First quarter reading 2025

 Another quarter goes by and it's not surprising that the reading list was shorter, allowing for all the medical activity following my trip to hospital.

Max Hastings - Vietnam

I mentioned this one after picking up a copy last November.  The subtitle calls it "an epic history of a tragic war" and that description is spot-on.  In more than 700 pages Hastings covers the causes and objectives of the war, from French colony, through communist insurgency to drive out the French, supported by Russia and China, partition and American intervention.  From beginning to end there seems no hope for the people of Vietnam, neither from the series of corrupt and unpopular governments in the south or the uncaring totalitarian state in the north. America spent a fortune in dollars and young lives but failed to prevent the communists taking over the whole country.  Nearly a million refugees fled the country, mostly in boats, to reach some chance of a better future anywhere else in the world.

As well as filling in the big picture with significant events that I was too young to understand when they happened, the book has individual stories of people who were there: patrols, ambushes, attacks on fortified positions, life on a SAM battery; this really is a huge book.  

Christopher Duffy  - Austerlitz

I had already read David Chandler's account of Napoleon's greatest victory and was hoping for  three-sentence summary of what he did that resulted in such an outcome. Both books gave me a blow-by-blow account of individual battalions and brigades slamming into each other in turn, all over the area of the battle.

After both accounts, all I can offer is this: Napoleon had an army that had camped and drilled together for two years, organised in fixed brigades and corps; the Russians and Austrians had no common language or experience of fighting together, and any organisation above the regiment consisted of ad hoc divisions and columns created on the day of battle.  The allies should not have rushed to battle against the French. but instead they advanced off a commanding position on the Pratzenberg heights to fight on the level ground of the valley below, only to find that the French then occupied the heights they had abandoned.  Individual units fought bravely in a piecemeal melee, but the outcome was inevitable.

Richard Osman - We Solve Murders

After 4 novels featuring the Thursday murder club, Richard Osman has moved on to a new set of characters for this story (although the old gang will be back).  The Thursday Murder club started as a believable group of retired people looking into a murder in their back yard.  As the series went on, the action became increasingly bonkers; having caught a local drug dealer, the gang may borrow a kilo of cocaine ro plant in someone's luggage, giving the police a reason to arrest the target.  The retired intelligence agent calls on foreign agents to help out and good turns to a wide range of shady characters lead to favours in return.  

This new story is bonkers from the start, with the main characters working for a close protection (bodyguard) agency. apart from the retired detective inspector who gets involved because he's family.

Like the other books, there are truly sad moments among the laughs. Also, the gang gets bigger as one good turn deserves another. An entertaining romp.

Paradice Worthing 2025

 On Saturday Trevor kindly took Lee and myself to Worthing leisure centre to enjoy a day of boardgame-related fun.  Paradice had  traders selling new and second-hand boardgames, a very civilised bring & Buy section (no crush, no arguments about who saw something first and reasonable prices).  I picked up Junta, a favourite of my university buddies, still in the shrinkwrap, for £23.  Trevor grabbed a small game for only £3).  

civilised gamers

There were game designers showing off their latest creations (just published) or looking for feedback on their games under development.

Hot off the press - first day on sale

The atmosphere was clearly different from wargaming events.  There was no pervasive odour of sweaty bodies. There were ladies present and even whole families.  Instead of a bacon or sausage sandwich to fortify  us for the day, there were granola bars. 

Where are all the bacon sarnies?

We took part in a couple of "social deduction" games.  Apparently, if you watch "The Traitors" on TV (I don't) you will know all about this.  The players (just under 20 in each game) are secretly assigned identities as good guys or bad guys by the Master of Ceremonies, who kept us on track.  Some of these identities provide little pieces of information about who the other players really are, such as how many bad guys there are.  One role may be a pathologist or undertaker who can find out (a bit late) whether someone who has just died was actually human or an alien or demon.  Another role may be able to sense how many of that player's two neighbours are bad guys.  In the two games we played there were as many different roles or identities as players.  The best known games of the genre are Werewolf and Mafia, well described on Wikipedia.

The game is played in daily cycles. During the daytime the players discuss information and clues to secret identities.  At night the good guys all close their eyes while the bad guys point to the player they would like to murder.  In the morning the good guys can open their eyes again, apart from the one who has been murdered.  Before night falls, the players can nominate someone to be ejected or executed as a bad guy.  The good guys win if they get rid of all the bad guys, and vice versa.

A snippet from The Spawn's identities

Our first game was The Spawn, set on a space ship.  I was an evil alien creature masquerading as human, but quickly established my cover story that I was the recycling robot.  Any scientific test would show that I was not human, but that's only to be expected, as a robot, and the real recycling robot is on the side of the good guys.  As the Psiok, I got to mess with Lee's post mortem examinations, and he spent the whole game wondering why the results made no sense.There were other twists, with one player sworn to protect me from ejection .  My cover remained intact until the evil aliens seized control of the ship from the surviving humans.  We won!

The next game was Blood on the Clocktower, a mediaeval setting where one demon takes on a whole town with help from his evil minions. Lee soon got into trouble.  He told us all that he was the town cook, which gives him information about how many minions of the demon there are (specifically 2 pairs sitting side-by-side).  We innocent townsfolk tried repeatedly to figure out which 2 couples this could be.  Eventually one of the others reasoned that it was impossible, and Lee could not be the cook.  Sure enough, they put it to the vote. Other votes were triggered when two players claimed the same identity.  They couldn't both be the butler, so one of them must be a bad guy - but which one?

With convincing logic, Lee was executed and turned out to have been the demon all along.  Nice try, but he was outwitted by a more experienced player.

To wind down, we borrowed Burgle Bros 2 from the games library and played out a cooperative heist caper to rob a casino.  My character was a safe-cracker, while Trevor had an acrobat with zipwires to move quickly between floors.  I spent most of the game just distracting the casino security guys by making a commotion among the slot machines before ducking back into a quiet corner that I'd found.  They came to the slot machines to check out the fuss, leaving Trevor free to work in the owner's office, then returned to their rounds, passing me by, so I could repeat the process.  Meanwhile Lee had made his way upstairs to find the safe.  We had fun, although we found the constant presence of security guys frustrating.

After an hour and a half of play, Lee got the safe open and we moved on to the ending.  There are several of these in a sealed envelope and we got the one with the car (avoiding the one with the tiger, or the one with the dye packs, which looked much more difficult to pull off).  Lee found a car in the vault, drove across the casino to pick up Trevor and myself, before crashing through an upstairs window to deliver us into the street outside.  It would have looked great in the movie.

Oceans 11 had nothing on us

Robinson Crusoe - solo castaway

 While I've been recovering, my brother-in-law has kindly lent me his copy of Robinson Crusoe - Adventures on the Cursed Island.

This is a solo / co-op game of being cast away on an uncharted island.

I played the first scenario "Castaway" and randomly picked the ship's cook as my character.

The core of this game is a limited time (12 days) to build a huge signal fire and attract a ship to rescue me.  Each day my character can take two actions (placing my two action tokens, rather like Agricola).

In a solo game I have help from Friday (1 action token) and a dog (1 action, but only to Explore the island or Hunt).

To complete the scenario I will have to Explore and find a mountain (a pre-req to make fire) and Gather 17 units of wood, then Build my shelter and the woodpile.  There's a lot to do and probably not enough time.

For each action I can use one of my tokens and then roll the dice to find out whether I succeed or fail, maybe taking a wound in the process, or I can use two tokens to succeed automatically.  This mechanic neatly emphasizes the feeling of too much to do with not enough time to do it properly.  No doubt there will be a need to take some risks and rush a few of the tasks.

Learning this game from the rulebook has been a major challenge.

There is a numbered list of 17 steps to setup a game and a picture of an example game with each element of the setup numbered to show which step put it there.  It should have been so easy.  Sadly there were several mistakes and unclear instructions, so it took me a week to reach the point of starting play.  The setup instructions are for a 4-player game, with a later section to explain the differences in a 2-player game.  A further section describes the solo game as just like the 2-player game with some differences.  Back and forth through the rulebook, I got there eventually.

This game has not skimped on the physical parts and the production value is impressive.  There is a space on the board for the action to Arrange the Camp, printed with a reminder of the results, and there is even a card to cover it up with the different results in a 4-player game, but not one for a solo game.

The cost in resources (wood & furs) to build a shelter varies with the number of players, but the table printed on the board starts with 2 players and only the rulebook notes in the solo section that solo costs are the same as for 2 players.

Once the cook has a fire, I can add a fireplace and then the evening meal will heal a wound.  I'm going to prioritise fire over building a shelter and accept some wounds overnight from sleeping rough on the beach.

I explored the next hex from my camp, taking the dog and got lucky.

what my exploration found

It's a mountain (presumably containing flints, since that lets me make fires and knives).  It also contains a natural shelter (saving me 2 wood and an action spent building).

I spent the rest of the day gathering wood and food in the new mountain with help from Friday.

So far I've found 2 hexes that produce wood, and I can only get 1 unit of wood per day from each of them.  15 wood in 12 days is looking impossible unless I can explore some more, and I still need spare actions to make fire and build the woodpile...  I'm starting to see what this game is about.

Tomorrow's priorities will have to be making fire and a fireplace, then move camp to the natural shelter tomorrow night...

Update: the game slowed down as the weather took a turn for the worse, requiring me to spend time on building a roof for the shelter and causing wounds in the meantime, which then had to be healed.  My exploration found 1 more hex, which yielded an antique rapier, the only weapon I needed

A series of event cards needed actions to be spent to deal with problems.  However, by day 7 I had the hatchet, which meant 2 units of wood per day without needing to spend any actions collecting it (on top of my existing stocpile from days of gathering)and I realised that the woodpile does not have to be built (with a build action for each stage) and instead builds itself so that victory became assured.

I had constant need to refer to the 61 pages of official errata and FAQ, which made this first game slow and frustrating, but there are plenty of other scenarios and different characters to use, so there should be new interest in each new playing.  Maybe I was unfairly lucky to win this one first time.

Until next time, health & happiness to you all.

Thoughts about a scenario for Lexington & Concord

 

Looking ahead to the next anniversary of the AWI, this is going to be a difficult scenario to define in a way that makes an interesting and winnable game for both players.

My idea about the basic structure is to play two short sections, one after the other.  First will be a search of Lexington, looking for the ringleaders of the rebellion and any hidden arms and ammunition that were rumoured to be stored there.  Then the Crown troops will have the long walk back to Boston under harassing fire all the way.

There are a couple of good templates for part 2 in the existing OHW scenarios.  Scenario 23 Escape looks promising, while scenario 20 Fighting Retreat adds a couple of elements that don't seen to fit the historical situation here: the retreating force has to quickly cross a river or be trapped and eliminated, and there is a strategic hill to be fought over for the final victory.  While it could have gone badly for any Crown forces that failed to reach their boats and cross back to Boston, that crossing is near the end of the scenario, rather than on turn 2, the time limit in in scenario  20.

Sadly there is no template for a scenario where Red searches a village, sending a unit to spend some time in each building. Blue can cause a few casualties during the search, rather like the losses from fighting at the north bridge.

Sadly I'm not convinced that the Crown troops ever had a realistic chance of finding their targets.  The advance from Boston had been well observed and all the ringleaders were long gone before the troops arrived to look for them.  Unless the Crown troops have some outside chance of finding something in their search, there is little point in playing the first part of the action, other than to scatter the Crown forces and cause a few casualties among them.

Perhaps an American reader will have a different perspective?  Are there versions of the story where the ringleaders were lucky to escape capture and showed great cunning or daring to remain free?

Until next time, health & happiness to you all.

Fourth quarter reading

Another quarter ends, and I've not forgotten how to read, but haven't maintained much of a pace, which is odd because there's not much else to do when you're laid up for a week in hospital.

Ben Macintyre - Colditz: prisoners of the castle

Having grown up with the TV series, the boardgame and the film, I thought I must have heard all about Colditz before my brother-in-law passed on this book for me to read.  Certainly a lot of the escape attempts are familiar: the impersonation of Franz Josef and of Willi the electrician, for example.  But it seems that the main source material was Major Pat Reid's book, and he escaped relatively early on, so left out much that happened after that.

There's a lot of interesting material in here that I hadn't come across before.  There's the story of Majumdar and the Indian nationalist angle.  The book addresses sexual frustration and how the inmates dealt with it.  Some of the issues of where to hide escape equipment such as maps and money (before the days of cavity searches). I thought of Colditz as a camp for the "bad boys" and repeat escapers, but it was also used for possible high-value prisoners, including a nephew of Winston Churchill, who might be useful in any bargaining with the victorious allies.  The sad story of the last escape attempt was new to me and very moving, given this was the same officer who played the part of the sgt major "Franz Josef" so well with so much planning, driven to such a desperate and hopeless rush.  The strange events of the end of the war were also new to me, when the kommandant gave orders for the prisoners to be armed if necessary to defend themselves from the SS.

Recommended, even for those who think they may have heard it all before.

Stephen Fry - Mythos

As a boy, I read Roger Lancelyn-Green's and Charles Kingsley's books of the Greek Myths and loved them.  It was probably one reason I have an academic qualification in ancient Greek.

Stephen Fry's rendition of the old myths & legends is more comprehensive, organised in a sort of chronological order, where the other two just picked out their favourite stories and left it at that.  This means that he begins with primordial Chaos, followed by the titans (who are mostly the embodiment of natural phenomena like earth, sea, day, night, sleep and individual rivers) and Zeus is not even born until page 30.  Once the human race has been created, the best-known tales begin, and Fry tells them with an obvious affection, mixed with the scholarship of alternative versions which is kept apart in footnotes.

I particularly enjoyed his version of Sisyphus, which goes well beyond the boulder that everyone remembers.

John Lambshead - One-Hour Ancient & Medieval Skirmish Wargames

I found this an annoyingly lazy book.  The basic rules were already written (in his Ohe Hour Skirmish Wargames), so most of the book was there for free, but still fails to  address FAQ from the original volume.  For example, it still says that a model may not move any further after shooting (point 3 in "The Player Phase" p8), but doesn't clarify that close combat is also expected to be the end of a model's activation.

Once again the scenario descriptions mention some terrain that should be on the table, but most is not marked on the map, and the effects of terrain on the game are not clearly defined (e.g. the punishment raid on p70 has gullies and fast-flowing streams, but are they more than waist-deep as specified on p9?  and how many should there be? and where are they?).  There are rules about light infantry, heavy infantry etc with no explanation that these are defined by the level of armour the models wear.

Combat resolution is slower (both shooting and close combat) to allow a second round of contested card draws (one draw to hit, a second draw to penetrate the armour).  Attacks are more likely to be ineffective than in the original book, because in all cases the defender draws extra cards for one or other of the two draws.  The defender is allowed a counter-attack, which is resolved immediately (two more contested draws).  While the author argues that this is to provide differentiation between different grades of armour, in practice that could have been handled by card modifiers or by additional card draws on defence; the changes to the rules make combat more granular and longer-running, creating a more heroic / pulp feel to the fighting, so that it goes on longer and in more detail.

To play this game, the players will have to fill in the gaps, some of which will have significant impact on the game balance.

Anthony Horowitz - Close to Death

I saw this in a bookshop just before my family asked what I would like for Christmas, so I jumped at the chance.  If I'd done my homework I would have realised that this is the 5th Daniel Hawthorn book.  While I've only read the first two and this one refers to events in the ones I missed, so it would make more sense to read them in order.

I recommend starting with The Word is Murder.  Horowitz does something interesting with the format of the whodunnit by including himself as a character (rather like Dr Watson) and this volume continues to explore his relationship with the detective.

Enjoyable, if not a masterpiece like Magpie Murders or Moonflower Murders.  The way those two books interweave a whodunnnit book with a mystery involving the author is something exceptional in my opinion, although I didn't take to the anagram at the heart of Magpie Murders and therefore prefered Moonflower Murders.  dr gustibus nil disputandum as they used to say.

Until next time, health & happiness to you all.

A stroke of luck

I must be the luckiest blighter alive.

On Friday the 13th of December, a date of ill omen, I suffered a stroke, a bleed on the brain.  I was taken in to our local hospital and a week later I  was sitting up in bed, chatting with old friends who had come to visit and check on my progress.

As I typed this on Christmas Eve, I was looking forward to seeing my two lovely granddaughters on the big day tomorrow.

Don't get me wrong. I haven't just walked away from this serious incident unaffected, but it could have been so much worse.  I'm still walking, talking and getting a weekly game in, even if I am half-blind now.  

Before all of this trouble. I was making a little progress on my backlog. including this famous archaeologist in a ruined temple.

Until next time, health & happiness to you all

Indy & the temple of inadequate maintenance

Zulu hordes with Trevor

Trevor came round on Friday for a game.  At one time we used to do this weekly, but it's been a long time since we could manage that.  As usual the evening was a mixture of actual gaming and chatter about what we've been reading and buying and so on.

Trevor has been painting up 10mm Pendraken figures for the Zulu wars, with the intention of basing them up for proper big battles, but he has based the first few as individuals for skirmishing.  So we played the One-Hour Skirmish Wargames Zulu scenario, which is a sort of miniature Rorke's Drift.  The British redcoats are taking cover in a redoubt as an endless stream of Zulu warriors rushes up to overwhelm them.  Dead Zulus are replaced after one turn, a little more than one move away from the redoubt (though they still count toward the Zulu morale breaking).

Tiny skirmish action

The luck of the cards was outrageous.  I kept pulling face cards for actions, while Trevor drew 2s & Aces.  Twice the turn ended just as Trevor had one of his redcoats attack my best warrior across the wall of the redoubt; to resolve this the attacker draws two cards and uses the higher of them to beat the defender's one card draw; he pulled a high card, I pulled a low card, then he drew his second card and it was a Joker.  That means that the turn ended immediately without resolving whatever activity needed the card to be drawn, and so my warrior wasn't dead after all.  It sounds like one of those very rare events, but it happened twice in one game.

The fighting continues until one side's morale breaks or until a relief column appears to save the day for the British.  The timing of the relief column is decided by drawing one card at the end of each turn, and when the running total reaches 30 the column arrives.  Trevor drew some terrible cards for this.  He was down to just the lieutenant and the inspiring private Alexander when it finally appeared.  He spent the whole game moaning about his terrible luck (and it really was outrageously bad) right up to the point when he suddenly won.

The OHSW rules are cinematic and generate games that are exciting and fun.  They are massively "swingy", generating very unfair and unlikely outcomes for individual actions with the expectation that they will average out across the game.  The outcome is far from predictable.  But if you are less concerned with playing the odds to maximise the effectiveness of your side and happy instead to effectively watch a Hollywood action movie unfold on the table, then they are worth a look.

The scenarios are frustrating to read.  They are all specific actions, no generic situations.  The terrain setup is disturbingly vague.  In this scenario "the only cover [is] small outcops of rock and giant ant hills".  There are no clues about how many to place, how large, where they should be, whether they slow movement or block line of sight, just the assumption that they probably provide a 1 or 2 card bonus for Zulus being shot at when next to them.

There is a chapter in the book on point values, but those costs don't give the numbers stated in the scenarios.  For example, in this scenario the British force is correctly costed at 18 points, with no extra points for being in a redoubt, but the Zulu force is 24 points, not the 31 stated in the scenario.  Perhaps the extra 7 are the price of limitless replacements and a 9" movement rate?  In effect the book might as well not include points at all, and instead say "write your scenario and play it a dozen times; if one side keeps winning then change something in the other side's favour".

Until next time, health & happiness to you all.