Monday 28 November 2011

Thinking Deep Thoughts....


An aid to clarity of thought....

I have spent most of the weekend involved in a variety of domestic tasks of the kind usually associated with the festive season i.e. Christmas shopping and decorations.Of the latter the one thing that struck me was how quiet the shops appeared to be, given that is less than four weeks to Christmas - a sad reflection on the current economic woes that most people are experiencing perhaps? Either that or it is a wait until the last minute or caning the internet for presents - either way Basildon seemed eerily subdued over the weekend (no bad thing many may say!).

Due to the fact that Christmas falls on a Sunday this year and because we also have a number of prior engagements over the coming weekends, SWMBO decided that this weekend the decorations would go up and so out came the tinsel, tree, baubles galore and all the associated festive paraphernalia so that the house now looks like a diluted version of Santa's grotto. I am a sucker for anything Christmas related and so always enjoy doing this and our opinion is that if you are going to bother with decorations at all then you may as well have them up for a reasonable amount of time in order to enjoy the experience and to get into the spirit of things. Besides, it is good fun - especially the annual Christmas game of 'finding the blown bulb from a 40ft length of tree lights'!

I popped into the local Toy and Train fair on Sunday although did not buy anything. There was plenty of military kit on display that would have any 54mm wargamer (especially anybody contemplating a Funny Little Wars set up) reaching for his wallet. There were lots of firing artillery pieces of the WW1 style 18 and WW2 25 pounder variety - as well as some very nice coastal style guns. Prices varied but £3 to £8 seemed to be the average range. There was also a lot of odd Britains figures around as well including a very impressive looking unit of Bengal Lancers that had me both wincing and staring in rapt (mainly at the price but they did look really striking) awe at them.

I also spent a lot of time tackling the fleet lists for the rules and this has given me much food for thought. I think I have allowed myself to fall back into the trap of over egging the pudding. The Royal Navy for example has a list of ships that is now covering three sides of A4. This is an impressive piece of work (if I say so myself) but I was struck by the number of ships that come up with identical factors. This has made me wonder if perhaps I should have stuck to a more generic approach rather than to 'drill down' into such levels of detail. Certainly this approach is probably at odds with the spirit of the Portable War Game.

I am more than happy with the rules as they are but am less convinced about the level of detail I am going to with the ship specifications and so will need to give this some additional consideration.

If anything, if I decide to go down the generic route it will mean that the rules will be complete far sooner than originally planned so that will probably be no bad thing.

6 comments:

Robert (Bob) Cordery said...

Your comments about the number of people shopping were interesting as the shops in Bluewater were full by 11.30am yeaterday! Likewise the shops in the local shopping centres.

It almost seemed that people were out trying to get the pre-Christmas bargains that were available.

I bought nothing, by the way!

All the best,

Bob

Paul O'G said...

Interesting that the stats came out so generic, particularly in an era where classes could differ greatly. Perhaps a more generic set of stats is required as a basis, with maybe a few die mods where necessary to reflect advances (or deficiencies) in technology

Bluebear Jeff said...

One of the dangers of naval wargaming rules is "rivet counting" . . . that is getting too detailed so that each and every vessel is different from every other vessel and the rules MUST take this into account.

Simplify, Sir David. Simplify.


-- Jeff

David Crook said...

Hi Bob,

It was really strange - masses of people milling about but very little activity in the shops. Perhaps we were just lucky!

I don't envy you going to Bluewater though - it is a hellish place!

All the best,

DC

David Crook said...

Hi Paul,

Absolutely! The problem was with the smaller ships but I have stepped back from it and have found a viable solution which has now been added (or tweaked even!).

It is getting very close to completion though!

All the best,

DC

David Crook said...

Hi Jeff,

I really tried to avoid the rivet counting pitfall but got sucked into it anyhow! I have taken a big step away from it though and the tweaks I have introduced will take care of it.

Simplify is my middle name - actually it is Roy but I am sure you get my drift!

All the best,

DC