Mad March roundup #1. Chivalry and... sorcery?!

Wednesday night woes: but for whom?
Badger was on holiday from work a week past Wednesday, so a day's gaming was called for. There was talk of playing Conflict of Heroes because of my imminent demo session at next weekend's Conpulsion 2010 but that'd've felt too much like homework for me, so we decided to play Combat Commander: Pacific instead. The CoH homework will be done solitaire next week I guess.

Combat Commander doesn't hit the table as often as it used to these days, so I was pleased to get in another game. Full CC battle reports here @RD/KA! have become less common even than that, the most recent being May last year. So I'll forbear from comment about our game until another day.

Stemming the varlet tide
Liam came round for dinner later, which curtailed our CC session after that one game. Dinner done, we turned to that old favourite- a new favourite of Liam's to boot: Ivanhoe. We managed 5 games.

Score
Badger 1 (15 tokens).
Liam 1 (17 tokens).
Me 3 (21 tokens).

I also owned the pwnage, with a game in which Badger and Liam's combined total was 3 tokens. Bragging rights to brave Sir John! :0)

Stepping out again!

I wrote last week of a "new project the exciting details of which I hope to reveal very soon". No prizes then for guessing the subject of this post dear readers.

Conpulsion compulsion
At some 15 years old, Conpulsion is Scotland's longest running RPG-oriented adventure games convention. Conpulsion is run by GEAS (Grand Edinburgh Adventuring Society), Edinburgh University students' RPG assocation, of which I was a member back in the 1980s. This year's con runs from Friday 26th to Sunday 28th March. After too, too many years of letting the event get past me, finally: this year I will be attending Conpulsion for the weekend.

Once more the culture vulture

Springtime for Glaswegians
If it's March in Glasgow it must be Aye Write!- Glasgow's Book Festival, now in its fifth year. Aye Write! had made little impression on me in previous years, despite my seeing the ads and the programmes in my local library each time. This was frustrating, so- determined to do better in 2010, I grabbed a programme as soon as I saw one and started looking for events. The first one which did more than just catch my eye was:

NEW SCOTTISH SCIENCE FICTION
The Early Days of a Better Future?

Presiding: Andrew J. Wilson of Writers' Bloc, Edinburgh

As if the due appearance of SF luminaries Ken MacLeod and Richard Morgan wasn't enough, this event was an instant choice for yours truly because the panel included Hal Duncan and Mike Cobley. Mike and Hal are old pals of mine from the Glasgow SF Writers' Circle, which featured in the first series of posts here @RD/KA!. It was this circle which drew me to Glasgow back in 1989, when I nourished active dreams of being an SF writer myself.

Just passing through...

I'm working on a big post which I hope to get up tomorrow. Meanwhile, I paid a visit to Glasgow's 2 FLGS today, in respect of a new project the exciting details of which I hope to reveal very soon.

Pleasure not entirely deferred
The latest eagerly awaited- and slightly delayed, expansion to Chad Jensen's Combat Commander: Europe series- Battle Pack 3: Normandy, hadn't made its way yet through the transatlantic distribution channels to land at the Dragon and George by the time of my visit yesterday. Just as well really, because it meant that the fact that I couldn't afford it anyway didn't leave me to sit drooling at home in hapless anticipation until I had lucre sufficiently filthy to lash out on this must-have product. Soon though, we go!

The Tau bite back

"Bring me the head of Shas El Quixo!"
So last Tuesday, Ezekiel Cromwell's Penumbra's Talons expeditionary force and the maverick Shas El Quixo's Tau battlegroup had their latest encounter on that as yet unnamed planet in a still unidentified system somewhere in the Eastern Fringes of the Imperium of Man. I'd been looking forward immensely to Dave's and my second game after the thrills and spills we'd enjoyed only a fortnight before. I was not to be disappointed.



Inevitable tactical adjustments
The Talons
Composing my army list for the upcoming game (lists here), I knew I couldn't afford to chance everything on another favourable roll on the Mission table, which'd've given me a 2/3 chance of being screwed before the game had even started if I chose to go with the Troops-light army I'd run the last time. My must-haves were the jump packers- as ever; dreadnoughts Elias and Stirner- they're the only heavy armour I've got just now; and a tacsquad with the free missile launcher (ML) and flamer options- the points shaving had begun.

The pen: mightier than the sword?

But whose pen will it be?
Dave and Tony joined the regulars to give us a full table of 6 last Sunday. First choice fell to Andy. After a short swither which included a disparaging nod in the direction of my mention of Battlestar Galactica, he plumped for History of the World. This choice pleased me because I'd been hankering lately to revisit this fine old game.

History of the World and all that
Looking back from the vantage point of the second decade of the 21st century, it is possible to see 1991's History of the World as the last word in a unique moment in British games design; a moment which- though quite self contained, was simultaneously widely influential; far more so surely than anyone could really have imagined at the time.