SpielByWeb Update

100%Blade! It's your turn!

I've spent the last two weeks in beautiful (?) Carlisle, PA, home to the US Army archives. I'm technically a semi-employee; I have a dress code, I come in at a certain time, leave at a certain time, and get a lunch break, the works. It's a three-week special internship, for which I am paid from a private grant. It's supposed to give me a running start to my dissertation, and it's certainly done that. For one thing, I realized that I'm really researching a navy story, not an army story...but there's still plenty here.

My favorite unit that comes up--often--in my study is the Mississippi Marine Brigade. This could easily be considered the worst unit in the Union army. They were stationed on a largish number of boats commanded by BGEN Alfred Ellet. The idea was that they would sail to a hotspot, put the boats close to shore, lower some gangways and send hordes of cavalry ashore to deal with the problem. In practice, the MMB were essentially vikings. The difference between "Rebel cavalry" and "probably innocent town" were a little fuzzy to the MMB. As was discipline. In one memorable incident, the marines (who should not be confused with the US Marine Corps of today) at a prearranged signal staged mutinies on board all the ships to ostensibly protest rations, but I can't help imagining that they just wanted to go pirate. In the end, nothing happened to them after order was restored. But they're an interesting approach to the problems of occupying a vast waterway.

So that's been my life. No gaming has been done, but I did get two games delivered here for...some...reason? Anyway, I now have the new Pegasus edition of Top Race, which completes the set for me. (I'm not going to try to get all the Top Race editions.) Probably my favorite racing game system; I'm eager to try this out. I also got a copy of Royal Palace, under the theory that I should own any game I can win. (If I stuck to this, and made it ONLY games I've won, I'd have a vastly smaller collection...)

What I do have here is my Combat Commander kit. Mr. Cranky has expressed a desire to try a wargame again, and this is the one that has been settled upon. It's one of my favorites, so why not? I'm putting together a scenario with relatively small numbers of units on a relatively terrain-free board, to minimize rule-age. I like that you can do this easily with CC; I know that it's part of a large series of games, but still. I love the rules, and I love the scenarios, but the simplicity of putting new, balanced scenarios together seals the game for me.

On the Road

I'm about to head out for the Harrisburg, PA region--specifically, to work in the US Army's archives in Carlisle for three weeks. As is my wont, I also plan on squeezing in some gaming and game store visiting. One of the game stores, "That Game Place," has one of the most amazing logos I've ever seen: A wizard riding a tank firing a die. I mean, how do you top that? You might have a meeple riding the tank, sure, but a wizard's not bad. I would become a fan of any sport that had a team with that logo.

ALSO, AND UNRELATED: Anyone out there a Gathering fan? The band, I mean. I've been listening to their latest, The West Pole, which is the first (in many years) without their longtime frontwoman, Anneke van Giersbergen. Every review I've read tells me it's magical, but I'm not hearing it. I mean, it's not bad, and I don't want to compare it to the AvG period, but it's not grabbing me the way a really good, four-plus star album should. (And I really don't get the claims that the new singer, Silje Wergeland, will be able to handle songs like Rollercoaster and Shot to Pieces in live shows. Totally wrong voice for those songs, imho. And AvG would be wrong for the TWP songs. They're very different voices, and very different songs were written for them.) Just mildly venting...if there's some level of appreciation I'm missing, then do tell. I'm giving it two or three stars at the moment, aka "pretty good."

I have to get this off my chest

Why does the packaging for Fruit by the Foot:

Emphasize "FOOT" over "Fruit"? I mean, presumably people are buying it for its fruitiness rather than its footiness. Foot, in general, is a poor thing to associate with food.

That is all...

I've lost my title-composing touch

FIRST OFF: Iain! Your turn in Amun-Re! Taken care of. Many thanks!

SECOND OFF: I've been toying with the idea of buying Space Alert, the latest from Czech Games Edition. The reviews I've heard have been mixed; I'm mostly attracted by the fact that it's solo-able. The idea, if you're not familiar with it, is that the player[s] are cooperating to beat back waves of alien ships attacking their spacecraft. The attack lasts ten minutes, moderated by either a deck of cards or a track on a CD. I'd have bought it already if it had a slightly different theme: Taffy III at Leyte Gulf. (UPDATE: I'm wrong! What am I thinking of? There's some relevant clash between a destroyer and waves of Japanese planes.) I realize that significant chunks of the mechanics might have to change, but I still claim a historical theme might be interesting for the basic engine and idea. Of course, I like historical themes more than fantasy/SF ones (EXCEPTIONS: When they're faithful to books: Cthulhu, LotR, etc. I can't explain it.) I like Smallworld fine, but...Vinci has a map of Europe and classical-ish markers, so it wins for me.

I headed over to Jorge and Eva's place last night, after far too long of a layoff. We played a few games, but two stand out in my mind. The first is Royal Palace, which has interesting features you can read about in other places. What struck me about it is that, to my astonishment, I won. I thought I was doing OK, but not anywhere near Jorge, who I thought was at least ten points ahead of me at any given time. I ended up being wrong in my assessment by about twenty points. The funny thing is, everybody thought Jorge was safely winning, and thus helped me maximize my score. Oops! I think I would have been able to find a win on my own, although--once again--I didn't think I was looking for one.

We also ran out of money--which by happy accident is the top post on BGG for the game. I think I had the least money by the end, which I suppose could mean I used my money most efficiently? I guess?

The other game I thought I'd mention is my first play of Stone Age, which is currently ranked 31st on BGG, and has some extremely gaudy numbers and reviews and everything else. It is, of course, what I assonantly call a "place your dudes and get your cubes" game; BGG prefers "Worker Allocation," which is certainly shorter. I thought it was all right. GRANTED: I finished last. It's a good game, but it doesn't do enough things newer or better than my beloved Pillars of the Earth to really suck me in. Besides losing with a bullet, the game kind of dragged on; three-player would not seem to be its sweet spot, and I agreed with my hosts that four would be a better fit for the game. Definitely one to try again. UPDATE: It would appear, thanks to diligent questioning from Russ, that we were playing things wrong, which added a turn or three to the game. I'll certainly give it another try.

And finally: My "go book or chess book?" "contest" below was, indeed, from a go book: Kamakura from Slate and Shell. Vastly recommended! Nobody asks a 73 kyu player if it'll help their game, so I'll stick to the text part of the book. It's about, as those better versed in such things than I may already know, a ten-game match between two of the giants of mid-20th-century go: Kitani Minoru and Go Seigen. It took place in the Kamakura temple complex over a quite-long period. Much of the book deals with the events surrounding each game, from the physical surroundings to the verbal banter between the players (!). One learns a great deal about go culture ca. 1940. It is remarkable that in one of the biggest events in Japanese go during the period, players talked between moves, Kitani shaved his head in an effort to restore his balance--it's fun to imagine the Fischer-Spassky match going like this go match. Great reading--and, like many S&S efforts, the game diagrams have very few moves each, so it's very easy to follow. With any luck, diligent study should bring me up to about 69 kyu; whether it'll improve your game by four stones is another matter.

Fascinating Experiment

Let's see. Anybody around? If so: I've set up an Amun-Re game on SpielByWeb called "Calling all cars," with the password isanybodythere. A five-player game, as the good Lord intended. (Or Dr. Knizia, anyway.) See you there!

Varia

I keep forgetting I have this bully pulpit. So what have I been up to since April 25?

It was a long, long six weeks. I wrote two papers--and had to rewrite one of them. I also had to take my comprehensive exams. Each of these exams involved mastering a given reading list--of twenty to sixty books each, in my case--and then write out an answer in twenty-four hours on a particular subject that was given to me at 8 AM. Then, after four of these, I had to defend them in an oral examination.

But it's over--I passed them comfortably, and am now ABD! Life is easy; all I have to do is research and write a 350-page book. The research will be the most fun, of course; it'll likely be an immense road trip through the upper midwest and the south along the Mississippi. My topic: The military occupation and government of the areas along the banks of the Mississippi during the Civil War.

So don't write a book on that yourself, plz.

For the rest of the summer, I'm going to relax, and then do some work in the Army's archives, and then work on a lesson plan for my students: My first time as the "real" teacher. The subject is US History to 1877. Can't be too hard. Right?

...

What else have I got...

A little contest! Does the following come from a chess book, or a go book?

In the grounds of the great temple, tranquil in its antiquity, the clear voices of cicadas could be heard, whilst in the garden a black butterfly, big as a bat, danced soundlessly over the red amaryllis--the flower of September's autumnal equinox. The night before had seen a harvest moon. From the cloudless sky, a chill wind sucked down from the steep hillsides was enough to cause an involuntary tightening of the lapels.

If you get it right, you get ten points.

Le Havre is turning into a game that I respect highly, but have little intent to actually play--except maybe solo. I just don't comprehend it, and there's so much to comprehend that it seems like work. Do I really want to play it fifteen times, and then reflect on my inevitable defeats in order to become incrementally better the next time? Thinking...thinking...no. I'm too deep into the Cult of the New, for one thing. (My first human opponents, Mr. and Prof. Cranky, have played it umpteen times, and wiped the floor with me in our game. It was a harrowing experience.)

Not that my opinion can't change. I managed to eke out a victory in Age of Steam--one of my white whales--also chez Cranky. By my reckoning, that was my first not-last in my several playings. And now that I've learned that the 3rd Edition comes with a solitaire map, it becomes more attractive. (I'd sold off my AoS set a while back, when I decided I'd rather have $250 than the game.) And besides: I won! Woohoo! Nothing improves my opinion of a game quite like victory.

Yeah, I might pick it up this afternoon.

Game of Chicken

(It's times like this I'm glad this blog isn't popular anymore.)

I have three shelves full of chess books, and a roughly equal number of go books. I consider myself a fan of both games, and routinely list go as one of my three "perfect 10" games. (The others being Combat Commander and Amun-Re. I go by categories.)

However, I virtually never play chess or go, even against the computer. I used to play go every week (or more) when I lived in Austin, but now...not so much. I love it, but I've lost the will to play it. Why?

I'm afraid of losing, basically; I don't want to look unintelligent. To paraphrase an old chestnut, I have chosen to keep my stones in their bowls and be thought a fool rather than play them and remove all doubt.

In some ways, this is partly because of the things that have led to me taking nine pills a day, racking up $1000 worth of mental health care a month (all paid by my insurance, thank heaven), and so on. It ties into why I have trouble writing; I might get caught out in an error; why risk it?

(Why yes I do have a paper due this week that I'd be better off writing rather than this, why do you ask?)

I suppose the real question is why this doesn't present a problem with other games. Part of it has to do with how chess and go are "touchstone of the intellect"-type games that have centuries of experience, literature, and thought invested in them. Millions have played, computers have been programmed to play them, hymns have been sung in their honor, there are professional players who play for millions. Amun-Re, on the other hand, has been around for six years, there are maybe 20,000 copies out there, and the great mass of humanity has never heard of it.

Also, it has to do with the playing culture. Most gaming "scenes" are not enormously competitive. (Exceptions, exceptions.) Mostly, though, games are social enough that the stigma attached to losing is not too great. On the other hand, I feel the cold stare of the millions of better go players than I am whenever I put a duck on the board. I've somehow spoiled the game.

Great chess players often speak about how winning just feels sort of like having driven home from the store without getting into an accident: Nothing special, but obviously better than the alternative. Losing, however, is vastly worse: Like an insult, or an injustice. For the insecure patzer, winning is like escaping, and losing is like having your worst fears about yourself confirmed.

(I'm not fishing for compliments here; just noting something odd about my game-playing preferences. I'll probably nuke this one in a few days.)

On the Bookshelf

...or, at this moment, "on the windowsill." Anything flat is a shelf.

I have a new favorite series of books. Slate and Shell has come out with four books now in a "Master Play" line. Each of these slim volumes covers one (or, most recently two) famous go pro--Takemiya Masaki, Go Seigen, Lee Changho, Kato Masao and Seo Bong Soo. The commentaries are by Yuan Zhou, and the well-go-book-read will have guessed the format. Each pro is represented by just two games--gone through virtually move-by-move with comments.

The miraculous thing is that the annotations actually make sense to me. Partly this is because we take it a step at a time. In chess, there are several move-by-move books, but doing it like that makes it hard to see the overall trends. The usual thing is to take a chess game, let a bunch of moves rattle off, and then explain the last move...which is even less helpful. Nobody does it quite like Yuan Zhou, where (say) five moves are strung together and then we are shown how they work together.

I'm essentially never going to be a decent go player--which, for myself, I define as single-digit kyu. I hope, though, to learn to appreciate a good game when I play through it.