In Which I Don't Spend Any Money, But It's Still A Substitute For Doing Something

 By far the biggest cause of my loss of wargaming mojo has been the death earlier in the year of Peter, a long-time member of our small group. He is, of course, remembered whenever we meet up, especially when repeated bad dice rolls occur; that being one of his superpowers, along with getting really, really annoyed about making  repeated bad dice rolls. This was certainly the case this week when we refought Salamanca. It was expected to be a game that would last two or, quite possibly, three evenings. Instead, it was all wrapped up well inside two hours. Wellington, that was me, rolled consistently high whilst Mark, as the French, channelled Peter to an uncanny extent; except thankfully for the throwing dice at the wall in anger, restricting himself to swapping his dice repeatedly. I won't pretend it was a very good game, but it was certainly funny.

When Peter died we were asked to help dispose of the very large stockpile he had amassed over fifty years in the hobby. And when I say 'very large' I mean it literally. I think a kind interpretation of his approach would be to assume that he was storing up projects for retirement when he would have more time to actually get any use out the stuff he had bought. Anyway, this process is underway, although in the interests of accuracy I need to point out that James and Mark have done everything and my role has merely been one of supportive encouragement. Boardgames, model kits etc are steadily being put on eBay, figures are being sold through a well-known trader in pre-loved collections, and the books will follow in a similar fashion in due course. However, we have, with permission, put aside a couple of small things for us to play with, which after all is what they are meant for, and think of him as we do so. For example, our recent games of Nimitz have been with Peter's ships. I have now taken a starter set of 'Cruel Seas', which Peter bought at Vapnartak in 2018 or 2019 and which was never seen again, with the intention of painting the boats up and putting on a memorial game.

So, from famine to feast, two new projects for 2025. Watch this space, although given that it's Christmas, feel free to start the watching in a couple of weeks from now.

Mellow Is The Man Who Knows What He's Been Missing

 My absence has been so pronounced that I feel I must have lost the right to be known as a bloggist. It's time to win it back.

There have been a number of reasons for my absence. Firstly, the illness and death that seem to be always around as one gets older (*). Secondly, and not unrelated, there hasn't been any wargaming. Thirdly, and completely unrelated, my computer broke, doing so slowly rather than in one big bang, but effectively rendering the thing unusable for the last few weeks. Happily, a new one has eventually arrived, featuring a screen so big that I have to sit on the landing outside the study door in order to be able to use it.

Also happily, wargaming has started again with a small game of Nimitz.

You can see Mark measuring the arc of fire using the tried and tested 'waving one's hand about' technique. We got the rules wrong; it was great fun; normal service has been resumed. 

* For the avoidance of doubt, I have only suffered the first of those personally.

Empress Augusta Bay

 This blog has been ignoring wargaming recently, but wargaming has not been ignoring your bloggist. James has recently rediscovered the joys of blogging and has produced a summary of recent games in the legendary wargames room. I won't repeat anything except to concur that the last crusades game using To the Strongest! was a belter. For various good reasons we have been having shorter gaming evenings and the likelihood of winning flowed backwards and forwards over two evenings. The only slightly odd thing was that going into what turned out to be the final combat either side could have won a crushing victory depending on the result. That doesn't affect how good a game it was, but does make one question the victory conditions.

This week we turned to a naval game using the newish rules Nimitz. I only took one photo and that wasn't a very good one. The rules however are rather good: easy to pick up and very playable. The Japanese won a refight of the battle of Empress Augusta Bay, albeit one transposed to daytime. As with any first game of anything, I wouldn't repeat what I did with my forces a second time. The main moral I took from the game was that ships cannot really be used defensively. Having said that I also ended up thinking that charging straight at the enemy at full speed wasn't likely to achieve much either. Somewhere between the two lies the sweet spot perhaps. We are having another game next week so I shall have a chance to put my analysis into practice. After that it's a grand Peninsular campaign in which it seems I am to be in command of the British.