring that the ladies didn't die alone. It was a fairly abject defeat, but really enjoyable while it lasted. Thanks to Chris Smith for putting it on.

I have not got much else to say about Britcon - of which the Lard Workshop is a subset - except that it was good value and the lunch was rather nice. I eschewed the opportunity to go and gawp at the Perry twins, and my only purchase was 'The War of the Three Sanchos', and that was on a whim. I can tell you nothing about it yet as it remains unopened.

Cerignola after all these years

 Our last visit to the Italian Wars for a while saw us revisit Cerignola. The first time we played it was over ten years ago, presumably shortly after James had painted sufficient of his (then) latest project to make it work. I have a vague memory that James and Peter put it on as their game for Triples in 2013, but I could be making that up. 

I've no doubt that version looked very different to the above, and it goes without saying that the rules have changed substantially. My main memory of the previous games is that the French really struggled to get over the ditch, but this time - presumably at least in part because I was commanding the defenders - they didn't have much problem.

The photo above shows the French gendarmes having just routed one tercio and prior to flanking a second as well as destroying a big chunk of the Spanish heavy cavalry. Whatever else one thinks of the current state of the rules, they ensure a tight game that, usefully, always seem to finish in one night.

Romans Chapter 13 Verse 13

 “The conservatives are fools: They whine about the decay of traditional values, yet they enthusiastically support technological progress and economic growth. Apparently it never occurs to them that you can't make rapid, drastic changes in the technology and the economy of a society without causing rapid changes in all other aspects of the society as well, and that such rapid changes inevitably break down traditional values.” - Theodore J. Kaczynski

Boardgaming April-July 2024

 The usual new and otherwise mentionable games:

Amun-Re: Excellent game, and another to add to the list of such which are set in Ancient Egypt. The two halves rather reminded me of one aspect that I didn't like about Brass (although if you follow that link you'll see that it's ranked the number one game of all time, so what do I know). Like all auction games it seems to me that no-one ever bids enough. 

Apiary: Bees in space, colonising other planets, but still making honey and wax. It makes no sense, but an enjoyable worker placement game nonetheless.

Castles of Mad King Ludwig: I knew it had been a long time since I had played this, and when I looked it up found it had been October 2015. Far too long for such a good game.

Century: Spice Road: This game has been around for a few years and won awards when it first came out, but for some reason I had never played it. And as soon as I did I bought a copy because I knew it would appeal to one of my occasional companions. The game we play the most together, because she likes it the most is Splendor. I have nothing against Splendor, but one needs a change every now and then, and Century: Spice Road hits the same spot and does it well.

Cradle to Grave: Didn't like this at all; don't bother.

Discoveries: The Journals of Lewis and Clark: Another good game which I hadn't played for ages. I found a cheap second hand copy and enjoyed revisiting it.

Faraway: A very good, but very frustrating small game in which one plays cards from left to right, but scores them from right to left. The first time I played it I smashed it and wondered why everyone else was complaining. On every subsequent occasion my score has decreased from the previous game played. Hubris.

K2: Lhotse: This was the first time I'd played this map, which I didn't think was as good as the base map (not tight enough probably), although still fun.

Poison: Pleasant, light, push-your-luck game about mixing potions in which the largest physical components are completely unnecessary.

Skymines: Not a bad game. It's a retheme of Mombasa without all the unpleasant colonialism and slavery.

Strike: To quote another reviewer: "A mindless dice game, but fun".

Trio: Another good but annoying small game. You are trying to collect sets, you soon learn what cards others have, and they're not only not allowed to rearrange their hands, but also have to play cards only from either end. And yet somehow it's still really hard to find the cards one wants.

Kemet: Blood and Sand: We has a couple of goes at playing this in teams two vs two. It's fun, but, to me at least, led to the game outstaying its welcome.

Ticket to Ride Legacy: Legends of the West: We managed two more scenarios, taking us to the halfway point. I'd still strongly recommend the game, but we are having serious problems getting all five of us back in the same room at the same time.

Total Domination: This should have been right up my - and your - street. It's basically a different designer's riff on the theme and, in part, mechanisms of Quartermaster General which, importantly, only needs four players. But it went on and on and on and on, before we abandoned it about 80% of the way through. I think it's fair to say that there are nuances which we failed to master.

Troyes: Good game, as befits a bit of a classic.

Wandering Towers: I liked this. Thinky with tactile 3D components.

Wonder Bowling: Indirectly knock tenpins overs with a little hammer; that's all you need to know.

French vs Venetians Again

 So, we had another go: slightly different forces, slightly different unit ratings, slightly different rules. Pretty much the same result though, with both forces being essentially out of morale at the end of the evening. The way we are playing it - and James seems to be happy with the historical accuracy, so who am I to argue - the only formations that matter are the pike blocks and the role of everything else is to get on the flanks of the pike melee or, in most cases, not actually bother to do anything except add to the visual spectacle. 

Let's zoom in on the back of the pike block in the centre and examine all the detritus behind it:

The two stands of arquebusiers signify that the pike block has an intrinsic skirmish shot capability and have been moved to the back to allow the opposing pike blocks to get to close quarters. The cotton wool ball indicates that the skirmishers have fired and need to be reloaded when the correct card is turned. The little white bead with a number on tells us which command the unit belongs to. The two dice also in the tray are, in total, the strength of the pike block. The white one gets reduced first, but while it is still there it is easier for the unit to maintain its morale. The exact mechanism by which it does so remains somewhat of a mystery to me and I suspect also to James, but will eventually resolve itself into a coherent written form. The tuft shows that the unit is 'Disordered' for having fought a melee and not yet having rallied. There could possibly have been a 'Shaken' marker as well (it may be 'Vexed' rather than 'Shaken'; the two terms seem somewhat interchangeable), but there isn't one due to the white dice inspired voodoo referred to above. The coloured beads on the pin to the left may appear to tell us that it is Pride week in the Po valley, but in fact each has a meaning. Starting from the top blue means that the unit is above average for combat. Then green tells us that it is average for defence; I don't think there is such a thing as above average for defence, but there are certainly some units that are below average. The yellow bead means that the unit is 'Swift', so it occasionally gets to move around the battlefield a bit more quickly. The black bead means they are 'Fearsome', so they win melees when they would otherwise have drawn. The pink bead means they are 'Vengeful', so they don't lose as badly as they otherwise might if facing their mortal foes. The pike block's on the other side are indeed their mortal foes, but as they too are 'Fearsome' and 'Vengeful' it all ends up a bit 'as you were' and melees last for ever. Still, it looks good and is a fun way to pass an evening.

French vs Venetians

 Understandably we have struggled to build any gaming momentum since losing Peter from our small group, but we did meet this week. The period played was Italian Wars, for the first time since early 2022. In my blog post on that occasion I speculated that the rules were due for a rewrite, and sure enough James had updated them in light of our experiences with the Peninsular Wars rules, most notably unit movement.

My main observation on the new set is that they are somewhat bloody, with the game ending within one night with one side having no morale and the other hardly any. We shall see if they stay that way when we try again next Wednesday.

Stan Qualen

 I've been away, but I'm back. While I get myself sorted out here's some music from a band I saw a couple of weeks ago:

I'm thinking of wearing my hair like that.

Much As Expected

 Well, I at least am a happy bunny. It could have been better, but it could have been worse. Anyone getting their news only from the mainstream media may have been surprised by the success of the pro-Palestinian independents, but you wouldn't be if you lived where I do; Starmer has been wrong about Gaza since the beginning. As for the rise of the Reform Party Company Ltd, I stand by the views I expressed in this post from eight years ago.

Let me leave you with a charitable appeal:

Today's the Day

 "When the mood of the music changes, the walls of the city shake" - Plato 

PotCXXIVpouri

 I've been busy electioneering of course. I'm quietly confident in Leeds North West, not least because no other party seems to be doing any campaigning at all. As for the overall result, who knows? I would, however, like to point readers towards this little 'prediction' I made on the 23rd April 2020, during the first lockdown when the Tories were well ahead in the opinion polls. As I said then: we shall see.

I have found time away from politics to do a few things. Firstly, walking. This is an entry in the very infrequent series of bridges of the Yorkshire Dales. In the Worth Valley, it's not far from the house that the Railway Children lived in.

We also finished the To The Strongest! game, with a win for the Crusaders, but not by much. I then took myself off to see Mississippi McDonald, who was excellent despite clearly not coming from Mississippi. This one's called 'If You Want A Good Cup Of Coffee'. If you do, then take my advice and don't go to McDonalds, whether in Mississippi or anywhere else.

Revelation Chapter 21 Verse 4

 We met last night for a game. James had chosen the Crusades using To the Strongest! for our return to the legendary wargames room.

It was fun - TtR! always is - but I'm not going to write much about it. I shall however share a couple of photos of James's extremely impressive Middle Eastern town, which hit the table in its full glory for the first time.

As you can tell it is modular, with the sections mapping directly onto the squares of the gridded tabletop. James had come up with rules for assaulting the town and then for fighting between sections that seem to be working well so far.

I hope that James is going to include some better photos on his blog, but this is the situation as we left it. It's not immediately obvious, but the Crusaders have broken into the section directly in front of the siege tower as well as the edge of the town on the left of the picture. However, I as the Crusaders may just possibly have overextended myself in an attempt to reach the palace at the back and thereby meet the victory conditions. The Muslim army has pulled itself together and moved to seek to drive the infidels back out. Plus, their forces outside the walls must surely get going sooner or later. To be continued.

Sad News

It is with a heavy heart that I pass on news of the death of Peter, my friend and wargaming colleague of twenty years or more. With cruel irony he was the youngest and, until his illness, the fittest and most active of our small group. My thoughts are very much with Heather and his family.

Readers of this blog are ideally placed to understand how unimportant wargaming is in the scheme of things. And yet, Peter had been wargaming, painting and collecting for fifty years; it was part of who he was (although quite a bit lower in his hobby priorities than horses if truth be told). With that in mind I take some comfort from the last game he played having been the best that any of us had been involved in for a long time, a backwards and forwards tussle with matters undecided until late on the fourth evening. His condition deteriorated shortly after that and neither he nor the rest of us have played since. 

The other interest shared by Peter and me was music. This remained hidden for many years after we first met, until one night I found myself quoting Tom Russell lyrics at the wargames table, as one does. He picked up on that and, our common taste having been established, he introduced me to the fine covers of Russell's songs recorded by Gretchen Peters. We ended up attending gigs together when both artists next visited the UK and I know that I shan't be able to listen to either of them in future without thinking of my friend. As a suitably elegiac way to commemorate that musical bond here is Russell's 'Guadalupe' beautifully sung by Peters:

Tell It To Me Slowly

 I write this in response to the blog having supposedly received 4,000 views in the last twenty four hours, a figure which is beyond implausible. Inasmuch as there are ever any views it's due to neither the frequency of posting nor the quality; it's simply that I've been going a long time so there plenty of opportunities for stray internet searches to hit a past post. I'm going to revisit two of those past posts myself, following a bank holiday weekend of gig going.

Firstly the Paperboys, ten years after having last seen them, and very good they were too. My companion on that occasion, the estimable Coral Laroc, didn't care overmuch for the trombone and the first thing said during the interval by the lady accompanying me this time was "What's with the trombone?". Plus ça change. Speaking of Coral, she was last heard of at the beginning of the month swimming in the sea off Redcar, following which she complained that something in the water had made her ill. Does she not read the newspapers?

I've also seen the Zombies, this time after a gap of eleven years. Back then I hinted at some surprise that Colin Blunstone's voice was in such good shape. It now occurs to me that at the time he was the same age that I am now - i.e. in his prime - and that therefore there was nothing remarkable in the fact that he could still cut it. I am delighted to report that all remains well vocally. And indeed musically, because it was an outstanding gig, with 'Time of the Season', 'Hold Your Head Up' and 'She's Not There' being the unsurprising stand-outs; excellent stuff and if I never see them again - which seems probable - it was a very good way to leave it. 

Stupid Boy

 No wargaming recently due to stuff. We are hoping to resume this Wednesday, technology willing.

In the meantime, there's going to be an election. I'm not sure I can do better than quote this week's Economist: "Whether this decision is an act of political genius or lunacy - and The Economist's money is on lunacy - Britons should welcome it". Bring it on, I say. So far it looks as if the Labour Party's plan to plant a mole to run the Tory's campaign for them is paying off, as they unveil one barking mad idea after another.

Opera in musica

 "Pretentiousness is the mask of worthlessness and weakness." - Rafael Sabitini

It occurs to me that the thing you will all have missed most due to my my erratic posting schedule is my self-appointed role as the leading opera reviewer among wargaming bloggers. I've seen nine so far in 2024, six of them new to me, and so I'm afraid I can't be terribly comprehensive in my catch-up. Instead I'll briefly cover a couple of highlights.

The best of those I've been to, I would say, was the Hallé's concert performance of the original 1857 version of Simon Boccanegra at the Bridgewater Hall in Manchester, which was sensational and got both a standing ovation and rave reviews. I can't tell you how it compares to the revised 1881 version because I've never seen that, although Opera North are doing it in April 2025 and so readers can confidently expect me to post about that this time next year (*). I shall be particularly interested to know if the plot is any more understandable because this one was impenetrable. The most confusing moment came at the end of the first half when, the lady known as Amelia Grimaldi - who, spoiler alert, turns out to be someone else completely - comes on and tells us that she has, offstage of course, been kidnapped and then managed to get away. At this all the other characters, including those whom we know perfectly well both planned and carried out the deed, start singing "Death to Lorenzo". So far so operatic, except that to that point there had been no mention at all of any Lorenzo; nor, yet another spoiler alert, did he turn up in the second half. As opera critic Robert Thicknesse observed, it is "one of those libretti that heroically rises above explaining anything at all".

It was also at the end of the first half that the most memorable thing in Stravinsky's Rake's Progress occurred. It wasn't that I didn't enjoy the music, singing and acting or, to a lesser extent, the direction and design. It was just that the sight of the bearded lady sitting on a large horse with a cardboard box on her head - you can perhaps see why I had my reservations about what was going on in front of me - wondering why there was neither applause nor someone coming to help her down, was very funny. The reason was that the curtain had malfunctioned, the audience therefore had no clue that the act had finished (**) and it took some minutes before those behind the scenes came up with a plan to put us all out of our collective difficulty.

Other highlights included the first performance I had ever heard sung in Russian: Rachmaninov's Alekko set in a hippy commune and also featuring surprise appearances from some characters who had earlier that evening appeared in Mascagni's cavalleria rusticana, only visible to some on stage. Think Banquo's ghost. It was odd, but it worked. Also worth mentioning was Rossini's scala di seta where the silken ladder was represented by a more solid ladder let down into the pit. It was no shock to see the tenor climbing up it, more so to see the conductor do the same when joining the principals to take his bow.

* If the Lord spares me, and if I can be arsed.

** Beyond the fact that the orchestra had stopped playing; it's a good job they weren't on the Titanic.

Wellington Triumphs Somewhere Or Other

 The Peninsular campaign hasn't been getting a lot of love in the blog recently, or indeed from your bloggist if truth be told. However, we have been plugging away by playing a game that's lasted a full four weeks, the longest that I can remember happening in the legendary wargames room of James 'Olicanalad' Roach, and I've probably been playing there for close to twenty years(*). In the interests of complete disclosure I have to say that week two of the game was dreadful, at least from the point of view of my colleague Mr Jackson and myself, because we never got to do anything. But, in the finest traditions of the band on the Titanic we played on and, if I may mix my metaphors for a moment, we rose from the dead like one of those gay vampires that Ulysses S. Grant's great-great-grandson writes about. The final two evenings were highly enjoyable, with plenty of to and fro plus the good guys won in the end. What more could one want?

Well, fewer casualties probably. I still don't understand how the campaign loss system (ⓒ J.Roach) works, but the fact that the tray is overflowing is unlikely to be a good sign.

* Refights of Sidi Rezegh always felt like they had lasted for a month, but that's not the same thing.

Gold Tops A-Rattling

 “The cow is of the bovine ilk; one end is moo, the other milk.” - Ogden Nash

The election is nearly on us, the campaign will soon be over. Rest assured that my part in it does not involve any personal interaction with voters. The video in the last post rivalled that of Daniel O'Donnell for being the worst ever put up on these pages. This is better:

The Barry Barrel is Scraped

 It's election time; I'm busy.

To tide us over here is some Barry Blue. There are a couple of mysteries about this video. Is the music we're hearing the same as that to which he is lip-synching and 'dancing'? And why have the audience been drugged?

Fun fact: his real name is Barry Green. 

Unexpected fact: as a songwriter his work was recorded by, amongst others, Diana Ross and Vera Lynn.

Eve of Destruction

 We live in interesting times. It's reassuring therefore that readers have felt able to spare the time to write to me. For the record none of them have asked how the Peninsular campaign is going. Nevertheless I feel obliged to tell you. Mark very nearly won a couple of weeks ago, but the Spanish forces collectively made a burst towards Madrid, recapturing sufficient territory from the French to ensure that it will go on a bit longer. Bastards.

What did seem to be worrying you all was why my list of the most famous Barrys hadn't included Barry from Eastenders. A fine question, but in my defence I must point out that he is fictional, plus of course he was pushed off a cliff twenty years ago. Having said that, he did recently appear at a gig venue local to me presenting his, apparently famous, barrioke; shame I missed it.

Much more relevant to the state of the world is Barry Maguire, who recorded a song in 1965 which I would re-release sharpish were I his record label:

Sad But True

 "War, at first, is the hope that one will be better off; next, the expectation that the other fellow will be worse off; then, the satisfaction that he isn't any better off; and, finally, the surprise at everyone's being worse off." - Karl Kraus

From this week's Private Eye

Vauban's Wars Revisited

 I have set the siege up again to have a little play. It's been getting on for three years since it was last out on the table. I refer to 'the siege' because the initial layout is always going to be pretty much the same. These photos may therefore look familiar. 

One change that we decided was necessary was to start the game with some of the second parallel already built, and that's what you see above. I want to test whether that means that any adjustment needs to be made to the force sizes or to the opening values of food, powder, morale etc. I hope not, and that's the way I'm going to try it first. Having re-read the rules I'm not sure we gave sufficient weight to blind spots around the bastions during previous games, although as it was so long ago I may just have forgotten. One aspect of addressing that which requires some thought - and possibly the manufacture of  player aid or two - is that my bastions don't have as acute an angle as would have done in real life or as the rules assume. The main reason for that is simply to make the table footprint more manageable, although it also makes it easier to put the cannon and figures in them. As I say I need to have a think about how to match the rules to the terrain.

Speaking of terrain, the only real change since last time is that I have modelled and cast up some proper positions for guns and mortars to replace the rather bodged way in which I did it before. Hopefully you can get the idea from the photo above.

The Spanish Have a Beef With Wellington

 The Peninsular Campaign, which we have been playing on and off now for some months, is in one sense just an extended playtest. James wrote the rules drawing on his vast experience, his status as a wargaming demi-god plus, of course, the ever elusive wargamer's common sense. However, and despite that pedigree, until they were played no-one could know how they would work out in practice. We have made the expected running amendments as we went along, but I understand that James now feels that he knows enough to start thinking about some more fundamental changes and a version 2.0. One aspect that seems certain to feature is some achievable victory conditions.

The problem with the current system is that it seems to be as easy to lose victory points as it is to gain them. The French are currently ahead, but only by as much as the allies were recently, and a swing back is all too imaginable.

One way out would be a climactic, winner-takes-all battle and we rather thought it had arisen a few weeks ago. One French command under Sault attacked a numerically superior, but otherwise inferior Spanish army. A second French force was due to arrive part way through, but - thanks to a campaign card produced from nowhere by Peter - so was Wellington with a large and very strong Anglo-Portuguese army. This was the big one. Except it wasn't. The luck of the dice and cards resulted in Wellington not bothering on this occasion and the Spanish received the inevitable kicking. I wouldn't be happy if I was them.

To me, to you

 I have been asked why my round-up of famous Barrys in showbiz omitted Chuckle. Good question. At the risk of confirming AI in its belief that this is a YouTube channel, let's have some music from another one. And is it just a coincidence that the Leeds born Ryan brothers (real name Sapherson) shared first names with the Chuckle brothers (real name Elliot) (*)?

* Yes, it is.

Six Months of Boardgaming

 Haven't done this for a while. New-to-me and otherwise notable games only.

Age of War: OK, but no better. It's samurai themed, but fairly abstract.

Amerigo: Perfectly fine exploration and tile laying game.

Arkadia: Polyomino tile-laying game with some clever variable scoring rules. Good.

Clever Cubed: The third in the Ganz Schon Clever! series. The second remains my favourite so far.

Dead Man's Draw: Nice pirate themed filler.

Dogfight! Rule the Skies in Twenty Minutes!: Played this some more, this time including missions such as bombing and reconnaissance. It's not very good.

Dune Imperium - Uprising: According to those whose judgement I rate, this has replaced the original. I didn't see it as being that much better myself. What I did see was a scam, whereby people are lured into paying full whack again for a game that has a 90% overlap with one they already have.

Evacuation: I really did not enjoy this, indeed I failed to see the point. Other people claimed to like it, so what do I know?

Exit - The Disappearance of Sherlock Holmes: I'd never played an escape room game before, and this was much harder than I was anticipating. Fortunately the players included two of the sons of one of my regular companions, both of whom turned out be much smarter than either their mother or me, and so we managed to solve the puzzle. I'd certainly do others in the series, but only when surrounded by younger and more flexible minds than mine.

Faiyum: We gave this a go with four players and it was proved to be a very good game at that number.

Heat: Pedal to the Metal: A fine, fine game; highly recommended. There's loads of stuff in the base box which I still haven't played with, but enjoyed the circuit from the expansion which we tried.

The Hunt: A very enjoyable asymmetric two-player game about the Graf Spee raiding merchant ships in the South Atlantic at the outbreak of WWII and the Royal Navy's search for it.

Imperial: This is Diplomacy with added cash. We only played it because there were six of us, but it turned out to be well over the heads of most of those taking part. I'd like to give it a go with stronger players.

K2: Climb the world's most dangerous mountain and, if you're lucky, come back down again. I've always enjoyed this and snapped up a second-hand copy of the big box version containing the base game and all the expansions.

Kemet: Blood and Sand: This is an updated version of the original Kemet, which I had played and thought was OK. I was more enthusiastic this time, although whether that's changes in the game or changes in me I wouldn't like to say. 

Lancaster: Haven't played this for years, and ended up teaching it, which wasn't ideal. It's a good game, sort of about the Hundred Years War, but not really.

Magic Rabbit: Likeable, and short, cooperative game where rabbits have to be sorted into numerical order without any communication.

Mesopotamia: Did they carry stones on their heads in Mespotamia? Did they always execute messengers? Reasonably theme free, but nonetheless interesting, pick-up-and-deliver optimization game.

Modern Art: There are four types of auction in this, which was at least three types too many for my brain. I did very badly.

Nusfjord: Will it be wood or will it be fish? Either way money is scarce and the turns you will have throughout the game are even tighter. Difficult to do well against anyone who has played it before.

Obsession: Downton Abbey the board game. I enjoyed it a lot more than the first time I played it. Worker placement with differentiated workers.

The Quacks of Quedlinburg: A popular game that I had never played before and enjoyed when I finally did. Involves push-your-luck and bag-building, both mechanisms which I enjoy.

Ticket to Ride Legacy: Legends of the West: Don't worry, no spoilers here. I'd never played a legacy game before, but am enjoying this one. We have played four of the twelve sessions that will make up the whole thing and so far it has exceeded our expectations.

Vegetable Stock: Fun filler.

Wallenstein: Thirty Year War themed, but certainly not a wargame. The main gimmick is a tower into which your armies are poured to resolve combat, but my advice is not to fight if you can avoid it.

World Wonders: Yet another polyomino tile laying game, but with a neat money track concept. It also has nice wooden wonders of the world which get placed alongside your tiles. 

I went to Airecon, the large local boardgaming convention, for the first time this year. It was very good, I caught up with a lot more people than I ever do at wargames shows. The highlight was the bring-and-buy, which is also something that never happens at wargaming shows.

Barrytown

 “Barry, you're over thirty years old. You owe it to your mum and dad not to sing in a group called Sonic Death Monkey.” - Nick Hornby, High Fidelity

I rather enjoyed 'High Fidelity' the novel, not least because it was located in a time and place of which I had direct personal experience (*). I didn't care for the film version because, in a classic case of cultural appropriation, the producers relocated it somewhere else so that they could make more money. Perhaps enough time has passed for it to be worth re-reading and/or re-watching. From memory alone therefore, the Barry character (**) wants to be in a band, but in the end only gets to be in one because those who invite him have decided that all the members have to be called Barry (***).

The chap singing the music in yesterday's video was Barry Booth. He had quite a career and worked with some very well known names, many of whom are listed on his website, the biography section of which is quite amusing (****). Whilst he sadly never seems to have worked with Gibb, White or Manilow, he has collaborated with a couple of aptly named non-musicians, Barry Cryer (appearing not for the first time here) and Barry Fantoni, which whom he wrote a musical.

A week or so ago I went to see Barry Rutter, another figure to have featured in this blog before, speaking about "Shakespeare's Royals". In between giving the full-throttle, chewing the scenery, performances for which he is known and loved, he told several anecdotes. I was personally very interested in the background to a production I saw some years ago, but perhaps the most amusing concerned a backstage encounter he had in New York once with both Dizzy Gillespie and Rudolf Nureyev. Many years after that, Gillespie and Nureyev both died on the same day. Rutter quoted to us the 'In Memoriam' poem composed for the occasion by E.J Thribb, aged 17 and a half.

"So Farewell then … Dizzy Gillespie
Famous Jazz Trumpeter.
You were known for your Bulging Cheeks.
Rudolf Nureyev,
So were you."

E.J. Thribb was, of course, a penname of Barry Fantoni.

Perhaps the quote to best capture the essence of this whole post comes not from Hornby's original book, but rather from the digested version written by John Crace for the Guardian:

Barry is already at the shop by the time I arrive. "How was your weekend?" he asks. I think about telling him about Laura but then I think we don't really have that kind of relationship so I reply: "I made a list of all the anagrams you could make out of 'Solomon Burke is God'."

"Cool," says Barry. "Did you include 'I'm a sad twat'?"

* For example the 'Harry Lauder' pub they spend a lot of time in is clearly based on the 'Sir George Robey', which will be well known to anyone who ever visited the Rainbow.

** All three of the shop staff are, I would have thought, just meant to represent different aspects of the author's own personality.

*** Should this, as is quite likely, be wrong, please keep it to yourself because it rather undermines the remainder of the post.

**** Be warned though, many of the photos show him with a convicted paedophile. Booth is no longer with us and the website itself is clearly rather old.

Ayee

 “The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim.” - Edsger W. Dijkstra

Jonathan over at Palouse Wargaming has asked a chatbot to explain his blog. On the basis that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery I have asked the same AI the same question but about this blog. Part of its response says that I am involved in "discussing various historical battles and wargaming topics from an informed, expert perspective". So, clearly nonsense then.

To get a different opinion, I tried Gemini from Google, who after all actually host this blog. Gemini says that it isn't a blog at all, but rather a YouTube channel, citing as evidence the post entitled "YOUTUBE has a wargaming problem". There is no such post on here nor, as far as I can find, on YouTube either. 

While I'm sulking about the possibly libellous suggestion that this blog has featured so many videos that it might as well be a YouTube channel, why don't I play some music which celebrates the modelling side of our hobby:

The appearance of a photo of Michael Palin as a shopkeeper early on in the rather overly literal visual interpretation of the song is not by coincidence; he wrote the lyrics.

Altar of Freedom

 Mark and I had a little break from endless French versus Spanish in the Peninsula and tried out the 'Altar of Freedom' rules for the American Civil War, whose title comes from a letter which President Lincoln may or may not have written to a woman who may or may not have lost five sons in the conflict.

In turn, the rules may or may not be any good. The one thing I can say with certainty is that they have a bit of a learning curve and one game is not sufficient to come to a conclusion. The main gimmick is a hidden bidding system for command activation priority, but I didn't really get to explore strategies for that. There is also an extensive list of possible traits for each commander and mine ended up with strict restrictions on what he could do in the bidding phase, which was not ideal for a first game. 

I enjoyed it all nonetheless, and would be happy to play again. My main reservation would be that it seemed to be one of those games where units can start directly facing an enemy unit and manoeuvre on to a flank of said enemy in one move. That's a feature which I really don't like, but it's always possible that we weren't playing it properly. 

In this world where we live...

Seven years ago I posted a picture (*) of the statue of a comedian on the seafront of a run-down resort on the Northwest coast of England. Here's another one:

Come back in 2031 for a third in the series. 

* If anyone follows that link, I did indeed go down with Salmonella poisoning in 2017.

In another part of Spain

            There was a little girl,
            Who had a little curl,
            Right in the middle of her forehead.

            When she was good,
            She was very good indeed,
            But when she was bad she was horrid.

                       - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

It's possible that you are asking yourselves whether this Peninsular campaign hasn't been going on for rather a long while. It has, gentle readers, it has.

We fought through the conclusion of the latest battle between Spanish and French - Blake vs Marmont, but I still don't know where - over the last two Wednesday evenings. The first of those gave an excellent night's entertainment; the second didn't. Piquet, despite definitely being my rules of choice for Horse and Musket games, is a bit like Longfellow's little girl. Occasionally it is horrid.

Anyway, the Spanish duly lost, but did a reasonable amount of damage to Marmont's army. Elsewhere, Wellington has been trying to get to Sault, believing that he had inferior numbers. He did, but then a campaign card gave him the Old Guard, and then timely reinforcements to existing formations bolstered him even more. He was still too scared to take on the Iron Duke though and has attacked a nearby Spanish army instead. Will Wellington arrive in time to join the battle? I have no idea, because I clearly don't understand the campaign rules. 

Langzeitmüdigkeit

 “This lasted longer than I could describe even if I wrote pages and pages about it.” - C.S. Lewis

Someone has very kindly asked after my health. I am much recovered, possibly up to more or less what passes for 100% with me. The one thing that I still can't do is spend much time at a computer screen so, to everyone's relief, blog posts will continue to be infrequent. In other areas of my life I have thankfully managed to return to full man-about-town mode, including catching the current touring production of 'Oh! What A Lovely War', which I very much enjoyed and highly recommend should it come near you.

A talented group of actor-musicians absolutely nail the production's mix of broad comedy, satire and tragedy. If you've seen the film you'll know that the attribution of blame is not especially nuanced, but sadly what the piece has to say about the futility of war is as relevant today as it was then.

A l’hora del record seràs València

 Or possibly not. It would seem that Valencia was relieved after all because the French marched their entire force of to battle rather than leaving any to man the siegeworks. I can't tell you what that means for the campaign; presumably all will become clear in due course. Anyway, in another part of Spain the French and Spanish are having at it again; we have already had more battles than there were in the whole of the Peninsular war. This time the Spanish force is that of Blake, who has done nothing so far except receive reinforcements. He outnumbers the French on the table at the start and has therefore attacked. As usual I don't know the location at which the battle is taking place. In my defence I seem to mainly view the map upside down and from a distance.

We've only played the first turn of the game so far, so by way of a change here is a picture of the participants. I apologise for the lack of ties; your bloggist was of course wearing one behind the camera.