First Of All, A Recourse To My 'Brewer's'
Every home should have one. A 'Brewer's', I mean, although lamps are jolly handy when the night arrives and you want to do a Codeword without wrecking your vision. So - did you know that 'The Lamp of Heaven' is poetic-speak for the Moon? Rather unreliable as a source of illumination, one feels. In which case one has recourse to 'The Lamp of Phoebus', which is the sun. An altogether more dependable light in the sky. Art!
Apollo but close enough
We now jump forward in time, yet still in the past, and the dim and distant days of August 1914, where sinister events on the Continent, as well as a baroque system of secret treaties and alliances, had brought matters to the brink of war. Unusually, Great Britain was about to become involved in the sordid squabbles of the European mainland, backing the French militarily. Art!
Gaslighting when it was not an offensive behaviour
Sir Edward Grey, the British Foreign Secretary, was mournfully watching the gas lamps along the street being lit before nightfall, being aware that his nation was about to enter a Great War and not being very cheerful about it. Art!
Ted looking morose
He came out with an expression that his friend and audience, a journalist called Spender, took down: "The lamps are going all over Europe, we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime."
Wow. Probably a buzzkill at parties, too. In fact the lamps came back up again by 1919, to a greatly changed Europe where the royal houses had vanished.
It's interesting to note that Herr Schickelgruber came to power in Germany in January 1933, whilst Ted didn't jitterbug off this mortal coil until November 1933, so he must have had a sense of deja vu.
ANYWAY back to that list of "ALL TIME BEST WW1 WARGAMES" by 'The Dice Treasures', which is what we've been leading up to.
14) 'The Lamps Are Going Out' By Compass Games
Art!
TDT define this one as 'High strategic level' and you can see the map-board includes all of Europe, the Med and the Near East. There are mountain ranges, indicators for industry, ports and one has to juggle economics quite as much as strategies. Art!
'Event Cards' permit unpleasant and pleasant surprises to be inflicted or endured by players, meaning that merely sitting back and repeating history will not work. For those who crave the warlord experience.
13) "The Great War" by PSC Games
Art!
Hmmmmm. Miniatures on a board, again. No, Conrad, do not stand in judgement!
TDT mention that the gameplay is card-driven whilst combat is via multiple dice and that, unlike a lot of these games, it concentrates on trench warfare. Heart in the fight place, then.
12) "1914 Offensive a Outrance" By GMT Games
Art!
The title is French for 'Giving the bally Hun a right drubbing' and this looks like one of the hex-and-counter games I was looking for. Art!
So, again, the concentration is on manoeuvre warfare before the arrival of trenches by the end of 1914. It comes on two great big maps and over 7 countersheets of units and markers, 2,100 of them, so pretty much the poster child for a 'monster' game. Covering the events from early August to late November, it's described as 'Complex' which I have no doubt it is, whoopee, but of limited solitaire playability <sad face>.
11) "The Battles For Ypres" By Compass Games
Art!
Using that famous photograph of the 10th Cameronians going into action on the box cover, I see. Ypres, the last Belgian town held by the Allies, held out against two Teuton offensives in 1914 and 1915, and was the base for the terrible third battle, dubbed 'Passchendaele', in 1917, which pushed the Teutons off the shallow ridges that ringed the ruined urban hellscape. Once again a hex-and-counter game, and it's unusual for a publisher to pick on individual battles like this. Sounds right up my street so doubtless long out of print. Art!
Hmmmm. Conrad ponders and rubs his chin.
10) "Fields Of Despair" By GMT Games
Art!
The war in France from 1914 to 1918, waged at the strategic level, where you have to make economic and technological decisions in addition to military ones. TDT goes into coils explaining about how the counters used are in a block format, meaning you can stand them upright and conceal exactly what your opponent might be hiding - an entire Army or a mere Diversion? Art!
If done properly this simulates the 'fog of war', because no army since the dawn of time has had full and complete information or intelligence about their opponent. The French at Crecy might have manoeuvred differently if they'd known how devastating the English longbow was in ranged combat, as an example.
I feel they're putting a bit of a downer on the probability of gamers purchasing this product; you don't expect to see 'The Joy Of Conflict!' on a box cover but having 'Despair' in the title doesn't help shift product. How about 'The Joy Of Hex'?
From The Sublime To The Ridiculous
Donnie Dorko has once again managed to get up and down the stairs of Air Force One without falling, by the simple method of gripping the handrail for dear life and carefully plodding one step at a time, stopping for a breather halfway down.
This next picture has nothing to do with that, it's just one of him being a gormless oaf on stage, confirming his IQ is the same as his shoe size. Art!
One MAGAt on Twitter claimed that this was taken out of context, as if that made any difference. In or out of context, he still looks like a bafune.
IT IS NOT A TANK!
You know Conrad, a man who lives to be made happy by being made unhappy, especially by spelling or grammar mistakes. Factual ones count, too. Art!
Is It A Slow News Day?
I did wonder. Art!
Ho ho ho, sub-editor, verrrrry droll. Your items are indeed laced with humour. Funny to the last. Instep with your editor's policy <that's enough punnery - Mister Hand redacts any more silly nonsense>. O I see, you're putting your foot down?
I Shall Put This Up With No Comment
Art!
Okay, a bit of comment. What you see here is RAF Duxford, the official museum of the RAF, hopefully to include the odd plane from the Royal Flying Corps and the Royal Naval Air Service, the two pre-RAF organisations that were merged on April 1st 1918 to create the Brylkreem Boys. A date the other services have never let them forget.
Conrad has never been here, nor is he anywhere near as clued-up on planes as he is on tanks. More info to come later in the year.
O I Say!
For decades it was rare for those artists who did the work on sci-fi book covers to be identified, either by signature on the front or a credit on the back. As I remember a reviewer complaining, this was pretttty unfair, as a striking cover illo naturally caused browsers to become buyers. S. Art!
I already have a Youtube item about Angus saved in my 'Watch Later' queue. This one has a story about it. That spaceship to starboard? It's the 'Hooded Swan', a unique variety of FTL craft, piloted by the misanthropic Grainger, whom never gets a first name. Authored by Brian Stableford and dating <shudders quietly> back to the early Seventies.
Finally -
Going out with a Biercism.
"Motive,n: A mental wolf in moral wool"
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