Reply To: Continued Explorations of Normandy Wargaming

[jamesevans140Participant 2055xp 0]

Thanks @oriskany. I had a truly great time at WinterCon, but I am already started paying for it.

Yesterday we had our first group play of U-Boot. Yarrick and I have read much about submarines in WW2 but we take the view that the other players should learn the hard way. So we make them the captain. The lesson of the day was the AA 2 cm was for shooting at small boats not aircraft. We got the alert from the observers of approaching aircraft. Yarrick and I advised a drive. The captain ordered man the AA. Final result we trashed a good Type VIIC. Lights out in the crew section and a chewed up diesel engine that became a fire in the engine room. One shot up boat. The group has decided that we should drive in future. But it was amazing watching the others come down with first person video game syndrome. They could not let go of the chance to do shooty things expecting to blow the aircraft up. They understand this is a simulation not a shooty game. However they had so much fun they are coming around Wednesday afternoon to have as many games as we can fit in. Perhaps we will get on to linked games and finally on to the campaigns. You start in 1940 and move on from there.

Middle Earth was a great game but it was in the box that got lost in the move along with the Normandy mega game and others. It was an interesting game within a game. The first looked after the characters and their interplay. The next part was the game that involved the units of the different armies. Both games could be played separately or together which was the best. Characters added bonuses to army stacks. If characters were attacked by army units it was more about capture and evasion.

The new board has generated a lot of interest among the greater group that were quickly talking about sci-fi and fantasy builds of it. This board however will be built for historic 15/25mm gaming.

Amongst everything else going on I have assembled one panel and painted up by plain hexes for a general desert, sandy comes later. I have been using several Tamiya textured paints and wet blending them on the hexes.

Once a have several panels up and painted I will send you some photos. With a little sadness once we have made the hexes for a European hex board we will be retiring the battle boards after almost 25 years of great gaming on them. In their next life they will be used by the guys at the warehouse.

I don’t expect that non days and gaming day will occupy my time until Thursday or Friday. So it looks like we will both be tied up this week in our own way.

I had my view of maths drilled into me by my year 11 and 12 physics teacher on one side. He was an American with a total passion for physics. On the other was Walter Cunningham, the Apollo astronaut. He was visiting Canberra when a was a small boy. My mother was had chef at the motel he stayed in. I used to build models in the recreation room while I waited for her to finish work. So he saw this boy building a model of a LEM and started talking to me. What ever I did to impress him, he went to the kitchen and asked my mother permission to write to me. After he returned to NASA he sent me lots of photos and we stayed in touch until he left NASA. They did not seen to pass on my letters to him or give me an address. I was devastated when I found out that at the time Australians were not eligible for the space program. However Walter nudged me to computers and I would have loved to let him know how that kid turned out.  I have been thinking about him a lot over this weekend with great fondness. I am amazed how a brief encounter in a recreation room of a motel and a passionate physics teach has shaped a life.