Packing List

Next weekend, I embark on the first of two (?) lengthy research trips: About seven weeks along the Mississippi River, from Baton Rouge to Natchez to Vicksburg to Little Rock (which is, granted, not on the River), and thence to St. Louis for the holidays. This is the longest research trip I've taken yet, by a couple of weeks, so packing is an interesting proposition.

Clothes, for instance, are trickier. Baton Rouge will get up into the 80s (30 C) while I'm there, but when I leave St. Louis it'll be in the 20s (-5 C), so I need a few different layers.

The other trick, of course, is staying sane while being alone on the road for almost two months. I'll be fairly busy, even when I'm not in the archives; I need to be categorizing all of what I find so I can get to it when I start writing. I also have a writing project I need to work on--on games on the Civil War--so that'll take up some time.

But there will be some time off. I'm casting an eye over the bookshelves and the game shelves, trying to figure out what to bring along. "Small" is the order of the day, of course, along with solo-able. I picked up Space Hulk: Death Angel on the recommendation of a great many people, and it's certainly a small enough package. Combat Commander is a natural; I'm also looking at Ancient Battles Deluxe, which is climbing up the ladder for me.

I may have discussed it before, but maybe not. It's one of my beloved "toy box" games, with the ability to depict a great many battles in one package. It's a redesign of the old 3W Ancients, which is the second game I bought in Austin (Europa Universalis being the first, of all things). The new one is more complex--although you can use the old rules if you want. But while it's more complex, it's still simple enough; it's no GBoH, that's for sure. It's not a dissertation on ancient and medieval warfare...but then GBoH isn't, either. (I got into a long Facebook argument about this with Richard H. Berg...) But it's fun, and it has a small footprint, and the time investment isn't great--and it provides a whiff of verisimilitude.

I'm trying to decide whether to bring a chess set along. I feel chess fever in my bones again, which is never a good sign. Speaking of reissues and revisions, a new edition of my favorite chess book ever reached my doorstep the other day: The Sorcerer's Apprentice. It's more than the usual game collection; it's a kind of autobiography written by a kind of idiosyncratic player, David Bronstein. He's famous for almost being World Champion in 1951; he drew the match (meaning he didn't take the crown) under suspicious circumstances, and there's a certain bitterness that tinges the book. But it's almost a kind of endearing bitterness; it's a sign of a real, tangible personality, which is often lacking from these kinds of books. Anyway, it's gotten me thinking about the Game of Kings again.

But on the other hand, there's the new Master Play, with fourteen go games deeply (and amateur-friendly) annotated by Yuan Zhou, who is making a nice authorial career out of this sort of thing. His books make me feel like I understand the game a little bit better after I read them. I don't think I actually play any better, but I might be appreciating well-played games better. In an attempt to actually improve, I've invested in Winning Go: Successful Moves from the Opening to the Endgame. Of which I cannot speak much at the moment...

Of course, what all this means is that I'll pack up all my games, and all my books, and forget my laptop...or the five (six?) chargers and cords I need...

Getting Educated: Football Edition

Some thoughts as I slowly assemble my first "real" miniatures army...on which more soon. It's part of my program of finding small-footprint games to take along on my research trip.

Anyway, I'm a big sports guy. I'll watch darn near anything on TV or in person; it accounts for the vast majority of my TV time. My favorite three sports are baseball (obvious first place) and then hockey and college football (which flip-flop in my mind periodically). Baseball and hockey I know pretty well. I've played them, or games very like them, since I was nine. When I watch games on TV, I know what's happening and what all the terminology means.

Football's different. I never played, really, and while I watch football all day long on fall Saturdays I can only really relate to it aesthetically and tribally. I can't diagram plays, I don't know what a "veer" is, and really a lot of the intricacies of the game are beyond me.

TV doesn't help. There's a lot going on on a football field and there isn't much dead air to fill talking about them seriously. With baseball, there's a lot of time between pitches and at-bats to discuss what's happening, how strategy works, and so on. Sometimes they'll cut away from the action to describe some skill--what a "circle change" looks like; things like that. Football just doesn't have time.

(Neither does hockey, and more so, which is why it's hard to really get into unless you've played, I think. There's a lot going on that just looks like chaos to the uninitiated. Basketball is that way with me; I can only fully enjoy basketball if it's a team I care about (there are three of these) and I'm watching them in person. It's mostly tribal. Key fact: I never played a game of basketball in my life; just HORSE and other messing-around games.)

ANYway, I decided this season to educate myself about football. I'm kind of casting around. My first attempt (I declared myself one step above Football for Dummies) is Pat Kirwan's Take Your Eye off the Ball. It's endorsed by NFL.com, so you figure there's some sort of official Nihil Obstat/Imprimatur involved here. I certainly find it interesting reading; it goes through many of the steps of putting a team, game, and position player together, discussing the various skills involved and going through at least some X's and O's. I could probably stand some more hand-holding for particular plays and what they entail but I'm following along. Of course, the proof comes on the weekends, if I'm getting more out of the games than I was previously.

What's kind of interesting is his attitude towards the college game. The college game, in the NFL's eyes, exists to prepare players for the pros, and he goes into some detail about what the colleges do well and poorly--and wishes that they'd push more running backs out the door so their NFL careers can start a year earlier. I'm still a tiny bit of an idealist when it comes to college football, partly since I'm watching the student-athlete/instructor interaction at close range. The football players I've taught have been pretty good students, honestly--partly because we're lucky to have Joe Paterno who has built a strong organizational culture of taking class seriously. (This is honestly kind of rare, sadly.) So I like to pretend that college football can and should be about the "college" part, and can do so while preserving some pretty good football.

Of course, there's no reason for the NFL to give a damn, other than some sort of weird altruism.

I've begun having fun, though; it'll be good if I can intellectually connect with the third of my top three sports.