Well the work-load continues without abatement. It has resulted in non-stop work for many weeks. This in turn has meant my playing and reviewing are intermittent. One of my companies got an AIM flotation in December which cleared up a lot of "one-off" work. I finally gave up on it all and instituted a programme of refusing to work at the weekend which allowed me to return to gaming, and there is some jolly stuff out there.
However, this did not stop the work-load so that there remains little chance of setting up and playing a game during the week - hence the lack of fuller reviews in this PA. Will this end soon, it will have to or it will kill me. I see April as the first gap (but I may have a £50 million flotation lined up then - quite unbelievable).
Game Kit News
Les Quatre-Bras: Magnificent work by Dave Farquhar here refusing to guess at anything and forcing me to explain things more clearly, and the great question of divisional charges has appeared (not as issue for Quatre-Bras but certainly for Austerlitz where the Boy Murat was on the field).
El Rey Prudente: No progress, except for developing the outline of a simple supply system that should cause the "melting away" of armies noted in the period. Gesta Regis Stephani: System stripped out into a "non-moving" display in which you campaign in an area and take individual towns without having to hop around the map during the turns (five movement points - throw five dice and see how many castles you capture and waste).
Chariotlords: Tiffs ready to be made into a test copy for Clash of Arms
Death Ride: Mars-La-Tour: Peter Perla's renamed my game and who am I to argue? Gareth Simon tried out the latest calibration thrice. Low French impulse dicing and appalling German combat dice gave us a game that resembled the real thing to an astonishing degree. The corps of Ladmirault and Leboeuf were threatening an advance when we ran out of game. In the second match old Scanner actually forced me into playing the Advantage to stop Canrobert in his tracks as his grouping of divisions was looking decidedly unfriendly. One could almost hear the historians tut-tutting. Third game saw the French just held off a breakthrough. Lots of tweaking of combat and Victory points going on. Our first American team (60th Foot) is mustering as we speak.
Withering Across the Pond
...and so it goes, in time all must serve the Wither Master, now our once proud American chums feel the glacial grip of the Withering. For some time now Richard Berg has defended his Wristage Wrampages as being the only games that are selling ("Ve are only despatching orders" as the Fuhrer used to say to me over a bag of cinder toffee of an evening). It turns out they are not selling well at all, the second Marlborough game (so the Bergoid informs me) is selling no where near as many as the first.
Is this firm evidence that boardgamers are sick and tired of this tedious, ineffective and repetitive stuff? (He said in his usual unprejudiced fashion) Well, no it is apparently evidence that wargames are going down the tubes and only France and Germany are left as markets where real games (that is, the Wristage Wrampages) are selling. I reserve judgement on this approach (which is in too sensitive an area for Richard to remain unaffected by sentiment) but would note that amongst the gamers I meet with and talk to not a single individual has bought a Wrampage in recent months. Although some of this group were fans in the past I doubt that they were its natural constituency so we cannot establish much (if anything) from this. The Wrister may have met the Witherer but only time will tell.
The next UK withering was hidden behind the news item that WHSmith will cease to sell Playboy and Penthouse. But it goes further than denying us smut they have also ditched a further 200 poor sellers. And amongst these are the three UK figure magazines and the sadly reduced Military Modelling weakened by the loss of mine own good self. Station shops are exceptions to this (although why train travellers should be more susceptible to pictures of lusty lovelies is not explained). This means that boardgaming (hanging off the cliff and grabbing on to figure gaming) has just had its saviour follow it over the cliff.
Gulf Crisis 7
Marcus Watney's fifty-player megagame will be played on 8 March 1997 in Oxford. If interested contact Marcus directly at PO Box 745, Headington, Oxford, OX3 7YT. Since I always miss his deadline I suggest you contact him now for next year's event.
Moments in History
Given the shrinkage in the traditional store outlets, together with a lack of sustained ordering MiH have courageously decided to avoid standing Cnut-like in the path of consumer changes and flex their product. Out go boxes, in come ziplocks (taking down production and storage costs) and down go the print runs (aided by the previous items).
A large number of other companies should be considering following this lead.
Certainly boxes look prettier but we want a Hobby left in a few years and if all our producers go under then we will not have this. Coming up will be White Ensign/Rising Sun Jack Greene's Indian Ocean adventures using the Norway 1940 system (and his Ironbottom Sound is also on the list). The Siegfried Line Campaign Dirk Blennemann takes his Triumphant Fox system and uses in to cover the ETO September 1944 to April 1945. All Quiet on the Western Front is Ted Raicer's second Kaiserschlact-to-Armistice attempt with (huzzah!) a number of scenarios so we can forget the unpleasantness in March and get biffing those German fellows in the Autumn. Tank Commander: North Africa takes their card game system off to the sands. Eastwall is John Desch's game on the Dnepr battles in the tradition of his Ring of Fire.
Finally, Risorgiemento from Perla and Berg which covers the campaign and (separately) the battles of Solferino and Magenta, sadly it will use the very unpopular and deeply crappy Glory system rather than Peter's kickingly crucial Bloodiest Day system. Interesting range of stuff with the stress on range I think.
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© Copyright 1997 by Charles and Teresa Vasey.
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