Alfred Wallace: Warning! Ice and Wargame content!

Okay, so, yeah—I didn’t get a whole lot of gaming done this week, nor did I think many particularly deep gaming thoughts.  Mostly I thought about ice.

This past weekend was to be the last one before the start of the new semester, which figures to be a big four-month stretch for me.  Finishing the thesis, graduating, with any luck getting into a PhD program, being a teaching assistant for the first time—lots going on.  On Friday, I kicked off my last weekend of “freedomâ€? by (wait for it) heading to the game store.  I’d just sent off another application, and I figured I’d hang out a while.

I did play a game with the manager—Easter Island.  I do love abstract two-player games with gimmicks, let me tell you.  Easter Island is a cool little game.  The bits are pretty cool (everybody loves moai); the gameplay is pleasingly different.  It gets compared to Khet, since you’re shooting/reflecting beams around (virtual beams, in EI’s case) and destroying pieces, but the two games feel quite different to me.  I like the variety of actions in Easter Island, for one thing.  You have two actions per turn—your choice of move a moai, turn a moai, place a new moai, place a sun counter, or flip a sun counter.  Flipping a sun counter is the semi-equivalent of firing the laser in Khet.  My sense was that Easter Island is less opaque in what choices you have; with only one kind of piece and twenty spaces, that isn’t surprising.  I enjoyed the game, despite getting beat.  Carl emphasized putting his moai out on the board; I focused on putting out sun tokens.  I’m not sure if I picked a poor grand strategy, or merely played poorly.  (Or both.)

My other game-related activity at the store was picking up a copy of the new Flames of War rulebook and the army lists for the Airborne forces at Normandy.  I like Flames of War; it just “feelsâ€? right.  There aren’t a huge number of special rules, and you spend the game focused on the strategy, not the rules.  I’ve decided to build a “Red Devilsâ€? company—the British 6th Airborne.  Basically, because they rock.  I probably shouldn’t say too much more about miniature wargames in these parts, but I’m looking forward to painting these guys.

On towards evening, the rain started to come down and had begun to freeze a little bit.  I remembered the ice storm in early December; Springfield’s roads were all kinds of messed up.  I expected more of the same and went by the grocery store on the way home to pick up some milk, bread, and other sundries.  Others all had the same idea—the place was jammed.

I woke up Saturday morning to the sound of the tree outside my apartment window shedding a giant limb.  Everything was coated with ice—except the roads.  The trees had begun to bend low and—like the maple outside my window—lose limbs.  Power had gone out in some areas, but not where I was.

Inspired by my decision to get a para company together for Flames of War, I set up Breakout: Normandy to amuse myself over the weekend.  Shortly after I put it up, though, the lights went out.  And came back on in about five minutes.

And went out again two hours later and remain out still.  Good thing I bought all that milk, eh?

The Ozarks Ice Storm has been ridiculous; at its height, 3/4 of the city of Springfield was without power.  As I write—from St. Louis, where I fled to this past Tuesday, when they announced school was canceled this week—it’s still about 1/5 of the city; all the “hard cases.â€?  Which includes me, according to my apartment manager.  There’s no telling how long my building will be without power; maybe another week.  Or two.  Or who knows?  My major worry is the pipes somewhere up above freezing and reducing my game collection to a very considerable degree indeed.  I’m headed back on Saturday morning—just in front of an approaching snowstorm.  I wouldn’t go, except that supposedly school’s starting up—for real, this time—on Monday.  Also, I’m assured that Metagames has its power back on, so there’s that.

What amazed me was how dependent we are on electricity; I’d never thought about it before.  I remember thinking to myself, “Was Abraham Lincoln ever this bored?â€?  I wasn’t that cold; my apartment’s mostly below ground and is thus well-insulated.  It was the silence—no radio, no CDs.  Without light, it was going to be hard to get that Beyond: Normandy game up and running.  And was it really just about twelve years ago that I first had easy internet access?  Have I really become that attached to it?  Apparently yes, and I’m not alone.  If you were a lucky Springfield restaurant with both power and WiFi, you did a land-office business.  I went to one place where the manager came back bearing six or seven power strips so everyone could plug in; every table had a laptop (including mine).  When my last refuge closed for the night and I had to go to my dark home…man, that was a drag.  I’d have gone entirely out of my mind if it weren’t for my booklight.  (I have a cool one; it’s one you put on top of the page, and it illuminates the entire page at once—not a spotlight.  Got it at Barnes and Noble; it’s great.)

Anyway—here’s hoping everyone else has had a more productive week.  And to those of you in one storm or another—Oregon, Texas, Oklahoma, my fellow Ozarkers and Springfieldians—I feel your pain!

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