Day 3 was the last day to come together for me in terms of my schedule. Originally we'd had three people looking to play something with no real consensus on what we wanted to do, but in the end Matt, Alex, and Dan ended up coming out on Monday evening and thus we had eight gamers for Tuesday. Tex and Matt played Labyrinth (with me helping them learn the game), Alex and Dan played Attack Vector, only to give up after finding that while the math was gradeschool level, the *amount* of math was not, and Mike and Chuck started their two day Ardennes '44 game. Eric and I played Fighting Formations, his first game and my second.
We played scenario 6, a one mapper with a decent range of unit types and numbers of units and a pretty cool situation with the Germans trying to attain objectives while the Soviets try to kill Germans. Eric was the Hun and I was the Slavs. I've discussed this game quite a bit recently, and I will go so far as to say that our game was in the top five wargaming experiences I've had (and I've had a lot). While neither of us played what I might call a stellar game (I was barely competent), there was a lot of back and forth and the decisions you got to make gave the game a lot of tension. At this point, I'm rating the game a 10, something I may have done once or twice in the past.
While we can argue about how effectively the game models real-life situations, the truth of the matter is that while I need a certain amount of what I'll call "plausible deniability" in a wargame, I do not need the entire ToE with fourteen variants of PzIVs. And you don't. The units, while modeling actual equipment, represents relatively few units. There is one variant of the T-34, for example, and it's used all over the place. And whether the Order/Initiative/Command complex models anything at all is definitely debated.
What does matter is that this game is great fun, and not only fun but the damned thing just makes sense. Every time you want to do something, you know what to do. There are some things we missed (like me putting my tanks in entrenchments, which I thought was equivalent to a hull-down condition), but we must have looked up rules about ten times. For Eric's first game, and my first game with a lot of new concepts, it was such a pleasant experience that you'd have thought we were playing the game for the tenth or twentieth time. Every order decision was difficult to make, combat flew by and there was almost no looking up of modifiers. We had a rolling melee in the middle of the board (where the road comes up the hill to the town) that took about half of the game to resolve. The hidden units are perhaps the most elegant solution to that problem I've ever seen.
Yeah, I'm gushing. And it's not just because I won because I managed to get a lot of really fortunate rolls that killed off enough of Eric's units to put the win out of reach for him. It's because we had a blast. Our game took about five or six hours not including 'splainin' and the day just flew by. Don't get me wrong, games like Combat Commander and Conflict of Heroes (and even ASL, to some extent) will have a place in my library, but there are other game series whose names will not be mentioned that are going on the sell pile when I get home because this is my game of choice at this level for 5-8 hour games.
We had a little down time before dinner (Eric's chili, which is still with me as I type, and I mean that in a good way - for me!), and then pulled out Dominant Species, played by Matt, Eric, and Dan and Alex (who played for the first time). First game for Dan and Alex, and like most people they had some trouble grokking the game, but by the end I think they started to see how things worked. Matt looked to be running away with it near the end of the game after I had some success in the mid-game, but a couple of nasty event cards played by Eric, who made an awesome comeback on the final turn, put me out of it and I stalled fairly badly. Enough to score 50 points in the last turn, but not enough to win, especially when I forgot that I needed to save myself from Regression in the last turn, instead wasting my play on Adaptation only to lose the chit immediately from regression (and all of my other elements as well). Eric came very close with his Reptiles, but in the end Matt won the game as the Arachnids. I continue to enjoy this game quite a bit, although it has gotten mixed reviews in our group, in my opinion unfairly as the game requires multiple plays to play effectively and most people who don't care for it aren't interested in playing again. Eric and I, however, consider it to be similar enough to Die Macher (and with none of the moronic graphic problems of the Valley edition) that I'd much rather play DS. The nice thing about Sunriver, however, is that we all can play the games we want to, and there are a *lot* of games to be played.
And that was Day 3, Tuesday.
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
WBC West 2011, Day 2 PM
So far, the wargaming retreat had gone well, although only for about 24 hours. Now people started to arrive, with Tex and Mimi around noon, Eric right behind them, and Alex, Matt, and Dan coming in in the mid-evening. Tex and Chuck went off to play Clash of Giants II, the Race to the Sea scenario, which I'm fairly sure Chuck won as the Allies.
Meanwhile, Mike and Eric and I played Maria, which is almost more of a Euro than a wargame, but it definitely blurs the line. A follow-on game to Friedrich, Maria covers the Austrian War of Succession, with one player taking Austria (Eric), one taking the French and Bavarians (me), and one player taking the Prussians (who were allied with the French) and the Pragmatic Army (who were allied with Austria!) on the other, as well as the Saxons, who may well switch sides at some point (Mike). The map is also a bit schizophrenic, taking up two separate parts of Europe joined along the southern part of the east/west bifurcation. The two parts of the map aren't even oriented in the same direction (there's a picture on the back of the map that shows how the two halves fit in Europe), but it is possible for the Austrians and French to move between the two.
There are two huge keys to playing Maria well, one being managing your hand of cards that are used for both combat as well as for playing a political game that can result in nerfs and buffs to various powers and in one case change the loyalty of Saxony. When you fight a battle, you play cards that are in the same suit as the area of the map where your army is. As such, there are some good strategies to pin an enemy army in a Spaces space (for example) while your armies come at them from two directions, possibly using different suits, with the idea being to wipe the enemy's hand of his defensive suit. Seeing as each country has it's own hand of cards, getting that kind of synergy is desirable, if sometimes difficult. The result, however, definitely feels more Euro than War, with you choosing areas to defend on a map based on what suits are in your hand. I suppose you could generate a gratuitous explanation for why this is so, but really it's intended to make an interesting game rather than something that actually feels historical, at least in terms of combat.
The other key is managing your supply trains. The major powers have two, the minors one, but Prussia has to conquer Silesia and then make a short peace with Austria to gain it (and a VP). Being in enemy territory without supply will end your offensive pretty fast, and managing where your supply train is requires more strategy than I was able to put to bear. For the Austrians, losing one of their trains, especially on the border with France (basically the Low Countries in today's world, back then partly controlled by Austria) means that they'll just sit and guard their fortresses because none of them are Major forts (required to bring a train back in).
There's quite a bit more to the game, but that should give you enough of an idea of how it works to appreciate our game.
One of the things you try to do as France is control four of the Electorates on the west map to gain a VP, and also to control enough electorates on both maps to get the French contender for the Austrian throne to win, while Austria tries to do the same. I started by going after these aggressively, and in fact I was able to score two VP for those two things, although eventually I lost the western Electorates before the game ended. However, I was not using my supply train well, and was trying to do two things with one train in enemy territory when I should have been guarding my frontiers. At the same time, the Bavarians and French were doing fairly well in western Austria, and I came within a couple of chips of winning the game about halfway through.
Meanwhile, Mike had been struggling as the Prussian, although he did manage to conquer Silesia and declare peace with Austria for a turn and a half. After doing so, Mike started to complain about the card distribution, that he was getting small denominations and managed to lose his train for the Pragmatic Army, forcing them to withdraw back to Holland. Eric took the opportunity to make a good run on the French in the east, destroying my supply train *and* both French armies, at which point I decided to use the French Limits War Objectives rule, so it was quite historical, but Eric looked like he was going to pull out the win. Protip: keep your enemies close, and your supply trains closer. About this time, the only thing that stopped Eric was the destruction of his own supply train in the west.
At this point, Mike's Prussians declared war on Austria again, and Eric had been pretty beat up in his victories over the French, and he rolled all over the eastern portion of Austria. So well that he ended up winning the game after being so unhappy about his card draws. There's a lesson here, I think.
Maria is a strange duck. You need to understand how best to utilize your supply trains and manage your cards (and your armies' positions on the map) to play well, and while all of us had a shot at winning at some point, I felt that I made huge mistakes in play that ended up costing me the game, such as neglecting Eric's use of Hussars to screw with my supply. There's no question that the game is in many ways superior to Friedrich, partly because there are no random exits of major powers that can make it difficult for some players to buy into a multiplayer game, seeing as you might be done in a turn or two. As such, it's probably best as a two, possibly three player game. No problem like that in Maria.
In the end, though, the game succeeds as a heavy Euro, perhaps too heavy, but too light as a wargame since the combat is *so* abstracted. There are a dearth of games that fit three players this well in this complexity level and length, but I think that perhaps maybe there is a reason why there's a dearth. In the end, Maria was a bit of a letdown after such a fun game of Here I Stand. As such, I will gladly play in the future, but it will almost certainly be a WBC West or Euro Retreat game rather than something we gather to play on a weekend afternoon, and I won't be adding it to my library.
On to the evening! Ken came by at a couple of points (he's out here relaxing a bit, but also doing some work during the day, so he plays at night at best), and was there for us to play the Resident Evil Deckbuilding Game. I continue to be amazed that a game with possibly the worst documentation and rules I've ever seen (the first version's rules were so bad that there were major typesetting errors that were fixed in the v1.1 rules, but the information is still a mess) can be so much fun to play. Ken, Alex, Eric, and I had a ball, getting into the spirit of the game in a big way. In the end, I managed to win the game despite Eric taking down the big bad (after drawing the Gatling Gun and Rocket Launcher early). That meant no "see who gets the boss at the same time as getting a lot of good cards" problem that so many other's see. I like the game quite a bit, but don't recommend it if you need a game that's well-produced in terms of clarity and errors (fortunately none I'm aware of in the cards themselves). It's also a little strange in that you don't randomize the set, but instead either use one of the many they suggest or make up your own, but no randomizer cards at all. Nevertheless, we had a ball.
And that was the end of Day 2, with a record breaking nine people present on the second day, eight of them gamers.
Monday, May 16, 2011
WBC West 2011, Day 1 into Day 2 AM
The first day of WBC West, and I'm smiling all the way out to Sunriver in the car. Kind of a carwash on the drive, but not much traffic and that always makes for a more pleasant drive.
I arrive an hour before Chuck and Mike, and spend most of the time loading in and getting Here I Stand set up (HiS). I was getting pretty close when Mike and Chuck showed up. We had pre-determined that I would be the English/Protestants, Mike the Haps and Paps, and Chuck the King Louis XVI Ottoman furniture store. Mike had played a long time ago, and for all practical purposes hadn't played other than to understand the very basic concepts. Chuck and I had played a little more, and I'd refreshed the rules, but that didn't stop us from making several major errors early in the game (placing control markers on fortified spaces without sieging, for example). However, we plunged through and had what I considered a satisfying game.
I've tried to enjoy HiS in the past, but since every game has been a learning game (and with very slow play, not that our game was speedy) it's been hard for me to decide how I feel about the game. One of the biggest issues I've had has been that you can't retreat an army into a fortified space unless you have four or fewer units, making it hard to defend said space. This time, I figured out that they still have to siege, even with no units in the fort, so that gives the guy running away a chance to come back in and save the city. I can't tell you what a big deal this was for me, and it's improved my sense of the game immensely.
The game started out normal enough. France and England allied to keep the Hapsburgs down, and the Protestants got out to a strong start, taking 10 spaces in Germany. I had Schmalkaldic League, but never quite got to the 12 to play it early, and I'm not sure that it was a great idea that early anyway. The Ottomans advanced up through Hungary, the Hapsburgs fought the French for the most part and left England alone, and the Papacy started out it's series of theological debates by having their weak debater disgraced.
The second turn saw a huge change to my fortures. Schmalkaldic came out again, but in the discard pile, and I was tempted to grab and play it, but in the end decided I wanted more Protestant spaces, and that was a good idea. However, my hot die rolling in the first turn went totally cold, and I ended up losing ground in Germany. Plus I lost one of my best debater on a fluke roll (3 points to the Papacy!) On the bright side, Henry asked for a divorce (through card play) and started down the road to a healthy son, which happened finally with Anne of Cleves (after both Anne Bolynn and Jane Seymour turned out to be horn dogs, although that did move my Marital Status along).
By the end of the fourth turn, things were looking good for the Protestants and English. The Prots had taken the bulk of Germany when the Schmalkaldic League got played by default, although I was missing two Electorates. Unfortunately, I was thinking there were five Electorates, so I thought I only had three and didn't take my extra Prot card. King Hank had his male heir (and healthy), and pretty much all of England was Protestant. By the end of turn five, the scores were tightly clustered in the low 20s, so everyone had a shot at taking the prize. Sadly, I was in such a position that I either needed Edward to come out or a really awesome Prot turn, but it wasn't to be. I held my own but it wasn't enough. The French managed to hold off the Papacy in a free-for-all in Italy (including the Ottomans, the Hapsburgs, everyone but me!) and the end result was the French hitting 25 right at the end of the turn, giving Chuck the win.
I really found the challenge of building up from a weak position (both the Prots and British) and came close to winning. Oddly, neither Chuck nor Mike was nearly as enthusiastic as I was, but perhaps I'm more interested in the overall arc of how the game develops rather than in finding interesting things to do. I hear that the six player game is good, but my experience has been with people learning the game and it goes *slow*. Even our game took about 90-120 minutes per turn, and it really didn't need to - I was ready to go with my play on both sides a good 60% of the time, and I would imagine that 45-60 minutes for a turn is doable.
For me, an excellent start to the festivities.
I arrive an hour before Chuck and Mike, and spend most of the time loading in and getting Here I Stand set up (HiS). I was getting pretty close when Mike and Chuck showed up. We had pre-determined that I would be the English/Protestants, Mike the Haps and Paps, and Chuck the King Louis XVI Ottoman furniture store. Mike had played a long time ago, and for all practical purposes hadn't played other than to understand the very basic concepts. Chuck and I had played a little more, and I'd refreshed the rules, but that didn't stop us from making several major errors early in the game (placing control markers on fortified spaces without sieging, for example). However, we plunged through and had what I considered a satisfying game.
I've tried to enjoy HiS in the past, but since every game has been a learning game (and with very slow play, not that our game was speedy) it's been hard for me to decide how I feel about the game. One of the biggest issues I've had has been that you can't retreat an army into a fortified space unless you have four or fewer units, making it hard to defend said space. This time, I figured out that they still have to siege, even with no units in the fort, so that gives the guy running away a chance to come back in and save the city. I can't tell you what a big deal this was for me, and it's improved my sense of the game immensely.
The game started out normal enough. France and England allied to keep the Hapsburgs down, and the Protestants got out to a strong start, taking 10 spaces in Germany. I had Schmalkaldic League, but never quite got to the 12 to play it early, and I'm not sure that it was a great idea that early anyway. The Ottomans advanced up through Hungary, the Hapsburgs fought the French for the most part and left England alone, and the Papacy started out it's series of theological debates by having their weak debater disgraced.
The second turn saw a huge change to my fortures. Schmalkaldic came out again, but in the discard pile, and I was tempted to grab and play it, but in the end decided I wanted more Protestant spaces, and that was a good idea. However, my hot die rolling in the first turn went totally cold, and I ended up losing ground in Germany. Plus I lost one of my best debater on a fluke roll (3 points to the Papacy!) On the bright side, Henry asked for a divorce (through card play) and started down the road to a healthy son, which happened finally with Anne of Cleves (after both Anne Bolynn and Jane Seymour turned out to be horn dogs, although that did move my Marital Status along).
By the end of the fourth turn, things were looking good for the Protestants and English. The Prots had taken the bulk of Germany when the Schmalkaldic League got played by default, although I was missing two Electorates. Unfortunately, I was thinking there were five Electorates, so I thought I only had three and didn't take my extra Prot card. King Hank had his male heir (and healthy), and pretty much all of England was Protestant. By the end of turn five, the scores were tightly clustered in the low 20s, so everyone had a shot at taking the prize. Sadly, I was in such a position that I either needed Edward to come out or a really awesome Prot turn, but it wasn't to be. I held my own but it wasn't enough. The French managed to hold off the Papacy in a free-for-all in Italy (including the Ottomans, the Hapsburgs, everyone but me!) and the end result was the French hitting 25 right at the end of the turn, giving Chuck the win.
I really found the challenge of building up from a weak position (both the Prots and British) and came close to winning. Oddly, neither Chuck nor Mike was nearly as enthusiastic as I was, but perhaps I'm more interested in the overall arc of how the game develops rather than in finding interesting things to do. I hear that the six player game is good, but my experience has been with people learning the game and it goes *slow*. Even our game took about 90-120 minutes per turn, and it really didn't need to - I was ready to go with my play on both sides a good 60% of the time, and I would imagine that 45-60 minutes for a turn is doable.
For me, an excellent start to the festivities.
Saturday, May 14, 2011
WBC West 2011 - Final Preparations
Tomorrow I leave in the morning for what is arguably the high point of my gaming year, our "WBC West" nanocon in Central Oregon at the Sunriver resort. This year we will have ten gamers attending, eight of them present and accounted for by Monday night. Every year there are more challenges and problems to solve, and this year has been no exception. Fortunately, almost all of those problems have been because we have more people, and soon we'll see if throwing money at them helped or hurt.
No doubt the biggest issue this year is not only where everyone will sleep, but where everyone will game. Ten gamers means up to five games going at once, some of which will require more space than you can generate using a card table. Our vacation house can barely accommodate four games (as well as Mimi's jigsaw puzzle) and we need that kind of space fairly early this year (Tuesday morning). Starting Thursday, we need the fifth table, but we've rented an extra house this year to ease the pressure, and it has a table that should hold two more games if necessary. While I like having all of the games going on in a single space, at the same time it's becoming harder and harder to do without renting some sort of event space.
A few things were still up in the air as of my last prep post, all of which have been resolved (I think there may still be a couple of people with open slots, but I'm not one of them). What Eric, Tex, and myself were going to play on Tuesday was a huge mess, but we ended up getting a white knight in the form of Matt R, who is coming out on Monday evening with Alex and Dan. This fills the house, as we had every bed filled on Monday night *without* them, but at the same time we have an odd number to match our existing odd number and that's a good thing. It looks like Eric and I will be playing Fighting Formations that day, Matt and Tex playing Labyrinth, and Alex and Dan playing Attack Vector. Chuck and Mike are playing a two-day game of Ardennes '44 starting that day.
We were also able to get a copy of Maria, the Frederich descendent on the War of the Austrian Succession, so Eric and Mike and I are set to go for Monday afternoon.
For our Fleet game, after a bit of wrangling I decided to go with the 2nd Fleet ruleset rather than try to cobble together the correct pieces and use the 3rd Fleet rules/counters/charts. If we played these regularly, a unified ruleset would have been awesome, but we don't and so using 2nd Fleet's rules will be fine. I prepped two play aids for this session, one a player-by-player set that covers what air units are based where (very handy for remembering where they all go after the strategic units return at the end of the day), as well as limited ammo units and victory conditions. The other is a breakdown of detection, how it is acquired, and how it is lost. The combat processes are already in play aid form. I'll post these to the 'Geek after we've used them and vetted their correctness and usefulness.
Dinner has been arranged for every night. One of the side benefits of renting a house that only two of the people attending are funding is that the two of us get out of cooking. Yeah, it's *my* rule, but I think it's a good one. Keeping the kitchen clean will be a challenge, and we'll need to institute a regular "sweep" to keep it tidy, that and use of paper plates and plastic cups (particularly the latter, which we put our names on with masking tape) help too.
As for my personal prep, it has gone fairly well, and I am ready to go on almost everything. Almost. There are two issues here - the first is that I'm not ready for any of the "new" evening games that we'll probably play, such as Wealth of Nations and Mansions of Madness. Hopefully someone else will have those games down. I'm also not ready just yet for PQ-17, which Tex knows but I'll need to know as well. I am going to do a quick read-through of those rules today, and will try to get in some refresher reading as the week goes on, although I frankly will need that for Burning Blue as well. No matter how much I try to get things managed out front (and I did that this year) it always seems like I'm scrambling at the end. Perhaps next year I'll go solely with games I'm familiar with.
I also ran out of room and have to decide if I'm going to bring some of the bigger boxed games like Wrath of Ashardalon or Cosmic Encounter which will sit outside of the bins. I was a little amazed at how well the games I am bringing fit in, but then wargames typically come in smaller boxes than Euros and I fit nearly every game I'm playing during the day into one bin. Nice.
I also have the necessary information for the second house we've rented starting Wednesday, which is a good thing to have. Fortunately, it's all done by lock-box, so no extra trips out to the realty office, which is about a 25 minute round trip.
The last surprise was kind of a big one, at least for those of us who go to Sunriver regularly. The Trout House restaurant, which has sat at the "marina" for 20 years, has gone out of business to be replaced with a Mexican/Peruvian restaurant called "Hola!" The last Hispanic restaurant, located in the mall, had gotten worse and worse as time went on, and I think they went out of business as well. It's a very difficult climate to run a small business out there, as the clientele is extremely seasonal (skiers in the winter, and the real bonanza of summer families), so I'm not surprised to see businesses come and go, but there has been an enormous upheaval over the past five or six years, partly due to the recession and partly due to the owners of the space who are either indifferent, hostile, or clueless depending on which owner we're talking about and who is doing the talking. It will be interesting to see who is still there this summer, as we won't spend much (if any) time at the mall on this trip. Regardless, Hola! is where we will hold our Saturday dinner festivities.
My last issue is getting a bike down to the shop for some major work, and I'll probably need to take a bike rack for my car to get it there and back. It's my own bike, purchased about ten years ago, and I've since learned a lot about what makes a good bike and almost nothing about this bike qualifies if you plan to ride it more than about five miles. It certainly doesn't work for off-road use, largely because the shifters are integrated into the handlebars and a tight grip can result in downshifting far too often. It's more for use as a "anyone can use it" bike, but it needs major maintenance so I might as well bite the bullet and get it done now.
This is our ninth WBC West, and it's gratifying to have seen it grow so much over the years. What started out as Chuck and I getting in five days of gaming has turned into a full seven days and ten gamers for most of the week. In some ways, this iteration will be a bellwether for what is to come. I'm hoping to keep the overall intimate vibe while making it possible for more people to attend, but those may not be possible. We will have a much better sense of where we want to go in another week.
Regardless, I am very excited about the trip this year. Now all I have to do today is finish reading the rules for PQ-17, do my laundry, get my food together, pack my clothes, carry two heavy bins of games out to the car, collect the hooch (bourbon, peppar vodka, and Benedictine, not to be combined at the same time of course), run a few more errands, and I'm done.
This year, I plan to make three posts a day, one in the morning, one in the afternoon, and one in the evening. Getting in my posts is one of the more difficult challenges in a week that is already busy, but it's also one of my favorite parts of the week since it reinforces the memories so well. I hope you enjoy following along!
No doubt the biggest issue this year is not only where everyone will sleep, but where everyone will game. Ten gamers means up to five games going at once, some of which will require more space than you can generate using a card table. Our vacation house can barely accommodate four games (as well as Mimi's jigsaw puzzle) and we need that kind of space fairly early this year (Tuesday morning). Starting Thursday, we need the fifth table, but we've rented an extra house this year to ease the pressure, and it has a table that should hold two more games if necessary. While I like having all of the games going on in a single space, at the same time it's becoming harder and harder to do without renting some sort of event space.
A few things were still up in the air as of my last prep post, all of which have been resolved (I think there may still be a couple of people with open slots, but I'm not one of them). What Eric, Tex, and myself were going to play on Tuesday was a huge mess, but we ended up getting a white knight in the form of Matt R, who is coming out on Monday evening with Alex and Dan. This fills the house, as we had every bed filled on Monday night *without* them, but at the same time we have an odd number to match our existing odd number and that's a good thing. It looks like Eric and I will be playing Fighting Formations that day, Matt and Tex playing Labyrinth, and Alex and Dan playing Attack Vector. Chuck and Mike are playing a two-day game of Ardennes '44 starting that day.
We were also able to get a copy of Maria, the Frederich descendent on the War of the Austrian Succession, so Eric and Mike and I are set to go for Monday afternoon.
For our Fleet game, after a bit of wrangling I decided to go with the 2nd Fleet ruleset rather than try to cobble together the correct pieces and use the 3rd Fleet rules/counters/charts. If we played these regularly, a unified ruleset would have been awesome, but we don't and so using 2nd Fleet's rules will be fine. I prepped two play aids for this session, one a player-by-player set that covers what air units are based where (very handy for remembering where they all go after the strategic units return at the end of the day), as well as limited ammo units and victory conditions. The other is a breakdown of detection, how it is acquired, and how it is lost. The combat processes are already in play aid form. I'll post these to the 'Geek after we've used them and vetted their correctness and usefulness.
Dinner has been arranged for every night. One of the side benefits of renting a house that only two of the people attending are funding is that the two of us get out of cooking. Yeah, it's *my* rule, but I think it's a good one. Keeping the kitchen clean will be a challenge, and we'll need to institute a regular "sweep" to keep it tidy, that and use of paper plates and plastic cups (particularly the latter, which we put our names on with masking tape) help too.
As for my personal prep, it has gone fairly well, and I am ready to go on almost everything. Almost. There are two issues here - the first is that I'm not ready for any of the "new" evening games that we'll probably play, such as Wealth of Nations and Mansions of Madness. Hopefully someone else will have those games down. I'm also not ready just yet for PQ-17, which Tex knows but I'll need to know as well. I am going to do a quick read-through of those rules today, and will try to get in some refresher reading as the week goes on, although I frankly will need that for Burning Blue as well. No matter how much I try to get things managed out front (and I did that this year) it always seems like I'm scrambling at the end. Perhaps next year I'll go solely with games I'm familiar with.
I also ran out of room and have to decide if I'm going to bring some of the bigger boxed games like Wrath of Ashardalon or Cosmic Encounter which will sit outside of the bins. I was a little amazed at how well the games I am bringing fit in, but then wargames typically come in smaller boxes than Euros and I fit nearly every game I'm playing during the day into one bin. Nice.
I also have the necessary information for the second house we've rented starting Wednesday, which is a good thing to have. Fortunately, it's all done by lock-box, so no extra trips out to the realty office, which is about a 25 minute round trip.
The last surprise was kind of a big one, at least for those of us who go to Sunriver regularly. The Trout House restaurant, which has sat at the "marina" for 20 years, has gone out of business to be replaced with a Mexican/Peruvian restaurant called "Hola!" The last Hispanic restaurant, located in the mall, had gotten worse and worse as time went on, and I think they went out of business as well. It's a very difficult climate to run a small business out there, as the clientele is extremely seasonal (skiers in the winter, and the real bonanza of summer families), so I'm not surprised to see businesses come and go, but there has been an enormous upheaval over the past five or six years, partly due to the recession and partly due to the owners of the space who are either indifferent, hostile, or clueless depending on which owner we're talking about and who is doing the talking. It will be interesting to see who is still there this summer, as we won't spend much (if any) time at the mall on this trip. Regardless, Hola! is where we will hold our Saturday dinner festivities.
My last issue is getting a bike down to the shop for some major work, and I'll probably need to take a bike rack for my car to get it there and back. It's my own bike, purchased about ten years ago, and I've since learned a lot about what makes a good bike and almost nothing about this bike qualifies if you plan to ride it more than about five miles. It certainly doesn't work for off-road use, largely because the shifters are integrated into the handlebars and a tight grip can result in downshifting far too often. It's more for use as a "anyone can use it" bike, but it needs major maintenance so I might as well bite the bullet and get it done now.
This is our ninth WBC West, and it's gratifying to have seen it grow so much over the years. What started out as Chuck and I getting in five days of gaming has turned into a full seven days and ten gamers for most of the week. In some ways, this iteration will be a bellwether for what is to come. I'm hoping to keep the overall intimate vibe while making it possible for more people to attend, but those may not be possible. We will have a much better sense of where we want to go in another week.
Regardless, I am very excited about the trip this year. Now all I have to do today is finish reading the rules for PQ-17, do my laundry, get my food together, pack my clothes, carry two heavy bins of games out to the car, collect the hooch (bourbon, peppar vodka, and Benedictine, not to be combined at the same time of course), run a few more errands, and I'm done.
This year, I plan to make three posts a day, one in the morning, one in the afternoon, and one in the evening. Getting in my posts is one of the more difficult challenges in a week that is already busy, but it's also one of my favorite parts of the week since it reinforces the memories so well. I hope you enjoy following along!
Sunday, May 08, 2011
Happy Mother's Day
I am an extremely fortunate man to have a family that gets along and can function together when we need to. We enjoy seeing each other at gatherings, and while we have our frictions and scars we also understand the importance of family. A big part of why we get along as well as we do is because of my mother's influence.
As some of you are aware, my mother suffered a subdural hematoma last June. After a short period where we were so certain she was going to die that she was under hospice care, she came back with a determination that I have found impressive. Unfortunately at 88, comebacks are difficult to pull off, and she's slipped back quite a bit. Her short term memory is very poor, although she remembers people she knows well. A year ago she and her partner won a charity Bridge league in an environment with some very good players, and now she struggles to remember what the bid was. If the rest of this post sounds like I'm speaking of her in the past tense, it's because in some senses she *has* gone on.
As the fourth of four kids, and fifteen years after my closest sibling at that, I perhaps had the best of all worlds. When I was born, I'm told that my mother looked at my father and told him that she was raising me her way this time out. "Her way" meant that I was encouraged in every endeavor I tried, some of which I needed a bit of a push to do, but mostly in the sense that I grew up thinking that anything was possible and there was nothing I couldn't do if I wanted to do it. The long term result is that I *still* think I can do anything I set out to do. OK, not basketball. Or golf. But anything else. That attitude allows me to keep an open mind about the world in general, something that seems to be sorely lacking in American culture in the early 21st century.
When I expressed interest in learning to play the organ after she got a small home console and took a few lessons, her support that turned into a lifetime of music performance for me that has paid so many dividends I cannot list them all. The primary one is almost certainly the confidence to play the fool when called for. Actually, it would be more correct to say that I am not afraid to play the fool or appear foolish, and the irony is that quite often by removing that fear we do not in fact appear foolish after all. That skill has served me well in many capacities, not the least of which is how I interact with my 2 year old granddaughter.
When I discovered wargames at 10 years of age, she encouraged the hobby, helping me to buy games and start what has become a bit of an obsession over the years, but one that has brought great joy and great friendships to my life. She may never have understood them in the slightest sense, but I am fairly sure that she would look at a game set up in my room and be proud that she had a son who could figure these things out and was learning history, all on his own initiative. What I'm not sure she considered was how much of her encouragement and love led to that point.
At this point in my life, I find myself using her example in my relationship with my son-in-law (and my daughter, were she willing) to help him become as good a parent to my granddaughter as my mother was to me. My mother is not and never has been perfect, but she was perfect for me, and I consider myself about as lucky as it is possible to be in that regard.
As my mother fades, I am starting to think that this may be the last Mother's Day I celebrate with her still in my life. The truth is, of course, that when she is gone she is not actually gone. Her DNA continues in four children, eight grandchildren, and six great-grandchildren. The example she provided is equally strong. Certainly her memory will last for a while, and I am thankful that my granddaughter has had the chance to spend time with her, even if eventually she will be more of an impression than a clear memory. She will live on in me and my siblings, in our children, and in their children.
Mom, thank you for everything you have done for me, all the sacrifices you have made, all the hard choices, the example and the ethical foundation. I am a much better person for being your son. I love you. Happy Mother's Day.
As some of you are aware, my mother suffered a subdural hematoma last June. After a short period where we were so certain she was going to die that she was under hospice care, she came back with a determination that I have found impressive. Unfortunately at 88, comebacks are difficult to pull off, and she's slipped back quite a bit. Her short term memory is very poor, although she remembers people she knows well. A year ago she and her partner won a charity Bridge league in an environment with some very good players, and now she struggles to remember what the bid was. If the rest of this post sounds like I'm speaking of her in the past tense, it's because in some senses she *has* gone on.
As the fourth of four kids, and fifteen years after my closest sibling at that, I perhaps had the best of all worlds. When I was born, I'm told that my mother looked at my father and told him that she was raising me her way this time out. "Her way" meant that I was encouraged in every endeavor I tried, some of which I needed a bit of a push to do, but mostly in the sense that I grew up thinking that anything was possible and there was nothing I couldn't do if I wanted to do it. The long term result is that I *still* think I can do anything I set out to do. OK, not basketball. Or golf. But anything else. That attitude allows me to keep an open mind about the world in general, something that seems to be sorely lacking in American culture in the early 21st century.
When I expressed interest in learning to play the organ after she got a small home console and took a few lessons, her support that turned into a lifetime of music performance for me that has paid so many dividends I cannot list them all. The primary one is almost certainly the confidence to play the fool when called for. Actually, it would be more correct to say that I am not afraid to play the fool or appear foolish, and the irony is that quite often by removing that fear we do not in fact appear foolish after all. That skill has served me well in many capacities, not the least of which is how I interact with my 2 year old granddaughter.
When I discovered wargames at 10 years of age, she encouraged the hobby, helping me to buy games and start what has become a bit of an obsession over the years, but one that has brought great joy and great friendships to my life. She may never have understood them in the slightest sense, but I am fairly sure that she would look at a game set up in my room and be proud that she had a son who could figure these things out and was learning history, all on his own initiative. What I'm not sure she considered was how much of her encouragement and love led to that point.
At this point in my life, I find myself using her example in my relationship with my son-in-law (and my daughter, were she willing) to help him become as good a parent to my granddaughter as my mother was to me. My mother is not and never has been perfect, but she was perfect for me, and I consider myself about as lucky as it is possible to be in that regard.
As my mother fades, I am starting to think that this may be the last Mother's Day I celebrate with her still in my life. The truth is, of course, that when she is gone she is not actually gone. Her DNA continues in four children, eight grandchildren, and six great-grandchildren. The example she provided is equally strong. Certainly her memory will last for a while, and I am thankful that my granddaughter has had the chance to spend time with her, even if eventually she will be more of an impression than a clear memory. She will live on in me and my siblings, in our children, and in their children.
Mom, thank you for everything you have done for me, all the sacrifices you have made, all the hard choices, the example and the ethical foundation. I am a much better person for being your son. I love you. Happy Mother's Day.
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