UPDATE: CHOCOLATE BOX WARS, CONVENTIONS, AND HARD DRIVE CRASHES

 

My bully Hungarians advancing across the field in one of the games in our ongoing Chocolate Box Wars (CBW) Tournament.

Hail and greetings, dear reader(s).  There has been much going on in parallel lately.  And as any bloggist will tell you, time and energy must be divided between "doing" and posting (although "posting" is also "doing," but it competes with other "doings" if you catch my drift). So in this post I'll provide an overview of recent (and ongoing) actions, with a promise of more focused reports to follow.

  

CHOCOLATE BOX WARS RULES UPDATE

I do want to state up front that there is some important Chocolate Box Wars news. There is a rules modification (Rally) that we are using--along with an accompanying updated Player Reference that reflects the new Rally process. It can be fond on the CBW Tournament Page. Speaking of which, the aforementioned tournament page is a new addition to this blog as well. On it, we are tracking the progress of our round robin CBW Tournament. There, you will also find links to two videos I've posted, one explains the new Rally rule and the other the Retire and Reform rule (not changed, but one that seemed to need clarification).   I will add that the "old" Rally Rule found in Version 1 of the CBW rules (the one currently posted) works fine.  But upon further reading of the 1914 rules, I found that I had misread the "Morale Test" from which my Rally process was derived, and I decided to adjust it accordingly. I'll drop the Version 1 Rally Rule into the optionals in forthcoming Version 2 so it will still be there for those who may prefer it.  For anyone who wants to play CBW with the new Rally Rule before Version 2 is posted, I would suggest you view the video and download the new player reference.

CHOCOLATE BOX WARS TOURNAMENT

Six players are engaged in a round-robin CBW Tournament. You can view the players and their armies on the CBW Tournament Page. There are some other materials, there, as mentioned. The General's Guide pdf there will provide the curious more about the tournament and includes the detailed army lists.  In sum, each player constructed a CBW army using the base system and will play once vs every other player once. This is providing us with another good stress test for the rules in general and the revised Rally Rule in particular: so far, no issues. I've played three games but have yet to get a game report together. I will say that each of my games has been a "near run thing" as have most others that I've heard about. This bodes well for the army construct model since there has only been one "lopsided" affair that I know of which seems to have been down to the caprice of General Dice more than the system itself.  So far, so good! For Tournament battle reports I would direct you to AJ's Wargaming Blog and Mark D's Gaming Site. In the meantime, here are some shots of the games I've played in or observed (as usual you may clix pix for BIG PIX).

My first game was against AJ and his Austrians (A loss for my brave but game Hungarians).

My second game was against Mike and his Danes (army on loan from me). A seesaw affair, but I pulled it out in the end. 

My third game was against Earl and his Romanians (another loaner army). Late in the game, with the result in the balance, Earl's dice went cold on a key counterattack and so I was able to riposte and push his army to exhaustion: a nail biter!

The game I sat in on: (left) Mark D and his British Intervention Force vs (right) AJ and his Austrians. 

I am proud of my own CBW Armies, but I have to say that these two armies (Mark's British and AJ's Austrians) are little short of stunning, particularly when seen paired off on the same table. I can't think of a better representation of the asethetics of CBW than the look of this table. I would encourage you to enlarge the photos to give them a good decko. This game happened the night prior to this posting: a battle report may be forthcoming on either AJ's or Mark's blog, so watch those if interested. 

CONVENTIONS

Once again, I'll be attending the Mayhem Convention in Lebanon, NH.  This year, I'll be running two games. On Friday evening at 7:00 pm, I'll be running a Chocolate Box Wars, "Borscht and Goulasch, Russians vs Hungarians": a game that I've playtested at home and brought to a club game night.  On Saturday evening at 7:00 pm, I'll be once again running my Joust for the Fun of It game. My gaming club will be well represented; collectively we are running 10 games (eight under our club name, and two others that are individually listed).  If you're going to be at the convention, feel free to drop bye (and I still have room for one more player for my Friday night CBW game: come and get it!).

A SPOT OF PAINTING

I've completed another contingent (Ottomans) for my Balkans/Russo Turkish War One Hour Skirmish collection. I'll have a more detailed posting on these later. 

COMPUTER WOES AND CBW RULES UPDATE

I'm not sure if I have mentioned this, but in mid February my hard drive gave up the ghost. Fortunately, I had backed up just before then (a so called "files and folders" backup), so didn't lose much  (an updated One Hour Skirmish player reference and squad roster, which I'll have to redo: happily, the pdfs were both posted on my resource page, but I've lost the original MS Word versions for my own use). Fortunately, my system was dual drive: so the system drive was still intact and I was able to keep functioning. At the end of March, I took possession of my new PC and spent many hours of my life that I'll never get back configuring it, reloading APPS (we used to call them "programs"), passwords, accounts, blah, blah, blah.

And then I reloaded all of my backed up files and folders....only I just now realized that I had done so from an earlier backup and not the most recent one. So, now I must go back in and reload all my files and folders. Other than as a cautionary tale, you might be wondering why I'm telling you this...

...Well, I had intended to do an update of the CBW rules reflecting the new Rally procedure prior to the Mayhem Convention (so that would will be Version 2: currently, Version 1 is posted). However, the convention is now less than a week off and the time I might have spent doing that will now be committed to scrubbing and reloading my files and folders (work before play, even for us retired folk--there are only so many hours in a day available after priorities are taken care of, naps and the wee dram here and there...).

So there you have it. A little bit of everything (or a lotta' nothing?). 

Excelsior!