1. I saw this great made-for-TV science-fiction movie... really great! There's this city the size of Los Angeles, below which is a huge cavern, and the entire city is going to fall into the sinkhole... see? The movie's name is ON HOSTILE GROUND... a really great production... see? Lemme tell you about it... And the City Council refuses to cancel a huge Mardi Gras type parade in which a million people in the city will participate... see? So if the city falls into the sinkhole, everybody will die... see? Wow! This is really great! But our hero-Scientist has a really great idea... see? He's got a truck-load of 2-part epoxy which, when mixed, will expand to 10(?) 100(?) times its size. Isn't that really great? And the Scientist is going to empty his truck into the city-size cavern and fill it up and prevent the city from falling in the sink-hole and save everybody... see? Isn't that really great? So the Scientist goes down into the cavern and starts spraying his 2-part epoxy, which starts expanding... see? But the escape route through which the Scientist planned to get out of the cavern is now clogged up! Wow! Isn't that really great? And suddenly, the 2-part epoxy starts to follow the Scientist and threatens to encapsulate him... see? So he starts to run like hell... see? Isn't that really great? And the Scientist happens to have some C4(?) C3(?) plastique on him, so he blasts his way to the surface... see? And he finds his girl friend... and they go kissy-kissy... wow! I haven't seen such a really great picture since Bela Lugosi's PLAN NINE FROM OUTER SPACE. What most surprised me was that the TV channel had the nerve to put this stinker on about five times during the week... 2. The best of all possible worlds? Bob Jones, of PIQUET fame, announced on one of the internet PIQUET sites, that he and Phil Barker, Mr. WRG/DBM, are jointly gathering their forces to develop some sort of skirmish game based on the PIQUET principles. The rules are due out in October, said Mr. Jones. This should be the rules set to end all rules sets... combining the PIQUET inert card system, the DBM historically-accurate pip system, and the 'groping for dice' combat system. You can't ask for anything more. 3. On one of the internet group chat sites, someone wrote in and asked: "Which is the best Napoleonic set of rules published?" Surprise! Surprise! Bowden's EMPIRE series won the election. Someone even pushed EMPIRE II as the rules set to end all rules sets. But I think the whole thing was rigged... there were less than 10 inputs... and it looked like one of the EMPIRE-boosting clubs asked the question and then got all its members to write in. 4. On another site... this one devoted to NAPOLEON'S BATTLES (NB)... there was a lot of to-do in April, because the NB author, Bob Coggins, apparently said he wasn't permitted access to the site... the site on which his own rules were being discussed! To me, this was rather amusing... if I had a site, I wouldn't permit anyone on site who wanted to comment on NB... but them's just my own druthers. It finally took a message from the 'site owner', who swore up and down that he had never denied anyone access to his site, and that Bob was probably having hardware or software problems. The April NB traffic also carried some messages about the gaming ploy that's been bothering NB fans since the rules publication in 1981(?) or so. The NB ploy is to have your own infantry approach enemy infantry to within an inch, not making contact, and then have your cavalry charge home. According to NB, the presence of your infantry will prevent the enemy infantry from forming square and, therefore, your cavalry will eat up the enemy unit. It's been some 20 years now that this silly idea has been bandied about. Lots of negative thoughts on it, lots of caustic comments, but not a word from the author. Perhaps that's the reason that Bob was trying to gain access to the site... perhaps he wants to recant. 5. Don Bailey, in Colorado, writes: I played a game of Warhammer 40K last Thursday evening. I've never seen so many 6- sided dice rolled in my life. One of my opponent's units had weapons that allowed it 18 shots per turn. As if that wasn't enough, he used another unit's magical capability to double that. Thirty-six 6-sided dice rolled to hit. Then any hits rolled again to attempt damage. Successful damage rolls then prompted saving rolls on my part. I dare say there must have been 60 or 70 total dice rolls to determine the outcome of a single attack! Despite all this "scads of dice" nonsense, I had a good time. Back to PW Review May 2000 Table of Contents Back to PW Review List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 2000 Wally Simon This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com