Wednesday Whinging

Tuesday games had to move to Wednesday this week and started much later to boot. We finished with Schotten-Totten, a strangely themed card game by the prolific designer Reiner Knizia which was later re-themed and made more complex as Battle Line. I have owned it for a while and was glad to finally get to play it.
 Image via Wikipedia



I have a German version of it and am unaware if there is any rational explanation for the odd theming of clan warfare between stereotypical cartoon Scots. I'm not sure whether the Scots are terribly happy to see themselves as bare buttocked, kilt-wearing beligerent bagpipe-stranglers but they know where to find Reiner if they want to take it up with him. Meanwhile I see it really as a nice little abstract filler.

One of our two games of it, which entails a string of "battles" for marker stones between groups of cards in sets of three, was the only game I won all day so I'm grateful to Dr Knizia for that at least. Is anything worn under the kilt? No, it's all in perfect working order, to quote the late Mr Milligan.

As in other recent weeks, the other games were Memoir '44 (both sides of an all infantry scenario) and A Few Acres of Snow. In the former I had some terrible luck as well as playing badly, in the latter I just played badly I think. At any rate I got trounced once again by the French despite trying a completely different strategy from last week. To be fair Crabro had stopped his stomping on Boston and tried a completely different strategy himself.

I need to do some homework before next time, although I did at least win one siege this time. The Memoir scenario pitted French resistance groups with the additional flexibility in their firing and retreating rules but only three figures per unit against ordinary German units. Unfortunately, given that there was no armour present, I kept rolling tanks, tanks and stars...lots of tanks...

A very enjoyable day again anyway.

Film Friday Goes West...again

Image via Wikipedia[Spoilers] This week's films to accompany our Friday drink were again both Westerns but only one with an Elmore Leonard pedigree this time. "The Tall T" is a stark and brutal film, directed by Bud Boetticher and somewhat foreshadowing the Peckinpahs and Leones to come rather than being typical of its predecessors. A good cast including ever reliable Richard Boone, Arthur Hunnicutt (right) and Henry Silva also gives us Maureen O'Sullivan in the somewhat unlikely role of a "plain Jane" newly married to an unscrupulous and uncaring gold-digger rather than be an old maid. The star is Randolph Scott (forever Randoloph for me since "Me Mammy") who bears a striking resemblamce to a former boss of ours.

The tense and brooding finale, after a stagecoach robbery goes awry and Scott and O'Sullivan find themselves hostages of the evil thieves, is in contrast to the humour and even slapstick of some of the early scenes where, far from being the untouchable hero, Scott shows himself rather foolish as he gets thrown in the dirt by a bull he inadvisedly tries to ride, then dives into a horse trough before trudging off on foot having lost his horse. Of course Patrick (Scott), as Good, ultimately triumphs over Evil and the selfish, greedy and cowardly other half of Mrs Mims (O'Sullivan) gets what he plainly deserves, conveniently freeing Doretta from a dreadful future in prospect. This Western is a cut above its fellows though and Scott's metaphorical hat is not an unblemished white nor is Boone's completely black. An important Western in its way and one which stands out from much of Scott's work

Image by Doctor Hyde via FlickrImage via Wikipedia"Appaloosa", the second of this week's double bill, saw us losing the Elmore Leonard writing link, this one being co-written by Ed Harris, who also starred, produced, directed and even sang. Mention of Contention and Bisbee puts us once more in Arizona though and firmly in Leonard's favourite area of the West. This is a modern but not revisionist Western from 2008, starring Harris, Viggo Mortensen and Jeremy Irons which does not immediately strike me as a likely Western cast but the film has clearly been made with enormous care and appreciation of the genre and was presumably a labour of love on behalf Ed Harris (below) given his involvement in every part of its production.

The Appaloosa of the title is not a horse but a town in need of taming, which is the stock-in-trade of Virgil Cole (Harris) and his partner Everett Hitch (Mortensen). The real problem is rancher Bragg (Irons) and his gang of amoral thugs who appear to have not the slightest respect for the law, which has angered and upset the town's leading citizens (who include Tim Spall).

Cole is reluctantly sworn in as Town Marshal with Hitch as his deputy and begins his own brand of law enforcement which mostly means shooting the transgressors and completely taking over the town.

There are plenty of classic western set pieces from saloons, to railroad, to shoot-outs but this is again much more than a straightforward good-cowboy-meets-bad-cowboy-and- fills-him-full-of-lead film. Here the main interest is actually in the characters and relationships. The main fly in the ointment is Renee Zelweger's piano-playing widow. Will any or all of them end up with her? She doesn't seem too concerned which it is as long as she gets her hands on one of them. Irons, of course is ruthless and immoral but what of Cole? He is on the side of the law but his methods appear to be similarly uncompromising. The relationship between Marshal and deputy also has a peculiarly close and almost marriage-like intensity. Adding a further nuance to this and their characters is Cole's apparent fascination with reading poetry and attempting to improve the way he speaks. He frequently paints himself into a verbal corner and has to ask his companion to come to the rescue.

A fascinatiinng and well made film which had us both saying "I didn't think they made them like that anymore. Ed Harris singing a song he co-wrote, over the credits, finished off a satisfying and very enjoyable evening's viewing.

Early Lunch

A fairly brief spot of birding today as last week's hot Summery weather gave way to the chill of Autumn. Enthusiasm waned a bit in the face of a fairly quiet Seven Sisters Country Park with a distinctly chilly breeze blowing, especially with the birders not yet fully in their winter plumage of gloves and woolly hats.

Nevertheless we did see some birds on our walk down to the sea and back and before we retreated to the car for a scandalously early picnic lunch.

A striking number of Little Egrets were dotted about including a group of ten in the trees the other side of the river. These are faint dots in my photograph but were clearly visible in the binoculars and 'scope.

We also saw several hirundines swooping low, a few Wheatears and Dunnocks, Chaffinch, Robin and Goldfinch and at one point disturbed several Skylarks.

Among the waders were a couple of Grey Heron, a few of my favourites the Oystercatchers, Dunlin, a solitary Curlew and then good views of an obliging Curlew Sandpiper. Above us corvids occasionally causing us to look again to make sure they weren't something more interesting. One of them just might have been a Raven.

Short but sweet. We quickly headed for warmer territory and more tea.

He's behind you...

Thursday games at my place again and good to see all six regulars although this does restrict what games are available to play unless the group is sub-divided.














MaOldie had brought a simple little game of matching shapes and colours called Symbotica which she, Crabro, the Professor and I played until Petra Pan and MrWendall arrived, their having been delayed by family issues.

Sadly, colourful though it is, Symbotica wasn't getting much love and a second game was played with slightly tweaked rules. I believe I won the first but I handed my cards over to Petra Pan when the others arrived so that I could make a round of drinks, so I'm not sure how much I would have liked the variant.

With all of us now ready, we turned to an old favourite, and, as we recalled, the very first game I played with MaOldie some years before.

On that occasion I had been the wicked Saboteur but this time I was the dwarf in every round of both games that we played.





As usual with this game that didn't stop people questioning the motives of my innocent delver. Partly this stems from the fact that "all dwarfs are equal but some are more equal than others" when it comes to gold.

While all the dwarfs share in the spoils if the saboteurs fail (and they did every time), it still pays to be the dwarf who actually reaches the gold as he gets the lion's share. Delaying tactics to line this up can sometimes backfire as one appears to be sabotaging things and end up with ones tools broken as a result. Despite being on the winning side in the first game, I didn't win. More ruthless in the second game, I managed to win fairly comfortably.

 Owing to the numbers problem, all the games were fairly light and the other two we played were Der Ausreisser (aka Breakaway Rider), a bicycle race card game, and another old friend Midnight Party.

In Midnight Party the various guests of Hugo the friendly ghost play a chase game with him.

The "guests" having been positioned around the corridor, once Hugo emerges from the wine cellar they have to try and hide in one of the rooms before Hugo catches them. Hugo moves three spaces at a time and there are two of him on the dice so he can motor along hoovering guests up at times.

Brave guests can try and get the exact distance required to get into the two bonus rooms otherwise, since rooms cannot be shared, it is every man for himself as they try to avoid the minus points incurred when Hugo catches them and puts them on the wine cellar steps.

This was for a while the regular warm-up game for the Goldstone Gamers where our ghostly friend was encouraged by enthusiastic cries of "Huuugo-o". It is very light but fun and, together with the other copy I eventually obtained and gave to the Goldstone gang, is the best value for money of any of my "thrifting" charity shop haul, at least in terms of number of games played and enjoyed.

In this case I avoided Hugo completely for the first two rounds as all my experience told, but sadly the last round was a disaster for me and I finished no more than mid-field.

The other game played was Der Ausreisser, a very light game based on the Tour de France, with players trying to stay with the leader's speed or overtake to gain the "Maillot Jaune" (or in this case gelbe Trikot) which sadly is just a large yellow disc.

There were murmurs of dissatisfaction during this one as it appeared to require little strategy and a large dose of luck to do well. I believe I won again with MaOldie trailing in last with a pile of penalty points and the rest on zero.

It would appear unlikely from the comments that we will play this again as the theme meant nothing to half the players and the game was too luck-based to satisfy. The Professor did say that it could easily be turned into a good game with a few rule variations though.







All in all an enjoyable evening of light if not hugely satisfying games enlivened by a number of very giggly moments especially around MrWendall's fund of jokes in particular the ludicrous tale of the man with half an orange for a head...

Much talk of Essen too with half the group heading off there soon with sizeable shopping lists.

A Few Acres of Snow

Image via WikipediaCrabro and I played "A Few Acres of Snow", the Martin Wallace deck-building board game again today.

Once again I played the Redcoat side but this time with far less success, losing both games. Crabro went for a simple military strategy both times, having decided correctly that simply besieging Boston until it fell was all he needed to do to win. Accordingly he did not bother much with expansion or any other aspect but concentrated on the French ability to raise money from trapping etc and ploughed that cash into buying military assets.


In the first game I decided that if I expanded fast enough I could finish the game quickly with the points in my favour. Unfortunately, I had forgotten everything I learned last week and most times forgot to put the cards for the new acquisitions into the discard pile to feed the deck. For a while I was frustrated by the lack of opportunity to expand the network and with four villages to go I realised that a lot of this was my own fault. Having never amassed the kind of military might to contest what Crabro was doing he won the Boston siege about the same time. To be fair I had also forgotten that this was an end condition so I didn't try to defend.

In the second game I wanted to come up with another strategy in order to continue to expand my experience and knowledge of the game. I didn't really want to be pushed into simply defending against attack, being a little worried that we might turn a good game simply into the siege of Boston game and tire of it.

Not having much of a concrete idea of what to do I first tried to carry the fight to Crabro by sieging from the first turn. This turned into a defeat and set back my potential for a successful non-military strategy at the same time. I never really worked out what I was aiming for after than and consequently didn't seed the deck in any helpful way. Towards the end I had a number of almost useless hands and even resorted to paying to discard cards. Meanwhile, despite some setbacks from my ambushes, Crabro soldiered on to another one-sided battle at Boston.

Still a lot of fun but I fear that Crabro may be happy to continue to bash Boston unless I find a way of thwarting that strategy. Meanwhile after three games it might be time to swap sides for a while and see how it looks from a different viewpoint.

Although we only started at lunchtime today, owing to family commitments on Crabro's part, we still managed another scenario from Memoir '44 as well. This time a battle among the forests between two elite Panzer units (four tanks each) with their supporting infantry and a number of small (3 figures) but nimble French resistence units. As is often the case in Memoir, the tanks were more of a liability than an asset despite their speed and range. In this case not only were they up against severe penalties in firing into forest and town but were also a tempting target being worth two flags apiece. Crabro, realising this tried to keep them out of trouble as a win was only four flags in this scenario. Nevertheless I attacked them from the air at the beginning and then managed to get a unit "behind the lines" for a useful hit and run. The depleted unit was eventually finished off by infantry in forest at close range. The remaining two flags were picked up from infantry units.

Having found it reasonably easy to win as the French I was not expecting to have a good time of it as the Germans and was relieved to gain one flag so I knew it would not be a whitewash. In the event though I was unable to keep the Panzers back owing to having exclusively right flank cards for some time but through some lucky rolls and successful infantry attacks as well I got the upper hand and won again.

A very pleasant day's gaming with overall honours even again. I must come up with a way of thwarting the siege of Boston however.

A Good Sense of Yuma

Image via Wikipedia

Elmore Leonard

This week's fish and not-a-proper-film-night Friday was another Western fest. My friend arrived with fish and chips, two bottles of Spitfire beer and the DVDs of 3:10 to Yuma (1957 version) and Hombre, the Paul Newman classic from ten years later.

Both were films we had seen more than once but are always happy to see again and both were also originally written by Elmore Leonard who, after his Western period, turned his hand, with some success, to the crime thriller genre.

A number of his later works have been turned into films, for example his enjoyable dig at Hollywood, Get Shorty, and perhaps Tarantino's most underrated film: Jackie Brown. A recent television favourite of mine "Justified" features one of Leonard's protagonists: Raylen Givens.

There was never any doubt that we were going to enjoy this programme and the two (one black and white, one colour) sharing a genre, original writer and the Arizona location were very good partners.

Shooter's Bottom is not like Tennis Elbow

A glorious day for birding.

Despite being late September it was very hot and bright up on the chalk Downland behind the cliffs, with a cloudless sky and shimmering blue sea below. In fact it was so bright my little snap camera wanted to run away and hide and has turned most of the photos very dark.

The one less-than-perfect element on this idyllic day was that the birds were absent. As we roamed the cliffs and valleys of the picturesquely named Cow Gap and Shooter's Bottom, near the notorious Beachy Head, it was unnaturally quiet and apart from one slightly busier group of bushes the birds were few and far between.

Oystercatchers & Terns (if camera was better)

Down below the cliffs on the rocks revealed by the retreating tide were a few of my favourite birds Oystercatchers and Terns though and shortly after the air filled with Hirundines (mostly Swallows but also House Martins and even a Sand Martin) a beautiful Peregrine appeared above us and he hunted around the area for some time.

A few LBJs appeared ("Willow Chaff", Great tit, Robin, Bluetit, Stonechat, Blackcap and Goldcrest for example) from time to time and the great slow wingbeat of a Grey Heron crossed below us in the direction of Eastbourne.

There were a number of sailing and fishing boats out on the sparkling sea but they too seemed rather lonely and without avian companions.

It was nevertheless a timeless, wonderful day, more late Summer than Autumn, and sitting enjoying a picnic while watching the Peregrine and later a Sparrowhawk giving an aerial display I was once again moved to thank providence that I wasn't fretting the day away behind a desk in a low-lit room in the centre of town.