My son and I started a game of Risk back in January, but never finished. I took a picture of the board, so we can recreate it when we are ready to resume hostilities.
- Joey Gibson
Funny, for all my love of war gaming, I have never, ever played Risk. I've never even seen it other than in photographs.
- Akiva Moskovitz
L4S, I was playing the USSR so I was pretty much prepared to let Germany roll over my first line of defenses. I just needed to hold the line until winter and then build up a huge second line of conscripts in January '42 and let the snow take care of everything else. By then, the US would be entering the war, too, and it would've split Germany's production and focus by half.
- Akiva Moskovitz
if not for that idiot from Austria, the Germans would have conquered Europe....they were within sight of Moscow before the winter...well thankfully for the Allies, General Akiva is running things.... :-)
- Live4Emma (L4S)
that looks like risk. i played it some years back, and i still have it. i played it with some slightly different rules however bcause the game sometimes be too long.
- Alfredo
Alfredo, a full 1939-1945 campaign game can take up to 12 hours to play. And that's nothing: in the game World in Flames, a full campaign game can take up to 40 hours or so to play.
- Akiva Moskovitz
ohhhh...I used to play ASL quite a bit when was a kid...biggest claim to fame, i sniped Rommel in France in 1940...my friend decided to try to have Rommel cross a river on a dingy and one of my French Snipers rolled a 2 and poof...changed the direction of WWII just like that...should have seen the look on his face when he realized what happened and he had to remove him from the board...haha...
- Live4Emma (L4S)
Hah, I bet! Reminds me of when some friends and I would play Axis & Allies as teenagers. One time, I took Berlin alone as the UK. It pretty much surprised everyone, including the other Allies, and essentially ended the game on the spot. Good times, good times.
- Akiva Moskovitz
HAHAHA...nothing like eliminating a 10-3 Field Marshal! Played A&A a bit too...never could get into the larger tactical stuff...really stuck mostly to the squad and company level stuff...ASL...Panzer Leader...stuff like that....
- Live4Emma (L4S)
L4S, you understand, then, what I mean when I say that our living room is pretty much covered with counters for these games! Akiva's clipping the corners and I keep finding pieces of the corners all over the place...
- Rochelle
hahaha!!! wait till Audrey gets more mobile!!! i'm sure you'll find a Tiger Tank or two in her play pen half chewed up! :-p and yes, the GAME is hella fun...the cleanup SUCKS ASS!
- Live4Emma (L4S)
I thought this was a room-sized picture and you just gave Louis Gray the ultimate checkmate in play spaces for newly mobile children......
- Matthew DeVries
Wait! Isn't ASL what kids ask when you join one of those immaturish chat rooms?
- Yuvi
I love the miniseries, but if you *really* want "unfathomably awesome"ness, read the Stephen Ambrose book on which the show was based. :-)
- Joey Gibson
OOohh good idea! Thats one BlueRay I'll have to buy. I loved that mini series.
- CW™
Yeah, clipping counters. Taking the rough edges off of the corners. It's kind of controversial, though. Some grognards see it as 'mutilating' or 'defacing' the game. I think it makes stacking easier and makes the counters look nicer.
- Akiva Moskovitz
And it's kind of a Zen thing, really. My father used to pick weeds in the yard and would lose himself in his thoughts for hours doing it. I clip counters.
- Akiva Moskovitz
"Grognards" and a new term enters the lexicon.
- Alex Scoble
Alex, it's a French term for an old soldier. Now commonly used in the board gaming community to describe players who gravitate toward complex, simulation-oriented war games such as Advanced Squad Leader, World in Flames, etc. It used to be kind of a pejorative but is now often rather complimentary.
- Akiva Moskovitz
Dearest Adobe, I just downloaded and installed Reader on a fresh computer. Now it's telling me it needs to update Reader. Why doesn't the installer you offer have the latest updates already in? WHY YOU SOMNSFLKaaLS UUFCJckALVK OYouaLGk;b
agreed.. and I can drag the labels to and from.. but I have to go to settings to decide which are shown? On a related note, will Gmail ever not be beta?
- Tim Hoeck
Just randomly remembered I used to have a bit of a crush on Janet Jackson in Good Times.
I had a huge crush on her up until she lost all her curvatures and dropped that B&W video with that African-looking model-guy. Love Will Never Do or something...
- Rahsheen ™
Replace Janet Jackson with Michael the little brother and then you have Derrick.
- Derrick
One of the best things in the world: forgetting and then remembering you have cold pizza for breakfast. One of the worst things in the world: being immediately told that of the three slices, you're only allowed one because your wife wants the others later for her lunch.
No wonder my MBP is running hot. I'm not sure if it's changed since real-time search was implemented or not but I only today noticed the temperature.
- Akiva Moskovitz
I get that a lot when I open multiple tabs with flash heavy objects. Sometimes it spikes to 100% till I close 'em out.
- Adi
Have you had trouble with Safari 4 quitting on you too? I've had that a bunch, especially if I have a few other windows open and 2-3 CS4 apps going too . . . on a MBP.
- Mary Baum
FriendFeed is definitely a little heavy on resource usage. It also eats up RAM after a while. I'm in Chrome, though.
- Rahsheen ™
Mary, nope, not really. I've had it crap out on me a couple of times but it's fairly rare. Keep in mind that I'm running Webkit nightlies so my experience is fairly variable compared to running Safari 4.
- Akiva Moskovitz
I want 'Cue the slide whistle' on a t-shirt.
- Akiva Moskovitz
Breakfast: two slices of buttered toast, one with melted smoked Gouda and the other with melted smoked Beecher's Original. To the latter, I added some white pepper and a few dashes of Crystal's. Simple, delicious, and effective.
Oooo. Akiva, you just reminded me that I have a $5 wedge of stinky Gouda in the fridge that I need to eat. I'll be adding some with lunch today. :-)
- Joey Gibson
'Fields of Fire is a solitaire game of commanding a rifle company between World War II and Present Day. The game is different from many tactical games in that it is diceless and card based. There are two decks used to play. The Terrain Deck is based on a specific region and is used to build a map for the various missions your company must perform. The Action deck serves many purposes in controlling combat, command and control, various activity attempts. The units of the company are counters representing headquarters elements, squads, weapons teams, forward observers, individual vehicles or helicopters. A single game is a mission and several missions from a historical campaign are strung together for the player to manage experience and replacements. A mission can be played in about 1 – 2 hours. This game is based on three actual campaigns experienced by units of the 9th US Infantry in World War II, Korea, and Vietnam. “Keep Up the Fire” is the motto of the 9th Infantry, known as the “Manchus” for their service in the Boxer Rebellion.'
- Akiva Moskovitz
via Bookmarklet
This came in the mail today. Can't wait to play it.
- Akiva Moskovitz
OH: 'Yes, I am watching a Korean stop action movie called Doggy Poo. WTF'
Now I'm watching Broken Social Scene on Morning Becomes Eclectic. Soon, I'm going to start prepping for tomorrow's game day. We're playing Europe Engulfed for the first time and, for some reason, I just can't make the rules stick.
- Akiva Moskovitz
'Terminate (terminat.exe) was a shareware modem terminal and host program for MS-DOS and compatible operating systems developed from the early to the late 1990s by the Dane Bo Bendtsen.' This was my weapon of choice back in the day.
- Akiva Moskovitz
via Bookmarklet
oh you're one of *those* people. :) ASL is some dense material
- mikepk
American Sign Language? Yeah, dense stuff.
- Josh Haley
I'm sorry....I've been tortured too much in AOL Chat rooms when I was a kid. Everytime I see "ASL" I think of "Age/Sex/Location"......GAHHH
- Mike VanLare (slayerboy)
It's a blast. It's an expensive hobby with a steep learning curve but it provides play as realistic as it is tense.
- Akiva Moskovitz
Have not played that one, but my brother and I were huge military board game fans - tons of games from Avalon Hill, SPI, and others. Great games many of them were.
- Patrick Jordan
Hubs has this edition - mind you, his is in much rougher shape. He loves ASL.
- Abby Martin
I'm more of a candy land sort of person.
- Geoff Schultz
Patrick, right on. I'm trying to migrate my gaming group more toward war gaming. If I could get World in Flames on the table, I'll be one happy old bastard. But, for now, I'm happy enough to see Europe Engulfed coming up on Wednesday.
- Akiva Moskovitz
Abby, luckily ASL's still in print (mostly). That's not my copy above; mine's in even better condition.
- Akiva Moskovitz
Geoff, one of the most vulgar and vicious game tournaments I ever played in was for Chutes & Ladders. I still have scars.
- Akiva Moskovitz
Chutes & Ladders is pimp shit! "YOU THINK THIS IS A GAME? YOU THINK THIS IS A FUCKING GAME!?"
- Geoff Schultz
Akiva - cool. What was your first game of this type you played? I think our first two were Blitzkrieg and Gettysburg - long time ago though, might be forgetting something :)
- Patrick Jordan
Patrick, well, some friends of mine and I used to play Axis & Allies every December 6 when I was a teenager but I didn't start getting into hardcore war gaming until a couple of years ago and it's only been maybe this year that I've been able to get actual players. I've been doing a lot of solo gaming. I am really, really dying to get a game of World in Flames on the table but that'll...
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- Akiva Moskovitz
Akiva - I remember Axis and Allies. And yeah that was always one of the biggest challenges - finding a safe place for a game board, and getting permission from parents, and later girlfriends and wives, to leave games out chewing up masses of space :) I seem to recall a couple Napoleonic ones that were fantastic, but took up virtually entire rooms.
- Patrick Jordan
A high school buddy owns a chain stores. Back when he had just one, we'd crack open each add-on as it came out, and play in the store after hours till like 3 am.
- Robert Hafer
Wasn't the full ASL with all the add-ons like multiple binders. Didn't it amount to thousands of pages?
- mikepk
mike, nope. It required modules which themselves had pre-requisites to get the necessary counter mix and mapboards, however.
- Akiva Moskovitz
Think I might be entering into a Coil/Swans phase again. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
Coil is probably my favorite group of all time, just incredible on so many layers. As experimentalists they are superb, as musicians they are unique, as occultists they are legendary. Swans is also a group that deserve many of these same praises. I suppose they are relatable because they are both so different. Nothing sounds like Swans but Swans, and nothing sounds like Coil other than...
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- Matthew DeVries
I don't know either of those bands, but think it made me think of was The Residents.
- Matthew DeVries
The Residents - Like the Velvet Underground, The Pixies, The Stooges - are adored by other bands and influence other bands, but me as a non-musician just can't.fucking.get.to........ (actually I do love many Pixie's songs)
- Matthew DeVries