Very Flat, Dordrecht

 No sooner had I posted yesterday's boardgames review, in which I stated categorically that Let's Go! To Japan was essentially an abstract game, than it appeared on someone's internet list of top ten most heavily themed games of the year. You pays your money and you takes your choice. 

Less contentious I think was my assertion that the Netherlands is quite flat. I offer the above painting by Cuyp as proof. In any case a moment's reflection would tell us that even if there were valleys that's not where one would put the windmills.

In the sadly misnamed game Windmill Valley, the tulip with the highest value is the dark purple, so dark it's almost black. I am therefore reading 'The Black Tulip' by Alexandre Dumas to see if I can pick up any tips. The only lesson learned from the first few chapters is don't cross the future King William III or it won't end well.

Lard Workshop

 The lack of postings here, and the fact that medieval cattle raid hasn't been played yet, are of course due to scorchio. Indeed the only reason I am writing this now, is that the cumulative effect has all been too much and I have retreated indoors. This is not to say that there has been no wargaming. We completed our second game of 'Soldiers of Napoleon', about which rules I have nothing to add to what I have said previously. We shall have a go next week with move distances tweaked to match the specific size of table and bases, and I shall report back. It was fairly sweaty in the legendary wargames room on Wednesday, but nothing to compare with the sauna that was the Old Chemistry Theatre at Nottingham Trent University on Saturday for the inaugural Lard Workshop (*).

The Workshop, which took place alongside the BHGS Britcon show, was organised by Don, my old (very old) school friend and bandmate, despite which it was a great success. I for one thoroughly enjoyed it, and had a blast. And no one could say that it wasn't excellent value for money. For £15 one got a £5 voucher to spend with the traders, a free sandwich lunch (which was rather good I thought) and to play two games; what's not to like? The one thing wrong with it was the heat, plus it was very noisy. So the only two things wrong with it were the heat, the noise and the fact that the toilets were a long walk given that middle aged men need to visit fairly often. Having said that, there were a couple of gamers involved who clearly didn't have prostates, which was the first time I've seen so many female wargamers since, well, since forever; another good thing.

I was travelling light and didn't bring a decent camera, which I regret because the eighteen games on offer were all worth photographing. There was a Far East set game of Chain of Command (possibly run by Richard Clarke himself; I wish I'd taken some notes as well as some pictures) which had more terrain crammed on to one table than I can remember ever seeing before. Very sadly I only took one photo of David Hunter's game of 'Infamy, Infamy', which I played in the afternoon, and that is very far from doing the table justice.

I'm playing the chap at the front left, tasked with getting my men along the road to a camp manned only by some unreliable slaves. The game was set in the civil wars of the early first century BC and, while I didn't get anywhere near the camp my Gallic ally and I had killed enough Italian rebels en route to win the game. I had played Infamy once, pre-publication and pre-pandemic, and despite reading through them again was feeling a bit lost at the start. However, as the game progressed I found it all began to make sense (**). Maybe I should get the chariots out before I forget it all again. 

You've got to love a measuring stick

I took more - and more useful - photos of the game I had played in the morning, Sidney Roundwood's 'Flashing Blades'. It wasn't hard to get a larger amount of the action into the picture because everything happened in a 2ft x 2ft square. It's not obvious from the above, but it's mounted on a Lazy Susan (£14 from Amazon according to Sidney) and players seated around the table can easily turn it to allow them to move their musketeer. Because the Mousquetaires du Roi, opposed inevitably by the Cardinal's Red Guards, are what this cracking little game is all about. The rules are not yet published (***), but they are in a pretty polished state already. The rules have quite a lot of the boardgame about them - and I mean that in a good way - and produce a result that, at least in our game, was a positively cinematic narrative arc. I loved the game, almost, but not quite, with the same passion that James has for SoN. And that was only a little bit helped by it being one of my characters, Monseigneur d'Eclair, who rescued the Comtesse de Chablis from the scaffold and spirited her away.

D'Eclair leads la Comtesse away through a crowd of Parisians

Interestingly, in the afternoon Sidney ran a Samurai scenario using the same mechanics. As for what I spent my £5 on: a copy of the second edition of Lion Rampant, of which more when I have read it. To conclude, thanks to David, Sidney, my various teammates and opponents, Richard Clarke and, in particular, to Don for a most enjoyable, albeit hot, day of wargaming.

* If you are going to Google that, then I would try to be precise in your search terms unless you genuinely wish to find out the best way to render lard, which is a very different thing and quite possibly smells even worse that a hot room full of wargamers.

** Except perhaps the close combat rules, which are, shall we say, convoluted.

*** Next year possibly, depending on the rest of TFL's publishing schedule.

Tales of old Dartmoor

That's an obscure title for a blog posting even by my standards. Hercules Grytpype-Thynne would understand. In any event I feel the urge for a boardgame round-up.

Cuthulhu Fluxx: Fluxx is a game that's fascinating the first couple of times that you play it and then gets dreary. I don't understand fantasy in general or H.P. Lovecraft in particular. Enough said.

Trains: This is a bit like Dominion with a board and with, well, trains. I'm not a particular fan of deck-builders, but this was as good as any I've played.

Eight Minute Empire: It actually lasted about twenty minutes, but it provided a good game for five of us. I'd play it again.

One Minute Unltimate Werewolf Daybreak: Which is the same old stuff, but with extra chrome (Alpha Wolf, Paranormal Investigator). Someone had brought in a loudspeaker to play their smartphone through. Strangely this didn't make it any better.

6 nimmt!: I like this, and don't understand why people think it's random; they're just not playing it properly.

Rococo: A nice game with all sorts of mechanics that mesh together well. My only quibble is that it is very difficult to work out who's winning whilst playing. It's about dressmaking and - please remember that logic doesn't always apply in these circumstances - I won essentially by making the most dresses.

Skull: Another game that I like. My logic was impeccable on every turn and yet somehow I failed to call people's bluff correctly. I'm not sure how that works.

R-Eco: We played this with the same rules (the correct rules?) for the second time running and it's growing on me. If you do try it then bear in mind that it's a very low scoring game when making decisions.

The Secret of Monte Cristo: Firstly this game has some lovely components - the marbles and the jewel value markers - and some really tatty ones - especially the jewel placement markers. Any heaviness in this game comes from placing one's marble after the end of one's turn, but my impression was that the number of possible outcomes makes it all so complex as to actually be far more luck than skill. It does however have my new favourite feature: in-game scoring on a track with a clear victory target. By the way, the game has nothing whatever to do with the story in the book.

It is also some time since I posted a photo of me on top of Haw Pike surrounded by women of a certain age. So here goes.

I'm a little teapot

Merle!

I haven't been asked by anyone why I haven't chosen a book of the year for last year, but it would have been a good point if they had. I am going to choose 'The Brethren' by Robert Merle (the first book in a saga about French history translated from that language), with a special mention to 'The Iron King' by Maurice Druon (the first book in a saga about French history translated from that language).

Your bloggist ponders French literature

The first of these books is reminiscent of 'The Three Musketeers' and I look forward to the rest of the series being like the subsequent million and a half words leading right through to 'The Man in the Iron Mask'. In any event both are highly recommended. I see that the BBC version of the Musketeers has started again and must catch up with it. I know it bears minimal relation to the books, but I found the first season entertaining enough.

Your bloggist has pondered enough

And sadly the new year brings no relief from the obituary column. We must once again say goodbye to an icon of my youth.

"Well, come on baby....let's wrestle."

Tooth House

I have been to the Henry Moore Institute to see their latest exhibition 'Ian Kiaer: Tooth House'. I can already hear you asking the obvious question and believe me I have asked it of myself a number of times. Why? I clearly don't like modern art and yet every time they have a new show off I go to stand there aghast thinking 'God this is pants' (honourable exception for Robert Filliou). And indeed this one is. Pants that is. Don't bother.

Much better

The title of the exhibition and of some of its exhibits comes from the work of the surrealist architect Frederick John Kiesler. (For the record, I have no idea whether the title of some of the other exhibits really does come from either the book by Dumas père or the Alain Delon film, but finding a link between 'a frame stretching six metres high, only just capable of holding its own weight' and anything much is a bit of a challenge.) Anyway, I suspect most wargamers have probably never heard of Kiesler, but when you look more closely I would suggest that many of us have certain traits in common with him. One of his colleagues at Columbia University was quoted as saying: "If Kiesler wants to hold two pieces of wood together, he pretends he's never heard of nails or screws. He tests the tensile strengths of various metal alloys, experiments with different methods and shapes, and after six months comes up with a very expensive device that holds two pieces of wood together almost as well as a screw".

 

I couple of weeks ago I had to admit to never having read 'Of Mice and Men'. However, I have read 'Tortilla Flat' (recommended - essentially a reworking of the legends of King Arthur with the knights of the round table becoming a group of indigent Californians). In order to demonstrate that this blog isn't simply just thrown together, the above photo shows Hedy Lamarr starring alongside Spencer Tracy in the film version. The pulchritudinous Ms Lamarr was Kiesler's niece.