exit stage left

I was tearing my hair out with frustration, yesterday evening, wondering why it was taking so long to download the latest Boardgames with Scott video podcast.

Had he recorded a special spiel-size two hour episode ?
Or was my broadband line once again messing me around ?

Neither, as it turned out. In fact Michael Jackson was dead, or about to be reported so, and the entire world was engaging in mass voyeurism over the world wide web. Technology was groaning under the weight of another celebrity road crash story.

Things have been little better today, with 24 hour news interviewing anyone who has ever watched the Thriller video, and a sudden spike in interest in the Michael Jackson back catologue has seen music download engines moonwalking all the way to the bank.

I can't say I was a big fan. I found his music dull and puerile but to be fair he exuded a nice line in nuttiness that, at least, made him interesting.

But I can't say I am motivated to go and buy any of his albums just because he died prematurely.

I read somewhere that blogging is the new Rock and Roll. I wonder if, when I finally shuffle off this mortal coil, there will be a mass stampede to access my old blog posts. Will there be endless tributes on every major TV channel ? Will crowds gather at the gates of Gormenghast and lay wreaths in the shape of a Tigris piece on my doorstep ?

Or will I be like one of those rock dinosaurs, playing the Glastonbury festival long after my sell by date ? Will upstart young bloggers start reissuing my classic posts in virtual megamixes ?
Would it be better to die young in a pool of my own regurgitated prose ?
Crushed under a landslide of meeples from boxes placed too high, and too precariously, on the top shelf.

I need a rest, lest I go the way of MJ (as the media now seem to have dubbed him).

I'm off for a few days R&R in the West country.
A break from blogging and from my army of fans.

There'll be a comeback tour in about a week when I've spent all my money on cream teas.

Allodoxaphobia

I've had a good few weeks of gaming goodness, recently, so it's something of a surprise that I have not burbled on about it here.

Sometimes I just have no idea what I'm going to type and I just lay down a Joycean stream of consciousness - other times I have an idea in my head that I simply have to preserve for posterity. Normally in a jar of vinegar.

Other times I just seem to be too busy working and actually playing games rather than trying to come up with entertaining anecdotes about them.

So, anyway, a couple of weeks ago, I finally got my grubby little kitchen hands on a copy of Small World, courtesy of the Hustler and his Clotted Connections. Which meant that this magnificent octopus hit the table at our last games night and a good time was had by all. Commando Halflings, Flying Elves, Diplomatic Trolls and Outrageous Poodles- the game has it all in equal measure and, let's not be coy about this, a shed load of arguments when it is played by four uber competitive 'adults'.

More table talk than physical piece movement, in many cases.
I love it. I've also clocked it up a fair few times, in two player mode, with Steerpike Jr and it scales well (but with less of the bitter recriminations).

Talking of two players, I also managed to slaughter the Welsh Lamb at 1960 again last night. So confident was my Kennedy that he even flew over to California, for awhile, to help shift that state to the Democrats. First time that that has happened in one of my many plays of this little gem.

Furthermore I also took the opportunity, last week, to venture out into the darker world of the Outer Dwellings to play a few games with the Hidden Gamers. A fine evening of Union Pacific, Notre Dame and Dominion. I remembered my manners and only won one game.

When I was leaving, the Leader of the Hidden Ones mentioned that he was looking forward to my blog report. Maybe that's what has caused my writers block over the last few days. I've been pondering this and it's kind of related to my last post.

In the early days of my blog it was all pretty anonymous. None of my readership were people that I actually knew in the real world, so I was pretty free to say what I wanted.
Of course, gradually over time, this has changed - sometimes because I actually arranged to play face to face games with some of my contributors, and other times because I just pointed my innocent victims here to give them a right to reply.

IN my last posting, Poodle made a comment about the vaguely irritating name I had bestowed upon him. (Despite the fact that we both know it has razor sharp resonance and pin point accuracy).
But, I've known him for years, so in many ways it just washes over his head.
Likewise the Welsh Lamb.

But the Clotted Hustler may feel different - the time I've known him is probably equal to the time I've dissed him here in the kitchen. The two things are in sync and therefore there is very little history.

Likewise the Hidden Gamers - I barely know them (though I did bump into their leader at a "Slade" tribute band on the local green). So, I feel the need to be more careful about what I say.
Not that I have anything particularly controversial to share, but I'm not so sure it would be as acceptable to make similar comments as I would if it were, for example, Poodle.
Not yet, anyway.

Yes, self censorship, something most of my friends would barely recognise as a potential character trait in me.

Sometimes I feel like I barely know myself anymore.
We've grown apart.

It's a strange old world.
And a Small one, at that.

Self Indulgence

It's a funny old game, blogging. I sometimes lean back (virtually) and wonder why I do it and what, exactly, it achieves.

In many ways, for me, it is just a medium for saying stuff that would otherwise be cluttering up my brain. A cathartic means of expression that, hopefully, offends no one - apart from a few gaming buddies who stumble upon these pages and feel that their defeat, at my hands, may have been somewhat misrepresented.

So I'm doing it for myself.

Or am I ? Why do I check my statistics ?

It's a common, narcissistic, Bloggery thing to do, of course. It's always nice to see if anyone is loitering (unlike Twitter there is no immediate feedback. No "OddBodd2 is now following / stalking you" messages). Although Bloggers often bleat for themselves, I suspect that they (we) are all secretly awaiting that breakthrough post which catapults them (us) (me) to Social Media Stardom.

A short while ago I posted a game report for Combat Commander: Europe and, to my surprise, found a peak in my readership to - gasp - 35 visitors in a day. I've now stabilised around 10 drop ins per day, although when I post I now regularly seem to hit around 25 return visitors. Twenty Five bookmarks somewhere out there !

Twenty Five people who have, effectively, bought a season ticket to the Castle and its grounds - rather than the random drop in visitors who are looking for something to do with their kids on a rainy day. (I've been considering a small play area out back and maybe a small cafe franchise)

Who was the visitor who Googled "left handed moley dobber " and ended up here ? Did he or she leave as a satisfied customer ?

The sad thing is, I find this quite exciting.

Even sadder, I now feel under pressure to entertain.

Are we (the Bloggers) the online equivalents of all those Mingers, Blingers and Clingers on Britain's Got Talent ?

Will I go the way of SuBo ?

El Grumpe

I find myself in Madrid for a flying visit.

 

At my last company, where the Corporate Dollar supported an expense system if not as extravagant as that employed by MPs and MEPs then at least on the right road, a visit to the Iberian Office was a leisurely affair stretched over two or three days with Anchovies and Jamon thrown in before late night dinners. (Clearly not late for the average Spaniard whose evening meal commences some time after 10pm).

Now, in the fiscally controlled service sector, I find that for the same set of meetings catching the first flight out of Heathrow, and returning on the last, is the order of the day. If you follow my Twitter stream you'll know just how grumpy I was this morning at 5am.

 

Madrid in a day. Certainly achievable, but sensible ?

What about networking (human networking, face to face, sharing a beer - as opposed to Social Networking which involves a computer and an avatar completely out of sync with your actual appearance) ?

What about the environment (although it's still two planes, I guess) ?

What about my sleep cycle  (I think I might have been snoring on the plane as my mouth felt as dry as sandpaper when I woke up, with a start, to find I'd slept through most of the latest Dice Tower podcast) ?

What about my decompression sickness (I fart a lot when I spend too much time on planes) ?

 

Oh, well, better do some work. I've had a slice of ham so I am a little less grumpy.

 

When I get back to the airport, I'll put one in the Castillo for you.

 

The Sands of Time

Thanks to the ineptitude of the main telephony "service provider" (sic) to the Castle - let's call them GT to protect the anonymity and shareholders of the real company which happens to have similar initials except the first one should be a "B for British" rather than a "G for Gormenghast" - it looks like I will be without internet or phone connections, to the outside world, for the next five days.

I can't even begin to comprehend this level of isolation. I could go stir crazy. Digital cold Turkey.

Of course I still have my iPhone but I'm not sure that this will be a suitable medium for my long and rambling posts. Probably a relief to some.

Talking of long and rambling, how long is an acceptable game turn for a casual evening across the board ?

There's an old Japanese story about a woodcutter who stops to watch a game of Go. He becomes so engrossed that he loses track of time only to discover at game end that his beard has grown to the floor and the shaft of his axe has turned to dust.
It turns out that he has stumbled across two immortals playing the game.

Last night I had a glimpse into this kind of eternity, when I played the Hustler and his American friend at Neuroshima Hex. This should be a quick chaotic game of furious combat and not a thoughtful, and deep, encounter between chess grand masters. Forthwith the American player shall be named "SloMo" for his ability to drag a game out long past its published play time.

Once Neuroshima finally dragged into the station, and its weary passengers disembarked, we sat down for a game of "The Circle". This is a spy game that the Hustler picked up from Essen a few years back - by now Poodle had joined us so we were in for a four player espionagefest.
SloMo announced that he only had a couple of hours left, due to a temporal curfew or something. I thought that this boded well for game pace as he would be forced to, at least, try to play a turn in a reasonable duration.

Sadly, I'm not sure such a thing is biologically possible for him and two hours later we were just entering the mid game as he got up to leave.
In some ways this was a relief. The game was so slow that I was actually playing some Go, in between turns, on my iPhone. The wind you hear, in the trees, is the immortals shaking their heads in disbelief.

To round off the evening the Hustler, Poodle and I played Billabong - a fast game of kangaroos bouncing around the Outback in a fun race around the eponymous ox-bow lake of Antipodean origin. A nice change of pace (if a little too wordy).

Anyway, I digress.
Lights Out.
I may be some time.
SloMo may even have played a move before I get reconnected.

Atlas Shrugged

Father's Day approaches so I have been dropping some fairly heavy hints with the pikelets that "The Geek Atlas" might make the perfect present for someone interested in science, travel, reading and, well, all things geeky.

128 destinations linked to scientific discovery - Bletchley Park; The Horn Antenna in Holmdel, New Jersey; The Trinity Test site in New Mexico; The Alan Turing Memorial in Manchester, England; The National Cryptologic Museum in Fort Meade, Maryland; The Joint Genome Institute in Walnut Creek, California

The list goes on. What is there not to like ?

Fire!

An interesting question from Steerpike Jr, tonight. If the castle was on fire and you could only save one thing what would it be ?

My initial, saccharine, response was "the children" but he wasn't falling for that and was more interested in the material side of the question. What thing would I save - not what people.

I asked what he would save. "The Toilet" he replied, "My bed" the Lady Fuchsia piped up from the other room, "Piglet" said the eldest of the female line.

Erm, ok, so I'd save Dominion. No, Tigris. Argh, I dont know.
If I had a proper Kaya wood Go board it would be that. But I don't.

I've really been getting into Go, again, lately. Mostly playing it over the internet against a few of the Dice Tower regulars (Giles in his shed and Geoff in his Maths Tower) and having a blast.

Ah, yes, I'd save my iPhone. I can play Go over the internet, trounce the AIs at Zooloretto, play an endless array of podcasts and loud music and still phone the Lady Fuchsia to make sure she and the kids made it out of the castle before being engulffed in the flames of this strange thought experiment.

Gaming Emancipation

It can be a lonely old business, being a boardgamer.

Finding people with a similar interest in cerebral pursuits, in a dumbed down world of reality TV and screaming soap operas, can leave the closet geek with the overriding feeling that they are the hobby equivalent of "the only gay in the village".
Well, the only geek in the village, anyway - but as Daffyd discovers in his little hamlet of Llanddewi Brefi, sometimes it can just be the fact that he is ignoring the signs. Or the meeples.

And so it is in Gormenghast.
Poodle and I have been playing games for some 14 years now, in the castle and in his various kennels - and during that time we had a fledgling group that came and then went (to Saudi and beyond). A few smelly people turned up, a few times, to make up the numbers, but Poodle soon saw them off with a spray of deodorant - because though we like to play boardgames, we also believe that personal hygiene is an important part of modern society.
As is the ability to interact in social settings.

Things have been looking up, recently, with the appearance of the Hustler - another geek who thought he was the only one, living in solitude just a few miles from the Hall of Bright Carvings and, presumably, just playing with himself.

Ok - let's not stretch this analogy too far lest I lose readership.... I'm just responding to a comment, a few posts back, from Iain but maybe I've taken it too far. I'm like that. Never know when to stop, apparently.

There is a point to this post.

(There normally is - it's more a question of whether you stick around long enough to get there. As blog posts go, I am more Twilight Imperium than I am Neuroshima Hex)

So, after a drought of gaming buddies, imagine my surprise to discover a hive of gamers right under my nose. Loads of them, in the clustered dwellings that attach themselves to the side of the main gates.

Experienced gamers, to a man, with BGG profiles and more heavy titles in their collections than a man of my stature could carry to the car.

How can this be ?

Of course, unlike Daffyd, I am very pleased with this state of affairs.

On Saturday night, one of their number organised a 'games evening', at a local venue, along with an old work acquaintance of mine (which is how I found out). Unfortunately I could only make the first couple of hours as I was already booked to take the Lady Fuchsia out, to dinner, with a few of the local gentry. Well, the Neighbours, anyway.

As you can imagine, I was quite torn. Surely dinner could be rescheduled.

Apparently not.

Still, I managed to get in a game of Le Havre - my first time at this game but a stunning victory for the humble kitchen boy. Mind you, I was playing against two twelve year olds and an eleven year old. Let's not underestimate the challenge though - one was a boyshark (it was his dad's game and he clearly had a strategy), one was an apprentice gamer (Steerpike Jr - who picks games up quickly) and one was a complete newbie (ie the random element. the ghost of Poodle's future).

Clearly I was late for dinner. Le Havre is a longer game than I anticipated.

I'll reserve my judgement on it, for now, but I did get the sense that it was, perhaps, a little too long - outstaying its welcome by about three or four rounds. Lots of interesting stuff going on in it but like its predecessor, Agricola, I got the feeling that it was perhaps a little too derivative of those that have come before.

Still, I preferred being a docker to a farmer and I would like to try it again to see if it goes quicker with experience or whether analysis paralysis makes it worse.

And, hopefully, I should get more opportunities as this cell of hidden gamers have invited me along to some of their regular meets (this recent games evening having been more of an organised event to attract newcomers and families into the hobby - though how they expected to do that with Le Havre on the table is a matter for sages to debate. I'd have gone for Ticket to Ride and Zooloretto ! Actually, it was a great time and I hope to work with them to get some more afternoons/evenings, like this, scheduled).

I am no longer the only geek in the village.

And maybe I never was.

Reality Check

It's a natural human trait to look at success and associate nice, positive, results with specific action taken. We have a tendency to look at millionaires or celebrities or just prominent businessmen and correlate their visible achievements with individual character traits.
If we all act like Alan Sugar, or those rude blokes off of the Dragon's Den, then we, too, can scale the lofty heights of greatness.

I believe this is referred to as Survivor Bias, often encapsulated in the phrase "We see the winners and try to learn from them, while overlooking the huge unseen cemetery of losers, who tried the same path".

I used to see a lot of this during my time as a slave to the Corporate Dollar - through endless "lessons learnt" sessions we would pat ourselves on the back and come up with bland, sanctimonious, statements proclaiming that the project was a success because of the proactive actions of management.
No one ever stopped to consider the alternative world view that the project was a success despite the proactive actions of management.

Yes, I am going somewhere with this, its not just a rant against Corporate America. Actually it's going to get on to games, soon, so stick with me.

I was reading an article on the D-Day landings in the BBC History magazine last week, and it would appear that the strategic planning for this pivotal event, in the history of the war, would fall into a similar category. The Allies were successful more through a mixture of good fortune than from any superbly executed master plan.

And so it was, last night, when I once more sat down across the table from the Clotted Hustler and another scenario of Combat Commander:Europe was played out.
You see he has all the chips stacked on his side - it's his game and he understands the subtleties of the rules, he's played most of the scenarios before and to cap it all he's actually in the military. What chance a humble kitchen boy raised on a diet of medium weight Eurogames ?

Aptly, the scenario chosen was a skirmish in the environs of some random French village a week or so after D-Day. (Apologies to military historians, grognards and people of Normandy - it's probably a famous French village and a well known event but the name meant little to me).
I was the Allies, seeking to hold the line with a handfull of troops and a couple of leaders weak enough to break at the drop of a croissant.
The Hustler was the Nazis - a whole swarm of them, armed to the teeth and looking to either make a quick exit stage left (with me in the way) or to wipe me out before sunset.

And that is what I love about this game. The attacker has a clear objective, and often overwhelming forces, but the defender has the clock on his side and has to hang on in there until reinforcements arrive (virtual reinforcements, of course, as the scenario ends once the sands of time run out).

I set up the board with an advance party, sitting in a farmhouse, hoping to pin down the Germans as they came out of the trees. The rest of my units I positioned further back, one grouping in the village and the other dug into a, hastily cobbled together, foxhole behind a semi-strategic hedgerow.
The aim was for my advance units to beat a hasty retreat once it could no longer hold the line - but the SS were on top of them faster than I could say Schadenfreude. My machine gun jammed, and my leader shot himself , as the men in black stormed into the farmhouse in a fierce melee.
I managed to fend off this ferocious attack in the ensuing fistfight (very Hollywood) but the single unit that survived remained isolated and encircled for the rest of the game.

However, rather than finishing me off in this key tactical outpost, the Hustler chose to press on my left and right flanks, secure in the knowledge that my advance unit no longer had the fire power to stop him.

My brave boys, still dug into their makeshift foxhole, took a pounding and, as they weakened, the German high command lined up its elite troops, behind the hedgerow, ready to finish them off. There was nothing for it but to call in an artillery strike and, unexpectedly, carnage rained down on the Nazis from above (I say unexpectedly because these artillery calls have a habit of hitting the wrong target or just missing completely)

Shell shocked, the German troops on my right flank were subsequently routed and spent the rest of the game trying to regroup and get their heads together. Well, maybe an exaggeration, but the strike did change the course of the battle and forced the Hustler to concentrate elsewhere.

So attention switched to the left flank - but time had been ticking on nicely for me. I was burning cards as quickly as I could, on both sides, in an effort to make the game clock accelerate and it was working.

There was no way that the Hustler could win on objective points, in the time he had left, so the only option was to wipe out my units skulking in the village. A surge of German troops fell upon the quiet French hamlet - it was baguettes at dawn. Lots of close quarter firing, ducking into the orchards, jumping over dry stone walls.

In desperation I called another Artillery strike right in the middle of the fighting, right in the middle of the village. Casualties on both sides were extremely likely. Collateral damage (civilian casualties) a certainty. As close to a War Crime as I have ever come.

But the shells fell slightly outside of the village, only causing a couple of German units to break. Everyone got off lightly.

I could tell the Hustler was getting irritated - he needed an Advance card to finish me off but to get hold of it he had to burn through his cards which, in turn, made the clock tick louder and faster. Finally, with five cards left in his deck, he stormed into the small bistro that I was holding. He ran right across the minefield I had hastily put together on the patio (don't try this at home) - a tactic I had learnt from him in our last game - and he lost one of his attacking units before the melee even began.

In the confusion the totally unexpected happened - I drew a time card and the clock stopped with the final firefight about to commence. Victory !
But in some senses a shame. I'm sure that I could have forced the game end via depletion of his deck, in the melee, in preference to the randomly drawn card from my deck. I'd have felt more vindicated in my triumph.

So that's 2-1 to me. It hurts him, I know.
Especially because my early set up, and play, was seriously flawed. My advance unit was a sitting duck and I wasted the cards which could have made it marginally more effective. I got lucky with an Artillery strike at the point when my defences were most likely to have collapsed.

But that's fog of war.
I won despite my strategy.
Although, tactically, my leaders on the ground did me proud.

Coptic Cop Out

I don't like leaving book unfinished.

I don't know why this is but I suspect it has something to do with my younger years when, for reasons I can't now recall, I never seemed to be able to get more than half way through any of the Alfred Hitchcock "Three Investigator" books.

Maybe one day a psychotherapist will explain why this has turned me into a compulsive completer finisher, in the literary department, but for now it is a cross I have to bear.

And it is a pain in the meeples. Because every now and then I start reading a book which is so tedious that it slows me down to a grinding halt. My conscience will not allow me to start another until I have done my duty - but I find myself only reading a page, or worse still a paragraph, at a time and then getting bored and going off to do something else instead.

Why do I do this ? There are so many other books in the world that I'd like to read why do I torture myself so ?
Right now I am building up a huge backlog of books because I have become well and truly bogged down in "The Keys of Egypt". According to the cover this is a 'ripping tale of obsession and rivalry'. The story of the race to read the hieroglyphics.

I'm sure it is a ripping tale - but not the way it's being told in this book. I can't wait for Champollion to kick the bucket and put me out of my misery.

This should be an ideal read for me. A triumph of 17th Century Cryptography - the Bletchley Park of its day - with loads of history chucked into the mix (French Revolution, Battle of the Nile, the dynastic lines of ancient Egypt). I should be lapping it up.

But the writing is as dull and flaky as the papyrus which rotted in the Egyptian sands. (Yeah, I'm no writer either !!)

According to the Times it is a "first rate blend of high scholarship and great narrative pace".
Well I wish the pace would pick up a bit so that I can get onto my selection of Peter Carey short stories.