Gudbuy T'June

I know well

That the June rains...

Just fall

- Uejima Onitsura

There has been a fair bit going on in June, a month in which it was first very hot and then very wet, that I have forborne from posting about. For example I went to see the NT production of Salomé, which was visually impressive (notwithstanding the Guardian describing at as looking as if the Last Supper had been held in a branch of Yo Sushi!), but wasn't terribly entertaining. I hung out in pubs watching bands, saw my second production of 'Kiss Me Kate' of the year, went to both Sheffield and Barnsley, took part in the Otley walking festival and still found time for occasional trysts with the big bouncy woman. In honour of one of those items, here's another entry in the occasional series featuring bridges of the Yorkshire Dales; this one is the railway viaduct at Knaresborough as seen from the castle.

However, this is a wargaming blog so let's stick to that. There have been a couple of Italian Wars games using Pike & Shotte and about which James has written. I like the rules, although things do fall apart rather quickly once they start to go wrong. On the painting front I have achieved very little. I have completed another dozen WWI British riflemen, but other than that it has all been repair work. When I pack away a Napoleonic game I always do some labelling (on the underneath of the bases) and some rebasing and repairing. Some of the figures are fifteen years old or so and are showing their age. I find doing a few at a time after they have been used is more bearable than thinking about doing everything at once. And I have finally bitten the bullet and thrown away the gloss varnish that has been repeatedly causing problems; just a shame I didn't do it before I used it on the three units of Prussian Hussars. As for next month, I mentioned that I might set up a Great War game and therefore wargamer's logic has determined that I have assembled and primed some chariots.

May/June Boardgames

It's been another distinctly non-vintage couple of months for boardgaming, although I still managed to play twenty games:

6 nimmt!: A bit random maybe, but a perfectly fine short card game which I prefer to X nimmt!.

Abluxxen: Another fine short card game.

Arctic Scavengers: The role of theme in boardgames isn't always that important; however I would suggest that while it can't make good games better it can make bad games worse. I have a distaste for the post apocalyptic almost as great as that I have for fantasy and magic. This gets a big thumbs down from me.

Avenue: This is a quick and interesting enough game that handles a lot of players without taking any longer.

The Climbers: I do like a 3D game and I especially like this. I suspect that my unexpected victory a couple of months ago will never be repeated, but I'm always happy to play.

Codenames: Reliable filler.

Elysium: I was pleased to play this again. It has an interesting auction mechanism and is one of the few engine building games that I don't mind. The scoring is also exactly like Rummy, thereby proving that there is nothing new under the sun.

First Class: From the designer of Russian Railroads, this is a bit like Russian Railroads. My advice would be to play Russian Railroads.

Five Tribes: I like this; recommended. The number of tribes involved is probably one, possibly zero, but certainly not five.

Ice Flow: Another favourite of mine, with a very different mechanism to most games.

Istanbul: An enjoyable game, which is rather looked down on by the hard core gaming fraternity; their loss.

Lords of Waterdeep: Speaking of theme, this one's is notoriously wafer thin. Treat it as an abstract worker placement game and it's good.

Package?!: A filler which, as they often do, took longer to explain than to play. Nominally about delivering parcels, it has a mechanism for doing down other players which rebounds if you're not careful. Enjoyable.

Port Royal: Yet another nice little card game. I'm not sure I entirely grasped the best tactics; maybe next time.

Power Grid: China/Korea: We played the Korea board, which had an interesting - though possibly irrelevant in our game - split in the resource market between North and South. You'll be pleased to know that the North doesn't seem to have any uranium.

Quantum: Another old favourite unplayed for a couple of years. I think the dice as spaceships mechanism is very clever. For added interest to wargamers, there is the opportunity - necessity even - to attack everyone else's ships, which is achieved by rolling dice adjusting for various factors and comparing the results.

Sail to India: There's a lot of game in a small box here.

Skull: I thought that this had suffered from overexposure and was unlikely to appear for quite a while. I was wrong.

This War of Mine:  More post apocalyptic drivel, this time it's a co-operative just to rub salt in the wounds. Apparently it's based on a video game; I trust that the original is better than this over complicated farrago.

The Voyages of Marco Polo: This is an OK worker placement game with a map. My tip is to buy as many camels as you can, as early as you can and as often as you can.

Haslach-Jungingen, the game

The Haslach-Jungingen scenario looked at first as if it was going to provide a surprise Prussian victory, but it all rather fell apart when a cavalry charge from the flank into the infantry behind Jungingen was repulsed by a combination of squares and light infantry in the woods. James, who played the Prussians, instinctively turns his units to face the direction that they are moving rather than leaving them facing perpendicularly across the table. The latter is surely more reflective of the its origins as a boardgame as well as, in my opinion anyway, being aesthetically more pleasing. I only mention it because I can't help wondering if this habit also subconsciously makes him start thinking of flanking bonuses and lines of retreat directly away from the enemy instead of back towards his own baseline. Neither of these things exist in C&C, which might in some small way explain why his tactics didn't work, especially as he once again displayed an uncanny ability to roll the symbols that he needed on the dice.

We played that some cards could be used across sections of the battlefield as previously described except that 'Give Them Cold Steel' was allowed to be across all sections, but limited to four units, and didn't get played in any event. This house rule for certain cards seemed to work better to us and will stay. The one lingering doubt we seem to collectively have is about movement being too slow. The cards with three stars (which must have a proper name, but I still don't know what it is) allowing extra March moves worked, but only up to a point. I have some ideas which we'll give a go next time. That might be a while because following the fundamental wargaming (and indeed boardgaming) principle that as soon as one gets familiar with something one should abandon it in favour of something new, I have a hankering to return to the trenches.

One other thing that came up is that with all the expansions containing special rules and with the card deck having changed so much it is sometimes difficult to work out which bit should take precedence.Two issues arose which I adjudicated somewhat arbitrarily. The first turned out to be correct as I subsequently found the rule that says explicitly that the Prussians can use as many Iron Will counters as they wish on one unit and at the same time; which in no way alters my opinion that James rather threw them away on something not perhaps as pivotal as it might have been. In the second case I have changed my mind; I now think that if you use the 'Break the Square' Tactician card in conjunction with the 'Cavalry Charge' Command Card that you should get the bonus for the latter and I shall, as long as I remember, rule that way in future.

Here, for my own future reference more than anything else, are the OOBs. In the actual battle the French cavalry were dragoons; given the binary choice in C&C of light or heavy cavalry I have made them the former.

Prussians

7 x Line Infantry
7 x Reserve Infantry
7 x Landwehr Infantry
3 x Foot Artillery
1 x Cuirassier
1 x Light Cavalry
2 x Landwehr Lancers
4 x Officers

4 x Command Cards
4 x Tactician Cards (both starting and maximum)
3 x Iron Will tokens


French

2 x Grenadiers
5 x Line Infantry
4 x Light Infantry
3 x Light Cavalry
1 x Foot Artillery
1 x Horse Artillery
5 x Officers

6 x Command Cards
6 x Tactician Cards (starting; no maximum)


French move first

Here I Go Again

I have been on what the big, bouncy woman - who, in a rare glimpse into her life, I am going to reveal works in education - refers to as 'unauthorised absence'. I have various things to report on, even including wargaming. However, before we get on to all that, it does occur to me that there hasn't been enough hair metal on the blog until now:

A woman waving her leg in your face while you're driving is exactly the sort of thing that might result in trying to drive off with the handbrake still on. Just saying.

Shād bād manzil-i murād

So, I tipped India to win the final of the ICC Champions Trophy; I hope none of you followed that advice to the extent of putting any money on it. Not only did Pakistan win, they whapped India so badly that the losers might as well have not bothered to turn up. Once again proof, should any more be required, that Epictetus doesn't know what he is talking about.

I am on firmer ground with music however. As I have previously reminded you, that eminent philosopher Homer Simpson once noted that it had been scientifically proven that popular music reached perfection in 1974. In light of that self-evident truth I have been to see Ian Hunter, former lead singer with Mott the Hoople, a band who broke up that very year, presumably recognising that it was all downhill from there. Hunter is, astonishingly, seventy eight - by some weird coincidence all the musical heroes of my youth seem to be reaching old age together - but played and sang with energy seemingly to spare. He also had a rather good, and rather younger, backing band to help out. He is touring in support of a new album, but while there was a lot of stuff I didn't know, it didn't stray at all from the template of forty years ago. He did, of course, play the songs one would expect from his solo career (Once Bitten, Twice Shy) and from Mott the Hoople (All the Way to Memphis, Roll Away the Stone, a cover of the Velvet Underground's Sweet Jane, The Golden Age of Rock and Roll etc). Hunter was a friend of David Bowie and for the encore he first played 'Dandy', his tribute following the latter's death which appeared on the new album, followed, inevitably and understandably, by 'All the Young Dudes'.

C&C Cards

In Epic C&C Napoleonics some Command Cards which in the base game would affect the whole table now have to be played in one section. This seemed a bit unbalanced; for example it would be far more common to have four infantry units in a section (e.g. for Fire and Hold) than four artillery units (e.g. for Bombard). Even worse, it rather slows things down; playing the rules as written would mean often activating fewer units per turn in a large game than in a small game, which seems counter intuitive. I/we have therefore decided to tweak a few and to clarify the meaning of another:

Command Cards

• The following cards apply in all sections rather than just in one:
• Bayonet Charge
• Bombard 
• Cavalry Charge 
• Elan
• Fire and Hold
• Leadership
• La Grande Manoeuvre
• Rally
• For the avoidance of doubt the Give Them Cold Steel card still only applies in one section.

I did think of making some of these cards (e.g. Bayonet Charge, Bombard etc) playable in two adjacent sections, but in the end felt it added complexity for little value. All the cards listed have limits to the number of units that can be ordered - some on the card, some related to size of hand, some determined by dice thrown, and some by number of leaders - and so none are out of proportion to the rest of the game. Give Them Cold Steel has no such limit and could potentially apply to every unit, hence the restriction.

Tactician Cards

Call Forward Reserves: the wording on this card is ambiguous. To me the logic is that units are being summoned by a leader to join them. We shall therefore ignore the clause about open terrain. Units can be moved forwards to any hex adjacent to a leader or occupied by a lone leader. I will also allow any unit to be so ordered, not just those on the baseline; that restriction is presumably intended to make it a counter to Short Supply, but in practice would seem to punish attackers.

I have never been entirely happy with the Short Supply card, either when it was a Command Card, or now it's in the Tactician deck. For a while we played it as a sort of ranged fire equivalent to First Strike instead of as written. However, for the time being at least, it stays. In the next game to be played there will be a scenario specific restriction and we shall see how that works out.


OK, I'm off to sit in the sun and listen to the cricket. If I were a betting man my money would be on India.

Pot69pouri

Well, I don't have much time for the royal family normally, but I think HM has played a blinder this week; which is more than can be said for TM the hapless PM. The Daily Mirror has also hit some form;

I used to work in the Mirror Building, back when both Fleet Street and I were in better shape; remind me to tell you all my Robert Maxwell stories sometime.

In other news I have been to see Vieux Farka Touré, the 'Hendrix of the Sahara'. I couldn't see any similarity between them myself beyond the fact that he played guitar, and, as the big bouncy woman pointed out, that is probably the absolute minimum. If I had to make comparisons - which I don't but I will - I'd say that he was the 'Robert Cray of the Sahara'. Whatevs, as the younger Miss Epictetus would say if she ever spoke to me, he and his band were very good. I have no idea what he was singing about - they spoke to each other in French, addressed the audience in very broken English, and sang in what is presumably a language native to Mali - except perhaps for the song entitled 'Ali', which I assume was dedicated to his father, the late Ali Farka Touré. However, I enjoyed it as did the audience of mainly aging hippies dad dancing in the aisles throughout.

He was on at the Howard Assembly Rooms, which shares a common entrance with the Grand Theatre. Currently showing there is Mama Mia, which made for some interesting contrasts in the queue for bag checks. It also provides an excuse to include a photo of Agnetha; though who needs one?

There is also no reason to explain the appearance here of some asparagus. That's crème fraîche with dill and jalapeño peppers on the right.

Haslach-Jungingen

The latest Epic C&C Napoleonics game set up in the annexe continues a number of themes. It is based on an old Miniature Wargames article (by Gary Lind in June 2011), that article is based on a scenario in a book (Napoleonic Scenarios 3 - The Glory Years 1805-1809 by Dave Brown, published by Partizan Press), it's converted from a different rules set (General de Brigade)  and it ought to feature Austrians, but has Prussians instead.

The original action took place on 11th October 1805, a few days before the battle of Ulm. A large Austrian force, largely made up of new recruits, under Mack, who wasn't a very good general, and featuring lower level commanders who weren't very flexible, attempted, but failed, to drive off a smaller force of veteran French that was in the vicinity of two small towns close by the bank of the Danube: Haslach is nearer the camera, while the Danube is the table edge.

All of that is fairly straightforward to replicate in C&C, especially, as luck would have it, using Prussians. The uncertainty of the force can be represented by large proportions of reserve infantry and Landwehr, the poor C-in-C by a smaller hand of Command Cards, and the inflexibility by a limit to the number of Tactician Cards that can be held at any one time.

Scenario details:

• The French get two units of converged grenadiers. These have been created to garrison Jungingen and no other units can initially be used for that purpose. 
• The stream counts as a fordable river.
• French 6 Command Cards, 6 starting Tactician Cards.
• Prussians 4 Command Cards, a maximum of 4 Tactician Cards (which is also their starting number), 3 Iron Will counters. If they already have 4 Tactician Cards the Prussians may draw new ones and choose which ones to discard.
• The Short Supply card cannot be played on a unit in a town hex
• Victory conditions: occupy the two towns at the end of the evening.

I'm going to alter slightly the definition - or at least clarify the interpretation - of a few of the cards, but I'll list those in another post.

Sonnet 64

When I have seen by Time's fell hand defaced
The rich proud cost of outworn buried age;
When sometime lofty towers I see down-razed,
And brass eternal slave to mortal rage;
When I have seen the hungry ocean gain
Advantage on the kingdom of the shore,
And the firm soil win of the watery main,
Increasing store with loss, and loss with store;
When I have seen such interchange of state,
Or state itself confounded to decay;
Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate
That Time will come and take my love away.
   This thought is as a death which cannot choose
   But weep to have that which it fears to lose.

                                   

The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves

"The bad end unhappily, the good unluckily. That is what tragedy means." - Tom Stoppard

It's time to leave behind British politics - with its stories of powerful though flawed individuals brought low by hubris and vanity; characters stopping at nothing and abandoning all principle as their ambition and selfishness causes careers and lives to end in undignified catastrophe; narratives that inevitably end with everyone involved, both the innocent and the guilty, lying prostrate as a result of revenge and ill will; all interspersed with cruel humour as the common people gather to mock those who presume to rule over them - and turn to the kinder, gentler world of Elizabethan and Jacobean drama.

I have been to see 'Romeo and Juliet' - again. Even I now accept that this has shifted from the harmless cultural pseudery that has been a lifelong diversion and instead become a disturbing monomania. However, fate has punished me in the manner of, well, of one of Shakespeare's tragedies, and this was by some way the worst of the four (count 'em, Jim, four!) productions that I have seen this year so far. This was especially disappointing as it was at the Globe, a theatre where I have never before seen a production that I didn't like. It was a raucous mess, played in whiteface for no discernible reason, and with the poetry overwhelmed by shrieking delivery and inappropriate banging music. Tybalt was the best thing about it, played as a cross between malchick and butcher and, in fairness, Juliet had a good crack at a few teenage tantrums despite being rather long in the tooth for the role. The various methods of death - rapiers, poison etc - were all replaced by handguns. That might have worked, but instead of firing blanks the actors all shouted "bang"; it was risible. As was the climax in which Romeo appeared to kill both his own parents and Juliet's in a mass US style shooting rampage before he visited Juliet's tomb. It was all truly terrible.

Much better was their production of 'Twelfth Night'. Reviews were mixed (which they certainly weren't for Romeo & Juliet), but I loved it. It appeared to be set on a remote Hebridean island, although apart from kilts and some generic Scottish dancing the location didn't intrude too much. The text was heavily chopped up and new bits added, but there was much to enjoy. Malvolio was played by a woman (I should have mentioned above that so was Mercutio), but it was somewhat more complicated. Katy Owen played the part as a man - a Welshman inexplicably living in Illyria/Brigadoon - but also had clearly based her performance on Ruth Madoc's Gladys Pugh. Anyway, whatever the gender bending ramifications it worked a treat, as did the appearance of Le Gateau Chocolat (as seen in the National Theatre's 'Threepenny opera') as Feste. However, the show was stolen for me by Carly Bawden's sexy, sassy and funny Maria. As one reviewer pointed out, it may not be great art, but it's undoubtedly great fun.

No one knows anything

I hope that you will excuse me if I return once more to the recent election. I won't promise that it will be for the last time because I am hoping for much ongoing amusement from Theresa May's death throws.

The cartoon is by Peter Brookes and is in today's Times. I'll give her three days and will confidently forecast that she will be gone by Tuesday. However, I am the first to acknowledge that my political predictions have been consistently wrong for a rather long period now. There's another thought provoking blog post here on the general subject of why absolutely everyone's judgement seems to be skewiff at the moment. I try to read analysis from a variety of perspectives and the 'Liberal England' blog is always worth checking out and covers a wider range of subjects than the name would indicate; an approach that I may emulate in future. He had a series of posts recently about what Ilkley looked like when the railway didn't stop there, but ran through to Addingham and beyond; possibly a niche interest, but isn't that exactly why the world wide web was invented?

Going back to politics, I keep hearing that since Thursday nothing will ever be the same again. What normally happens when people say that is that things immediately revert to pretty much exactly the way that they have always been. We shall see. The other main news is obviously that a political party made up of homophobic, climate change denying, racists has decided to team up with the Democratic Unionist Party. Readers might think that this would be the cue to finally relate the story of the Reverend Ian Paisley, the giraffe and me; but they would be wrong.

Ha bloody ha

"To the Tories every election must have a bogeyman. If you haven't got a programme, a bogeyman will do." - Nye Bevan

One of the advantages of age is an acknowledgement and acceptance of things that one isn't very good at. The chap at this blog sums up pretty much where I have got to in my thinking, except for the bit about winning money; I don't hold with gambling, or, to be more precise, I don't hold with the possibility of losing money.

As Oscar Wilde would undoubtedly have said were he still with us: "One would have to have a heart of stone not to laugh at Theresa May".

Ersatz Eckmühl

We played the sort-of Eckmühl game last night. The good news is that it was enjoyable and met the aim of getting a game that neatly filled the three hours available. The bad news is that I didn't take any photos, that I have prepared neither maps nor OOBs and that we got some of the rules wrong. One cannot have everything.

To recap, this was scenario that I translated to C&C from an article in Miniature Wargames, with the specific intention of playing a game with victory conditions different to the normal C&C option of (mostly) aiming to destroy a certain target number of units, that number being the same for both sides. I think the consensus was that it worked OK, only slightly undermined by James' perverse interpretation of what was meant by 'the road'. As Gertrude Stein would have said had she been a wargamer "a road is a road is a road". So, I shall definitely give this method of generating a scenario another try.

We used Prussians to replace the Austrians that I don't have, but played them as Prussians with appropriate national characteristics. Apart from anything else that was because I have prepared laminated sheets with all those details on them, and - not having Austrian figures - haven't done one for them. As previously featured on the blog their forces included the 6th Hussars. Traditionalists will be pleased to note that they were destroyed without achieving anything, as all newly painted units should be.

The key rule that we got wrong was the one whereby Command Cards with stars on them - there is a proper name for these, but I forget it - allow extra March moves in the section in which they are played. This would have allowed the Franco-Bavarian attack to develop more quickly, although given that James didn't know what he was trying to achieve in the first place it's unlikely to have made a great deal of difference. There was also a certain degree of rule rustiness, reminiscent of the games of Pike & Shotte over the last couple of weeks; it seems to be getting more and more difficult to retain information as I slip into my dotage. I think that next time we might perhaps try a bit of a variant on the use of specific cards such as Bombard and Fire and Hold. I shall explain our thinking in due course.

Anyway, I'm off to vote, with neither hope nor expectation. As someone once said "You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows", a quote that is doubly apposite today.

We are skins, we are hoods

"Just remember, once you're over the hill, you begin to pick up speed." - Charles M. Schulz

Sometime ago I posted - without accompanying explanation - a photograph of a number of middle aged men who had gone badly to seed, in company with a svelte figure who had somehow retained his youthful good looks. Today I offer - once again without elucidation - something remarkably similar.

To add a modicum of wargaming relevance, one of the odder-looking chaps in the picture (which I accept doesn't narrow it down much) was, or so he claims, once a competition winner at the Derby Worlds.

'Eck as like

The time has nearly come to play the game I originally set up some weeks ago, which has undergone a couple of revisions since I last wrote about it. The official Epic scenarios for Expansion 6 of C&C Napoleonics include one for the second day of Eggmühl (they prefer the modern spelling) on April 22nd 1809. This covers a somewhat larger area than the one in Miniature Wargames which I am ripping off, and misses out a couple of the key terrain features from the latter and so isn't much use for validating force sizes. I have therefore had to once again resort to the higher mathematics and have revisited my previous mental calculations, this time writing things down and using a calculator. As a result both sides have lost a unit of cavalry, the remaining Bavarian cavalry units have become smaller, the Prussians are down a light infantry unit and up a foot battery. Getting correct proportions within each arm is straightforward; ensuring that the balance is right between infantry, cavalry and artillery is slightly less so.

The table is (re)set

Rules for the two terrain features not in standard C&C will be:

• Forests with field works:
• units and leaders must stop after crossing sides with fieldworks - in or out
• units may ignore one flag if attacked via a side with fieldworks
• infantry may not form square if attacked via a side with fieldworks
• battle into via fieldworks: Inf -2, Cav -3, Art -1
• battle out via fieldworks: Inf 0, Cav -3, Art -1
• otherwise normal forest terrain rules apply

• Two level hill:
• top level is uphill of side slope hexes which are up hill of flat terrain
• artillery are -1 for firing uphill two levels

In addition the stream is decorative except:

• infantry cannot form square in a stream hex
• passing through it or battling into it negates any cavalry charge bonuses.
• units in a stream hex cannot play the following Tactician cards: Artillery Canister, Charge if Charged, First Strike, Infantry Combat First.

Bavarians cross the decorative stream

I have never cared for the victory conditions system employed by C&C which seems to consist of little more than eliminating as many opposing units as possible. In designing my own for this scenario (or more accurately porting across those in the MW article) I am constrained by not being able to think of a way of translating the playing of cards into the type of turns more usual in other rule systems, so we'll just play until the French win, until it's time to go home, or until someone gets fed up, whichever comes soonest. I shall attempt to keep things simple:

• Napoleon's instructions to Davout were to clear the artillery from the Bettel Berg and to sieze control of the road. The French/Bavarian objectives are therefore:
• ensure there are no Prussian foot artillery batteries on any of the seven hexes of the Bettel Berg
• close the road by putting three units into contiguous hexes, at least one of which is on the road
• if they have achieved both these at the end of any Prussian turn they win a major victory
• The Prussian objectives are simply to prevent either happening by the end of the evening, thereby gaining a major victory.
• Should the time allowed end with one of the French objectives met and the other not then the French will gain a minor victory if Prussian losses (in blocks not units) are at least 125% of French losses; otherwise it is a minor Prussian victory.

One outstanding issue is how to trigger the arrival of the French reinforcements; I am hoping that inspiration will arrive at some point in the next twenty four hours.

The newly arrived and dodgily varnished Prussian 6th Hussars; not as bad as their brown coated colleagues though

Genesis Chapter 35 Verse 17

My trip to London was obviously overshadowed by events while I was there. As it happened I went to Borough Market for lunch on Saturday (Koshari in case you wondered) and I shall return on the next occasion that I go to a matinee at the Globe. Sure it's pretentious and expensive, but hey, it's central London. Anyway, the point I'm trying to make is that despite the ill-informed reporting in the US press, let alone the mad, unpleasantly racist ramblings of the disgusting halfwit that they have seen fit to make their head of state, we shall simply carry on doing in the future what we have done in the past. The important thing is to keep a sense of historical perspective. When I was a young man fatalities in this country due to terrorism were hundreds per year, a level far in excess of the current position; we didn't change our behaviour then and we shan't now. It's worth noting of course that the majority of those deaths were funded by the American public, as smugly self-righteous in their ignorance of the rest of the world then as they are now.

The rest of the trip was good. I met up with old friends in Isleworth and then went on to St Albans where I attended my sister's 30th wedding celebrations. I was at school with my brother-in-law so there was an added school reunion element to the whole thing. Inevitably some of the news exchanged after the passing of several decades wasn't good; as someone said over the weekend, there are increasing reminders of our mortality. All of which makes it more important to savour moments such as these.

Fortunately I can finish with something life-affirming in the true sense of the word. I don't think I have ever mentioned it, but the elder Miss Epictetus is a student midwife. Over the weekend she delivered her first baby; one hopes there will be many, many more to come. I am immeasurably proud of her. I know you will all join with me in hoping that the child grows up to live in a world more peaceful than that into which it has been born.

Pot68pouri

It has been a while since I have had to report any domestic appliance related issues. However my gas fire - yes, the same one I used to dry paint on the chariot which unexpectedly started to smoulder instead - has failed an inspection and had a notice stuck to it forbidding further use. And then there's the freezer; I won't go into details, but suffice it to say that I am glad that it is in the cellar.

Anyway, we had another go at Pike & Shotte for the Italian Wars last night. We didn't actually get everything correct, but we were somewhat closer than the previous week. The rulebook is dreadful, but the rules themselves are OK. On the plus side things move along reasonably quickly, I like the way that units behave once they have taken their requisite number of hits and I have always found the concept of saving throws to be a bit of a guilty pleasure. On the other hand melees seem very complicated; all the bother of getting supporting units into place never seems to actually make any difference. I suspect that overall, and as usual with new rules, we aren't quite using the tactics that the designer intended.


I am afraid it's been another poor boardgaming month, but there has been some painting:

• Another sixteen longbowmen - four stands - have finished off the box that I bought. As previously advised, I have absolutely no immediate plans to use them in a game, but one can never have too many archers in a 15th century army. 
• A dozen WWI British infantry haven't even made a dent in the pile of unpainted figures, but is a small step towards being able to have a go at Square Bashing.
• I have previously complained that I didn't have many non-lancer, Napoleonic Prussian light cavalry and eventually it has dawned on me that no one else is going to do anything about it. I have therefore painted up a box of Prussian Hussars. My cavalry units are very small and so that amounted to three regiments. The original reason for small unit sizes was to facilitate a more colourful tabletop and so, in the spirit of things going full circle, the three units have blue, brown and green dolmans and pelisses respectively. The brown ones look very familiar; I rather think I had a unit forty five years ago, probably Airfix Waterloo British Cavalry despite the incorrect headgear. Unfortunately for nostalgia, that unit also has a bit of a problem with the gloss varnish and so are unlikely to see action very often.
• Some more home made shell hole hexes
• A rather nice walled garden, a terrain type which will be familiar to players of C&C Napoleonics. In another misadventure, while it looks very good it has turned out to be too small to hold the sabot base for a unit of infantry thereby rendering it not much use.

There will be a blogging hiatus for a few days as, taking advantage of my senior railcard, I am off on a trip to London and St Albans. I shall be meeting up with the wargaming opponent and bandmate of my school years who was mentioned here recently; indeed the unit of brown coated Hussars mentioned above would have taken part in his fixed refight of Waterloo. There won't be any opportunity on this occasion for a game, but we shall no doubt find plenty to speak about on subjects as diverse as female fronted prog rock bands of the 1970s and the lack of taste once displayed by the former mayor of Harpenden. I intend to be back before election day, but in case I'm not: Vote Labour.