Everything is not enough

"There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love" - Martin Luther King

The Goat's Revenge

James has come up with what seems to be another excellent Seven Years War scenario. Details and photographs are as usual on his blog (although you'll search in vain for a report on the conclusion to the previous Crusades game) so I'll just highlight a couple of points. I'm in charge of the Russians and my first failure was in drawing for morale. My draw was so low that I thought James was joking when he told me the minimum below which I could declare a Mulligan; some serious fiddling had to take place to ensure that we could make a game of it. My second problem has been an inability to get any reinforcements on. My force is split into a higher number of commands and this is therefore a bigger problem to me than it would be to the Prussians if they had it, which they don't.

On the plus side, I got lots of initiative, with runs of 20, 19 and 18 (in that order funnily enough) although looking at the current position you'd never know it as the Prussians have done most of the attacking. And whilst James rubbishes the Cossacks as 'fairly useless' they've actually done rather well. They have destroyed a handily placed Prussian artillery battery and provided a screen that has delayed the Prussian cavalry sufficiently to enable an infantry command to move in force onto the hill on my right flank. 'Fairly useful' I would say.

Anyway, in case there should be any visitors to the blog who are not interested in wargaming, I offer the following cautionary illustration. One shouldn't mess with goats.

How long must I keep my eyes glued to the door?

I went to see the Gerry McNeice band last night, but it turned out that those playing were actually Nick Hall and the Resurrection Men. Nick Hall is half of Plumhall and the Resurrection Men were basically McNeice on bass and his band's drummer. Rehearsals seemed to have been few, but nonetheless they were terrific. They did a lovely run through "(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding" with Jon Palmer on guest backing vocals, but the standout was the best version of "Senor (Tales of Yankee Power)" that I have heard in a long time.


For all the song's obvious connotations of anti-imperialism I prefer to read it as a straight (albeit metaphorically described) explanation of a man's search for salvation through the love of a woman; a woman dark haired like a gypsy who having told him "this ain't a dream no more, this is the real thing",  and urged him to "forget me not" then disappears. Surely even wargamers can relate to that? Here's Willie Nelson and Calexico covering Dylan's classic.

WWII in 45 Minutes

This blog is about nothing if it's not about cooking, and so I am proud to present your bloggist's lemon and courgette cake.

However, the blog is also about nothing if it's not about listing boardgames that I have played and in which no one else is interested. So here goes for July:

7 Wonders: I like this, especially the fact that it's scalable without slowing things down, but I don't play it often enough to be any good at it.

Abyss: The pasted on theme has something to do with mythical beings living under the sea. It was OK, but of games of this type I'd rather play Elysium.

Chinatown: An area control game involving an auction, a sort of bingo mechanic and inter-player trading. It left me a bit cold.

Dark Moon: A much more sophisticated version of The Resistance, minus the keeping your eyes closed bit. We played with seven and it was good fun. That is the second game was fun, because the bad guys won the first one in about five minutes. I especially liked the opting in and out of each task depending on one's view of who else was going to do what. That's not the clearest of descriptions, but I suggest that you play it find out what I mean.

Francis Drake: Didn't have much to do with Drake specifically, but was about piracy, trading and biffing the Spanish so one can see their point. I was dubious about the two stage turn process when we started, but it grew on me. The chap who didn't seem to understand the rules won fairly easily, which may or may not prove something.

Good Cop Bad Cop: Another hidden identity game, with the added complexity that one's identity can change due to circumstances outside one's control leaving one losing to the strategy that one had oneself devised the moment before. A bit random, but one does get to shoot people with guns, which - as I think I mentioned last month - aren't real.

Hanabi: We played with a neophyte who, understandably enough, almost imploded with the responsibility of remembering what someone had told him thirty seconds before. We still managed to score seventeen.

Machi Koro: A real estate themed engine builder game. I really enjoyed it despite falling so far behind after a couple of turns that I had no realistic chance of getting anywhere. Only time will tell whether this was just my incompetence or a major design flaw that no one else has spotted.

New Salem: No, no, no, no, no! A hidden identity game that goes immediately onto my list of games that have nothing whatever to do with the theme or title.

Pentago: A sort of sexed up Connect Four. I suck the big one at spatial awareness games.

Pillars of the Earth: Cathedral building worker placement game. I liked it when I played it before and enjoyed it second time around. It's accounting, so I won.

Quartermaster General: After a bit of a gap, I played this three times in July and I find it still to be an absolutely cracking game. With experienced players one can, if the cards fall right, play through the second world war in forty five minutes and enjoy oneself enormously in the process. Every game works out differently; indeed in the last one I played the Italians largely won the thing single handed, capturing both the UK and India along the way. They were helped by an odd allied strategy which saw the UK and US abandon Europe and Russia in order to gang up on - and not defeat - Japan. I can't recommend this enough.

Spyfall: A hidden location game by way of a change. It turns out that I also suck the big one at games requiring creativity under time pressure.

Tinners' Trail: A strongly themed game about Cornish tin mining which I really enjoyed and would happily play again. The concept of the water ingress is very good and I liked the fact that there is never enough money to invest. It's accounting, so I won.

You I'll Believe

What a piece of cake!

Out flew the web and floated wide

I have been thinking about shallots recently: the growing - my sources tell me that they provide a better crop on allotments than do onions; the eating - I cooked some in a rather fine broad bean and bacon risotto last night; and the symbolism - see posts passim.

It was therefore inevitable that on a brief trip to Leeds Art Gallery this morning my eye would be drawn to John William Waterhouse's 1894 painting. Less well known than his painting of the Lady drifting to her doom, I like it because it portrays her at her moment of existential crisis.

 A comparison of Waterhouse's various paintings based on the poem can be found here.

The Lady of Shalott has featured in this blog before, but that was, as it were, before.

Where's the wargaming?

A non-wargaming reader of this blog has observed that there isn't actually that much wargaming content. I would refer any such critic to the very first post in which I explained that I never did any wargaming and could therefore offer a different perspective to those lucky people who did. Subsequently of course, and a result of certain domestic rearrangements, more games have been played. Even during the period when I was sleeping under hedges and eating out of dustbins I managed to get plenty of games in; so what excuse do I - now the proud possessor of my very own wargaming annexe - have for the current inactivity? ["And what excuse," asks the RP "do you have for this appalling prose style where you are constantly asking yourself questions?"]

Simple, it's summer and I'm having 'a blast'. ["Well-a-well-a-well-a huh, tell me more, tell me more"] and therefore have no time. Normal, toy-soldier-heavy, blogging will resume soon. Possibly. Actually the criticism that hurts most is the suggestion that the blog has lazily turned into nothing more than a series of daily music videos. I refute this totally.

From the lining of my sports jacket, I produced a bottle of Harvey's Bristol Cream.

Soft kitty

The crusades game at James' finished yesterday in a draw. It was very enjoyable and very close; a well balanced scenario. So well balanced in fact that I suspect that neither side can ever actually win. Possibly the Saracens if they put two commands at the exit point and manage also to get their ambush in the right place. Peter as usual threw a multitude of ones and also spent much of the game handicapping himself by rolling incorrect defence dice. Considering the fact that he co-wrote the rules it's hard to have any sympathy.

Anyway, for the benefit of anyone who is either suffering from migraine or new to the songbook of Leon Russell, here is a little Delaney and Bonnie:

Moving through the peasantry

"Il n’y a qu’un bonheur dans la vie, c’est d’aimer et d’être aimé." - George Sand

Especially for those among us who weren't there, but wishes that she had been, here is a song from Country Joe and the Fish's Woodstock set. 

And personally, I think the drummer is nothing much to write home about.

Beryl

And so to the theatre. I missed 'Beryl' at the West Yorkshire Playhouse during it's first run last year - timed to coincide with the Tour de France - and came within a whisker of missing it again on its revival this year, but just managed to get a ticket for the penultimate performance. As an aside I somehow ended up with a discounted senior citizen ticket. Upon picking it up I tried to pay the extra, but the box office clearly thought I was fantasising about my lost youth and wouldn't take the money.

The play itself is simply wonderful. Given the relative lack of media coverage that Burton got during her life (although I for one had actually heard of her prior to the play being mounted) there was a lot of exposition, but it never dragged or became too much. The four person cast moved as effortlessly through the moods as our heroine moved through the gears; humour was ever-present, but so was a recognition of the impacts on others of her driven personality.  The staging was extremely well done as was the physical theatre. There was a round of applause only ten minutes in for one effect which marked her marriage. The fourth wall was broken a number of times, mostly scripted but also on one occasion to allow a member of the sell out audience to display his knowledge of the main crop produced in the triangle between Wakefield, Morley and Rothwell. Anyway, I am not ashamed to say that I left the theatre with a tear in my eye.

"Our life is what our thoughts make it"

So said Marcus Aurelius. This week I have been, as Blake put it, "he who kisses the joy as it flies", and it caused me a whole lot of angst and more than one sleepless night. Whether "eternity's sunrise" will be my reward or not is, I think, neither here nor there.

                                 Moments of happiness do not come often,

                                 Opportunity’s easy to miss.

                                 O let us seize them, of all their joys squeeze them, 

                                 For tomorrow will come when none may kiss.

                                                   - W.H. Auden

I took refuge in walking and can add another to our irregular series of bridges of the Yorkshire dales. This time it's the seventeenth century Barden Bridge.

The sunlight on the garden
Hardens and grows cold,
We cannot cage the minute
Within its nets of gold

- Louis MacNeice

Tewkesbury recrudescent

I am remiss in posting to the extent that I am playing games faster than I am writing about them. Last night saw some Crusades goodness at James'. The scenario and a brief report of the first night is here so I will say no more than that his conifer anxiety was misplaced.

'I don't share your greed, the only card I need is...'

Last week we gave 'To the Strongest!', the ruleset du jour, a try out for the Wars of the Roses. Originally I didn't have much time to set something up and so by default I went for that old WotR standby, Tewkesbury. This requires modelling both the Yorkist ambush and whatever Wenlock was trying to achieve and the way that either or both of these are handled could, if they don't work, distort the game to the extent that one can't properly judge the rules. However, all the other WotR battles were either completely lopsided or even more dependent on treachery, weather and so on.

Tewkesbury Abbey in the background

Anyway, I'm pleased to say that the rules worked well and, importantly, were quick to play. We were able to run through the scenario twice, the second in particular being a very tight and enjoyable game. The first game ran into a slight problem in scenario design when Gloucester's battle lost all its archers immediately in a sort of longbow armaggedon and was unable to trigger the Lancastrian special move; umpiring intervention was required to get things back on track. In the second game it all worked more smoothly: Somerset advanced, Wenlock didn't and got brained for his pains, with Sir John Langstrother taking over.

Wenlock's prevarication causes Somerset to lose focus

 The rules were voted a success for the period, indeed the consensus is that they work best when both sides have essentially the same troop types. One or two ideas were floated as to how to ensure that commands advanced - or not - together, which we felt would better represent warfare of the time. No doubt we shall try these out in due course. For the record the Lancastrians won both games.

"...boundless and bare, the lone and level sands stretch far away"

Shelley, of course. I wonder if Angela Merkel has ever read it.

Anyway, apologies for my absence, which I dare say you haven't noticed any more than I have. There has been board gaming and there has been wargaming, both of which I shall return to in due course. In music I have once again seen the rather excellent Dr Bob and the Bluesmakers.

Sadly it looks more and more likely that the name comes from the fact that one of them is a doctor named Bob, rather than as an homage to Rowlf the dog. For anyone who happens to find themselves in Ilkley (epicentre of wargaming in the lower Wharfe Valley) on September 26th then they are playing at the inaugral Ilkley Blues Festival. Also appearing are the equally top notch Thieving Lloyd Cole and it's only a tenner.

And for, I think, the first time this year I bring you a new entry in the series 'Stocks of the Yorkshire Dales'. These are at Nesfield and we are reliant on an image from the interweb because having lost my camera I couldn't take a photo whilst passing.

Die Frist ist um

And so to the opera. Leeds Town Hall is sold out and rammed, it's the hottest day for years, and we're facing two and half hours straight through Wagner's The Flying Dutchman with no interval. But, fortified by a last gasp pint of Tetley's I made it somehow. So, thankfully, did the singers, conductor and orchestra.

It was, as one would expect, simply excellent. The cinematic semi-staging works even better for this than for the Ring and the title character's costume wouldn't have looked out of place in a fully staged version - or in a Disney cartoon come to that. I did wonder why the Helmsman had come dressed like Phil Harding from Time Team, but the influence of television is everywhere these days. Anyway, the chorus and band - the foundation of Opera North's success - were on fire.

As usual with opera one is faced with the question of what on earth it's about. I lean to a theme of Marxist alienation. Die Hollander himself represents wage slaves in the twenty first century, doomed to be tossed about by the storms of the capitalist crisis, unable to find a safe harbour but still naively believing that security, stability and a home can be his one day. Is it a coincidence that he sings 'Die Frist ist um' at the same time as the Germans say exactly that to the Greeks?

I Bound the Rose in Sheaves

I have delayed writing about boardgames for so long that I find myself reviewing all June. So, better late than never, here they are:

Colt Express: This game has a three dimensional train and one can shoot or punch people. It works for me. It might not be as good if it was played too often - it's chaotic to the point of being almost random - but will be fun once in a while.

Elysium: Taking the role of Greek gods (easier for some than for others) players employ a novel drafting mechanism involving columns (Doric I think) of various colours to, in effect, play rummy. I played it twice and rather liked it.

Good Cop and Bad Cop: At the better end of the spectrum of 'deduce the hidden indentity' type games and with real guns. OK, they're not real.

Guillotine: As ever, executing the aristos was a pleasure.

Istanbul: I like this more each time I play it; I really don't understand why it isn't all that popular in the gaming circles within which I move.

K2: I managed not to lose a mountaineer to oxygen deprivation this time, but I also didn't manage to climb to the top. Excellent game.

Kanban: The first thing that needs saying is that it has nothing whatever to do with kanbans. In it reminded my of Evolution in the specific sense that the mechanics of the game are pretty much the direct opposite of what the title would imply. Indeed, rather than the pull of a real kanban one quite literally pushed things through the factory. It is a very complicated, but clearly very well balanced, Euro game. It's not in my sweet spot, but I'd play it if it was suggested, certainly in preference to Keyflower.

King and Assassins: An asymmetrical two player game involving, well you can probably guess. I was the king and got assassinated. I knew the chap on the roof was a wrong 'un, but didn't take him out. Big mistake. I'd happily give it another go.

Ligretto: Multi-player patience. Nice enough filler.

Lords of Waterdeep: Worker placement game, but not bad with it. The theme is unbelievably thin, it really might as well not be there at all.

Marrakech: Good game. My street cred was dented when I explained at length why they were rugs and not carpets and how I knew. I played it with both two and three players and the games were rather different.

No Thanks!: Good game of guessing what other players will do. I sucked.

Pandemic; The Cure: Dice based version of the cooperative game rather than the competitive game. The population of the world died a horrible death so early on that I didn't have time to remember that I don't like cooperative games.

Panic Lab: Fun, but it quickly becomes obvious which player has the knack.

Revolver: Another excellent, asymmetrical two player game.

Roll for the Galaxy: This was the game which caused a debate as to what was Analysis Paralysis and what was a failure to understand the lessons of the eighteenth century.

Skull: I'll say it again, this is a great game.

Stuff and Nonsense: Fairly dull set collection game, which caused the only example of ageism that I can ever remember suffering among the boardgames fraternity.

Sushi Go!: At least it's quick.

Zooloretto: If a game involves pandas then it's OK by me. This is fine, if light, but my advice is not to ignore the catering concessions.

Yesterday a morning came

a smile upon your face

Oh, it all makes work for the working man to do.

I have been asked why my review of Klute in yesterday's post was so peremptory. Why, people say (possibly rhetorically, who knows?), didn't I bang on about how Bree Daniel's seeming journey of self-discovery only actually reinforces the patriarchy that was doing her down in the first place? Well the simple answer is that, just as I was getting into my critical flow, the plumber unexpectedly arrived. Sadly Flanders and Swann don't mention plumbers, but that's no reason not to listen to this classic.

I have been to see last season's Globe production of 'Comedy of Errors' on the big screen; actually not that big a screen because Otley Courthouse was designed by the Victorians for dispensing justice rather than setting up makeshift cinemas. I have always found this a very funny play, which is not something which one can say about all of Shakespeare's comedies. It's farce pure and simple and doesn't rely on the sort of clever wordplay which would have had the Elizabethans rolling around, but leaves us scrabbling for the footnotes to the script. I have mentioned here before my theory that a good farce requires the appearance of sardines. I may have to extend that to seafood in general, because the director in this case decided that an octopus was the way to go.

In any event it was very good and quite up to the standard of Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra which I saw in situ this time last year.

Out of the Hurly-Burly

"So we had no fire in the range upon that day, and the family breakfasted again upon cool viand without being cheered with a view of the plumber. Upon calling at the plumber's shop to ascertain why he had not fulfilled his promise, I was informed by the clerk that he had returned, but that he was compelled to go over to Wilmington. The man seemed so thoroughly in earnest in his assertion that the plumber positively would attend to my boiler upon the following morning that we permitted the range to remain untouched, and for the third time we broke our fast with a frigid repast. But the plumber and his assistants did not come." - Max Adeler

I'm waiting for the plumber. Now obviously that means I have time to write a novel, if not a series of novels plus the screenplays for the films to be made from them, but I shall content myself with a short blog post.

The try out of TtS! for WotR was cancelled last night due to a combination of the common cold, decorating and professional cycle racing. (Not an especially odd combination. Earlier in the week in response to news of the death of a university acquaintance I found myself typing a sentence containing the words Diddy David Hamilton, labrador dog and split foreskin.) I'm tied up next Wednesday so I'm not sure when we shall revisit it.

If it's the WotR it must be Tewkesbury

I have watched Klute for the first time - a mere 45 years or so after it was released - and whilst enjoyable as film noir I find it astonishing that it was originally seen as either liberal or feminist.

And coming fashionably late to the whole Waterloo anniversary thing as well, here's a report of the re-enactment from what seems to be an unimpeachable source..

A Shallot

The full cloves
Of your buttocks, the convex
Curve of your belly, the curved
Cleft of your sex—
Out of this corm
That's planted in strong thighs
The slender stem and radiant
Flower rise.

       - Richard Wilbur

Pot41pouri

As well as being behind in reporting boardgames played, I have been remiss in recording my experiments with asparagus. Therefore let me present sweetcorn, sweet pepper and bacon.

Jonathan 'Palouse' Freitag has asked me to justify my assertion that it's harder to get the tactics right in grid based games (as an aside, his blog is well worth a read, with some quite lyrical non-wargaming posts; although those of us living in the 21st century might be puzzled by measurements expressed in feet and degrees Fahrenheit), but I'm not entirely sure that I can. My view is based on the fact that James, Peter and I struggled somewhat at first with C&C and appear to be doing the same with TtS!. Inasmuch as I have a theory, it is that grid based games afford far fewer options, because movement is in discrete  chunks and there are typically fewer range bands. In a traditional game some infantry may be able to move say 20% further than others in a turn; in a grid based game they all move the same or one type can move twice as far. The same goes for differences between weapon ranges. Game designers therefore seek to represent the smaller differences that can no longer be built in to movement distances and ranges by other unit specific mechanisms. It's the use of these rule nuances that I mean when I say tactics.

And here is a photograph of a large Dalek making its way along Kirkgate. There is no panic among the townspeople.

Hot street tongs

So, we had a third game of To The Strongest!, and once again discovered that we hadn't been playing it properly before. Basically it seems to be a well thought through, internally consistent set of rules hidden within a somewhat disjointed and oddly laid out document. Every time we think that something doesn't quite seem quite right as it plays out on the tabletop we dive into the text and discover that it doesn't feel correct because it isn't correct. So far the problems seem to be on our part rather than the rules.

The posh bases are no longer required

Of course one not only has to learn the rules, but also the tactics that the designer had in mind. This seems to be especially true in grid based games (that's a personal opinion, I have no empirical evidence that I could point to). I'm not sure that we are there yet and it took us quite a while with C&C. The first games of To The Strongest! were Punic Wars and this one moved us on to Early Imperial Romans against Celts. With hindsight the best tactics for the latter are hit and run rather than trying to slug it out, with even the ordinary auxiliaries saving on a six. Things weren't helped by the forces being created by using all the Romans that I had and then just adding more warbands to the Britons until the points matched. I also overdid the veterans on both sides, which possibly accounted for the stalemate that ensued along much of the table, and massed the barbarian cavalry rather than spreading them out as disruptive skirmishers. For the record the Romans won in the end.

So, they are definitely good fun, but a final decision on them has to be postponed until we're clear that we're playing the rules properly with at least vaguely optimal tactics. Next up for this period is to buy some more chariots I think. Next up for the rules is to give them a go next week with my Wars of the Roses figures.

kg m/s

Until yesterday the only thing that I knew about Jean Buridan was that he had a donkey; possibly a dead donkey that had starved to death through indecision, but a donkey nevertheless. Having researched him for the purposes of my last blog posting I now know somewhat more:

• If you're not careful Google confuses him with the actor chappy who won an Oscar for 'The Artist'. As good as that film was, please don't make the same mistake.
• He was, apparently, assless. Who knew?
• He had something against William of Occam. Hiss.
• He was a crucial figure in the development of scientific thought in Europe, paving the way for Copernicus, Newton et al. In fact he developed a theory of the quantity of motion, which he referred to as impetus.

On m'a promis un âne

It is perhaps timely therefore to report that my own investigations into Basic Impetus have come to a dead halt. They have, as it were, run out of momentum. I didn't get to play through a full test game (and nor sadly have I caught much of what has clearly been an excellent ODI series), but what I did find time to do convinced me that these were not the rules for me. My own interest in wargaming stems from the game part; fair enough I like a bit of visual aesthetic pleasure and also some historical references thrown in, but basically it's a game. And as a game Basic Impetus just doesn't float my boat. The combat resolution seems fine, if a bit dice heavy, but the command and control rules don't match my own tastes, which are for decision making within a framework of constraints. These decisions are not in any way meant to mimic the decisions made by real life commanders, they're just the sort of choices that occur in tabletop games: allocation of limited resources, stick or twist, guess what the opponent can/will do - you know the sort of thing. And because of that, and nothing else, I abandoned plans for a game of Basic Impetus when James and Peter came round last night. Instead I rejigged it into a game of the current new, shiny ruleset 'To the Strongest'. I may, or may not, find time to write that game up in due course, but a good time was had by all in any event.

Hee Haw

I am a bit behind with writing up the boardgames that I have played, and as the latest list of new ones involves rugs and the wild west I shall do so soon. However, I am diverted by the rather tedious game of 'Roll for the Galaxy' that we had on Monday. This is no reflection on the game - which is perfectly good - but rather because one of the players was a bit slow in taking his turn. Afterwards one of the other players, classifying the problem as Analysis Paralysis, asked about research into the issue, whether there were different types, and, most importantly, what could be done to sort it out.

I first came across the term some twenty five years ago whilst doing my MBA. In that context it means specifically the tendency to postpone a decision in order to collect more data, carry out more analysis, discuss things with more colleagues and so on. In boardgaming parlance it can't mean that; and I suspect that it doesn't actually mean any more than that somebody else is taking longer than you would prefer to play their turn without there being any obvious external distraction such as eating, arguing with their spouse or, increasingly, staring at one's phone.

Now the concept of not being able to make a decision isn't new. I was immediately reminded, as no doubt you were yourself, of Buridan's ass, and Buridan lived in the early fourteenth century. Indeed having looked him up to verify the details, the reputable source that I consulted (OK, Wikipedia) says that the paradox never actually appeared in Buridan's writings and in any event had been known to the ancient Greeks.

But in any event, it seems to me that the problem being manifested in l'Arbre d'If the other night wasn't really indecision. If we are to seek the guidance of a dead philosopher - and why wouldn't we? - I think we should turn to Immanuel Kant and his concept of enlightenment as being the emergence from self-imposed nonage. The individual involved had never played the game before, for which we would all obviously cut him some slack. The problem was his reluctance to take responsibility for his own moves outwith the guidance of others as the game developed; precisely, I'm sure that you will agree, the situation described by Kant. So, returning to the most important question raised above - what can be done to sort it out? - we must urge our opponents to heed the advice that Kant gave in 1784 (quoting Horace) Sapere Aude: Dare to Know.

Two further points. Firstly despite having played and enjoyed the game previously, I couldn't for the life of me remember the rules. In my case however the problem is not nonage, but dotage. Secondly, my research into Buridan tells me that what he did write included an attack on the work of William of Occam. Now there I have to draw a line. Occam's Razor remains as it always has been, the single most useful tool of analysis whether playing a boardgame, in business or doing anything else.

We feed the baby

And so to the theatre. The Royal Exchange in Manchester and the West Yorkshire Playhouse have co-produced a dramatisation of Tolstoy's novel Anna Karenina. As with the Keira Knightley film of 2012 - which I liked; it had a Tom Stoppard screenplay after all - it is a stylised rather than naturalistic staging. In the case of the climax (although I'm assuming everyone knows how it ends, I won't spell it out) not reproducing the written word is of course inevitable given the physical limitations of a theatre, but it seemed to me that the director's choice would have left anyone coming to the story cold completely mystified as to what was supposed to have happened.

Anyway, whilst the book has a very famous opening sentence (not present here) and a well-known ending, the meat of the sandwich is, er, well sort of in the middle. Anna trades safety for passion, her husband becomes a Christian and thereby loses the ability to forgive, Vronsky finds that one should be careful what one wishes for, Oblonsky - representing his entire class - sleepwalks towards his doom, and Levin and Kitty learn that true heroism is in the banal daily struggle rather than the grand gesture. All of these themes were sketched out here rather than covered in depth and therein lies the paradox of condensing such a complex novel into a two hour play. In order to understand it one must have some familiarity with the source, but if one does then the precis version can easily disappoint.

G-L-O-R-I-A-A-A

While we're on matters Irish here's a rare second post of the day featuring a shout out of congratulations to Sir George Ivan Morrison:

When I grow up I want to be John Lee Hooker.

I would wish to be less wise

William Butler Yeats was born one hundred and fifty years ago today.

"The years like great black oxen tread the world, and God, the herdsman goads them on behind, and I am broken by their passing feet."

Testes Thong Rot

We have been trying out the newish 'To The Strongest!' rules with James' Punic War figures, or at least a small subset of his stuff. James has already given them the thumbs up and I would like to concur. We've played twice now and I am happier that we got the rules right the second time through. They are quick, give a fun game with what seems to be a nice balance of luck and judgement.

Command and Colours is the obvious reference point and I think these have the edge. Comparison points would be:

• Squares are better than hexes, primarily because one can go straight forwards towards the enemy.
• I prefer having multiple - OK, two - units in a space and for facings to be important.
• The points above mean that the Roman three line system (which in the manner of the three musketeers seems to have contained four separate elements) can be more effectively modelled.
• The command and control system means that one could hypothetically order all one's units in a turn, but is very unlikely so to do. I found this less annoying than getting stuck with the wrong cards at C&C. It also made me more prepared to gamble that my opponent wouldn't be able to do what he wanted.
• The cumulative difficulty effect on activation works well.
• The rally rules, coupled with the low number of hits that units can take, prompt a cagier style of play involving withdrawing and the re-entering the fray which I found to be to my taste. Of course it makes no difference at all if you are playing the Romans with their surfeit of small units destroyed after one hit.

There are a couple of bits that I'm not entirely convinced by yet.

•  Shooting seems so ineffective and has such short range that one hesitates to risk the command failing its activation in order to do it. And yet ancient armies were full of troops who engaged in missile fire.
• Officers are just as expensive to lose as in C&C ancients, are far more likely to be lost than in that game and yet seem to be of much less value while one has them.
• The logic of the demoralisation rule isn't that clear to me.
• The victory banner concept appears to have been lifted wholesale from C&C and has all the faults of that system - too few, too arbitrary etc.

For the record the Carthaginians won both times.

And yonder all before us lie

I have set up a Romans vs Ancient Britons game to have a crack at Basic Impetus. I would like to have taken some decent photographs, but sadly it would seem that my camera is unlikely ever to return. (One which subject, anyone who found it following the Otley Show should understand that all those photos of the ladies tug-of-war were taken in admiration of their athletic prowess and for no other reason) We must therefore make do with some blurry efforts taken on my phone.

The terrain on either side of the battlefield is for aesthetic effect. In particular the river at this end is solely for the purpose of creating a space for the umpire to put his ginger beer and the rules.

Roman ballistae on a precision, laser-cut template which only looks like a bit of cardboard painted green because of the limitations of the photography.

Some Airfix chariots, painted many, many years ago and never before seen on the table-top. Note once again the deceptively cheap looking unit footprint template.

I intend to have a solo run through at some point over the next few days while listening to the ODIs vs New Zealand. In the meantime here is some asparagus with a hash of sweet potato and chorizo.

They got the boogie band blowin' that's bound for hell

For no real reason let's have some Little Feat:

It's astonishing to to think that Lowell George - who in both videos appears to have come straight from his day job as a painter and decorator - would be seventy by now; less astonishing perhaps that he never made it to thirty five. Don't do drugs kids.

Pursuit check

"There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy and the tired." - F. Scott Fitzgerald

I have some sort of post-viral fatigue thing going on for a while now. It's all been a bit up and down, but I am now feeling a little stronger every day, possibly because the British summer has decided to get its arse into gear. In any event, if I am no longer to be tired then I need to work out where else I fit in.

In the meantime here is a Robert Crumb cartoon.

Presumably no explanation is necessary.

It is not the healthy who need a doctor

"It is in moments of illness that we are compelled to recognise that we live not alone, but chained to a creature of a different kingdom, whole worlds apart, who has no knowledge of us and by whom it is impossible to make ourselves understood: our body." - Marcel Proust

I have been ill again. I checked my symptoms online and came to the conclusion that I had malaria. Fortunately it can only have been a mild version because after a good night's sleep I am recovered. Indeed I am recovered enough to cook and eat this lot: asparagus, sweet potato and leek hash topped with fried egg, caramelised rhubarb.

I was invited to Headingley by a business contact to watch the cricket, but was equally rapidly uninvited. I wasn't as miffed as I might have been because the weather has been truly dreadful here in what the locals insist on calling God's Own County. If they weren't Yorkshiremen I would suspect them of having a sense of irony.

However, the second test has been the catalyst for my magic hat to be taken down from the peg for its first outing of the 'summer'. It still works.

Pot40pouri

"Surprises are foolish things. The pleasure is not enhanced, and the inconvenience is often considerable." - Jane Austen
  
Our refight of Chotusitz completed - or near enough for everyone's satisfaction - and Frederick won. Having said that, I think it's a very good scenario and the Austrians have a pretty fair chance of winning. To do so, their commander needs to be more sensible with his cavalry on the left than I was and the grenzers who occupy the town need to inflict a bit more damage on the Prussian reinforcements; neither of which is beyond the realms of possibility.

I have been to the latest exhibition at the Henry Moore Institute featuring works by Carol Gove and Carlo Scarpa. It is absolute rubbish. 

I travelled to London last week, my first trip since the reprivatisation of the East Coast Mainline route under the control of Virgin Trains. My return train was cancelled, and I was advised by Virgin that any delay over thirty minutes entitled one to compensation and, this being the case, I duly did. My claim has subsequently been rejected on the basis that, and I only paraphrase slightly, there is nothing to do in Leeds at that time of night anyway so what difference did half an hour make. 

Asparagus has been cooked again, this time with bacon lardons, poached egg and pine nuts

To do the right deed for the wrong reason

And so to the theatre. I have been to see 'Murder in the Cathedral', T.S. Eliot's examination of, among other things, the dichotomy between man's loyalty to his conscience and the duty he may be considered to owe to authority. I prefer to interpret it as a product of its time - having been written during the rise of fascism - but that may just be because I am constitutionally incapable of any empathy with the inner struggles of god-botherers. There are obvious parallels with Thomas More that other egotistical Lord Chancellor who allowed himself to be martyred, although in fairness to Thomas a Becket he never told lies about Richard III.

I wasn't entirely convinced by the production, the opening scene in particular seemed to drift on for ever before anything much happened. Some of the costume decisions were also questionable. Becket himself wore motorcycle leathers for no reason that I could discern and while Reginald Fitz Urse (crazy name, crazy guy) had a bit of a Herr Flick, Gestapo vibe going on, the other three knights appeared to be ninjas. The music managed to be both odd and predictable - Cohen's 'Hallelujah' was inevitable - and was at times too loud. However the verse was crisply and powerfully spoken, transcending all the other inadequacies to make it a memorable evening.

Asparagus officinalis

If this blog had any readers I would apologise to them for my absence. I have had what medical professionals would describe as a stinking cold and have been laid low over the bank holiday. However, I am almost fully recovered and back to what passes for normal life around here. At the moment that seems to consist of searching for the best recipe for serving asparagus, always bearing in mind that I cannot eat dairy produce. The current favourite is lemon and garlic roasted asparagus with herby tomatoes, but I've also had great success with chorizo accompanied by sweet potato cakes with spring onion and ginger.

Returning to the ostensible theme of the blog, there has also been some wargaming in the legendary wargames room of James 'Olicanalad' Roach, after a hiatus caused by genuine illness on the part of his wife and some epic scale hypochondria from him. He has blogged about the game here and we will finish it off tonight, so I will simply say that considering the terrible dice that I threw and my appalling cavalry tactics on my left flank I am remarkably well placed. I don't have very much morale left though so another defeat seems all too likely.

I shall therefore celebrate rising from my sickbed by bringing the world up to date with boardgames played.

Cosmic Encounter: An oldie but goodie. Who wouldn't want to conquer the universe?

Factory Fun: A very off-putting name for a game so loosely based on factories one wonders why they bothered. Good game though.

Fleet: An interesting, if somewhat lightly themed, game. It was basically accounting and so I won.

Ice Flow: A favourite of mine, spoiled on this occasion by the fact that I didn't win.

Letters from Whitechapel: A one-against-many cooperative game where acting as policemen we chased Jack the Ripper through the streets and alleys and across the rooftops of the East End. I'm not sure where the letters come in to things exactly. I enjoyed it, and we caught the fiend while I was directing operations so I have to declare it a good game. Trivia note: I was born in the area represented by the playing map.

Pandemic: Contagion : A competitive version of Pandemic and all the better for it. Players take the part of a deadly virus attempting to wipe out humanity; suits me.

Pastiche: The game revolves around the painting of old masters. It's very pretty, but not terribly coherent.

Russian Railroads: I enjoyed this despite it being a worker placement game. I'd play again and would be able to deploy a better strategy next time.

Skull: I love this game to such an extent that I have been out and bought a copy. I'm rubbish at it though.

Sushi Go!: Very lightweight card drafting game that didn't do it for me.

Waggle Dance: Bees make honey - very entertaining; at least until with the game all but won I put one of my worker bees on the wrong spot because I wasn't paying enough attention and so lost. Hubris indeed.

What potent blood hath modest May

What potent blood hath modest May
when violets bloom sweet and fair
as the butterfly on red roses play
without a thought, without a care?

When violets bloom sweet and fair
along the roadsides emerald way
without a thought, without a care
as in the breeze they dance and sway.

Along the roadsides emerald way
a child picks them here and there
as in the breeze they dance and sway
with his mother the beauty he wants to share.

A child picks them here and there
innocent under the suns bright ray
with his mother the beauty he wants to share
all the treasures of his day.

Innocent under the suns bright ray
at the tombstone he lays with care
all the treasures of his day
as his mother sleeps so unaware.

At the tombstone he lays with care
he speaks the words he needs to say
as his mother sleeps so unaware
he curses the grave where she will stay.

He speaks the words he needs to say
who will love him without her there?
He curses the grave where she will stay
he cries to think how unfair,

who will love him without her there?
As the butterfly on red roses play
he cries to think how unfair
what potent blood has the month of May?

                        - Ralph Waldo Emerson

I haven't been to...

... Belgium again; and, with a new string to my bow, I haven't been to Turkey either. I have been to London - Marylebone or thereabouts - but that was dull. It was my first trip on the East Coast Mainline since it was reprivatised in the hands of Virgin and, to no surprise whatsoever, it was terrible, culminating in my return train being cancelled completely.

Other items of note over the last week or so:

• An unnecessarily large Napoleonic cavalry battle staged for no other reason than to get all my collection on the table. The French swept the Prussians from the table easily, but the Russian heavy cavalry won the day in the end. I remembered to take some photos, but I can't put my hand on my camera.
• I definitely had my camera with me when I went to the Otley Show at the weekend. This is the first of the large agricultural shows of the year in the north of England and was replete with livestock of all sorts and the farming community of the dales making merry. The absence of photographs means you are denied a detailed report on the ladies tug-of-war; which is possibly just as well.
• I have seen Thea Gilmore again. She was as excellent as on the previous occasion.

May was full of promises

And so to the theatre. Or possibly to the opera. Or possibly both. Opera North regularly include musicals in their repertoire, partly I think because they exist on a continuum with opera proper rather than being subject to a binary divide, and partly to make money. Their production of Kurt Weil's 'One Touch of Venus' from a few years ago remains a highlight for me of all the many times I have seen their work. This season they have revived 'Carousel', which I missed last time they did it for some reason; possibly because I was in Belgium, a country that I have once again failed to go to this week.

We want Willum, Willum the cat

Anyway, it was highly enjoyable, up to a point. It is very operatic in theme - for which read it is full of horrible people and it doesn't end well - and perhaps that is what attracted the company to it. I saw fit in my review of 'The Marriage of Figaro' to advise Mozart that he should have lost the fourth act. Similarly Rodgers and Hammerstein should have drawn a line after the first rendition of 'You'll Never Walk Alone'. The audience would stumbled out into the street emotionally wracked and blinking back tears. As it is they all leave shaking their heads at the baffling last half hour of mawkish sentimentality, wondering if even Americans could really stomach such banal, quasi-religious drivel.

There must be a better world somewhere

Fellas, tell them one more time

Well I've been around a long time

I really have paid my dues

Silence is safer than speech

"England is nothing but the last ward of the European madhouse..." - Leon Trotsky

He didn't fly to Bruges

Or indeed Courtrai. I have spent much of the last fortnight not going to Belgium; an activity which has occupied a paradoxically large amount of my time. You will be relieved to learn however that boardgaming has somehow struggled on regardless. Games played were:

6 nimmt!: The higher the number of players then the more random it gets, but I rather like it.

Guillotine: Once again the French aristos got what was coming to them, and quite right too.

Kemet: I led the dog people of ancient Egypt (you know, the dog people of ancient Egypt; come on, don't pretend that you haven't heard of them) to a respectable second place.


Mottainai: I have no idea how to describe this any more than I had any idea what the rules were while I was playing it. Peculiar, but on the plus side seems to reward the ability to plan ahead.

The Pillars of the Earth: Pretty standard, fairly light worker placement game with a cathedral building theme that, apparently, has something to do with a book by Ken Follett. Notwithstanding any of that it was nice to play and doesn't outstay its welcome. It's all accounting really so I won. It does contain the best turn counter that I think that I've ever come across.

The Resistance: Seriously, I hear you ask, seriously? All I can say is that my resistance was low (did you see what I did there?) and I went with the flow. I got it completely wrong, but in my defence the chap sitting next to me works at Menwith Hill and so must be considered a professional and he had no idea either.

Revolver: I haven't played this for a yonk, not since the episode with the Malaysian midwife; one of those stories for which the world is not yet ready. Anyway, it came out because Peter and I finished Katzbach a bit early and then I squeezed in another couple of games, including the first time I've ever seen it won by removing all the tokens from the Mexican Border card. It's a damn good game.

San Juan: It occurs to new players fairly early on during the rules explanation that this is about running a slave plantation, but distasteful theme aside, this is a good game. It is rather similar to Citadels, but for some reason that game is looked down upon by the cognoscenti whereas this one is deemed OK. It's a funny thing, fashion.

Tzolk'in: This is the one with the cogs on the board that are rotated each turn. I very much enjoyed it. Again, a mostly standard worker placement game except for the gear wheels. It is, of course, all accounting and so as I often do in those circumstances, I won. For the record I have been to Chichen Itza. It rained.

Anything goes

And so to the theatre. 'Kill The Beast' theatre company are touring 'He Had Hairy Hands' and were in Harrogate for one night only. As one would expect given their name - which is a quote from 'Lord of the Flies' - the show is in the horror genre, but it's also very funny.

They combine slick physical theatre with clever wordplay and quick switches between the multiple characters being played by each of them. Highlights for me were a wolf wonderfully constructed from the entire cast and a corny, but laugh-out-loud, joke about haunted tiramisu. Worth watching out for.

Start wide, expand further

"Start wide, expand further, and never look back" - Arnold Schwarzenegger

My C&C Napoleonics set up consists of nine doormats arranged 3x3 and marked out in the regulation sized hex pattern albeit in offset squares. However, I actually have a further three such mats plus the space to add them on to the end to make a 4x3 layout. Before it all gets taken down to play something else I have therefore experimented with widening things out. The new layout has eighteen hex/squares on each baseline. The left and right flanks consist of six each and the centre eight, implying an overlap of on hex/square on the baseline row and two on the alternate rows.

We played out the Katzbach scenario from the C&C Napoleonic website (it's a user posted one rather than one in the expansion) with the terrain stretched, another half dozen units on either side and proportional adjustments to victory banners and iron will counters. The wider playing surface worked well in the sense that we didn't really notice it. The scenario wasn't a success however, the lack of ranged fire for infantry units (the battle took place in a thunderstorm) being too much of a special case to draw any firm conclusions.

I intend to play another game on the same layout and, learning nothing as usual, it will be another special case. I'm going to set up a cavalry battle; the only reason for which is that I have such a shed load of cavalry that unless I have a cavalry-only battle on a bigger area it will never get used.