Tomorrow Never Dice

Ha!  You'll See What I Mean In A Minute

If you are familiar with the blog then you'll know Conrad occasionally puts up pictures of his idiosyncratic wargaming; we are currently running an encounter of the English Civil Unpleasantness, in it's earlier years.  However, what we need is a big, impressive, artistic wargame that might be using a base and churlish ruleset yet which looks good.  Art!

Slightly more sophisticated than my set up

     I bring this up because my mate Richard - no, not the one in Spain, the one in even more remote Storrs, West Yorkshire - is suggesting a "Command Exercise" game for the Christmas period.  In this variation there would be two teams of three generals commanding either a French or Teuton armoured division of the Second Unpleasantness in summer 1940.  Art!

     Richard and younger version of himself Jamie would be the ones playing the game itself on a table in his kitchen, where they would be using a ruleset, rolling their dice and moving units around.  The kicker is that we, the generals, would be using Skype at home to communicate between ourselves and Richard in order to issue orders without seeing the battlefield, or certainly not in real-time.  O yes, we'd have a map, and could guesstimate what's going on without actually knowing, much as in real-life.  This models the fog-of-war and removes the "100 yard General" perspective gamers normally enjoy.  Art?

Military planning imperilled by lack of pencils

     Your Apprentice Dictator hasn't played a game like this before, though I have read after-action-reports on them, and you can bet what can possibly go wrong, will do, and in ways utterly unexpected.  And thus we get today's title.
     Now, given that this is a niche subject matter, which Conrad has never before undertaken, you cannot possibly tell me that there's a J-

      What's that?  There - there very nearly is?  I don't believe you.  Pictures or you're lying!

O beggar

     I am incandescently cross about this!  How can these churlish knaves (or are they knavish churls?) be mocking me from across the years?  The only explanation is that they have a time machine and lazy imaginations, the dirty curs.

     Motley!  You're lucky I'm listening to Beethoven's Sixth, which always puts me in a good mood, so I shall only use the 1% tetrodotoxin solution with my dart gun.

Ludwig Van = The Man

Cross About Words

Yesterday I gave up on ever finding that paperback of Codewords <sad face> and bought another Codeword magazine whilst doing the weekly shop, which of course means the paperback will magically hop out of concealment shrieking "I WAS HERE ALL ALONG!*"  <resigned face>.  Art?

     I don't know why they included that horrid cheap <shudders> biro; it nearly put me off the purchase**.  

Today, I Bite The Coincidence Hydra On The Ass!

O how splendid it is to inflict a little fanged payback on the great green beast! for there is no spot more tender on a hydra than where it sits down.

     Okay, we shall now have to allude to that fetid and unwholesome poison of the modern world: Politics.  There has recently been an election over in South Canada, and you may even have heard about it.  One party is making all sorts of allegations, which are even more serious than passing the port to the left, if you can believe it!  Art?

Nope

     This story, I hasten to add, dates from 1876 and is thus History.  Still, that's verging on too much and therefore the end.

Thank You, Brain

Ah yes, Conrad's brain.  Normally well-behaved reasonably well-behaved not completely wild during daylight hours, it is capable of coming up with some quite spectacularly horrid stuff when not being supervised at night.  For example, last night we had Conrad as a lone police constable in the Fifties (I think, it's not like these things come with a timestamp), out in a remote countryside police station with only the crows for company.  Lots of empty ploughed fields, no people, except for one odd young lady with a gloomy countenance, who hangs around the station, which is a cold Thirties pile with no modern conveniences.  Of course she reveals her true self as the rotting animated corpse of a murder victim when Conrad is manning the reception desk one evening, transforming in the time it takes to look down at the desk and back up again.  Yes yes yes it's a horror cliche, I admit, yet still rather a shock when it happens to you.

     "I expected something like this," quoth I, before waking up.  Perceptive as ever, hmmm? even in the land of nod.

Mine was a little more feminine

     It might make the outline for a short story.  I'll get back to you on that.

Hmmmm that was a bit grim, let's lighten the tone with LITHIUM WAFER BATT - then again perhaps not.  Aha!

Jet Propelled Onto His Head, Jet Propelled Until He's -

We've shown a few photo montages of idiots wielding chainsaws whilst clinging single-handedly to the tops of ladders, where they kind of brought the danger along with themselves and their six-pack of beer (not joking here).  Over in Hawaii there are places where the danger is ever-present and all you have to do is add human.  No, I don't mean volcanoes, I mean <coughs apologetically> blow-holes.  Art?

The Halona Blowhole

     This is a geological phenomenon where a narrow channel has been eroded below ground level by the sea, emerging into daylight some distance inland.  As waves roll in, water shoots out of the hole.  With considerable force and mass.  Obviously such activity is dangerous, and to make sure people realise this salient fact, there are signs at Halona.  Art!

Which translates in some minds to "Go right ahead and ignore this sign!"

     There is a viewing area on the main road that is safely distant and which is where the authorities would like people to observe from.

     There's no access to the blowhole from the road.  However, this doesn't stop people getting near it by clambering over the rocks to get there.  Which is what Daniel did, ignoring the signs and other tourists warning him not to stand directly over the blowhole, laughing in the spray.  A big wave came in, knocked him up into the air, then headfirst into the blowhole.  His body was recovered several hours later by an emergency recovery team.  

     SO!  Be warned, tourists.  Leave the blowholes alone.  They've been around for centuries if not millenia; you've we've only got ninety years or so.

Finally -

Actually that was a bit grim, too, wasn't it?  Okay, okay.  At least it didn't feature either crocodiles or spiders.  Let us finish with my favourite police officer, and one who certainly doesn't take any nonsense from vengeful spirits -

     In the next panel, the blocks gave up and 97,441 perps went into custody.

     Vulnavia!  We are DONE!

*  "8.5.15.3.22.10.!"

**  Conrad: tea and pen snob