A great weekend – an Offside Report

Thanks to Jim’s generous work with the tech set up, I was able to attend the whole weekend, and enjoyed it immensely. We went from stimulating design discussions from Dave on pre WW2 China and Japan to James’s very amusing thoughts on how you might game Fuller’s crazy and gas dominated visions of warfare in the future to Evan’s thoughts on Taiwan logistics in the event of a conflict with China. All interesting sessions and I learned a fair bit about periods and theatres where I had very little prior knowledge. And we ended with a trip into the concept of exploring and colony building on a new world in James Kemp’s Lit By Another Sun (great name by the way). So lots of very varied, involving and entertaining design discussions.

And then we also had two very different but highly enjoyable games, as well as a very quick battle resolution card game from Jim which those of us online could observe but not participate in. Andrew had brought some very well painted medieval troops for a War of the Roses battle. Us onliners were Yorkists up against the treacherous Lancastrians, and we were ably represented by James Kemp in the room, and controlling the toy soldiers. I didn’t know the Billhook rules (though I do know other Andy Callan sets). They were very dice heavy, perhaps typical of the time they were written, but they did seem to give a pretty good idea of how battle in this period worked. My own knowledge of medieval warfare is at least a couple of centuries earlier with the early Crusades so I was interested to see how different tactics were by the time of the Wars of the Roses. The fact that the glorious sun of York triumphed was just an added bonus.

Perhaps out of many enjoyable sessions the one I liked most was Tank Duel, a Lego styled blind system of close quarters tank to tank combat. Very simple and easy rule set. It was great fun to play, even if I did crash my tank into an enemy tank, oops. A major added benefit for me was the introduction to the Brickskrieg models, which I fear are going to cost me a lot of money in the future. Really entertaining and I hope to play more of this style of game, face to face here with Swedish Chestnut and online as well.

I found the whole weekend most enjoyable and quite stimulating. It certainly proved to me that hybrid can work in a lot of sessions, perhaps even the majority. I’m grateful to all of those who helped to make the sessions work for us in the ‘diaspora’. Thanks to all.