Generalleutnant Erwin Rommel holding a strategy meeting with his divisional comanders.
Regular readers will have noticed these last few
months, since around June, a tapering off of content. Where I was regularly
posting two to three times a week, lately I’ve barely struggled to release one
post a week. I’ve alluded to personal issues as well as outside pressures, but I
feel like I owe more to the folks who regularly show up for their dose of
gaming news, thrilling unboxings, and half-baked opinions.
I’ve been spending a lot of time on a playtesting project
recently for Conflict Simulations Ltd, or CSL (Afrika Army Korps (Conflict Simulations Ltd, ~2025), which
I wrote about back in August). This has taken an an inordinate amount of time, with a couple of false
starts and hiccups. I think this will be winding up soon, and I should have a
follow-up post to the aforementioned in the next few weeks.
With The Hammer, coming soon from CSL. Cover design and
game artwork by Ilya Kudriashov
This has been a serious commitment on my part, not
just in time but also in bandwidth. I’ve been doing a lot of historical
research into the African theatre, and I’ve found myself devoting a lot of
thought to the game when I’m not actually engaged with it physically. This has all
been at the expense of appending time on new games and on writing about those games
(I don’t want to over-egg my participation in the project, I’m just a play-tester,
but I do take it seriously and try to contribute where I can). I had told
myself that I would back away from playtesting for a bit and concentrate on the
blog. Then last week, Ray Weiss from CSL put out a call for play-testers for With the Hammer, a game he was working
on celebrating the 500th anniversary of the Great Peasants’ Revolt
in Germany (this will be Ray’s second game concerning the subject but will
likely be available first). The play isn’t as complex at Afrika Army Korps –
the game should play out in under ninety minutes – and I’m fascinated by the asymmetric
aspect of the conflict, so I’ve put my hand up for that as well. This should
take a lot less time (there are more folks working on this one). It’s an
intriguing game and I’ll be sure to post some pics and thoughts in due course.
From a recent CSL newsletter.
On a personal note, my wife’s mother is not expected
to be with us much longer. This is the family issue that has been taking up
some of my time. Jess's mum has a brain tumour; she’s managed to outlive her initial
six-week prognosis by more than three years with a positive response to early treatment
and irrepressible joie de vivre, and most of that time has been pretty much on
her own terms. But the last few months have been very hard on her, and that inevitibly takes a toll on those around her. I've been a part of the family for twenty-five years; we've always got along well, and I already miss her.
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So, where does this leave A Fast Game? Going
forward, I’ll be trying to quarantine more time for writing (and playing games
I’m not actively playtesting). The Acquisitions department has been profligate
lately, due to the sale of some old RPG materials that have been taking up
space, and so I now have a backlog of games that deserve unboxing posts. I’ve
been sitting on A Most Fearful Sacrifice: The Three Days of Gettysburg (Flying Pig Games,
2022) I’m starting to wonder if I’ll end up doing a double header with The Rock of Chicamauga (Flying Pig Games, ~2025).
Normally I like to break up the unboxings with other posts, but between now and
Christmas, that will probably be what you see the most of, including a couple
of absolute gems. I also have a couple of reviews I’d like to finish before
Christmas, but I make no promises at this point.
Lastly, a little rant (this is the complaint of the
title). I’ve been eagerly awaiting delivery of a game (that’s not like you, Jon,
I hear you say). It was another CSL game; Imperial Bayonets: Solferino, 1859: For Liberty and Lombardy (Conflict Simulations Ltd, 2024), the follow-up to Mr Weiss’s Imperial Bayonets: We Were Not Cowards: Sedan, 1870 (Conflict Simulations Ltd, 2020), which I still need to write about. For
Liberty and Lombardy covers several battles in the Wars of Italian Unification,
a subject of particular interest to me, and I was eagerly awaiting its arrival.
That was until I checked the tracking details, and
found out that the package had already been delivered a couple of weeks earlier
– slid under our gate and well into the courtyard, as the driver’s photograph
indicated – and somebody had come along after and stolen said package from this
“secure” place. This was the first time we’ve lost a package to porch piracy,
and we’ve had boxes of wine left at our door when we’ve been out. I get it, it’s
the price of doing business in Kansas. What burns me up the most is whoever
took it probably just binned it when they found it wasn’t electronics or whatever
the hell else people get shipped to their door.
I’ve been fuming about this for a week, but I’m
trying to let it go. It’s not like I haven’t got enough to keep me busy for a
while.
If there’s a message in this, it’s this: use your time
wisely. Make time for family and friends, and find ways to let them know they’re
important to you without getting weird about it or making them uncomfortable. And
try to not tie your happiness to things, but to experiences and time shared.
Here the rant endeth.
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